The Magic Gibson J45 - 1978

The relationship between a guitar and a player can be an extraordinary thing, sometimes even magical. I'm sure other musicians feel this as well. You can pick up two instruments made at the same time by the same craftsman, and one will resonate with you on a deep level, while with the other, you may feel no special connection at all. 

Then, there are those instruments that have that elemental connection and have a deeply personal, even spiritual connection. It has been my experience that those instruments are truly....magic. 

Anyone who knew me in the 70s and 80s also knew my Gibson J-45 guitar. It was literally a part of me, always with me, and was my best friend. All my friends knew the guitar, but nobody knew it’s story.

My mom started working as a secretary for Tom T. Hall in the mid-seventies, and she quickly became his business manager. Not only did we get to hang out with Tom, one of the greatest country songwriters of all time, but mom and dad became close with Tom's younger brother, Hillman, and his wife, Lea.

This was around the time my dad's drinking was really getting bad. He had gone off to treatment once already, but he was still drinking. They didn't call it treatment back then; I think they called it a midlife crisis, or nervous breakdown. Hillman tried to stop drinking a few times by then as well, but that didn't stop him and dad from getting together and getting hammered, figuring out all the problems of the world, one Jack and Coke at a time.

Hillman was a singer-songwriter, like his famous brother. Tom loved his writing and supported him all the way, from what I could tell. I am sure Tom had something to do with Hillman getting a record deal and putting out an album. Hillman never had any hits as an artist, though, and he lost his contract after the first record failed to chart, leaving him depressed and even more down on himself. I don't think it helped that Hillman lived in the shadow of a giant, like Tom. Also, he probably had a better singing voice than Tom; there was just no chance of measuring up to Tom's success. He would come over and drink with dad a lot and bitch about how nobody understood him.

He took a liking to me for some reason.

I used to go to work with mom sometimes and hang out at Tom's Toybox Recording Studio, which was on the second floor of the building where her office was. I will never forget the first time I got to watch a recording session go down. I knew right then and there that I was in my element. I didn't know how or why, but I knew that I belonged there. 

Hillman did handyman work around the studio, like painting, repairs to the building, and mowing the grass. He was always really cool to me and would talk to me about music and guitar playing. We struck up a conversation one afternoon while he sat, sweating, on the rock wall outside of the studio. He had a Budweiser can in one hand and a Winston in the other. I had been upstairs watching a rock band track songs with Chuck, the house engineer, Hillman had been mowing.

"What's going on up there, Mikey?" he asked, half interested.

"The guitar player can't get his guitar in tune. All the other guys are bitching at him, telling him he shouldn't have changed his strings or something. They just keep doing the same part over and over, and Chuck says he's out of tune. He's still trying to tune that damn thing."

Hillman chuckled and whispered under his breath, "Fuckin' greenhorns." 

He tossed the cigarette into the gravel drive. He looked at me and said, "You'll be doing that stuff one day, Mikey. I can tell. Every time I come over to your house, you are playing that damn guitar. You are getting good, man. You've got it, son."

"Thanks, Hillman. Nobody ever told me that before." I really appreciated the compliment, especially coming from him. He could play.

I stood there and talked to him for a few minutes. I fucking loved the guy because he never treated me like a kid. I could tell he was listening to me when I talked instead of zoning out like other adults. We spoke about a Stephen King novel I was reading at the time, The Stand; he also read it. We talked about books from time to time. He caught me reading a few times when he was over at the house. I think it surprised him that I was a reader because I was eaten up with long hair and rock-n-roll.

Once he said, "I'm glad you read books, Mike, maybe it'll balance out what's happening to your brain when you listen to that goddamned KISS."

He hated KISS. I didn't care, 'Love Gun' had just come out; Gene was losing his draw on me... I was returning to Deep Purple, my first love, anyway.

He's sitting there, on the wall, then out of the blue, Hillman says... 

"What do you think happens when we die, Mikey?" 

I looked at him, wide-eyed. I wondered why he would be asking a fifteen-year-old kid this question. He handed me a Coke out of the cooler, and he grabbed a beer.

"Well," I said tentatively as I cracked the top and heard the hiss of air from the can, "I really don't think we go to Heaven or Hell if that's what you mean."

