Strumming, Picking, and Shredding:

An Oral History of Guitar Player Part 5: Tom Mulhern

By Steven Ward

Tom Mulhern is a bassist with a background in electronic music. Mulhern is today a technical writer, user interface designer, and web developer.

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“I got intimately acquainted with The Elements of Style…”

“Although I started at GP in June 1977, I moved from the Chicago area to California in January ’77 to do freelance editing for their book division–to sustain myself while starting a band with my old friend Dominic Milano, the Assistant Editor at GP’s sister publication, Keyboard. The freelancing fell through, and over the next months I had a couple of crappy jobs elsewhere. In June, Don Menn called and asked if I’d want to come to work at GP. This was on a Friday; I started on the following Monday.

“I began as an assistant editor, which was probably better than I deserved, considering I was fresh out of school with a background in electronic music composition, rather than in journalism. Youth and enthusiasm, not to mention the needs to feed myself and pay the rent, motivated me to work very hard. I realized how green I was when confronted with a gibberish-like piece of text from one of our columnists, edited it, and got it back from Don with more red ink than black on it. I then got really intimately acquainted with my copy of The Elements Of Style–I didn’t want to lose this gig.

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Strumming, Picking, and Shredding:

An Oral History of Guitar Player Part 4: Jas Obrecht

By Steven Ward

Since 1999, Jas Obrecht has lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He teaches creative writing, writes for music magazines, and owns a record label, Avabella Productions. Obrecht recently produced Buckethead’s Acoustic Shards CD and Young Buckethead DVDs, with more works on the way. His book with James ‘Al’ Hendrix, My Son Jimi, came out in 1999, followed by Rollin’ & Tumblin’: The Postwar Blues Guitarists in 2001. He currently writes the Jas Obrecht Music Blog. Life is good.

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“Even music journalists were mystified by Eddie’s fingertaps technique…”

“On Ascension Thursday, 1978, I literally ascended from Detroit’s rundown West Side to glorious San Jose, California. A few weeks earlier, I’d foolishly followed my father’s advice and wore a three-piece suit to an interview at Creem magazine, where the lady editors viewed me as some kind of a narc. For Guitar Player, I went casual. Good thing, because editor Don Menn showed up barefoot and uncombed, in jean cutoffs and a tattered King Tut T-shirt. I liked him instantly. Hanging behind his head was a numbered Les Paul guitar that had been smashed on stage by Pete Townshend. Within a couple of hours, I’d also met Jim Crockett, Tom Wheeler, and Tom Mulhern, and I’d been hired as Guitar Player’s new Assistant Editor.

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