![]() “And everybody wanted a guitar,” he says. Nirvana was huge when the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, 38, was growing up. “They don’t have guitar heroes like you and I did.” “Now, it’s more electronic music and kids listen differently,” McCartney says. King and Buddy Guy, and you had a few generations there.” “So you got loads of great players emulating guys like B.B. “The electric guitar was new and fascinatingly exciting in a period before Jimi and immediately after,” the former Beatle says wistfully in a recent interview. He thinks back on those days fondly and, in his sets today, picks up a left-handed Les Paul to jam through Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady.” McCartney saw Hendrix play at the Bag O’Nails club in London in 1967. The ’60s brought a wave of white blues - Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards - as well as the theatrics of the guitar-smashing Pete Townshend and the sonic revolutionary Hendrix. “That was something that had so much profound attitude to it,” Page told Jack White and the Edge in the 2009 documentary “It Might Get Loud.” But four chords were enough for Jimmy Page. ![]() That instrumental wasn’t a technical feat. Link Wray, with his biker cool, blasting through “Rumble” in 1958. Scotty Moore’s reverb-soaked Gibson on Elvis’s Sun records. Chuck Berry duckwalking across the big screen. They arrived with the first wave of rock-and-roll. “You don’t see a bunch of kids emulating John Mayer and listening to him and wanting to pick up a guitar because of him.” How about Creed’s Mark Tremonti, Joe Bonamassa, John Mayer? He shakes his head. ![]() He is asked about Clapton, who himself recently downsized his collection. “What we need is guitar heroes,” he says. They’re looking to shed, not add to, their collections, and the younger generation isn’t stepping in to replace them. Now those boomers are retiring, downsizing and adjusting to fixed incomes. When he opened his store 46 years ago, everyone wanted to be a guitar god, inspired by the men who roamed the concert stage, including Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Jimmy Page. He’s concerned by the “why” behind the sales decline. What worries Gruhn is not simply that profits are down. And at, the online retailer, a brand-new, interest-free Fender can be had for as little as $8 a month. In April, Moody’s downgraded Guitar Center, the largest chain retailer, as it faces $1.6 billion in debt. The two biggest companies, Gibson and Fender, are in debt, and a third, PRS Guitars, had to cut staff and expand production of cheaper guitars. In the past decade, electric guitar sales have plummeted, from about 1.5 million sold annually to just over 1 million. “I’m not all doomsday, but this - this is not sustainable.” “There are more makers now than ever before in the history of the instrument, but the market is not growing,” Gruhn says in a voice that flutters between a groan and a grumble. What others might see as a boom - the seemingly endless line of manufacturers showcasing instruments - Gruhn sees as two trains on a collision course. There is great love for the product and great skepticism. Walking through NAMM with Gruhn is like shadowing Bill Belichick at the NFL Scouting Combine. The 71-year-old Nashville dealer has sold guitars to Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift. Standing in the center of the biggest, six-string candy store in the United States, you can almost believe all is well within the guitar world.Įxcept if, like George Gruhn, you know better. But when the doors open at the Anaheim Convention Center, people stream in to scour rows of Fenders, Les Pauls and the oddball, custom-built creations such as the 5-foot-4-inch mermaid guitar crafted of 15 kinds of wood. The convention couldn’t sound less rock-and-roll - the National Association of Music Merchants Show.
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