I felt safe to speak freely with him; if I had said that shit to my grandma, she would have lost her mind.

"I think we probably go back to wherever we were before we got here, which is nowhere," I said.

"Goddamn, son!" he exclaimed. "How old are you?"

"Fifteen," I replied.

"Well, I think you're onto something. Damn it, boy, I'm thirty-six, and I'm just now figuring this shit out."

He paused, his demeanor changed.

"You wanna know why that fucks me up?" He asked.

"Why, Hillman?" I could see he was a little upset.

"Because I lost my wife and my little boy about nine years ago. Everybody's been telling me I will see them again, that we will meet in the afterlife, all of that bullshit. I want to believe it, Mikey, I really do, but there is this feeling I get when I'm lying in bed at night, a feeling of being so alone that I just can't stand it. Lea can be lying right there next to me, but I still feel alone."

Lea was his wife then. I didn't know he was married before; I also never knew he had a son or that he lost them both.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Ahhh, your mama would kill me if I told you all that shit."

"No," I said with gentle concern. I really wanted to know, and I could tell he wanted to talk about it. 

"I won't tell her," I said, locking eyes with him.

"I'll never know for sure what happened. I was drunk, of course, really drunk. I was out somewhere when I should have been home." He was tearing up now. He lit another cigarette and looked at me with a pained expression.

"I was too fucking drunk when I got there; I didn't even realize what was going on, at first. Then, I realized it was my house. Somebody had called the fire department, but it was too late by the time they got there. They..." he paused,  

"Were gone...Electrical fire. It didn't burn all the way, but they died in their sleep from smoke inhalation, best they could tell. Goddamn Mike, when reality hit me, I wanted to die, too."

He paused. He had stopped crying and was now talking with his head down, cigarette smoke wafting up through his sweaty hair.

"I want to see them again, Mikey. I want to tell them how much I love them and how much I miss them ... how sorry I am," He choked on, sorry.

"But, I know, I will never see them again," he whispered.

I looked at him, and I didn't know what to say. I had nothing. 

Fuck, I wouldn't know what to say now. Would you?

I wasn't about to say anything like people at church would say. That shit had always weirded me the fuck out anyway, and I always knew it was bullshit, even as a kid. It was just people spewing shit that they didn't have a clue about to avoid the depth of the incredible loss and pain, applying some cheap cliche to something so real that words are not adequate.

That shit always came across as fake to me; it still does.

No. This man was hurting, and for whatever reason, he trusted me enough to talk about it. There was no answer, and there was nothing else to be said. I didn't judge him either. It was evident that he had been his own judge and jury for years. The only thing I felt at that moment was love for him.

I went over, sat with him on the wall, and gave him a hug.

I started tearing up some too, I felt so bad for him.

We sat together, in silence, for a few minutes, and then he fished out another beer.

"Thanks for listening, Mikey." He said, "You are a good kid, man."

He smiled and said, "I gotta get back to it." He stood up, looked at the lawnmower, then turned to me, "I'll probably see y'all this weekend. Make sure you are around; I've got something I want to show you."

"Okay, Hillman, I'll be around for sure," I said. 

He fired up the lawnmower in a cloud of oil smoke, and I went back up to see if the greenhorn had his guitar in tune yet.

******

It was Saturday; I was in my room, practicing on the Electra Les Paul. There was a part in Child in Time off Deep Purple Made In Japan that I had picked up on. My lead playing was coming along, and I had discovered the magic of the 'pull off.' There was a knock on my door.

"Not now!" I shouted, slightly irritated. I thought it was Jamie, looking for Sesame, our Siamese cat.

He loved that cat.

"Mikey! It's me, Hillman." 

"Oh shit, come in, Hillman!"

Hillman walked into my poster-covered room, carrying an acoustic guitar. It looked like a Gibson, but I couldn't tell for sure because there was no logo on the headstock. 

"Hey, here's what I wanted to show you. Put that thing down for a second, and try this out." 

I put my guitar in the case and grabbed the acoustic; it immediately felt good in my hands. I strummed a G. It sounded beautiful too, so rich and full sounding, almost like a piano.

