July 6, 2010 | Guitar Collecting

Prince: ‘Playing guitar stops baldness’

Suggestions that Prince may be a bit eccentric have been bolstered today by his assertion that playing guitar prevents baldness!

The 52-year-old musician, who is best known for songs such as ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘Raspberry Beret’, said that the electricity flowing through the musical instrument must affect the body in some way.

Prince told The UK Daily Mirror: “Playing electric guitar your whole life does something to you. I’m convinced all that electricity racing through your body made me keep my hair.”

He also said: “Music is my life. It’s my trade. If I can’t get it out of my head I can’t function. I think I’m improving all the time. When I listen to my old records I’m ashamed of how I played them.”

Then again, I’ve played guitar for 30 years and I still have all my hair, so there may be something to his theory…let’s ask Joe Satriani…oh..

More on guitar pick collecting

Following on from my last article about guitar pick collecting, I came across this website dedicated to this great little facet of our hobby.

Guitar-picks.com is the run by Alan Ralph, who seems to be the world expert in all things pick related.

Alan amassed his collection in 20 years. Another remarkable thing about Alan’s collection is that it was not grown via eBay purchases nor through buying collections from other collectors. Neither does he buy bags and bags of picks from those on the inside. Alan has done it the good old fashioned way … by being at the shows and through trading his duplicates with other collectors.

In the early 80’s I grabbed a few picks myself as I used to work at London’s biggest concert venue. Most were unbranded, although I can just about remember where most came from; George Benson, Angus Young, Tom Petty but I thought I’d photograph my meagre spoils from that period.

These were acquired from gigs and several of them were well used by the artist before being discarded; The JY Â Styx ones are very thin, and seem to have taken a fair bit of abuse from his playing style! The Rick Nielsen one is from 1979 I think, the others from probably 81-84.

I think I’ll start scouting Ebay for a few more!