Recently, Classic Rock had a chat with Joe Bonamassa before a show in France at Théâtre Jean Deschamps. With a cigar in his hand, the guitarist opened up about his massive collection of guitars and amps, linking it to his tendency for addictive behaviors:
“I have an addictive personality. I have five hundred guitars, five hundred amps… Things escalate. In one way, cigar smoking is man’s folly. Like that [indicates the one in his hand], you’re taking thirty pounds, rolling it up and taking the lighter to it. But it’s relaxing. Kenny Wayne Shepherd and I, we enjoy cigars. I think it’s a forties thing.”
Bonamassa’s first step into guitar collecting began when he was just 14. He used money left to him by his great-grandmother to buy a 1954 hard-tail Stratocaster from a local seller. After that, a 335 and a Telecaster soon joined his collection, which really started to grow in the early 2000s.
He Couldn’t Stop Buying
In a talk with Guitar Aficionado back in 2012, Bonamassa looked back at a time in the mid-2000s when he was buying guitars at a rapid pace. He recalled moments when he bought a new guitar only to realize he already owned a similar one. The guitarist admitted:
“It got to be so gluttonous. I’d be on tour in a place like Japan, jet-lagged and ready to start my day at four in the morning. No Starbucks would be open, so I’d just go to the website Gbase and throw something on the credit card.”
Continuing, he said:
“I ended up with all these guitars I didn’t even play – a bunch of old [ES-5] Switchmasters and ES-350s and even four Trini Lopezes – guitars that were killer to look at but not useful to me on the stage or in the studio. Finally, I just said, ‘Garage sale!’ and got rid of a ton of stuff.”
The Collection Overwhelms People
Now, Bonamassa has around 1,000 to 1,200 pieces in his collection, most of which are kept at his home in LA. The guitarist mentioned on Kenny Aronoff’s podcast that the sheer size of his collection often surprises people who visit him. He remarked:
“If I went into it blind – not knowing what to expect or just seeing a few pictures on Instagram – the sheer magnitude of it all would overwhelm even the most jaded collector. The difference is, I live there! So I wake up, I get my coffee, and there’s hundreds of guitar amps around [me].”
Some pieces from the artist’s collection may see a show or two during his upcoming 2024 tour, which will kick off in Louisville, Kentucky, on February 19.