"Wow! This thing feels great," I said, as I plunked out a few more chords and a couple of blues licks. The action was very low and comfortable; the neck was thin and flatter than any other acoustic I had played. The few acoustic guitars I had played were super shitty affairs, with the strings a mile off the frets and a neck like a banana. The finish on this one was strange though, I could tell it was not a factory paint job. This guitar had some miles on it for sure, but the finish seemed like it was done by somebody at home. Not that it was terrible, but it was far from the perfect lines and consistency you see on a guitar from the factory, even after years of use.

I didn't give a shit; it felt so good. It was easy to play for an acoustic.

"Is this a Gibson?" I asked. "It looks like a Gibson headstock, but there is no logo."

"Yep. It's a 1962, J-45." Hillman replied. "I sanded a layer of charred wood off the neck, top, and some of the back. It wasn't burned too awful bad, maybe not even as bad as my shitty paint job!" 

He laughed and said, "I always meant to go down to Gibson and get another logo from Cam and put it back on the stock, but I never got around to it." He smiled. "It looks good on you."

It took me a second, then it hit me. This guitar was in the fire at his old house.

I stopped playing and just looked at it. I looked at him; he kind of nodded, so we really didn't have to say anything else.

"I wrote a lot of good songs on that thing Mikey, I think there are a few left in her. I want you to have it; I can't play it anymore." 

He said the last part quietly.

"No way!" I said, "I can't take your guitar, Hillman."

"The hell you can't, I already gave it to you!" I could tell he meant it.

"Are you sure?" I still couldn't believe it. He ignored me and said...

"I don't have the case for it, you know, you may have to get one. Hell, it's beat to shit anyway; you could probably drop it off the roof and not hurt it!"

We both laughed. I would find out how true that was over the next twenty years.

Whenever I saw him after that, he would always ask about my playing, and tell me to, "Tell your mama you ain't giving me that damn guitar back."

I am so glad because that guitar opened up my playing so much. I was writing songs left and right, and It made me play better. I still play some of those riffs to this day. The J45 became my constant companion.

Some years passed, and Hillman stopped drinking, so he didn't come around as much. According to mom, he was attending AA meetings; I had no clue what that was then. He was close with mom; I know he confided in her. There were a few times I would hear her on the phone talking to Jacque or Lea about Hillman. She was worried about him, said he was depressed, and struggled to stay sober. 

He had apparently sent her some letter in the mail and then come over, begging her to give it back. Whatever was in that letter really upset my mom.

I heard her telling Jacque that he had started drinking again.

I came home one rainy afternoon, ready to smoke some weed, and go jam with the boys, later. 

Mom was on the couch, crying.

"Mom, what's wrong?" I asked. She was so upset.

"Oh, Michael," she said between sobs, "It's Hillman. He committed suicide."

"What?"

I heard her though, I just did not want to believe it.

No.

After Mom had calmed down some, she told me as much as she could. He had done it with a shotgun. The letter he sent mom had been a suicide note. He didn't follow through with it that time and came over, begging her to give it back and not tell anyone - he said he 'was okay now.' Of course, she did tell Jacque and Tom, but I don't know what they did or if anything could have been done. He had been struggling with his demons for a long time, she told me. I found out, much later, she never really knew the details of the death of his first wife and their son.

I knew.

I went to my room and picked up the guitar that he probably would have given his son someday, in a perfect world, but there is no such thing.

I played, and I cried.

Beyond, the band. - 1977

Just for the record, Robbie won the talent show. By that time, I introduced him to Joey, and we may have even jammed a couple of times before that. Robbie performed last and blew everyone off the stage. He totally brought the house down! Nobody played guitar like that back then around here, especially in junior high. Joey and I were in the crowd raising hell and giving each other high fives. It ruled! There was some prima donna girl who thought she had it in the bag with her karaoke song...she was crying and all butthurt...it was so awesome.

Before we ever played any music together, Robbie, Joey, and I got really high on some of Robbie's killer weed. He always had the killer. Robbie worked part-time at KFC, and he also dabbled in dealing pot. Joey and I were both fourteen, and Robbie was sixteen or seventeen; we were not sure why we were in the same grade, and we didn’t give a fuck. But he was older, so he definitely had more street smarts than we did, and a lot of common sense, too, which was in short supply around my house. He had a black belt in karate, and his reputation for kicking ass was well known around Donelson, Tennessee, where he lived with his mom and dad, sister, and little brother. His dad was a sweet blue-collar guy, and he loved his boy, supported him in pursuing music. He was happy for Robbie to have friends over to jam. We were made to feel right at home right off the bat. His mom made us sandwiches and iced tea every time we came over. They were the sweetest people ever.

