Claes af Geijerstam displays unique guitars at the ABBA museum

Claes af Geijerstam has been a popular musician, songwriter, DJ and radio personality throughout his life. He is now exhibiting his unique collection of guitars at the ABBA Museum in Stockholm. I (Peter) was there yesterday to check out the opening, the day before the exhibition opens for real. Which is today!

Claes of Geijerstam

Claes af Geijerstam is a truly popular artist with a long list of accomplishments. Originally known as a songwriter and guitarist in the band Ola & the Janglers, he has since done everything from film scores to radio programmes. 'I grew up with this fast-talking man as a DJ and I loved it.

Things have been going well for Clabbe

Claes af Geijerstam has appeared on TV in countless contexts, worked as a DJ, been a sound engineer for none other than ABBA during the crazy hysteria and ABBA fever that prevailed. He has participated in Melodifestivalen several times and beat out ABBA in 1973, winning the Melodifestivalen together with Göran Fristorp.

He had great success with Little Mike and his Sweet soul band that I saw on the stock exchange in the New Year 82 or 83. In recent years he is perhaps best known as a jury member in the programme Idol. Not a bad track record then!

Guitars of the stars

Claes af Geijerstam is currently hosting an exhibition at the ABBA Museum with his very unique guitar collection. The collection began in 2005, and since then af Geijerstam has accumulated around 50 guitars. And these are not just any guitars he has in his collection!

Yesterday he cut the audio cables!

Famous rock stars' guitars have been recreated in very small editions, and Mr af Geijerstam has had to work hard (and pay a lot - the estimated value of the guitars is around 10 million) to get his hands on so many. Thanks to his collection, we can now see guitars used by stars such as Eric Clapton, Andy Summers (The Police), David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Ace Frehley (Kiss), Gary Moore, Jimmy Hendrix, Kirk Hammet (Metallica), Don Felder (The Eagles), Slash, Les Paul (GunsN´Roses) and others.

We continue the journey

Robbie Krieger (The Doors), Joe Perry (Aerosmith), Marc Bolan (T.Rex), Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple), Billy Gibbons (ZZ Topp) and a lot of emotions and memories come to the surface that you grew up with.

Cool musicians who have left their mark

The New Yardbirds was Jeff Beck's band and invited Jimmy Page, who was then a studio musician for the Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kings and many others. Jeff Beck wanted to improvise and left the band to go his own way. The band was renamed no less than Led Zeppelin, and it wasn't wrong. There were two superstars in the same band like Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins who played in Genesis and Peter left and that didn't turn out badly either.

Now some cool stories

Eric Clapton is a legend and so is his guitar. Here you can see how a cigarette has burned into the wood above the e-string. He put his cigarette there when he would take a solo and it was always too long.

What about Clabbe himself?

The guitar on the left is from 1961 and was Clabbe's first guitar. "Because you are in a flow, you are young and you want to create, you don't think much about a guitar, because there are new ones. It disappeared and he didn't think much more about it.

After 30 years, a person calls up from an estate and says this guitar is signed by Claes af Geijerstam, and he didn't understand. He asked them to send him a picture and it was his first guitar and it's now in the Pop House and ABBA Museum in Stockholm. Read more about the museum at the museum's website.

These aren't all the guitars and stories I've written about but you can experience more at POP HOUSE.

Personal memories

Music makes memories and don't dream away right now for hours because I need your help. I'll start!

I grew up on Blidö outside Norrtälje in the summer and on weekends. I met four brothers who loved and practised musical instruments. With Led Zeppelin, the Wallén brothers sat in 1974 and practised the riffs (Smoke on the water). One of the brothers was called Ingemar who has toured with Jerry Williams several years and plays bass. Wille played drums in The Boppers and Kjell started his own band. I was with the youngest son and we were just interested in life and all the fun.

What memories do you have?

Now comes the hard part! You've cried to the ballads and partied to the cool songs and you've fallen in love with many of these legends. The memories just flow and you can sit for days, but take your strongest memories and tell them... This is going to be long!

The exhibition is aptly named Guitars of the Stars and is on display at the ABBA Museum in Stockholm for about a year.