I feel lucky to own a copy of this rare book! Mine is falling apart, it's stained with yellowed Sellotape that's six decades old, and the cover is faded, but all the pages are intact.
Here's Hank with "the guitar now being held adequately for selective and arduous playing"...
There
are small excerpts - 2-5 lines of sheet music - of Midnight, F.B.I.,
Driftin', Big Boy, Shadoogie, and 36-24-36. The only two non-Shadows
tunes are the folk song Barbara Allen, and Home On The Range arranged in
a "modern guitar group style" by Geoffrey Sisley.
However, in
my opinion, the publishers have just put together a generic 'Play In A Day'-esque beginner's guitar book, and then just stuck some extracts of the Shads' music in it and a few photos in order to appeal to fans. Though I
might just be being a bit cynical, and the Shadows might have actually been more involved? This page is unique though - read about "the modern guitar group"...
Judging from the publication dates of the sheet music, the range of guitars in the advert on the back pages, and that all the photos are of the Hank/Bruce/Brian/Licorice lineup - this book is from 1963.
There are some full page photos of the boys in the middle pages:
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On a pedantic note, these aren't a matching set - the photos of Brian and Hank were taken way before the ones of Bruce and Licorice. Brian and Hank's pics are from a Dezo Hoffman photo session in late 1961 and so the original set of portraits included Jet Harris too. You can see the original set in Dezo's Cliff Richard and the Shadows: Around The World In Pictures book. Well it's
nice to finally have a matching portrait of Licorice on his own from this period!
After several pages going through different chord shapes we reach a note about the tremolo arm. What do you mean, you're telling me you don't hold it by attaching it to your little finger with an elastic band?!
Lastly there is a supplement about playing bass guitar as well (for budding Jets, Licorices, and soon-to-be Johns), which has some exercises using various scales and this page too! "The instrument is receiving very serious consideration for even further conquests"...
The Shadows' endorsement of Vox is really emphasised throughout the book to the point where it feels forced; whenever there is an image/diagram of a guitar, it is always a Vox model. Instead of a more typical Fender Stratocaster on the front cover they've opted for a Vox Phantom, which would seem very strange if you were a Shadows fan in 1963 picking this up for the first time! The inside back cover has advertisements for Vox amplifiers and guitars, and this page here has photos of the ads in the book and a lot more information about the range of guitars shown. You can see the 'Hank Marvin tremolo' bridge on the Consort and Phantom models in this one.
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There were two editions of this book published in quick succession - mine appears to be the second edition of the book, the only differences are that the Vox ads on the back pages are different. The first edition features an ad for the bizarre Vox Transonic! Scroll down a bit on the linked page.
There is
another 'The Shadows Modern Electric Guitar Tutor' book - I have only ever seen a photo of the cover so I don't know if it's the same book inside, but from the
cover it looks like an Australian(?) edition, with the price in dollars, published by "The Shadows Music Inc." This edition dates from November '63
onwards since there's a pic of the John Rostill lineup on the back.
And not forgetting Hank Marvin's guitar instruction book from the 1990s - which he wrote himself, narrated and played on the cassettes/CDs and wrote all the original music in the book too. It's great - and unlike this 1963 one, I actually use it as a tutor book!
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| Inside front cover with the Vox amps - and Brian - in front... |
(P.S. whose disembodied hand is this?! -->)
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