Guitar Lessons by Bob Taylor

In his first-ever book, Bob Taylor, cofounder and president of Taylor Guitars, shares candid stories about mastering his craft, overcoming adversity, and building a successful company. In the introduction to the book he tells the story of his feelings of accomplishment in seeing one of his idols playing a Taylor Guitar, early in his career.

“I heard he plays one of your guitars in it!’’ said Steve Phillips, my best buddy in those days. ‘‘We have to go one night this week, the sooner the better.’’

Steve and I had been friends for years. It was 1979, I was 24 years old, and we had both been married for about two years by then. We’d met in church, our wives became best friends, and the four of us did everything together.

Steve was more into music than I was, as well as books, movies, and news magazines. He kept me informed. People always thought that, since I was a guitar maker, I must be an avid musician, and therefore, be in the know of what is going on in the music scene around the world. While there is a bit of truth to that, I was primarily a woodworker with dirty hands and jeans, and a desk piled high with tool catalogs.

However, with my brother-in-law Mike, I played my fair share of music—years’ worth, in fact—starting when we were just kids. Mike was Neil Young’s biggest fan and together we spent countless hours playing Neil’s songs. In fact, I’m sure I’ve learned more Neil Young songs from Mike than from listening to Neil’s records. But I am a fan of Neil’s music, and when Steve told me that he heard Neil was playing one of my guitars in his new movie Rust Never Sleeps, I had to go.

What 24-year-old, in those days, didn’t have memories of driving to high school as a senior in a car with an eight-track tape deck and a copy of Neil Young’s Harvest playing over and over? We screwed tape decks to the bottoms of our dash boards and put a couple plywood speaker boxes on the floor somewhere, filled up the tanks for 29 cents per gallon, and drove to wherever listening to ‘‘Old Man,’’ ‘‘Heart of Gold,’’ and ‘‘The Needle and the Damage Done.’’

If you’re my age, you know what I mean. And when we sold those cars we owned and relieved their back seats of the junk—along with the towels and some swimming trunks, the tools you used to keep the car running, and maybe a hair brush, or a map that was never folded back to its original condition—among the pile of stuff was usually an eight-track of Neil Young’s Harvest.

There was a big theater in the Mission Valley section of San Diego called Pacific’s Cinerama. It was one of those huge 70-foot-wide curved screens, and all the big movies played there. When I was a kid, I went with my childhood friend, Greg Robinson, to the movie Grand Prix at this same theater. We sat in the front row eating Flix Nonpareils chocolates with the cars racing around us across the big screen. I got so car sick I had to walk to the back. I still can’t eat a Flix to this day. Then there was Star Wars some 14 years later and now, Rust Never Sleeps.

Steve and I scheduled a night and got a few other friends together and we headed to the theater. I was nervous. I hated the anticipation that something was going to happen for fear that it might not. I prefer to drink my disappointment alone, not with an audience of friends interviewing me. Of course, news travels fast when a celebrity buys your guitars. I had been told that Neil Young had bought a Taylor guitar by the dealer who sold it to him. Then, I’d heard from Steve that Neil Young played a Taylor guitar in this movie, but I didn’t know it for a fact.

When I walked into the theater, I was met with a flurry of questions: ‘‘Hey Bob, how did you know Neil plays a guitar in the movie?’’ ‘‘What song does he play?’’ ‘‘Have you met him; is he a cool guy? Can you get us his autograph?’’ ‘‘What are you gonna do when you see him play it? Are you gonna just freak out?’’

Of course, I didn’t have the answers. I was going to find all this out myself, but by the time we’d walked in I was somehow feeling the responsibility to make it turn out good. It was hard for me to bridge that gap between how I felt about it and how everyone else did. They were on my side; I knew that.

We took our seats and I was just hoping that the buddies I was with wouldn’t start telling the row in front of us that Neil plays one of my guitars in the movie, because I didn’t want to live through it if he didn’t. But he did.

It didn’t happen right at the start, it was a while into the film. Every new song he played was somehow a tease to me, waiting to see if this was really going to happen.

Finally, he strapped on the Taylor 855 12-string, put on his harmonica, and walked around the stage, playing ‘‘My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)’’ on this glorious guitar and singing. Just him, that 12-string we’d made, and a harmonica.

That guitar was two stories high on that big screen; you could see every detail—its shape, the name on the peghead, the bridge—it was all there. And the sound would have been George Lucas approved, I’m sure of it.

All at once, I was overcome by a feeling of total satisfaction, alone with myself, soaking in the moment, followed by total embarrassment as my buddies slapped me, looked for reaction, and told people around us that I had made that guitar. Not much has changed to this day in that department.

I walked out of that movie a little more confident, proud that I’d come that far; that I’d made a guitar that Neil Young would buy and play in a movie like that.

The next morning I went to the shop and looked around, realizing that, as great as it was, the night before hadn’t changed my life all that much and I still had a lot of work ahead of me if this business of ours was ever going to pan out. I strapped on my apron and started cutting wood.