I once gave a lecture on Great Teachers to a university group of professors, and pointed out that my greatest teacher never made it past grade 11, and said things about professors (including me) that would have curled their hair. One thing I mentioned was that a great teacher is very reverent towards his or her tools. The example I used was the time Rick Fielding said to me that it was time I got a better guitar. We had all kinds of discussions about guitars (I knew, and know nothing about types or makes of guitars), including the time I pointed out to him that his guitar was a combination of speaking stick (First Nations baton that moves around a circle) and teddy bear and lover, which he liked. I'm sure he had heard all that before. And the only time we ever really had a fight was over a guitar (that's a story for another time).

Anyway, he said it was time I got a new guitar, and I knew that this was his lifeblood, hanging around guitars, so we got into his guitar and went to a neighbourhood shop (not the 12th fret) and after about two hours of banging around, we settled on one that was pretty pricy, but not outrageous. It was second hand, and needed a little work on the neck, so I left it there, and we went on our way, chatting about this and that. That night, around one am, my telephone rang, and it was Rick, and he said, "I feel so awful, I've been fretting about this all day, ever since you left, I can't sleep, I think I recommended the wrong guitar. I have to get your money back." He went to the store the next morning when it opened, and talked them into giving me my money back.

It was very like him. But what I took from it was not about guitars, but about being careful about your tools to the point of obsession. In my case it is most often books, sentences, words. I advise all my students to buy the best dictionary they can. A real dictionary, not the Internet. Some of them think I am nuts, others take my advice. The best students.

But in a weird sense, the opposite is also true. I remember once fussing about how hard I should be playing, and Rick said, "Er, Peter, it's supposed to be played. It can take a lot. The important thing is playing it full out. After all, it's just a piece of hollow wood we're talking here."

There is something about learning from your tools, letting them teach you, that we all have to learn over and over again, and while I knew that before in a way, it was one of Rick's lessons.


yours ever,

Peter T.