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http://Scene-RLS.net
Here at the Repair Shop, we take amazing objects from the past...
Oh, wow, look at that!
..and bring them back to life.
There's so much history that could have been lost there.
You've got to have a love to do this type of work.
to the people we fix them for...
Wow!
Oh! I don't want to cry, but... Oh, my God!
Heck of a history, isn't it?
..they also tell a bigger story about Britain...
These went out of service in 1938.
Aha!
It's from my family business, which started in 1862.
Bagpipes - over 100 years old!
..our history back then...
They're just about the most modern
designed bikes that I've seen for ages.
It looks extremely sporting.
..and who we are now.
Yes!
I'm Jay Blades...
Roll up, roll up, here we go.
..in this series we're going to look back at how we fixed...
No idea where to start on this!
..some of our favourite items in the Barn...
Over 100 years old? And still it stands.
..unlocking how the past...
Look, look, look. See that? Look!
You've literally just unlocked the secret.
Now that's the story.
..shapes the way we live now.
I can feel the memories she feels from it.
The story that is behind - this is what's kept it alive.
Here at the Repair Shop,
we've got a talented team of makers and menders...
..but what people don't know is there's even more
skill behind the scenes.
Ceramics expert Kirsten is a mean fiddler...
..while wood genius Will is learning to strum...
..and you've probably clocked our resident horologist Steve,
well, he's super skilled on sax!
You see, that's just magical, innit?
Throughout time, we've been enchanted by music
and the instruments of today can be traced back thousands of years.
These days, there are reckoned to be 1,500 different types you can
bang...
..blow, or strum.
through the barn doors.
Wow!
And lots of the instruments that we fix...
If I broke one of these levers, it would be a bit of a problem.
..tell a fascinating story about music's enduring power
to bring people together.
Retired music teacher Marion Stanley owns a precious pump organ
that played a key role in her own family's history.
What have we got?
Sounds like a job for restorer, David Burville.
He took up an apprenticeship in church organ building
when he was just 16 years old
and has fixed some of the biggest in the business.
David, don't mind joining me?
I believe it's about 100 years old
and it's been in my family for about that time.
My father, who was very, very musical, had six brothers
and one sister, they all lived in Stepney... Right.
..the East End of London and this is the 1920s
and at Christmas they used to carry this portable harmonium
and sing and play in the streets
They would come on and do a turn! Right.
And the last time I remembered it was my Uncle Bob
playing Silent Night - very badly!
Huge derision from the rest of the family! Yeah.
So, how does it work, then?
Cos I've never seen one of these before. Does it lift up, does it?
You hold it? This whole thing lifts up
and you can see where the damage is.
Oh, yeah, I can see what's going on there. That is broken, innit?
Yeah. Yeah. Shame. I don't know how...
..this works with getting the bellows up,
perhaps you could tell me?
Well, these are foot pedals and they are actually also the bellows,
so you pump them in this fashion.
Yes. And, effectively, what happens is the air that they produce
is channelled up the legs -
the legs are actually hollow -
and then it's put into the main body of the machine.
And then, obviously, you play on to the keyboard. Keyboard.
OK. All right, you can push these in between.... I'm with you.
..there. That's right.
And, hopefully, keep your fingers crossed, it'll stay up.
Yes. That is well smart. I do like that.
Now, this is the tricky bit.
I had fun doing that on my own, I can tell you, trying to get...
Ooh, mind your hands! There we go. That's it.
All right. Yeah, we'll have it singing again! Oh, good.
Thank you for bringing this in. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Lovely to meet you. Thank you. Take care now. Thank you, bye. Bye. Bye.
Now, that is nice. I think you've got your work cut out on this one.
I think so, yeah, yeah. Keep me busy! All right, cool.
Well, let's get this to your bench then. Great. All right?
It really does mean such a lot to me to get it restored,
because my dad, it was such an important instrument to him,
it would be just really great to have it repaired and working again.
The harmonium evolved from the Chinese mouth organ,
which created its sound by blowing air through a series of reeds.
Also known as a pump organ, it was perfect for churches
and chapels that were too small, or couldn't afford a full-size organ.
Portable versions like Marion's were often used by missionaries,
The harmonium was overtaken in the 1930s,
with the invention of the electric organ.
But the harmonium's unique sound survives to this day,
featuring on music by the likes of Queen, Pink Floyd, Elton John
and this one here can be heard playing in 13 of the Beatles' hits!
Most old harmoniums like Marion's would have been
hand-crafted in the 1800s.
