The axe men cometh

Guitar sales are booming as musicians of all ages turn their backs on synthesised pop. John Walsh joins the growing army of reborn rock gods

When Tony Blair, visiting a school two weeks ago, strapped on a Fender Stratocaster for an impromptu jam with the sixth-form groovers, accompanied by the imposingly manic figure of David ("Animal") Blunkett on drums, you might have thought it a sad spectacle: a near-50-year-old dreaming of his outlaw credibility when he used to sing with the Oxford band Ugly Rumours.

That purse-lipped, grunty look on his face, as he essayed a bar chord on the 10th fret, was full of nostalgia for a more heroic time, when playing an "axe" through a Marshall amp was the coolest form of self-expression available to mortal man, and impressed the hell out of rackety young women. But the Prime Minister was unconsciously embodying a significant trend. Young musicians and ageing hobbyists alike have returned to the realm of Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler, mostly out of boredom with a world of synthetic dance music and hip-hop deck manipulation. Across the nation – and the age spectrum – people are buying electric guitars, amplifiers, wah-wah pedals, fuzz boxes and other rock-god paraphernalia with an enthusiasm that hasn't been seen in a decade.

Sales figures show a steepening upward curve. In 1999, a quarter of a million guitars were sold in the UK, a 19 per cent rise on the previous year. In 2000, sales were up by 23 per cent. In 2001, they rose by 30 per cent – and they are still rising. Fender – the guitar equivalent of Ford Motors – sold 57,000 of its Squier model last year, compared to 43,000 in 2001. The Squier is considered the typical guitar choice of young men hoping to start a rock band. Marshall MG amplifiers flew out of the shops last year, selling 20,000 more than in 2001, an increase of 90 per cent.

"We're seeing a lot of sales in what's referred to as the DDL market," said Dennis Drumm, the director of Ivor Mairants Music Centre in Oxford Street, London's premier musical-instrument shop. "By which I mean 'doctors, dentists and lawyers' – people who used to play guitar when young, who are now on good professional salaries, and who can afford to spend anything between £800 and £3,000 on a serious acoustic or electric guitar."

I can corroborate his analysis. In the past 18 months, I've seen at least five friends (all male – this is an exclusively male phenomenon) proudly displaying their newly-bought axes as though showing off a new Savile Row suit. None of them posed much of a threat to Jimmy Page, but all were able to make a spectacular noise with an E-chord and the volume control turned up to 10. They'd come a long way from playing a tennis racket in front of a mirror 30 years earlier, windmilling their right arm to play crashing up-chords like Pete Townshend at the climax of "Won't Get Fooled Again". They couldn't afford a Strat or a Telecaster at the time; and there's a limit to the amount of power-chord windmilling you can do on a nylon-stringed Spanish guitar your mother bought you for Christmas.

One friend, Philip, became mystifyingly adept at BB King-style blues solos and threw a summer party at which he played "Crossroads" and "Voodoo Chile" with a teenage rhythm section behind him. He even remembered to do the transports-of-ecstasy head-shaking routine that is King's greatest legacy to denim-clad poseurs everywhere. And he introduced us to an amazing accessory called a Pod – an electronic box of tricks that converts the instrument to sound like the fuzz guitar of T Rex, the stratospheric noodling of Pink Floyd or the liquid legato of Eric Clapton.

Look at those magic fingers (as James Taylor once said in "Steamroller Blues") boogie up and down them silver frets... But it's not just saddo middle-aged men who are responsible for the guitar boom. Serious young musicians are also keen. "I think you can attribute it to what's been happening in schools," said Dennis Drumm. "The Labour government made the playing of an instrument a core-curriculum subject. And though you once had to choose an instrument from the classical orchestra to play at exam level, now you can study electric guitar right up to Grade 8, which is the equivalent of an A-level. Add to that the proliferation of independent music schools for adults who want to take up the guitar seriously as a career, and the boom isn't surprising. Also, I have a theory that kids who play computer games get used to the rock-guitar music that features in the background, and it's only a matter of time before they start wanting to play the music rather than watch the screen."

At Andy's Guitar Centre and Workshop in Denmark Street in central London a similar trend is apparent. "There's a definite upturn in interest in guitars, though they were never in danger of dying off," says Andy Preston, the owner of this shrine-like emporium, which started life as a guitar-repair shop in the 1970s and is now a repository of elderly, well-seasoned, classic Fenders, Gretsches, Gibsons and Taylors, the solid-body or semi-acoustic cousins of Stradivarius violins, which retail, second-hand, at prices up to £7,000.

"We get mums and dads coming in to buy one for their kid, because they know they can bring it back if it needs adjusting. And yes, the middle-aged men who remember the Hofner guitar they once played at 15 and want to own again," Preston said. He too contrasts the current income/cost ratio of buying a guitar with the way it was in 1966. "When I bought my first Les Paul, it cost me £120 and I earned £2.50 a week. That's an awful lot of weeks. Now you can buy the same quality of guitar for about £600, and kids' earning power has increased to about £150 a week. That's a significant change."

Andy's is a place where modern guitar heroes such as Noel Gallagher and elderly rock legends such as Terry Dean drop in for a chat about pick-ups and machine-heads. "For a while, it looked like keyboards were going to take over," said Preston. "But guitars are very portable – who was it who said that the guitar is a very good instrument to play badly? – and they're not an awkward thing to stand on a stage with. If you've a yen for it, if you discover you can sing and play it, you can express yourself better than with any other instrument."

As I prowled around the shop, bumping into aspirant superstars, listening to the blistering, show-off riffs from somebody walloping a Gibson Les Paul on an upper floor, I played a few awkward notes on a gleaming red Japanese model, to impress David the photographer. A threatening figure in a "Heere's Johnny!" T-shirt loomed over me. "If you're going to pose with something," he said scornfully, "try something worthwhile, like this 1974 Fender Telecaster." He was Gary Butcher, a hot session musician whose slide guitar used to snake around behind Tammy Wynette's emotional wail.

As he stood and watched me wrestle with £6,950-worth of rock history, I had a sudden eidetic memory of a long-haired former self trying to play the chords to "The Pusher" in a guitar shop in Oxford; just one of a few dozen students who'd come through its doors that day, and who loved to hang out among the dangling axes, anorakishly discussing the "action" of the fretboard neck with anybody who'd listen, and finally getting slung out for murdering the opening chords of "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple (durng, durng, durng, durng durng der-durng) once too often.

Men's love affair with the guitar may be an enduring mystery for the female sex. But for middle-aged Keith Richards wannabes, noise-obsessed teenagers, phallus-worshippers and the music-shop proprietors of Tin Pan Alley, its return to fashion and passion is excellent news. Hand me that plectrum...