| | STEELS AND WHEELS AND REELS | | The obsessions of producer/guitarist Daniel Lanois include pedal-steel guitars, motorcycles, and recording technology. | Long before he became one of contemporary music's most respected producers—a three-time Grammy Award winner who's been behind the board for career-defining albums by U2, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, and many others—Daniel Lanois was a slide guitarist. He started playing at age nine, thanks to the effective sales-pitch technique of a visitor to his family's house in Ancaster, Ontario.
"One day," Lanois remembers, "somebody knocked on my mom's door and said, 'Hi, I'm representing the local conservatory, and we want to know if you have any kids who like music.' She pointed at me and said, 'Yeah, that one over there, he likes music.' So I passed the aptitude test and the guy said, 'Okay, we teach accordion and slide guitar.' I said, 'Well, I'll take slide guitar.' The instrument that the conservatory provided was just an acoustic six-string with high action, but that was the beginning of it."
His choice of the slide proved to have some staying power. More than 50 years later, Lanois still pulls out a slide nearly every day, though now he generally applies it to one of his eight prized Sho-Bud pedal steels—four in his Toronto recording studio and four in his Los Angeles home. These are, of course, in addition to his collection of "normal" guitars, which includes a custom red early Sixties Gibson Firebird, a pair of butterscotch early Fifties Fender Telecasters, and a small family of Fifties gold-top Les Pauls... | | Read More» | |
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