Neil Finn and the story of the Tempo 12 String

February 3, 2010

Neil Finn and the Tempo 12 stringThis guitar represents the essence of what the Guitar Repairers are all about. It’s a short story, however I think you’l like it.

June of last year one of our regular ‘irregulars’ the Rev. Justin Petrie wanted to give us a guitar that he had sitting in a cupboard for nearly ten years. Several ‘consultants’ had been deemed the guitar worthless, irreparable and worst of all, these same folk had told him to chuck the old girl in the bin!

We could see great potential in this old gem and I gave Justin 150.00 for her as that seemed the right thing to do. I now realize that a thousand dollars would have been more appropriate!

Once we had restored and modified certain aspects of the Tempo, she just sang. A big fat bottom end and woody midrange was a real surprise and took us all on a short journey back to those great blues legends like Big Bill Broonzy. Note from John, Hendrix’s “Here My train A Comin” really rocks on this guitar.

We were honoured to have Mark Lizotte (aka Johnny Diesel) buy one of our Harmony ‘Gene Autrey’ cowboy guitars and one of our semi acoustic ‘Hot rod’ P90 monsters

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which he tells me is all over his new album. He really took a liking to the Tempo and said that someone he knew back home in Sydney would be very interested. A few days later we found out who that somebody was.

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Getting a morning call from Jimmy Barnes (yes, that’s right kids, that Jimmy Barnes) is a really cool way to start the day. Anyways, Jimmy ended up buying the Tempo, a 1943 Walielea 0 Size guitarand A beautiful little 1935 Rickenbacker lap steel. Needless to say that He loved them !!. Now, here’s where it gets interesting, please, please please read on.

Jimmy has a show on Music Max called ‘My first Gig’. Jimmy has special guest artists appear on his show to talk about the earlier parts of their vocation, such as first bands, first cover songs they learned etc. The first guest finished the show by playing ‘Lola’ on the trusty ol’ Tempo.

Neil Finn on the line

He loved it and wanted one just like it. A few days later I get a call.. ‘Hello this is Mark, Jimmy Barnes sent me’. ‘Hi Mark how’s it going blah blah blah’ it took about a minute for ‘Mark’ to intervene in the conversation to humbly inform me, ‘Sorry John, the name isn’t Mark, it’s actually Neil…..uhmmm Neil Finn‘ Neil $%^&*Finn!!!!!!! Two National Treasures in two days!!!! Neil wanted another 12 string like Jimmy’s.

We did have something similar in the form of an beautiful old Stella 12 string

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. Neil also bought a mid 1920’s Regal parlor

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and a 1967 Guild 12 String that he gave to Son Liam as a Xmas present (Lucky Liam!)(Liam’s Site).

We had to fast track the restoration and stayed up half the night packing them all up in order to get them to Neil, before Xmas.

However, The icing on our already overflowing cake was this….. Neil Finn really needed these guitars because he gets ‘special’ songwriter friends to fly in for a week over the Xmas/New years break. Each individual is paired with another that he/she has not worked with before.

The result is an album and a three night tenure at a 2000 seat theatre in Auckland. These performances help cover the cost of the project, so who were these ‘special’ friends? KT Tunstell, Johnny Marr (ex Smiths), two Chaps from Radiohead (citiation needed) and two from Wilco (citation needed).

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The last band being in our collective top five best ever bands! Are we happy? Are we proud? Should we be telling you this story?? We think so!. And to think it all started with Mr. Lizotte and a Tempo 12 string guitar that none wanted.
This is our Tempo here as Neil Finn and Jimmy Barnes play “LOLA”