Tom Taylor Music

Flavour of the year for 1978.....when I worked at Tom Taylor Music.....The Sunn Mustang. Actually licensed by Fender and made in India. This was before the era of the Squier Strat, when if you couldn't afford a yank plank you couldn't have a Fender at all. We sold truck loads of them!
The old ones are rock solid and still a damn good Strat. They come up regularly on e bay. See my previous post about my guitars over the years for my relic 'Old Red' Mustang.

Working in a music shop on the Isle of Wight in the late seventies was a real blast. Tom Taylor Music was a hub and meeting place for local musos, I had my little workshop out the back building and modifying guitars, the electrical repair side of things was taken care of by the brilliant Ron Fairweather.

I was nineteen and Saturdays were the highlight of my week. ‘Big Tom’ would lord it over bass lessons in his office, supplied by myself or Ron with cups of strong varnish like tea. ‘Prince’ Dave Kahn would teach guitar in the store room, clad in pvc jeans and posing on the table while playing Hendrix licks.

It was a glorious optimistic madhouse…Di marzio pickups were the latest craze, and with abandon we ripped and routed old Fenders and Gibbos…slapping in Super Distortions and little coil tap switches. Ibanez, Antoria and all the other ‘Law suit’ Japanese guitar makers were in full flow, and tasty instruments flooded in and were snapped up just as quickly. I have fond memories of demonstrating a twin neck Jimmy Page style Ibanez 6/12 string to customers.

The summers seemed to be long and hot then…perhaps just selective memory…I often played with the Alan Thomas Dance Quartet in the evenings, knocking out the St Bernards waltz and the Gay Gordons for the old folks on their SAGA holidays…..while in the days learning the punk and heavy metal genres and forming short lived but gloriously high energy bands every few weeks…or so it seemed. Few of those proto-bands ever gigged more than once, but man was it fun.