I will never forget the first time we jammed together; It fucking rocked from the get-go! The killer weed surely had something to do with it, but we had a blast. Joey was a kick-ass drummer, and Robbie just wailed on lead guitar while I laid down the fat-ass rhythm guitar. I think everything we played was in the key of A or E. We would jam for ten or fifteen minutes at a time and then end on a massive power chord like Skynyrd did at the end of Free Bird live. It felt so damn good. We didn’t have any bass or vocals, and we didn’t care!

We were a band, by God.

It wasn’t long after the first or second practice that we came up with our name: Beyond. 

This was the first of many names for bands that I would come up with.

(Other names I came up with over the years after were: Ezekiel Steel, Natas Dog, Aura, and Assault. Natas Dog and Assault were killer metal names. Mom had a hard time with Natas Dog...She asked just what in the hell were we up to..."Michael, do I need to be concerned?")

We loved it, and Joey and I would sit and draw logos in class and talk about the band and how much ass we were going to kick. Joey and I were tight, and living closer together, we were able to hang out more. By that time, we were riding motorcycles, and whenever we weren’t jamming, we would be out dirt riding in the trails by The Place.

We jammed quite a bit that spring, riding the bus home with Robbie, getting high, and then going into his room and throwing down. Robbie’s dad would often drive the ten or twelve miles to Edge-O-Lake to take us home afterward. Either Joey’s mom or dad, or mine, would drive us over and pick us up from time to time, but I think it was Robbie’s dad that did most of the carting. We kept hearing a rumor that Rob was going to get his license soon and would be able to drive. Fuck yeah.

It felt good being in a band. After a couple of years of teenage awkwardness and feeling like I didn’t fit in anywhere, now I was where I belonged, with my band. We were all letting our hair grow out long and wearing our bell bottoms and boots. We would walk the halls together after class, and everybody would move out of our way and whisper when we would walk by. It was like being in a gang, and Robbie was our leader because he was older, and he was a badass on the guitar. He wasn’t a dick though, he wasn’t mean, he was humble, but everybody knew you didn’t fuck with him or us. In reality, Robbie was one of the sweetest guys I ever knew growing up, he was a good friend, and he stood up for me more than once. I made fun of this big dude on the softball field one day at PE because he swung like a girl. Well, he didn't punch like a girl in the locker room afterward! After he hit me, Robbie grabbed him and slammed him up against a locker...dude didn't punch Robbie. Most of all, he always encouraged me on guitar, especially when I would get frustrated or bummed out about my playing. He taught me so much not only about playing but also about attitude, loyalty, and friendship.

I had another friend from the neighborhood named Jeff. He was a wild ass, and we became good friends because we dated these two sisters. We would get drunk and high, ride motorcycles together, get in trouble, and generally have a fucking blast...most of the time...until I almost killed him in a motorcycle wreck, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The more I talked about the band, the more Jeff wanted to be in it. The only problem was, he couldn’t play an instrument. We were hanging out one day at The Place, and I said, “Jeff if you could talk your mom into buying you a PA and a microphone, you could be the singer in Beyond. I know Joey and Robbie would be cool with it, man.” It never occurred to me to ask, or even wonder, if he could sing. It obviously did not occur to him either. He just wanted to be in the damn band, and singing had to be easier than learning how to play bass. I figured he would be pretty good because he could talk shit like nobody I had ever heard.

I brought Jeff over to one of our practices, and of course, he was blown away by Robbie. He hit it off with everybody after we smoked a couple of joints and drank a few Miller ponies. The next time Jeff came over, we were unloading a brand new Peavey PA system with a four-channel head, two columns, and an awesome lead singer mic and stand. 

The first time we jammed with Jeff was fucking hilarious! We plugged everything up and started playing with no agenda or plan whatsoever. We didn’t talk about lyrics or where he should sing in the songs or anything. He jumped right in and “sang” some stuff for a couple of verses, then Robbie would wail, and Jeff would sing a little more until we did one of our huge endings. We played so fucking loud that you couldn’t really hear anything he was saying or if he was singing in key, but we were happy to be more like a real band, so we didn’t give a shit... not one.