I suppose the enjoyable bit is you are literally, in most of these
cases, the first person to have seen it
since it left the factory 100 years ago.
Sometimes, you find pencil marks.
Sometimes the manufacturer's signed their name inside it.
Sometimes, if you're very lucky, you find a date.
I've found the occasional rude comment in some of them!
So, you never know, you never know quite what you're going to find.
Ooh, there we go.
Here you can see all the reeds.
So, the air actually passes through
and between these brass tongues
and, over time, you tend to get a build-up of dust
and muck.
So, what we'll need to do is remove these
and then we're going to put those into an ultrasonic bath,
which will clean all of the verdigris and muck.
This is a technique that we use a lot in the barn for cleaning
metal bits and bobs.
As sound waves bounce about the ultrasonic bath,
they strip the dirt from the metal.
You might even call it water music!
Here, we've got the remains of the bellows.
These wooden formers, or ribs as they're known,
are in quite good condition, so we can salvage these
and we can make patterns to remake the leather parts.
What I'm going to start doing now is glue
the ribs on to the pedals.
It's interesting, we call these ribs,
because they do, effectively, work like your ribs in your body.
And, of course, the bellows are like lungs.
They're sucking air in and then they're breathing it out,
into the instrument, to then produce the sound.
This is going to literally breathe life into the instrument
and, hopefully, carry on for many years.
An instrument as old has this has inevitably
had a few scrapes over the years.
Woodworking is normally left to the expert hands of Will,
but our Dave is also a dab hand.
So, this is the back of Marion's harmonium
and this has a reasonably large piece of veneer on it.
What we are going to do is re-use this
So, I've got a damp rag here and a steamless iron.
We just introduce a bit of heat.
That will cause
the glue underneath
You can see the glue
gradually peeling away
and just giving up, as you take it.
And there we go.
A repair like this is all about blending the new veneer
with the old and David has an unusual method.
Look away now, Will!
We're just literally just going to bash it, so it's...
Then we want a few sort of scratches...
It looks violent, but it's great fun!
The reeds there looking a lot more healthy.
So that's, erm, the first noise that's made for a few years.
So, that's quite promising.
Hopefully, all the parts,
when they come together, will work harmoniously!
Music to my ears, David!
In London's East End, where Marion's family lived, life was
tough in the 1920s, but there was a strong sense of community.
Musicians would bring their instruments
out to the streets to entertain their neighbours on important
dates like birthdays, weddings, or at Christmas.
As East End houses were small, the street
often became an overspill living room, free for all to gather
and enjoy these music-filled celebrations.
It's at gatherings like these
that Marion's father's harmonium would have taken centre stage.
This is the very final stages
of what's been quite a long project.
It's been very, very interesting
and you really connect with,
not only the instrument,
but you get a glimpse into the
history of the family
and also the joy that this would have brought.
And I can't wait to hear the first notes on it.
When it first arrived in the barn, Marion's father's
Well, the harmonium means such a lot,
as far as my family history is concerned.
It just brings back wonderful memories of my dad,
cos he was a brilliant musician
and I'd love it to be in a state
where it can be played.
Hello. Hello. You all right? Yes!
Hello, Marion, how are you? Good to see you again. And you, and you.
How are you feeling? Erm...
..excited, a little bit nervous. Right.
Shall we let her see it? I think so. Please. I think so. Here we go!
Oh, absolutely brilliant!
Oh!
Look at the case!
Oh, that was just falling to bits, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was.
What a transformation and...
Oh, look at the pedals in there, cos that was all...
..musty and dirty and horrible, wasn't it?
Oh, absolutely grand!
Oh, yeah! Oh, lovely!
We've kept as much of the original feel of it as possible.
You can see little... Cigarette... Cigarette marks!
..marks, you can imagine them all with a fag, can't you?
Yeah, yeah, yes.
At the end there. That was great.
It's beautiful. Yeah, you want to get it standing up?
We'll stand it up, yeah. This is the all-important stick!
That's the all-important stick, yes.
Hey! Lift it up like that.
It goes in there, it goes in there. Just goes in.
Oh, I think it's brilliant, it really is.
Thank you so much.
So, the next thing to do... Yes. ..is probably hear it. Oh, please!
Is that what you want to do? Yes, I'd love to hear it.
Love to hear it, yes.
The musical items we have had in the Repair Shop inevitably conjure up
I think the last time I heard it, I was probably about 14.
So, it is a long while ago! OK!
I'm not a very proficient player, I have to admit,
so we'll give you just a little demonstration first. Yes.
