One of my first childhood memories was wetting my pants in public. But that isn’t the case here: One the first vivid childhood memories I have of my dad, was driving from Viborg to nearby city Holstebro to the Alfred Christensen music shop. I think it must have been around 1968 or 69. Apart from being the brilliant piano player he was, my dad had also eairlier on been messing around with guitars. As my mother told off when she met him at Askov Højskole in 1952, he was in fact the only one who played guitar and therefore could jazz up the social gatherings. And I have seen the photos to prove that point. My dad in the midst of a crowd, mostly dames – a wall to wall dames situation, playing the guitar, smoking his pipe and wearing his classic islandic sweater and brown shoes. The dames, my mother told me, was aroused by the modern tunes, and she among other girls she had to fight off for example this one http://www.macnyt.dk/editor/imagecatalog/picUploads/11061612997472297.jpg before she could get to him.
Anyhow: now a good 20 years later he was in a music shop with his son and purchased a beautiful Hohner jazzguitar, much like this one: http://tanabe-mitsukuni.com/barney/guitar/CIMG0149.jpg for the shocking amount of 800 kr.
Thinking back I don’t really remember him playing it much. I remember it hanging on the wall, and I remember me trying to play it. At one point, the guitar broke its neck, I do not remember how, but I remember it being fixed at my Uncles furniture-factory, leaving a characteristic scar.
Years passed, as they do, I left home, grew bigger, more stupid and less humble, and one day – round 1987, I was home for a visit when I noticed the guitar wasn’t there anymore. I asked my dad what had happened to it, and he told me he gave it up for a Red Cross collection Campaign.
Me at the time playing in a band felt a stint of bitterness. Howcome he hadn’t thought of me first? I don’t really remember if it led to any crisis, or we just stigmatised the distance between us that over the years had snuck in.
Then more years passed, and in the summer of 92, I and a bundle of friends was invited to a party somewhere out in the country. The party was super cool, drugs at hand, girls, live music, we were somewhere near the water, we walked, scored, fucked and talked all through till morning. I was sitting at a bonfire very early talking about music with one the guys living there. He was a musician, and at some point he started raving about this guitar he just bought at a flea market for 300 kroner. It was a bargain he said, for a guitar like that, and he raced into his room to get it. And what he brought back was nothing less than a Hohner. Very much like the one my father had. I asked if I could play it, and something felt familiar. The sound. And there, it was, the scar in the neck. I felt it carefully, looked it over. I had no doubt: It was my fathers guitar, and I felt inclined, no, I demanded it back. For a price. But this guy had spend hours fixing it, and I could in no way pay what he asked, so we left it at that, and jammed for a while. Strange Fruit, I remember us playing. The Billie Holiday lynch mob song.

But it was my dads guitar, now it’s the guitar of somebody else`s dad.