Fifteen years after he scratched a lifelong itch and moved to New York City, Steve Wynn has settled in nicely to life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The relocation also breathed fire into a music career that already had notched landmark albums by his first band, the Dream Syndicate, collaborations with Gutterball and a slew of excellent early solo releases. Once he turned 40, Wynn rolled up his sleeves and really went to work, cranking out masterpieces like 2001’s Here Come The Miracles and 2003’s Static Transmission. Wynn, wife/drummer Linda Pitmon, Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Scott McCaughey (Minus 5) are set to begin a U.S. tour. Read our Q&A with Wynn. (Also read our 2001 Q&A with Wynn, conducted by novelist George Pelecanos, as well as our overview of the Dream Syndicate and its fellow Paisley Underground bands.)
Steve Wynn: The early ’80s was a rough time to be a guitarist. Everyone was trying to tell you that your instrument was soon to be extinct (anybody want to buy a cheap Yamaha DX7?) and guitar shops featured some of the ugliest looking (and sounding) things on the planets (Hamers, BC Rich and, worst of all, those headless freaking Steinbergers). Well, the good news is that cool/old-looking and cool/freaky-sounding guitars are out there again. My personal favorites are the guitars being made up in Canada by Eastwood and down here in the U.S. by DiPinto. I’ve recently picked up the TwinTone by the former and the Galaxie IV by the latter, and both are wonderful eye candy that make everything sound like your favorite Shadows Of Night song. And that’s a good thing. Don’t know how well they’d work on Kajagoogoo songs, though. Check out their websites: fun, retro guitar porn. And you can get almost any of them for well less than $1,000. I have been fortunate enough to have been taken on as a Fender endorsee and am about to try out one of the new Vintage ’62 Jazzmaster reissues. After playing the same Stratocaster for the last seven years, I guess I’m going through a bit of a guitar midlife crisis, which admittedly is a pretty benign offshoot of the ever-popular malady.
