Tony Sheridan's Personal Guitar

THE guitar of Beatles collaborator Tony Sheridan 

Tony Sheridan was the singer and guitarist who collaborated with the Beatles during the band’s early days in Hamburg. Sheridan met John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best in Hamburg’s red-light district in the early 1960s when the young group came to see his act every night after their own shows at a neighboring club. Sheridan took the band under his wing, advising them on their look (which at the time included black leather bomber jackets and cowboy boots) and introducing them to American R&B acts like Little Richard. The Beatles cut their earliest recordings accompanying him as the Beat Brothers on recordings of “My Bonnie” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” (The album they recorded was later released outside Germany as Tony Sheridan and The Beatles.)

Sheridan, who is credited with being the first British musician to play the electric guitar on television, went on to tour with Gene Vincent, Eddy Cochrane, Chubby Checker, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry.

Tony Sheridan owned a lot of guitars in his life, but this one was very special to him. It was built and gifted to him by the german luthier Christian Stoll in 2003. Tony played it EVERYTIME he was on stage for the last 10 years of his life. You can see it on hundreds of photos and videos. Watch the YouTube-Video from a concert in France with the former Beatles drummer Pete Best!

Here is an extract from an interview with the Roland Music Corporation:

Interviewer: You have recently started playing an acoustic thinline guitar from Christian Stoll. Does this hybrid guitar make a larger backline unnecessary when you're on tour?
Tony: Oh, that's a fantastic guitar Christian Stoll gave me. It is a kind of noble telecaster with which you can sound acoustically if you want. It can sound very woody and warm, but I also play it out loud. So it's a very nice all-round guitar that actually makes a huge guitar collection on tour unnecessary.