MYLES KENNEDY

The Alter Bridge guitar man and vocalist recounts how sometimes you can strike gold when working in a music store, and that there is money in horse manure…

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What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money?

“It was an Ibanez DT250 – they called them ‘The X-Series’. The story is that we had some horses and I wanted to get an electric guitar and my dad said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a dollar for every stall you clean…’ So I cleared horse manure for nine months, saved up my money, and bought my first electric guitar, which, to this day, when I see that guitar I smell horse manure!

“About three years after I bought it I was playing in the school jazz band, which was funny because this guitar was totally heavy metal and didn’t belong in a jazz setting, but it was all I had. I left it at the school to see a David Lee Roth concert later that night – I wanted to see Steve Vai play guitar – and I got back to school the next day and someone had stolen it. I’ve been on a hunt for a decade trying to find one and I found one. Somebody had taken some liberties with it, but it was still in pretty good shape and I cherish it.”

What was the last guitar you bought and why?