We thought we were fucking badass, and that was all that mattered.

We worked on perfecting the Beyond “sound” the whole summer between ninth and tenth grade. We had the time of our lives. Robbie did get his license, and his dad started letting him drive. He would come and get us in the beat-up Ford Falcon, we would load up on beer, Robbie could totally pass off as eighteen, the legal age at the time, then we would go to the lake and get drunk, or we would ride around and smoke weed, yell at girls, and be a band. We would always end up over in Robbie’s room, jamming our hearts out and then having sleepovers afterward where we would sneak out into the night doing what teenagers do. We all had girlfriends off and on. If they had weed, we let them come to rehearsal sometimes. I was all about the band and jamming; Jeff was more about the party. He and Robbie were starting to have that in common, but not enough for it to be a problem yet. (Just for the record, I had nothing against the party, but Jeff would get super fucked up and step all over my cables and shit, then sit on my amp and fuck up the controls, pissing me off.)

Our first ever real gig was in Lewisburg, Tennessee, at the National Guard Armory. Somehow we had hooked up with this bass player, "John something" from Lewisburg. His dad brought him to a few practices all the way from Lewisburg to Nashville. I think he responded to a flyer we put up in Donelson Music store, one of those little flyers with the tear-off phone numbers. John was very straight-laced and proper, a really good boy. His devoted father would drive him one hundred miles so he could jam with us while he waited in the car or whatever he did while we rocked. When John first came in, he introduced himself all proper and shook our hands. That was fishy right off the bat. He really didn't listen when I tried to show him the songs, he just played whatever, but he did have a nice bass and amp, which counted for something. He also didn't cuss or drink, so we made fun of him big time after he left. Robbie wasn't sure about him, and we all knew it too, especially when he said: "Man, I ain't sure about this John dude, boys."

"Yeah, he's kind of a pussy, but his bass is cool," I said as I exhaled a long cloud of pot smoke. "Let's see if he can learn the songs, and maybe we can loosen him up a little in the meantime."

Everybody said okay, so we had us a bass player.

John was very excited about being in a band, and he was ready to play a show! He was so ready to play a show, he went ahead and booked us into the National Guard Armory in Lewisburg. It didn't really matter that he didn't know the songs; I think he just wanted to make sure he got to play his bass solo in front of his hometown crowd. 

I don't think John Something had ever been laid before.

He came to one more practice before the show and gave us the lowdown on the gig. It would be on a Saturday night, and there would be another band playing after us. I really don't think we even practiced. We sat around and talked about everything we would need to do to get all of our shit up to Lewisburg. After Robbie talked to his Dad, that problem was solved. He would rent a U Haul trailer and take us all up there, hang with us for the day, and bring us back after. (See? I told you his dad was the shit! Who does that?)

I wish I could tell you I remember everything about my first ever road trip with a band, but I don't.

I remember being there and us going out riding around listening to Ted Nugent's newly released Cat Scratch Fever 8 track with some local dude in his muscle car. We got really high on weed and almost died going 100 miles per hour on this curve out in the boonies. I remember sound check and how all the people standing around shit their pants when Robbie started practicing his solo. I think we had a crowd that night because word got out about Robbie after that soundcheck. You gotta love small towns, man.

The other band was a bunch of older guys that played covers, they were really bad, even by our standards, and they were all blown away by Robbie and Joey. Look, here's the deal: Robbie was a fucking boy wonder awesome fucking rock-n-roll guitar player, and Joey was a well-trained kick-ass drummer. On the other hand, I'd been playing a few months and could play some barre chords with a Wah Wah. I pretty much sucked, as did Jeff, and none of us knew what the fuck was going on with John; we had seen him maybe twice in our lives. We had Robbie and Joey, though, and they were badass, so we didn't give a fuck.

We teamed up with the other band and put all of our gear on the floor together, so we looked more awesome. Then we took these cafeteria-style tables and stacked them three high on their sides behind us, about five across, so we had this huge wall behind us. One of the other band members was all stoned and said: "Mahhyun, it would be bayyyuud if it wuz awl silver mahyunnn!" So we went down to the local Bi-Rite and bought all of their aluminum foil. By showtime, we had this huge silver wall behind us! With some creative positioning of the few shitty lights we had, suddenly we had this eerie-looking alien stage set. You should have seen the looks as the local rock fans started to stream in. There were a lot of them too.

