John Lennon Guild Starfire

Derr5151 · Dec 28, 2011

I was over at the Hard Rock in Honolulu the other day and noticed hanging on the wall a red Starfire 12'er with a photo of the Beetles. Attached was a letter saying that it was given by Mark Dronge son of Alfred Dronge the founder of Guild. Anyone ever hear of this story? Thought it was kinda cool. Almost identical to the Guild my dad has.

Treem · Dec 28, 2011

Niiice! Here is the youtube clip! :mrgreen:

ArchtopAnimal · Dec 28, 2011

This attempt to get some Guild Player publicity didn't work whatsoever . Don't think the Beatles ever used Guilds . Did they ?

adorshki · Dec 28, 2011

ArchtopAnimal said:
This attempt to get some Guild Player publicity didn't work whatsoever . Don't think the Beatles ever used Guilds . Did they ?

WE've seen it before, it's also in Hans Moust's book.
Our member Walrus cited a book which covered the instruments used by the Beatles in their recording seesions and it appears the guitar never did get used for any released tracks.

But there is an informal photo of John sitting of the floor surrounded by 45's in here somewhere, and part of that guitar is visible, implying he did keep it handy for "noodling around."
Sorry, short of time to do a search to post some links of the threads I mentioned.

ArchtopAnimal · Dec 29, 2011

http://www.thecanteen.com/mark.html
Wouldn't have troubled the tight #### to give one to George either .

adorshki · Dec 29, 2011

ArchtopAnimal said:
http://www.thecanteen.com/mark.html
Wouldn't have troubled the tight #### to give one to George either .

Letter says it was presented to both of 'em, but that's kind of like your dad giving you and your brother a car to share, right? And we all know George was a better driver. In both ways. :lol:

walrus · Dec 29, 2011

I agree - my opinion is it would have been much more likely George would have actually used it on a recording or on stage, as he did use several different guitars over the years. Lennon, of course, was not the guitar "aficionado" that George was.

One can only wonder how things would have different...

walrus

southernGuild · Dec 29, 2011

Enjoyed that Youtube clip Treem, Thanks. It puts a bit more background to the tale than I knew before. For me, It also does raises the questions around "What if'. Like what if Guild presented TWO guitars? One for each of them. What if George would have actually used it, In recordings or stage, how whould that profile have changed things at Guild beyond just more guitars sold.
Sure would have been great to hear ( and see) George work his magic on a Starfire. :mrgreen:

adorshki · Dec 29, 2011

southernGuild said:
Enjoyed that Youtube clip Treem, Thanks. It puts a bit more background to the tale than I knew before. For me, It also does raises the questions around "What if'. Like what if Guild presented TWO guitars? One for each of them. What if George would have actually used it, In recordings or stage, how whould that profile have changed things at Guild beyond just more guitars sold.
Sure would have been great to hear ( and see) George work his magic on a Starfire. :mrgreen:

If that wasn't that guitar on "And You BIrd Can Sing", can you just imagine what it would have sounded like if it HAD been?

guildman63 · Dec 29, 2011

What amazes me is that as good as Guild was and is at producing guitars they just never understood marketing. I suppose if they had I would have never been able to buy both an X-500 AND a Starfire 4 for the price of one ES-335.

Thank you Guild!

fronobulax · Dec 30, 2011

adorshki said:
But there is an informal photo of John sitting of the floor surrounded by 45's in here somewhere, and part of that guitar is visible, implying he did keep it handy for "noodling around."

Here you go. mgod found it and I posted it somewhere but relinking was easier than searching.

walrus · Dec 30, 2011

Those were the days.... Listening to 45's next to your rotary phone....

When mgod first posted that photo, I loved it, and still do. Not only the Guild there which proves Lennon at least had it with him and presumably played it, but he seems to be really listening carefully to the 45's, the 45's are all over the floor haphazardly... The photo seems to catch him "unawares" in a quiet moment, just listening to music like everyone else, if you know what I mean.

walrus

southernGuild · Dec 30, 2011

Thanks Frono, and Mgod. Great to see that photo again, and yea, it sure does belong in this post.
I agree, seeing the guitar as such, shows that he at least 'played it' privately, and not just accepting it and putting it into some storage unit. Cool!
Now if I can only figure out what that double CD case is doing atop his stereo speaker......near his expired bowl of Captain Crunch! :lol: ( we all know he liked his Crunchberrys!)
Maybe thats the Beatles Anthology Cd 3 Cd set. and John is just trucking through time zones...... :roll:

billydlight · Jan 16, 2012

I love that the letter is signed by Bob Cianci, LTG's own DrumBob. Who knew??

The Guilds of Grot · Jan 16, 2012

billydlight said:
I love that the letter is signed by Bob Cianci, LTG's own DrumBob. Who knew??

Shirley? :wink:

DrumBob · Jan 20, 2019

guildman63 said:
What amazes me is that as good as Guild was and is at producing guitars they just never understood marketing.

I totally agree Guild's marketing was very often lame. When I was there, I constantly shook my head at the feeble ads we ran. The worst one was the white guy with the extreme Afro playing a Bluesbird. Some flack at the ad agency trimmed the photo out with a pair of scissors and his hairdo looked awful. We had some ad agency from NYC at the time, and whenever they came to the office, Neil always let me look over their proposed ads. I made suggestions, but they were rarely heeded.

As most of you probably know, Neil Lilien and Leon Tell made some incredibly bad business decisions during their time at Guild. A couple of the ones that fortunately never happened: transferring all manufacturing to Japan and taking on the construction of piano benches for some company. Thank goodness those didn't happen. And as most of you know, Tell and Lilien were fired eventually by Avnet.

Guild's marketing efforts improved drastically under Mark Dronge's watch. I especially liked that ad with the dejected guy sitting on his bed with a Les Paul behind him, with copy that read something like, "When the thrill is gone, get it back with Guild."

coastie99 · Jan 21, 2019

The Guilds of Grot said:
Shirley? :wink:

Nice one Grot. I'd give that five smilies if I knew how !

GAD · Jan 21, 2019

guildman63 said:
What amazes me is that as good as Guild was and is at producing guitars they just never understood marketing. I suppose if they had I would have never been able to buy both an X-500 AND a Starfire 4 for the price of one ES-335.

Thank you Guild!

Holy crap how have I never seen this Starfire? I want it! Tell me more!

SFIV1967 · Jan 21, 2019

DrumBob said:
I especially liked that ad with the dejected guy sitting on his bed with a Les Paul behind him, with copy that read something like, "When the thrill is gone, get it back with Guild."

Great!

Ralf

katthestar · Jan 23, 2019

I want to recreate that ad, with my Gibson ES-137 on my bed and my Guild Starfire III in my hands.

John Lennon Guild Starfire

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