If you love guitars or love guitar-driven music - or if you are just a rock n’ roll guitar god on the weekends – then you will definitely enjoy Clapton's Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument by Allen St. John. Essentially, St. John chronicles the building of two world-class guitars for Eric Clapton. This is an entertaining contrast between worlds: the high-gloss finished product of pop music, and the subculture in which Henderson is fully immersed, filled with folklore, craftsmanship and regular folk mastering traditional music.

The title is a tad misleading in that there isn’t the culmination of hard work leading to a meeting with Clapton (there is just an exchange between St. John and Clapton’s guitar tech). But what St. John does a tremendous job of doing is putting the reader over the shoulder of Henderson as he turns a piece of wood into a beautifully crafted guitar. St. John deftly tells the story of Henderson, his family, and friends in an entertaining way. This makes Clapton’s Guitar more palatable to those who just want to read a good book. Yes, it’s true the guitar aficionado will find a lot to , but it’s not prerequisite that you be a super-duper guitar freak to enjoy this. From the opening of the book, right after Clapton plays one of Henderson’s guitars and hears about the guy for the first time:

“The guy was Wayne Henderson, and it’s no surprise that even Eric Clapton, one of the world’s certifiable guitar freaks, didn’t know anything about him. Henderson lives in rural Rugby, Virginia, population 7, where until recently he split his time between building extraordinary guitars and delivering the mail to his neighbors. He has built maybe three hundred guitars over the last thirty-five years, as many as the popular C.F. Martin factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, can finish in a busy afternoon. But in just a few short moments with this guitar, Clapton had discovered one thing. Wayne C. Henderson might just be the greatest guitar builder who ever lived. A Stradivari in glue-stained blue jeans.”