We were the first band, and by the time we were set to go on, there must have been 200 people in there. We were all nervous and excited. None of us really thought about the fact that John didn't really know the songs, and in retrospect, it didn't matter. When Joey counted off, and I hit that first note of Beyond, the first riff I ever wrote, we were fucking on fire! I'm sure it sounded like a train wreck because Joey, Robbie, and I were pretty much together on what we were playing, but Jeff was just screaming random shit. John was off on his own orbit playing some jazzy hippty hoppity lick; that was the only thing he knew how to play. The whole thing is like a dark, noisy, scream dream in my memory. I remember a bunch of people's blank stares in the shadows as I played my heart out. Lights shining in my eyes as I struggled to find my wah pedal on the floor, cheers for Joey and Robbie when they did their killer solos, more blank stares as John did his weird shitty bass solo, and then...

It was over.

Sweat streamed down my face, and through stinging eyes, I saw that the drummer from the other band had Joey on his shoulders, doing a rebel yell, and is carrying him around like the winner of some Texas Chainsaw Massacre themed sporting event. Robbie is surrounded by a bunch of people trying to get his autograph, and I am getting bombarded with pats on the back and: "Yawl was killer mahhyun!" and "Baaaod ayuss maon!"

I guess they didn't get many rock shows in Lewisburg back then.

The ride home was triumphant. Robbie's dad took us to Sizzler at a stop on the way, and we all fell asleep crammed together in the back of the station wagon for the rest of the drive to Nashville.

We never heard from John again.

I'm pretty sure his dad figured out we were not the fine upstanding men John told him we were.

We didn't care. We sounded better without the bass.

******

Beyond carried on a while longer into the fall of 10th grade at McGavock High School, still thinking we were awesome, oblivious to the fact that we had no clue. There were also the beginning signs of big artistic differences. We finally realized Jeff couldn't sing, so then he wanted to play guitar...great. Jeff couldn’t play guitar, so I showed him a variation of the barre chord that was just two notes that you could do with one finger, but he rarely played it in the right position, oh, and he couldn’t tune a guitar, either. There were also petty jealousies over girls and weed bags that were supposed to be used to sell joints that were coming up short.

Somehow we landed a gig opening for a band at the McGavock High Auditorium on a Thursday night. We went in with high anticipation; this was the prestige stage of our youth! 

I'm sorry to inform you that we totally desecrated the stage that night. Jeff was a train wreck on guitar; he should have stuck to "singing." Come to think of it, I think he “sang” on a couple of tunes because there was a mic there... Jesus. Robbie was having technical issues with a shitty cable that he was too stubborn to replace, we couldn't score any weed beforehand, and we didn't want to show up drunk because our parents were there.

I remember looking out into an audience of pained expressions and people heading for the doors. Stone-cold sober reality set in. 

To make matters worse, the band that played after us were older guys, obviously well-rehearsed pros, and they were kicking major ass. They were doing Skynyrd and Marshall Tucker, playing harmony leads, they had a bass player, they could sing...the whole nine.

As we were packing up our gear backstage in our non-high, sober shame, those guys drove the stake in our hearts one song at a time. Robbie kept saying, "Man! They are blowing us away! They are kicking our ass! We suck!"

Jeff kept passing it off. "Nah, man, we weren't that bad; we were pretty good. We just had an off night. Those guys are just older; we kick-ass, man!" He said it halfheartedly, but you could even see it in his eyes...he knew.

The dream was over, the illusion was gone... we were not bad as fuck, man.

We sucked ass.

This is the place in many a young rocker’s life where you have to make a decision...

“Am I really gonna try to do this shit? Or, should I start thinking about my future?”

That last part never even occurred to me.

I made a pact with myself that night. 

"I live for fucking rock n roll. I’m going to learn how to play lead guitar. And... I will never set foot on a stage again unless I'm well-rehearsed and playing real songs with a goddamn bass player and a real singer! We are going to kick fucking ass and take fucking names!" Something like that.

It was time to go to the woodshed.

                                   Me and Grandma with the Electra....she prayed for me constantly ;)