With its swamp ash body, maple neck, and black pickguard, the guitar is not only iconic, it’s also unique. “When he sings ‘I’ve got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk’ on ‘Thunder Road,’ this is the guitar he’s talking about,” says Christopher Phillips, editor of the Springsteen fanzine Backstreets. That same guitar was featured prominently the cover of Born to Run in 1975 (during Bruce’s street-poet phase) on Live 1975-1985 (held by a clean-shaven pumped-up Born in the U.S.A.–era Boss) and on 2012’s Wrecking Ball (as the high-mileage instrument of rock’s elder statesman.) He bought the guitar in 1973, around the time he released his debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park. Unlike most rock stars who go through instruments as quickly as they do groupies, Springsteen has been a monogamist in this area.
With its wood body worn in like the piece of the cross that it was, it became the guitar that I’d play for the next 40 years. “I strapped on my new guitar, a 1950s mutt with a Telecaster body and an Esquire neck, I’d purchased at Phil Petillo’s guitar shop for one hundred and eighty five dollars.
On page 185 of his new memoir, Bruce Springsteen pays brief but heartfelt homage to his oldest musical collaborator: his old Fender electric guitar.
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