Liminal Mood: Carrying Tom Verlaine's guitar around a freezing New York City

Reliving one of my years best moments

Looking back at a years worth of photographs on my phone I’ve been reliving some wonderful moments from 2025 when I was reminded that I was able to purchase a guitar from the collection of the late great Tom Verlaine - one of my guitar heroes - who passed away in 2023.

Although Verlaine was also a songwriter and vocalist, I think most will remember him for his iconic guitar lines - at least I will. He’s my favorite type of guitarist - one who doesn’t write masturbatory and meandering solos, but instead lyrical ones, where every note is right where it’s supposed to be, serving a greater purpose - as if the guitar parts themselves were the vocals, more so than the actual vocals. To prove this I’d bet good money that the majority of people could sing the guitar part from Marquee Moon before they could recall any lyrics to the song.

Anyways, my friend Dave, who runs a wonderful book shop in Brooklyn called Better Read Than Dead, inherited Verlaine’s book collection, which is a whopping 50k + books, and was tasked with selling it off. Alongside this, Toms liaison told Dave that there were a few guitars from his Collection that he was looking to move as well. I got the sense that Verlaine’s nicer guitars probably went to family, friends, and high profile artists who knew him personally, as they should. But these junk guitars, let’s call them, were for sale at a reasonable price and so I jumped at the opportunity to buy one.

I picked a nameless Japanese six string (though it only had five) that feels a little worse for wear but somehow the most “Verlaine” of the batch. It’s cherry red and effortlessly rock n roll. As Dave explained, Verlaine apparently played it on one song on one of later solo albums. It thrills me to know that Verlaine even looked at this guitar once upon a time, much less held it.

Though I bought the guitar in January, I wasn’t able to pick it up until March 3rd, when I attended a house party at Dave’s and he handed it over. It didn’t come with a case and I didn’t have one on me so when I left the party around midnight, drunk and freezing in the subzero temperatures, I held Verlaine’s guitar, suddenly mine, proudly over my shoulder as if wielding a battle axe on my way to cut down a tree.

I ended the night at a bar somewhere in Fort Greene with a night cap alongside my friend Clay, the guitar leaning between us, when we noticed a small practice amp hidden behind the bar. We asked if there was a cable to plug the guitar in and test it out, and they told us to look for one in the back.

Clay searched around the back but couldn’t come up with a cable so alas we didn’t get to plug it in but that’s okay. The night was still perfect, getting to walk around New York City carrying a guitar over my shoulder that once belonged to one of my heroes and, without a doubt, one of the greatest guitarists of all time. In fact, remembering it all now, maybe the guitar felt less like an axe over my shoulder and more like proudly flying a flag. A flag that read:

LONG LIVE VERLAINE

GUITAR HERO

GUITAR GOD

🎸🎸🎸