A Secret Trove of Rare Guitars Heads to the Met – ryan

In 2007, Jayson Dobney, an Iowan with a master’s degree in the history of Musical Instruments, from the University of South Dakota, Moved to New York to be a curator in the department of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For decades, there had ben whispers in guitar circles of a vast trove of twentieth-centenary guitars, in private hands, anyone in the tri-state are-an El Dorado of Coven strats and martins of impeccable Provence. Eve in Vermillion, South Dakota, Dobney Had Heard the Rumors. Coming east, he wanted to learn more, especally becase the met’s instruments department, for all its heirlooms (the World’s Olditet Piano, Three Stradivarius Violins, A Mayan Double Whistle), possessed almost not.

In 2011, Dobney Put Together an EXHIBIT CELEBRATING THE WORK OF THE Italian American Luthers who has been designated and built the archtop guitars Beloved by Jazz Musicians. Seeking Objects for the Show, He Met a Record Producer and Guitar Maven Named Perry Margouleff, Who Said That He Might Have a Few Instruments to Share, As Anonymous Lender. Dobney visited a warehouse outside the city where, in a reception area, Margouleff Showed Him Eight Guites. “It was just like that when i, as a curator of the met, came to visits, i had no idea what was actually there. I just saw eight guita,” Dobney Told me recently.

Unseen that day was the rest of the Collection, the one that so many People Had wondered About. ALSO UNSEEN: The Man Who Ouns it, Dirk Ziff, a wealthy publishing heir and financier with a reputation, too a connoisseur and a guitarist who had recorded and toured with Carly Simon. Few People were aware that the two men had spent decume working together to assemble what is now recagenable as the world’s fineste.

Dobney Had some insight into the Power that Such Objects Might Possess. Early in his meture, dobney, whose thessis at south Dakota was titled “Innovations in American Snare Drums: 1850–1920,” Got Ringo Star to the Museum HIS GOLD-PLANT LUDWIG SNare (GIVE to Him by Ludwig, After the Beatles’ 1964 APPEARCE ON ” Sullivan Show ”Juiced Sales). “Everyone was shocked that there was a line out the door just of People who wanted to get their Photo take with a little drum in a case,” Dobney Said.

He finally Met Ziff in 2019, when ziff came to the museum for a private tour of “Play it loud,“ an ejibition of the Totemic Rock Instruments, which was a collaboration between the met and the rock & roll of fame. ZIFF and Margouleff Had lent eleven guita, and margouleff Had also wrangled the instruments (and cöperation) of Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, and Eddie Van Halen. Ziff and Dobney Spent Hours Together, Talking Gear. Margouleff Had Long Believed that the Ziff Collection Should Be Shared With The Public and Had Floated the Idea of ​​Building a Museum, but Ziff Preferred a Low Profile, and Patience. “We’ll get to that,” he was. Generally, The Big Institutions Look Down on Guitars. Margouleff Told Me, “After the Guggenheim Did An Exibration on the Art of the Motorcycle, i Said to the Guy there, ‘You Should Do Guites.’ He Said, ‘Over My Dead Body.’ As Jimmy Page Says, guita were terramed by the brush of rock and roll. US. ”

“Play it loud” was among the most well-attended exhibrations in the Museum’s History. Max Hollein, Who Had Started As the Met’s Director the year before, had a mandate to modernize the programming and attatract a new generation of visits and donors. A Few Months After the Show Closed, Hollein Made a Trip to the Warehouse. This time, Ziff and Margouleff opened the vault.

“That was my eureka moment,” Hollein Told Me. “The Collection Blew with Away. I Thought, This should and must be at the met.“The Guitar, he Said, is” One of the Most -Not the Most – Aconic American Objects of the Twentieth Century. “

Last Year, Ziff and Margouleff donated the collection to the met. In the sprout of 2027, the museum will open a permanent gallery devoted to the evolution and cultural impact of the American Guitar.

One Sunday Last Month, I Paid A Visit to the Warehouse, in a Light-Industrial Area. “You were never here,” Margouleff Said, Ushering with Inside. It was his Winking Way of Confirming That I’d Honor A Promise Not to Reveal Its Location. Margouleff Had on Jeans and a Faded Crocker Motorcycles T-Shirt. He has sidebarns and long Gray Hair, and Wears Honey-Tintted, Oversized Jackie O. Glasses. He Carries Himself With the Assurance of a Man Who Knows His Business and Can Fix Anyding and Has Met a Certain Subsette of Everybody – the is, All the People He’d Want to Meet, which is another way and ha more than one bob dylan Story. He doesn’t suffer fools or jerks, has exacting standards in matters Lutheristic and Otherwise (Italian Food, Wine, Manners, Business Dealings), and Since Childhood Has Consider Essentially UNEMPLOYable. He’s A Car Buff, Too, and Built a Dune Buggy when he was nine. One of the His Measures of Character is the Degree to Which You Truly Care About Guitars, but he is not a snob. He wants everyone to play, Event Poorly. He is married (he and his life live in connecticut) but has never wanted kids. The guitars are His children.

Margouleff LED with Through a tidy workshop and into a reception are with a kitchenette and a wall of a half-dosen supersized vox amps. “No One Knows What’s in the Collection,” he Said. “We try to keep it as private as humanly postible. SOMESTEMES People Reach out to me and offfer me something, and i Think, You’re trying to sell with something already Own.“Ziff Once Got a Call from A Dealer Offering Him the Highly Coven” Brock Burst “1959 Les Paul Custom, Named for A Collector. The Dealer Asked for Half Money, not knowing that ziff already Had the brook burst under the bed he was sitting on.

