REX LUTHIER: A REX BOGUE TALE

The week before last, in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar section in the Pop Eye column, I read that Dweezil Zappa, son of the rock icon Frank Zappa, was about to sell a guitar. This guitar was not your average guitar; it had a very special history. 

This particular guitar was once owned by Jimi Hendrix and was played by him at the Miami Pop Festival. As with most of his performances, at the end of his set he doused it with lighter fluid and set it on fire on stage.

This guitar was eventually given to Frank, and if you were to believe the LA Times, Frank “restored this guitar and played it extensively during the better part of the 70’s”. Unfortunately, this was not true.

On March 13, 1976, my 21st birthday, a friend of mine invited me to dinner. His name was Rex Bogue and he was what is called a luthier. A luthier is someone who builds or restores guitars. In Rex’s case, his specialty was electric guitars. Rex suggested that before we head out to dinner that we meet at his shop, he had something he wanted to show me.

When I arrived, he handed me a charred body of a Fender Stratocaster Sunburst guitar. No neck, no electronics, just the body. I looked at him completely confused and asked him what it was. He told me that he had just gotten it from Frank Zappa with the instructions to rebuild it. Not to refinish it, but to just lacquer over the burnt body, replace the neck, and electronics. The electronics were one of Rex’s specialties.

In the years that followed, I did see Frank play the guitar many times in concert. There were also times when he would just place the guitar on a stand, center stage with a spot light on it, in sort of an homage to Hendrix. Even though Rex built many custom guitars for people like Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin, this restoration was something that he was very proud of. I felt it was my duty to send a letter to the Times to set the record straight, which I did. Whether they set the record straight or not remains to be seen, but my conscience is clear.

I met Rex while I was in high school and he was one of the most colorful characters I have ever known or even read about. There were so many times when he made me laugh, so many times he made me frustrated, and many more that were happy, sometimes all in one encounter. 

He was a complex individual. Someone capable of creating beautiful pieces of art on the one hand and someone who, once he would take on a project, could procrastinate like no one I had ever known. He could make both his friends and clients crazy. He was no saint by a long shot, but all who knew him, loved him.

Since writing the letter to the Times, I began to reflect on my friendship with Rex and how he had given me a plethora of memories and how he had made my youth a unique one. Exposing me to many things that without having known him I would have never experienced. As I look at my kids and the friends they are making now, I find myself wondering, will they be lucky enough to find someone as special as Rex was to me. Maybe they will become someone else’s Rex, only time will tell.

As I write this I am questioning why it took me so long to draw on my memories of the adventures I had shared with Rex, there were so many. The more I dwell on them, the more come to the surface, some surreal and bizarre, some humorous. There were lessons learned, both good and bad, and I am sure he will return to this column in one form or another. He was viewed as a genius by some and a lunatic by others, but anyone who met him will never forget him.

If you did, you were lucky because you don’t have that luxury now. Rex Bogue passed away on February 8, 1996, at the age of 44. A victim of his own excesses and complications of mishandling his diabetes. The mantle of lunatic certainly fit during the last years of his life, he became a casualty of the rock and roll life style he had adopted many years before.

So if you are fortunate enough to have a Rex in your life, embrace every moment you have with them, even the most maddening ones, because you never know when it will come to an end. 

(Bill Dunn received a call from the Los Angeles Times Wednesday evening. His letter will appear in this Sunday's Calendar section.)