Machine Gun Kelly has recalled the hilarious, ill-fated tale of his prized Martin acoustic guitar, which he once stole from the Ace Hotel – before getting slapped with a hefty bill for his troubles.
The pop-punk guitarist certainly has an interesting eye for guitars as his razor blade Schecter – an axe many thought was a meme at first – attests. But one of the more unassuming six-strings in his collection, a humble acoustic guitar he stole from a hotel, tells one of the most interesting stories.
The anecdote comes from a new excerpt from the recently released Norman’s Rare Guitars Netflix documentary.
MGK has always carried a traditional rock ’n’ roll swagger with him, and he proved that while staying at the Ace Hotel in downtown LA ahead of a show. Its rooms were treated as green rooms for the performing artists, and they were strewn with gifts and, much to the guitarist’s surprise, a guitar.
“They had candy, gifts, and shit like that, but then they had this guitar just sitting in the corner,” he explains. “I picked it up and it said (written beneath the bridge): ‘Your left hand is what you know, your right hand is who you are.’”
The message struck a chord with him: “That’s exactly what I was talking about. I never connected with the super technical guitar players,” he says. “I was always into the people where I could feel every emotion they had, whether they were having a good day or if they were pissed or if they just didn’t give a fuck.”
MGK felt such a strong immediate affinity for the Martin – which looks to be a humble $699 X Series build – that he decided to take it for himself.
He continues: “So I took the guitar out of the room, we exited the building and Interscope (Records) called me 20 minutes later. They said, ‘The Ace Hotel just called us and said that they have you on camera leaving with the guitar,’ and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, well, I thought it was a gift for doing the show!’ They were like, ‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t a gift, that’s just what they put in their hotel rooms.’”
MGK, though, was in no mood to frog march back to the hotel and hand over the acoustic.
“I was like, ‘Well you know, I’m out of town already catching a plane. I love the guitar, just tell them I have to have it.’ The hotel billed me for $5,000.”
Then tragedy struck after MGK “woke up one night after a party, and this fucking happened,” he says, revealing how the guitar’s top has started to split from its back and sides. It’s quite the wound. Someone suggested the guitar simply fell off the wall. MGK wasn’t buying it.
“I’m like, ‘What did it fall from, the top of the Empire State Building? This doesn’t happen if you fall four feet off the wall rack. To me, it looks like someone (imitates a Pete Townshend-esque guitar smash).”
The culprit may never own up to damaging the costly, former Ace Hotel guitar, but MGK sees it as adding to its character.
“Things like that,” he says, “is what makes a guitar special to me, (the) character or a reason why it was brought to you.”
After the initial fallout of his razor-sharp signature guitar, MGK came to its defense, saying: “I’ll never explain my art, because true art is conversational and always up for interpretation, but I will say, most of you constantly interpret it wrong, and then blame me for your version of what you think my art is.”
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