![]() ![]() It’s such a famous image, we all know that, it’s one of the great images. “I was dreaming about the first time I ever saw a Flying V, which was Dave Davies on Shindig in 1965, playing with The Kinks. “You’ve gotta have one for when the other one’s in the shop,” he says, laughing. Yet that still wasn’t enough for this avid guitar collector. You’d better leave it all in your pants when that thing takes off.” Something elseĪ few years later, after getting a good reaction from using that first Flying V at local gigs – “usually around the holidays, ’cause it was red and I’ve got this sort of Santa thing going” – Gand went on the hunt for another and invested in a player-grade 1959 model, as featured in these pages when we first photographed his collection in early 2019. All eyes are on you! It’s a lot like being an astronaut. And if you’re a stage performer, that’s what it’s all about! It’s a commitment when you are a player: as soon as you put this thing on, you’ve got to deliver. You play a V onstage, everybody hears you. “Everybody bad raps Vs because you can’t play them sitting down but my answer to that is, if you are sitting down, you’re not playing! Come on… this is rock ’n’ roll. I started really digging it.Īlthough the guitar has been repaired at the heel and some of its original tuner buttons have disintegrated and been replaced, the 1958 Flying V’s PAF humbuckers remain intact and it plays fantastically well. All Images: Eleanor Jane I sort of got it for show but I started playing it and I really liked it. “The 50s ones were few and far between so I bought a used red one from 2001, with a stopbar on it. For someone who wasn’t always a fan of the Flying V, the former music retail pioneer has ended up owning a few, and we’re here to see one 1958 model in particular, once wielded by Kinks legend Dave Davies and now part of the Gand collection following its purchase via Heritage Auctions in 2019.īefore we get into all that, how was Gary first seduced by the charms of Gibson’s most angular design? And what is it about the Flying V that makes him keep on coming back? “A few years ago when Lonnie Mack died I thought, boy, I don’t have a V, I should just get one,” says Gand. “I wasn’t always a V lover,” admits Palm Springs-based guitar collector Gary Gand as we sit in his elegant mid-century home in California’s Coachella Valley in early 2020, shortly before the world would shut down and make such face-to-face conversations impossible. ![]()
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