Photograph
Biting Tongues, Iron Lung
1976

“whats that guitar? awesome, is that Tenants girl lager??”

“there's that martin price's expression again!”

“The guitars a Crucianelli Elite I bought at Renos with my Christmas bonus in my 1st job. I still have it (cost £20) we call it The Iron Guitar..it is a can of Tenants also....”

“Renos ,was that up near the odeon on oxford rd or the one near the mancunian way (on the sight of the poly student union)?
My 1st guitar was from Peters Swap Shop in Levenshulme.
A Tulip shaped Kay ,It came with an amplifier that was like the front of a Dansette record player (in fact you added this to a Danssette to make it stereo ,(which of coarse is rubbish physics),My freind who bought the matching bass kay tulip also bought a Dansette amp from Mazel Radio ,a wonderfuly
ramshakle radio spares shop near UMIST where they had buckets of valves and tubs of transistors,a million miles from Maplins. I think Kay was the main kind of catalogue guitar ,and also hung in Woolworths for about £40.
So they swilled around the second hand market for £25 as people
realised they made your fingers bleed and you could sing into the pick up as if it were a mic.
They also did cheap fx boxes in red ,yellow and blue plastic
I think fuzz was compulsory in the 70s wasnt it?”

“It was the one on Oxford rd.. It was Christmas and I was extremely bladdered straight from the "works do" I was carrying a huge Hamper they used to give us as a gift each year, full of Spam and sparrow pate and Jacobs crackers..anyway I turned up at home that night with the guitar,Hamperless and penniless having spent all my 2 weeks wages on it. My Mum went ape and sent me back round all the music shops in town asking if I had left it there....dont know what happened to it as it never showed up..I must have "ditched it" somewhere when it got too heavy.. I remember Petes Swapshop near Levenshulme Station well.I got loads of stuff from there......Mazels too I remember the trays of Valves outside...I bought a 12 string Terada Acoustic Jumbo guitar from there along with a really tinny contact mic and loads of ex-jukebox 7" singles”