During a 2002 tour with Yes, Steve Howe experienced every guitarist’s nightmare: the catastrophic break of his beloved 1964 Gibson ES-175 — the instrument heard on many of the band’s biggest songs, including “Roundabout” and “Close to the Edge.”
Remarkably, the incident remained a secret for more than two decades.
“I'm not really that keen to advertise the fact because it's not evident anymore,” Howe told this writer in 2003. “But something very unfortunate happened.”
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Howe special-ordered the ES-175 from the Selmer music store in London in 1964 when he was just 17, and it has remained his go-to instrument ever since.
“Basically, I was a bit of a lunatic! But if you love something, you should nurture it.”
— Steve Howe
To say the electric hollowbody is beloved would be an understatement. At one point, Howe even restrung it every day.
“Basically, I was a bit of a lunatic!” he told Guitar Player in 2021. “But if you love something, you should nurture it.”
Taking guitars on the road, however, is always risky business — as Howe and his prized instrument discovered.
“My tour guitar tech Ron ‘Shooz’ Matthews did it actually,” he said. “Knocked it over.
“The guitar’s headstock did the classic break!”
It was the first serious accident to befall the instrument — unless you count the time Howe himself dropped it years earlier.
“I was really young, and it damaged the socket, but that was just a little wound,” he recalled. “What happened then was nothing compared to what happened this time.”
Matthews quickly set to work.
The first thing he did was put it back together, but he didn't beautify it. Three days later, I was playing the guitar onstage again.”
— Steve Howe
“The first thing he did was put it back together, but he didn't beautify it,” Howe said. “Three days later, I was playing the guitar onstage again.”
Once the tour ended, Howe sought a proper restoration and turned to respected British luthier Hugh Manson.
“I gave it to Hugh because I trust him very much,” he explained. “Hugh knew what a crisis it was, and so he had it for a while — very few people have had it for more than a day — but he had it for a while and he did a really beautiful job.”
“We completely eradicated any kind of visual or structural knowledge of it. So it’s been completely fixed and put back 100 percent.”
