Famous Guitars and the Musicians Who Played Them

One photo per instrument: the individual guitars behind landmark records and stages, from Chuck Berry's Gibson to Kurt Cobain's blue Mustang, roughly in the order they entered the story. Each caption names the model, the nickname where it has one, who played it and where it was heard. The test for a place was simple. It had to be one specific, documented guitar rather than a famous model, and the photo had to show that very instrument, on stage or in the museum case where many of these now live. Eddie Van Halen's original Frankenstein is the obvious absence: no clear, large photo of the original instrument was available, only of its replicas.