When Steve Albini gave Sonic Youth a phallic guitar
Legendary engineer Steve Albini never seemed too afraid of being provocative. This is the same man who played in a band called Rapeman and whose most famous album of original material is called Songs About Fucking. Subtlety and good taste weren’t exactly concerns of Albini’s, which is why his combative and aggressive style (both production-wise and personal) has become so legendary. But just like his first band Big Black proves, Albini isn’t above a silly dick joke.
Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth figured that out for himself when the two toured together in the late 1980s. Sonic Youth were always on the hunt for guitars that could be played in ways that the manufacturers never intended. Anyone who is a bit delicate toward their guitar will surely want to look up live performances of ‘The Burning Spear’ to see what I mean. But Ranaldo got a surprise after Sonic Youth toured with Big Black in the late 1980s.
To thank them for bringing his band on tour, Albini had a luthier make a custom Sonic Youth guitar, with some rather unique features. “It looks like a Stratocaster. This was made for us by Steve Albini in Chicago, given to us I think probably in the late ’80s when he was, I think, still doing Big Black,” Ranaldo told Earthquaker Devices for their series ‘Show Us Your Junk’.
“It’s 16 strings, 16 high-E strings, it’s got an inlaid penis in the headstock, and it says ‘Sonic Sixteen’ up there. Maybe that’s its most notable feature after its 16 high-E strings,” Ranaldo explained. “That’s one of the bossest headstocks you’ll ever see in your life, front and back.”
In a nice bit of symmetry, Albini himself picked up the thread when Earthqauker Devices visited his Electrical Audio studio a few months later. While showing off the studio’s equipment, Albini reveals that he actually had two versions of the 16-string guitar made. After shipping off the first to Sonic Youth, Albini kept one for himself to use. Albini’s recollection of the tour puts it in the early 1990s, when Albini would have been in his band Shellac.
“In 1990, the band I was in at the time did some shows in the UK with Sonic Youth, and when we got back as a thank you to them, I had the excellent guitar maker and repair guy Jeff Benge make an experimental guitar which had 16 strings on it. This is a duplicate of that guitar,” Albini revealed.
“I sent that guitar to Sonic Youth as a thank you for having my band play shows with them,” Albini added. “But before I sent it off, I got to play it and I really thought it was fun to play, so I had him make another one. It has 16 strings on it. Typically it’s used as a drone instrument and all of the strings are tuned the same.”
Watch both Ranaldo and Albini’s appearances showing off their 16-string guitars down below.
