CG: As the business grew you had a good strategy of getting to those folks selling guitars before anyone else. Tell us about how that worked? like to see George have his guitar back, but he felt he had purchased the guitar in good faith and wanted another late 50’ s Les Paul Standard in exchange for George’ s guitar.
NORM: I constantly was getting up early in the morning to be the first to call newspaper ads. Sometimes the sellers would be upset that I was calling at 6:00am. Occasionally I had to tell a white lie, saying that I was going to work. I said I had cash on me, and I would like to come by and pick it up before work. My wife Marlene would occasionally help me by tying up the sellers phone line. This was before call waiting. I would instruct her to ask multiple questions, just keeping the sellers on the phone. This was just one of my strategies. Another would be to go to local Musician’ s Unions in whatever town I was in. I would call people with older sounding names such as Tex, Harold, and Delmer etc. I was trying to target old guys with old guitars. This was before cell phones, so calls could be quite expensive but I was determined to unearth any and all cool vintage guitars.
CG: As your vintage guitar-selling career started to flourish you had a providential meeting with a Beatle. Tell us how that came about and what instruments were in the deal?
NORM: My friend Dale Rossman at University Music in West Los Angeles called me one morning. I had been buying, selling and consigning instruments at his store for quite some time. Dale said,“ I have a very special customer who needs a very special guitar and I think you might be my guy”.
He would not tell me who it was at first, but with a lot of coaxing, I found out the customer was George Harrison. Dale said,“ Come over to the store right now!” When I arrived at his store, I didn’ t see anyone at the store other than Dale. I thought he could be playing a joke on me and I started getting upset. A minute later George came walking in with the Beatles road manager Mal Evans.
Norm( L) and George Harrison( R)
George explained to me that his beloved red Les Paul that Eric Clapton gave him was stolen. They
found out that the guitar was sold to a store in Hollywood. The store sold it to a customer who lived part of the year in Los Angeles and the other part in Mexico. They located the new owner and explained the situation. The owner said he would
George and Mal came over to my apartment in Sherman Oaks to see my inventory. George purchased two early Les Pauls’ from me that day. A 1959 to use as trade bait to get back his guitar and a beautiful 1960 that George fell in love with to play for himself. George also purchased a 1956 Stratocaster from me, and negotiated with me to throw in a clean 1950’ s Princeton amp.
There are more details to the story in my book. Meeting a Beatle during that time became a topic of conversation among all my friends.
CG: You had utilized local papers like the Little Nickel and the Penny Saver to reach out to buy guitars. Once the Internet arrived how did you shift your guitar buying and selling strategies to make it work for you? What has worked well and what hasn’ t worked?
NORM: When the Internet became a factor, everything changed radically. For those who are aware of our social media presence, it may surprise you to know we were a late arrival when it came to the Internet. I resisted with all my might, but I finally had to succumb to the modern world. I am pretty old fashioned and I prefer to continued on page 28
Tom Petty & Norm Then 26 Sep � Oct 2016
CollectibleGuitar. com
Tom Petty with Norm & the Store Crew Now
continued from page 23