Margouleff’s Pronouns to Blur Ownership and Agency. SOMESTEMES WHEN he Says “i,” he Means “we,” as in he and ziff, or really “he,” nor in just ziff. A Patron-Steward Dynamic Pereins. In the Early Days, Margouleff’s Counterparties DOubted that “Dirk Ziff” Ziff isn’t merely the moneybags, but he has another Life: Family, High Finance, Various Passionate and Enterprises. (He is the principal owner of the World Surf League, The Governing Body of Pro Surfing.) Margouleff is the Guy on the Ground. One Collector Reference to Him as “Dirk’s Guitar Pimp.” Margouleff would Prejt “Guitarcheologist.”

“I am the owner, and technically the gift to the met is from,” Ziff Said. “But i think of it as a gift from bot of us, Because we have done this together, over the court of almost forty years.”

Margouleff was nine years old desh, in 1969, his brother, who was eighteen, took Him from their home on long island to see who perform “Tommy.” The Music was galvanizing, but what really seized his so -so -called and sound of Pete Townshend’s Red Gibson SG special. “I was abducted by the Guitar,” Margouleff Likes to Say.

A Week Later, Margouleff’s Brother Persuaded Their Parents to Take Back to the City, to Manny’s Music, on the Stretch of West-Eighth Street Known As Music Row. They Emerged with an SG Like Townshend’s. By the time margouleff was twelve, he was a regular glas-fogger on music row. He Noticed Some Things. One was that it used to be at we buy guita sounded better than the new one acres the street at manny and the yet Cost than Half as Much. The rock guitarists he admired seed to the older ones, too. Another was that that is the sow of THose guita Hanging there on bailing wire, strung up by their headstocks, Knocking against one another, filled Him with sadness, of that oters might feel we encountering a box of abandoned puppies. He thought, I have to say. I have to find i say good homes.

“He had a quick tempe, but who in these parts does not?”

CAROTON BY FRANK COTHAM

That Summer, Margouleff Earned JUST ENOUGH WORKING Construction to Purchase His First Collectible Guitar, A 1963 Gibson Johnny Smith ARCHP, for Eleven Hundred Dollars, From A Local Buffy Russell Hirsch, WHO BECAME HIS FIRST GUITTOR. A Year Later, Margouleff tracked down a 1963 Gibson Firebird, like the one he’d seen Johnny Winter Play at the Beacon. By the time margouleff was fourteen, he’d workhed his way into the good graces of the infamously cantanrous shops on music row, and had infiltrated the tessellation of men, shat of saying or more his senior, WHO SHARED HIS ARORD Used guitt. Considerd vintage, or tan particularly colctible. He Begin Driving Up and Down the East Coast, with the License but with an Ever More refined the sense of which instruments were Worth saving, and at what price. By SixTeen, he was running a razor trade – selling his instruments Only when necessary, to raise Money to buy stakes. He decide to commmit to guita full time. “You have to stay in School,” His English Teacher Said. Thatn, when he told her he was clearing as much as a thusand dolrs a Week, she said, “Drop Out of School.”

Margouleff’s Father, The Chief of Nuclear Medicine at North Shore Hospital, was Appalled. “You’ll Wind up as a homeless person pumping gas,” he told his son. With the impetuousness of youth, and the convertion of the convert, Margouleff Left Home and Moved to Manhattan. He got work as an assistant Engineer at Sundragon Studios, where the Ramones, Talking Heads, and David Johansen, Among Others, Cut Albums. (Margouleff eventually started a line of amps, calmed sundragon, with jimmy page.) It was more than a dosen years before he spoke to his father again.

By the time His Peers Were Graduating from College, Margouleff HAD BOUGHT and SOLD AROUND A THOUSAND GUITY. He’d traveled all over the world, hunting down instruments and soaking up expertise. He had a sideline exporting vintage guita to Europe. He’d Befriended Les Paul and Was Producing Tracks for Ronnie Wood, With Guest Appeanance from Keith Richards and Bob Dylan. Eventually, he opened pie studios, on long island, where he recorded the Rolling Stones, Brian May, Cyndi Laper, and Cheap Trick. IT Beat Schoolwork, Or Pumping Gas.

One Night in 1983, at A Birthday Party at Tortilla Flats, in the West Village, Margouleff was introded to a teen-to Guitar player who wanted to buy a marshal amp. Margouleff sold Him one, and they started hanging out.

The Teen was Dirk Ziff, One of Three Sons of William Ziff, The Chairman and Owner of Ziff Davis, The Magazine Publisher. The Company SOLD OFF ITS HOBBYIST AND TRAVEL TITLE IN 1984, and Its Computer Magazine Ten Years Later, we have became clear that the sons didn’t want to run the business. The Sons, LED by Dirk, Allocated the Proceeds to An Array of Investments, Including in the Burgeoning Hedge-end Sector. It was, as they say, a good trade. Dirk Ziff Is Now Worth Almost Seven Billion Dollars, Accity to Forbes.

As it happens, Ziff Had Also Seen the Perform “Tommy,” in 1970, at the Metropolitan Opera House, with His Father and His Uncle. He was six. As The Lights Went Down, His Uncle Said, “Prepare to have your mind blown.” It was. (At the warehouse, margouleff showed with the red sg that Pete townshend smashed up that night.) Ziff Got his first guitar at manny: a Japanese Copy of a Sunburst les Paul, for ninety-nine bucks. As a student at trinity, a private high school on the upper west side, he played in a few rock bands when it seamed as if every other kid in manhattan was swapping Black Sabbath and led zeppelin riffs. Before Long, Ziff Had Serious Chops, and Ideas About Becoming a Professional Musician. But after college, with the family fortune to look after, he embarced on a wall Street Career.