Michael Schenker - Rock Bottom

This is going to be a combo post, part "Guitars and Gear" and part "Musical Dreaming".

The TL;DR is I missed the opportunity to buy a limited edition collectors edition guitar, mainly because it took me two days to see the news, and I wasn't able to jump on one of them. Good thing too, as it was a wee bit pricey.

I was late to learning to play guitar. It was probably my junior year of high school, when my friend, Ken Rice, introduced me to the band UFO. They had released the album "Strangers in the Night" and we were in his bedroom listening to it, and I was mesmerized. It was (and is) an in-your-face straight up rock by a band in its prime, but the highlight was their German guitarist, Michael Schenker. I've written about Michael Schenker before, so, if you want more background, hit that search function.

Anyhow, not long after the series of concerts that the songs from this album were recorded (1978 Midwest US tour), Michael Schenker left the band, and after a quick stop where he started his career, the Scorpions, he formed his band, The Michael Schenker Group or MSG, and went on a multi-decade journey.

But I am not here to talk about all that, it is well documented. Instead, I want to talk about the piece of wood and steel he held.

His guitar was a 1971 vintage Gibson Flying V guitar, that he bought while still in the Scorpions before he left to join UFO. It was white, and most of the (low quality) video of his performances with UFO shows him with long flowing blond hair, and that white Flying V.

But when he formed MSG, he was sporting this guitar with a symmetrical black/white paint job, sort of like the yin and yang symbol from Eastern Religions.

It was his trademark, and even when he switched to Dean guitars, the paint scheme remained. It was iconic.

Last week, Gibson announced a limited run of these guitars, from their custom shop, they are about as perfect replicas of Michael's guitar that were possible. There were 50 offered for sale, and you can guess that they were expensive, and the audience was a certain class of aficionado:

The price is mind boggling, $16,999 exclusive of tax. And yes, Kirk Hammet has one.

But, man, that is almost worth selling some of my RSUs for:

Anyhow, by the time I learned that these were available, the production run sold out, so that seventeen thousand dollars in my bank account is safe.

In case you want to see Michael wailing away on the original, here is an early 1980's recording of MSG playing Rock Bottom. \m/

I am bittersweet about this. The chance to own one would be cool, but that is a whole lotta chedder.