b'the guitar. The moves made sense, adding extrawitches, drunkards and priests, strong men and dynamics to the music and introducing it to neweven stronger women. audiences. I was able to take part in all that, andFor an English guitar maker needing strong, learn what the musicians needed by watching,descriptive identities, it made complete, instant listening and talking to them. sense. Soon I was getting more orders, I was workingShakespeare tells a lot of stories about the English overnight to get them made, and not turning up tokings and nobles of the time and Robin Hood work on time. Then I was offered help to set up aappears in them once or twice.While Richard the full time guitar making business on the Fylde coastLionheart was away on his crusades, his brother of Lancashire (hence the name, its pronouncedJohn ruled England, and Robin Hood was a deposed to rhyme with wild) and a whole new chapternobleman who spent his time righting the wrongs started. that the evil King John imposed upon the poor. Anyone who starts a business needs to find a nameMore recently, we have been told that John was for it and also some way of naming its products.actually the good king, and Richard was the absent For guitar makers there are a few short cuts, usingwastrel. This just shows that history is not to be numbers or copying other makers systems, but intrusted. Literature and Myth are far more fun, and I my case, I was visited in the night by a bald Englishdiscovered a story that when things became a little ghost wearing a silly shirt, and I woke up with atoo tricky for Robin in Sherwood Forest, he escaped very, very good idea.William Shakespeare. to the wastelands of Fylde. There are hundreds of names in Shakespeare, eachWhen I look now for the reference to Fylde with its own unique character, evocative of culture,amongst the Robin Hood stories, I cant find it, so poetry, music, war and love. Some of them are wellmaybe I dreamt that part as well. Im stuck with known names like Romeo, or suggest other worldsit now though. The senior designer at my work, like Leonardo. Working men, monarchs, lovers,Stuart Lever, produced the Elizabethan script logo soldiers, servants, heroes, villains, murderers,that I still use today. Everything fitted together very nicely indeed.Early Advertisements An advert that ran in American magazines. There were quite a number of famous American guitarists who supported Fylde at the time Clever fun sketch by Andrew Seddon that I used as an advert and a poster in about 1976.30'