A HISTORY OF BROADWAY GUITARS

The Revellations

 

Ian Shaw contacted with the story of his 'Great White Wail' - a white Broadway Plectric 1922! Ian takes up the tale.

 

"My first guitar, in the early 60s, was a cheap acoustic costing about £7.10s, together with the obligatory Bert Weedon “Play in a Day”. So musically emboldened, I started to frequent the Youth Group at Bispham Parish Church in Blackpool, which had, to my mind, the most amazing-looking girls to delight the senses of the callow 14 year old that I was. A few of us there had guitars and started to play songs together and eventually morphed into a four-piece group. That however required something a bit more musically stylish and although I was still at school, I managed to just scrape together about £12, enough to buy a second-hand solid electric guitar from a friend, together with a crude amplifier and speaker which were nakedly uncased,

 

The guitar had no manufacturer’s name, no serial number and no distinctive shape or features by which to define it, but very recently I found it to be a Broadway Plectric 1922 with the very recognisable dual oversized, oval-ended chrome single-coil pickups, and I have a vague recollection that it may even have had a 3.5mm 'mini-jack', which required conversion to a modern, standard 1/4" jack lead.It was in a slightly battered state then and ended up with the body being hand-painted white...

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Sadly in 1968, after 3 heady and very formative years together, I left the Revs to go to college in Chelsea, London, which was the centre of the world back then. 'Moby Dick' languished at my parent’s home, unloved and unplayed for many years, with the total ignominy of being relegated to the loft when I moved to Liverpool, married and bought a house on the Wirral. I lost contact with the other 4 band members and totally ignored my guitar, so much so that my wife didn’t even know I had been in a band at all until years later when it all came together again.

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