Today was a fun NYC guitar adventure! I wasn’t sure if this could be pulled off successfully, but it wound up going off without a hitch.
One of the most iconic Mosrite guitars in rock music history was a white ’66 Ventures model owned by Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5. The MC5 were a legendary Michigan band who played hard and fast rock ’n’ roll in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They are often credited with being one of the pioneers of punk rock, along with their fellow Michigan rockers The Stooges.
Fred “Sonic” Smith played a pearl-white Mosrite Ventures model with the MC5, famously pictured on the cover of their live album Kick out the Jams.
The white Ventures model that Fred played in the MC5 influenced both Johnny Ramone of the Ramones and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana to play Mosrite guitars. So as you might imagine, Fred “Sonic” Smith’s Mosrite is a truly iconic instrument.
I really wanted to photograph the guitar for the Mosrite book that I’m working on, but there were a few hoops to jump through. The guitar has been cared for since Fred died in 1994 by Patti Smith—yes, THE Patti Smith (member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, also ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the top 100 greatest artists of all time). Luckily, I was put in contact with her son Jackson Smith, who as it turns out is quite the guitar geek himself. Jackson was super cool and put me in touch with his mother, and she couldn’t have been nicer about the guitar being photographed for my book.
Big help on the technical side came from Laura Palmer, who offered to help with the photo shoot. She had all the camera and lighting equipment, so we set her gear up in the back room of Lucinda’s nightclub (Patti’s only requirement was that the guitar not leave Manhattan) and photographed the guitar before the club opened. (It was good to see a photo of my old pal Jeremy Tepper hanging behind the stage, and in fact his widow, Laura Cantrell, is performing at the club this evening—small world!).
HUGE thanks to Patti Smith, Jackson Smith, Laura Palmer, and Kelley Swindall from Lucinda’s for helping make this NYC Mosrite adventure possible! I’m so happy to have a photo of this guitar for the book.
If you’ve got “the fever,” as I do, you can only imagine how thrilled I was to open this case and see THAT guitar, live and in the flesh. What a great day!
