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Hardtail Strat: Guitars, Heroin, Songs and Stories
Hardcover
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: Jan 30 2026
Pages: 224
Weight: 1.04
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
One of the best books by a rock musician I've ever read . . . -Danny Goldberg, author of Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain
A gritty and melodic memoir of a guitarist's coming of age amid the electric pulse of the Greenwich Village and Los Angeles 1960s music revolutions, when he encountered legends like James Taylor, Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and Ken Kesey.
A Jewish kid born in Queens in 1947, Peter Gallway grew up with caring but emotionally aloof parents, and when the Leave It To Beaver 1950s gave way to counterculture, free love, and the chaotic rock 'n' roll of the next two decades, he took the ride of his life.
From shooting rubber bands in Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe's Sutton Place apartment to shooting heroin in the backrooms of New York, Gallway plunges into the intoxicating world of New York's Night Owl Café alongside the Lovin' Spoonful and James Taylor, through the Troubadour, Mama Cass, the Manson family, and the record companies of LA's Sunset Strip.
Signed first with The Fifth Avenue Band, and then as a solo artist, Gallway's music career culminated in a six-city Japanese tour. When he moved to Maine, a Fender hardtail Stratocaster guitar offered him a second chance-an unlikely rebirth, when he was lucky to still be alive.
Written in the raw, lyrical rhythm of a songwriter, through poetry, music, and prose, Hardtail Strat is an unputdownable story of music and madness, abuse and opportunity, loss and redemption-and the enduring power of song to set us free.
. . . as much as our lives and loves have crossed, I had no idea what was going on in the in-between spaces! Glad we're both here! - John Sebastian, American singer-songwriter and musician1 different editions
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