I met Dick Boak a few years ago while having my J-40 worked on by Richard Starkey at the Martin factory. Unexpectedly, Richard invited Dick into the room to have a look at my guitar -- that's right, the guy who designed Eric Clapton's guitars was checking out my guitar! Believe me, that's where any similarity between Clapton and me ends. I will never be able to play anywhere close to the way Clapton plays, but I will be able to own a Martin guitar like him.

I was fortunate to spend some time talking to Dick, a thoughtful, generous guy who will always make time for fellow guitar enthusiasts. Dick has designed some of the most beautiful guitars Martin has ever made - guitars that are not only breathtaking in appearance but have exquisite tone, as well. His knowledge of guitar design, particularly Martin guitars, and his ability to remain on the cutting edge of new guitar design, is unparalleled in the industry. Indeed, a Martin signature guitar by Dick Boak is the ultimate compliment to any collection.

Dick Boak has worn many hats at the Martin factory over the past 30 years -he originated The 1833 Shop, Martin's retail store; he started The Sawmill, the company's on-site mill that cut whole logs for guitar production (Martin now buys pre-cut sets); he was the first (and still the only) editor of The Sounding Board, Martin's official newsletter; he served as the company's director of Advertising; today he is manager of Artists Relations. You name it Dick Boak has done it.

I am fortunate to own some of Dick's creations, but even more fortunate to call him a friend. This article is my way of thanking Dick for everything he's done for me and the countless other Martin fans the world over.

BG: How did the artist endorsement series get started?
DB: Chris Martin had been out in California and had visited the Gene Autry Museum. He was really impressed with Gene's collection of Martin guitars on display there, including the original D-45 built in 1933. Chris thought it would be a good idea to do a project with the Gene Autry Museum, but didn't want to mix mass merchandising with respected signature models. Chris wanted to do something altruistic, so he proposed that we give a royalty to the museum. Gene and the museum staff thought it was a great idea, and especially liked the idea of financial support and publicity for the museum, so we proceeded with the project. Prior to that, we had done the Perry Bechtel Orchestra Model, where Mrs. Bechtel signed the labels, but there was no royalty involved with that guitar. The Gene Autry Guitar was a big success and Chris felt that there were probably other projects like it. Right around that time, the Eric Clapton "Unplugged" performance had appeared on MTV with tremendous success. Eric's "Unplugged" album also won a couple of Grammy awards, and I was getting a lot of phone calls from customers wanting to know what guitar Clapton was playing. I did a little research and found out that Eric had two separate OOO's. One was a gift from Steven Stills and the other was an OOO-28 that had been modified to a style 42 by Mike Longworth; the two guitars had very different specifications. I asked Chris if I could contact Eric Clapton's office and make a proposal, which Chris thought it was a good idea.

My proposal was emotional in nature because Eric's son had recently died tragically and the proposal was that we would set up a foundation and give a royalty to the charity. Eric got back to us within a day and was very positive about the project. He wasn't really that much involved in the design, but he was interested in seeing what our ideas were, so I got back to his guitar technician, Lee Dixon, with the idea of blending the specs of his two guitars to create a new model. My proposal also suggested that we make 461 guitars, after Eric's 461 Ocean Boulevard album, and that Eric would furnish his signature. He did. I couldn't read it. It just said Eric Cru. So I modified the signature so that it was readable and sent it back over to them to see what they thought -- and he didn't like it. He said keep it the way it is, so we did the OOO-42EC. It was really the first major signature model, and there was a lot of trepidation from our sales department as to whether or not we could sell 461 of them at $8200 retail -- but they all sold right away.

BG: That was in '95, right?
DB: Right. Because of that success, I was given carte blanche (to some extent) to pursue other projects. As a matter of fact, Chris said "how are you going to beat that one?!!" So I began pursuing Paul McCartney, but that didn't really work. I then pushed for Neal Young and that didn't really work, either, but we did have a lot of success with many other artists. I have a list of them here. Paul Simon was one of the early ones. We also started working with the estates of deceased artists. Our intent was to honor either living or deceased Martin artists that had reached legendary status, and gradually we broke that into categories: Bluegrass, Country, Rock, Folk, Blues,Contemporary; there were no real Jazz artists. There were a number of deceased artists that we thought were very significant -- Jimmy Rodgers, Perry Bechtel, Hank Williams, Lester Flatt, Elizabeth Cotton, Clarence White, Woody Guthrie and Jim Croce all fell into the category of artists that we wanted to pay tribute to where we hadto deal with their
estates.

Living artists, of course, include Eric Clapton, Marty Stuart, Paul Simon, The Kingston Trio, Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Cash , Jimmy Buffet, Joan Baez, Steven Stills, Don McLean Willie Nelson, Roger McGuinn, Steve Howe, Sting, Dave Matthews, Johnny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, George Jones, Steve Miller, Merle Haggard, Keb Mo, Gordon Lightfoot, Babyface, Beck, Dan Fogelberg, Peter Rowan, Mark Knopfler, Judy Collins, Shawn Colvin, Dion, Lonnie Donnegan, and David Crosby, to name a few.

We have also paid tribute to such musical "institutions" as MTV Unplugged, Sing Out magazine, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Godfrey Daniels Coffee House (locally); and also did a collaboration with Ned Steinberger and a NAMM (National Association of Music Manufacturers) tribute. We've also done a number of contemporary artist collaborations; the Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Beck, and Johnny Lang models were specifically aimed at younger players. We also have a number of women tribute models that were intended to be extensions of our Women in Music initiative here at Martin. There seems to be an endless list of artists we'd like to work with -- and we are still working to get Neil Young!

BG: Any person that you care to mention, or is that all quiet until it is done?
DB: Let's see if there is anyone that I can mention.....There is a possibility that we might do "second edition models" like we did with Eric Clapton (we are on our fourth Clapton model) because they are so successful and so full of integrity and good tone. If we see opportunities with other artists to do a second model, we can do it.

BG: Like Steven Stills?
DB: There are a number of artists that are certainly deserving.

BG: I saw the Steven Stills guitar and then when I saw the price. It was out of my range.
DB: That was a situation where we decided to make only 91 guitars because they were so expensive. We sold about 50 of them and we didn't think we were going to sell the whole edition until ABC Night Line with Ted Koppel did the Martin feature and the next morning the edition was sold out. Initially, I would try to guess the edition size and sometimes I would guess too high or too low and there would be a lot of people angry with me. If I guessed too low like I did with the Gordon Lightfoot model, the salesmen would get angry because they didn't have an unlimited number to sell. If I guessed too high like I did with some other models, everybody would feel that we didn't have a success. So we changed our philosophy and now we go to a trade show with an ordering period of approximately two months. We take orders first and
then we announce the edition size which seems to be a better strategy.

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