"Now, it’s more electronic music and kids listen differently,” McCartney says. “They don’t have guitar heroes like you and I did.”
No guitar hero. Less interest in guitar. The demographic that played the guitar is getting old and dying off.
Good.
They can play video games so they can pretend to be playing guitar, baseball, football, etc.
Being good on guitar requires practice and discipline.
Not much of that being encouraged today.
Gibson was persecuted by Obama regime: non-union and quasi-conservative, as I recall.
I agree with you. I am old but not dead yet.
I quit electric years ago but I still please a lot of people playing my Gibson Hummingbird.
In my 66 years I've taught a few people how to play. It's been fun so far...
FMCDH(BITS)
You’ll have to pry my Martin D-1 outta my cold dead hands....(actually, oldest son will have to do it, as I promised him he could have it when I’m gone).
Rock ‘n’ Roll is dead. No more Elvis, no more Chuck Berry, no more Rolling Stones, no more The Beatles, no more The Animals. Males have been emasculated, and all we have are divas and fruits.
Apparently you don’t know about Joe Bonamasa, Derek Trucks, and a big resurgence of interest in American folk, which is guitars, various fiddles, etc.
Quality acoustic guitars are still selling fine.
If there's not another piece of music recorded for the rest of my life I won't feel cheated.
The wheels grind slowly, but exceedingly fine. The British Invasion is frequently credited with firing the fatal torpedo (in the form of the electric guitar) into the hobby industry and ultimately sinking it… albeit slowly. Looks like the world of "let's pretend" on hand-held electronic devices is returning the favor.
My 14 year old son is killing it, he plays drums, guitar, and bass and records his own stuff. He doesn’t quite have all the recording stuff down, but he is getting there. We can’t afford high end guitars for him, but he is doing well with what he has. It helps that his dad always had instruments lying around.
I first started playing the guitar in 1992. I still rock out on my fender telecaster for at least 15 minutes a day and often more. I have a 36 year old Gibson Les Paul too but I mostly just admire it these days. The tele is more playable IMO. I run the tele into a Vox wah wah and then into a very affordable Fender half stack and not much else.
10 year old blind boys sings and plays the blues
https://www.wimp.com/blind-boy-from-quebec-sings-and-plays-the-blues/
One of the contributors to the lack of customers is the HOA which wants total quietude in the neighborhood.
Thus, the death of the garage band. There aren’t any anymore.
What a joke. I’ve bought three guitars since I turned 70 a couple of months ago. Of course none of them were new. Got a Mexican Strat made in the ‘90’s for $150. A 2009 USA Les Paul for $550, and a Chinese Epiphone Les Paul Special for $80. All of them play great. The other two electrics I have are a 1996 Korean Fender Telecaster and a 1962 Gibson ES 355. The latter is worth a fair amount and would be right up Gruhn’s alley. The used electric guitar market is doing quite nicely. If I live long enough, there’s some new models out that I might consider at a fraction of their current MSRP in maybe ten years.
With all due respect to my acquaintance George, this is a standard lament of an “older” guy to the state of the market today. If you go to a NAMM show and look at the guitars, you can barely escape the conclusion that there is no way for the world to absorb the numbers of guitars on display.
Almost forty years ago when I first met George, he despised the idea that a Candy Apple Red Strat (electric guitar) 1: sold for twice as much as a regular sunburst one, and 2: Sold for more than a finely made acoustic guitar, say a Martin D-18, simply because it was spray-painted a different color.
In the meantime, George has bought and sold guitars including CAR Strats up to the point where they command $25,000, still substantially more than regular sunburst ones.
Today, Fender (and most other makers) produce “relic” guitars which look like they are really old, really well used ones. At the same time, the tech to make modern electric (and acoustic) guitars has advanced massively. I used to have a medium sized vintage collection. I sold them and bought newer guitars that are mechanically far, far superior and cost 1/10th as much as those older ones are worth. Yes, they sound a bit more sterile. Run it through a fuzz box, I can’t tell.
Anyway, those beat-up-from-the-factory looking guitars sell for 3x what regular models sell for.
There will always be a fetish people chase. There will always be guitar makers who go out of business. Offshore made instruments are almost as good as domestic ones, the real vintage ones are fiendishly expensive (and with YouTube and ebay NOBODY does not know what they are worth any more) What Mr. Gruhn laments is, the loss of intermediation = his oppty to profit, to make a living. That is true of all things, pretty much.
I never really had guitar heroes.
For a band to meet my minimum standards it had to have a balance of instruments beyond drums and guitars even if rock was the style.
Rock and roll has all but come and gone...I’ve heard all the greats songs of the 60s 70s a thousand times each and most everything that followed were versions of what I’ve heard over and over and over for decades. It’s just not the same...