Dumpster-diving is a sometimes risky and legally questionable practice, but it sometimes produces priceless acoustic guitars. That’s what happened for longtime Clapton collaborator Andy Fairweather Low. In a new Guitar World interview, he reveals that his most treasured guitar was found in a skip [UK parlance for dumpster].
After a career that has seen him working alongside Van Morrison, Roger Waters, George Harrison, and Joe Satriani, we assume Low no longer needs to find his guitars in the trash.
Yet when asked by Guitar World what guitar he would save in a fire, Low replies, “It’d be a little Gibson archtop. My mate, Mickey Gee, a guitar player from Wales, who played with Shakin’ Stevens and Tom Jones, found the guitar in a skip down the bay in the early ’70s.”
Ironically, given that this is the guitar Low would save from a fire, it was found with burns on the body. “It had been in a fire, so the body was rippled a bit, but I put some strings on it and got it set up and really loved it,” says Low.
“I offered to buy it from him because he wasn’t using it; I paid £47 [$59 at that time] and told him if he ever wanted it back, he could have it back for £47,” Low remembers. That’s around £550 ($713 USD) in today’s money.
Identifying vintage Gibson archtops is notoriously tricky, but we believe this is an L-37 [not an L-40 as identified in the video above].
Low has previously talked about the find with Guitarist. “I got some guy, Colin Mackey, to do some work on it, to get it to where it is. Now it's playable, and it fits in with how I'd like to think I am as a guitar player. And the first song I wrote on it was Wide Eyed and Legless,” he said, referring to his 1975 #6 UK hit.
The archtop is one of many highlights in a collection that also includes a Teisco that Eric Clapton refused to let him play on stage. Andy also admitted that he had never heard of Roger Waters when they first met.
