Phil playing the Whitebook Acoustic Guitar , 1972
Olsen and the guitar ended up back with Mark Whitebook , I might say .
So , the creator redeemed his own guitar , which is a beautiful story actually , because I was selling it to try to raise some funds to deal with some financial issues , and this man comes up to me and he says , “ How much do you want from the Whitebook ?” And I gave him a price . It wasn ’ t too extravagant , but he said , “ I ’ d like to buy it .” I go , “ Oh , great . What ’ s your name ?” He says , “ I ’ m Mark Whitebook . I made that guitar .” And I said to him , “ Oh , I can ’ t sell you this guitar . This is your guitar .” He said , “ No , it would mean everything to me if I could buy it from you .” So he helped me out , and he got his guitar back , and I ’ ve seen pictures of it recently . He ’ s restored it completely . And that guitar has a beautiful tone . You can hear it on songs like “ I Will Sing ”, the last track on What a Day .
So yeah , back to the Les Paul . I still have that Les Paul and I do play it on sessions , but I love the Zion . The Zion is the most incredible sounding guitar for any purpose . It could sound like a Strat , and then it could sound like a Les Paul . And I ’ ve done some solos with it that I ’ m very proud of . In fact , on my Bandcamp , there is a release under the podcast . It ’ s called Notable Moments , and it ’ s about an hour ’ s worth of solos all strung together .
[ Bruce ] Wow . I ’ m got to check that out .
[ Phil ] It ’ s a tour de force of solos and tones and a lot of variety , a lot of great players with me . And it ’ s something I ’ m pretty proud of . I listen to it . I go , “ Gosh , I can ’ t believe I actually played like that ”. And so the Zion probably has the lion share of those solos . Many thanks to Ken Marshall who made that guitar for Zion !
[ Bruce ] Gotcha .
[ Phil ] You can certainly hear the Les Paul on tunes like a “ Stay Home Baby ” and “ Not Be Moved ” and various songs like that . But back to the What A Day album … It was just me