So, you have to use the bellows first,
before you can get any sound out of it?
Yes, you've got to continuously pedal. OK.
Go on, Dave, give us a tune!
We'll do the first couple of bars.
Knees Up, Mother Brown
No, that's good, that. That's all right. That's great, yeah.
Wonderful. Thank you. You're made up, are you? I am, yes.
I really am, yeah. Would you like to have a go? Oh!
Oh, now, I've got to get these going first, haven't I? Yeah, so...
Oh, I see. Oh, they're quite easy! That's it, yeah. Oh, how easy!
Oh! Oh!
Keep pedalling! Keep going! Yeah!
Yeah! Oh!
Well done. It's wonderful, lovely memories. He's done us proud.
Yes, he has, he really has. Thank you very much. You're very welcome.
You're very welcome, pleasure, absolute pleasure!
Well, I'm just full of admiration.
That harmonium just looks nothing like it did before
and I'm really, really going to be excited to get it home
and actually being able to play it.
Marion's family's harmonium was played on happy occasions,
but the Briley family are owners of an instrument used
to lift spirits in much darker times.
Hello, so what's this?
This was my mother's accordion. Oh, wow!
The barn is home to Roger Thomas,
one of just a handful of specialist accordion restorers in the UK.
Roger, or the Jolly Roger as he's known in the trade, has been
restoring accordions across the UK for seven years,
after leaving a career in computer programming.
But Howard's mother's accordion has its own very unique story.
It was my mum's. Right. Who is now 94.
And do you know when she got this one?
When she was 17, she came home with her first week's wages
and her mum went and put it down as a deposit for them to buy this.
So it was actually brand-new when they bought it.
So, I'm just trying to do the maths, so...
So she's 94, so it's just under 80 years old, isn't it? OK.
But the story is my mum used to play it during the war, during the Blitz.
Oh, wow! In the shelters. Really?
So, they used to go, obviously, underground
and play to keep people's spirits up.
Where does she think this is, then?
Does she know this is here today? She doesn't know.
She doesn't know anything about it. She doesn't know anything about it.
And, in fact, the last time she saw Sarah, she said,
"How are you getting on with my...?"
Because Sarah's the musician of the family.
So, you can play this, then, Sarah? Well, I would like to.
You can hear that really high note? Yeah.
It shouldn't make that really high pitched noise, should it?
No, it's very annoying, actually! You can't actually play it, either!
Yeah, it's like a cat, isn't it? Yeah.
Yeah, it doesn't sound right!
These keys that are popping up, they look like they're breaking.
You can deal with that, can't you?
It's a beautiful instrument, isn't it? Yeah.
So, what would this mean to Mum to actually get this repaired then?
Oh... She'd be really pleased, wouldn't she? Yeah.
I think really she'd like me to be able to play it.
So, it's going to mean a lot. It's going to mean a lot.
So, by the time you come back, it will not sound like a strangled cat.
It will if I play it!
Yeah, if you play it or me as well,
but it's definitely going to sound good.
Thank you very much, nice to meet you. You take care now. Thank you.
All right. Cheers, bye-bye. Bye-bye.
Well, that's a nice story. Yeah, it is.
In the toughest of times, music has united us and raised our spirits.
During the dark days of the Blitz between 1940 and '41,
the German Luftwaffe launched near nightly air-raids on the UK,
dropping bombs over towns and cities
and killing more than 40,000 civilians.
People were forced to take refuge in purpose-built air-raid shelters,
or wherever they could find safety underground.
but music was used to lighten the mood and drown out
the terrifying sound of bombs, just like Iris's accordion.
But before he gets fixing,
Jolly Roger's giving a barnstorming performance on another instrument.
That's really nice, yeah.
So it kind of gives you a... Well done!
..a rough idea.
So have you fixed it already, then? He has fixed it.
If only, Steve.
An instrument like Iris's accordion has plenty of problems.
Take the grill off.
Like the harmonium,
the accordion works by squeezing air from bellows through a set of reeds.
But this instrument also has buttons
to open pallets to sound each note.
Well, I can deduce from this that one of the pallets has
fallen off and, look, there's the pallet, this is a pallet.
This is a leather and felt sandwich and when you operate the bellows,
it forms an air seal and this is why we're going the sound when you...
The dead cat sound!
The thing I need to do is just give this leather a bit of a brush.
I can glue that back on there.
I can then give it a full test, so I can test all the notes to see
whether there are any other sounds that we don't want.
Here at the barn, it's often tricky to predict how long a fix will take.
It's only once the item has been opened that the true
nature of the problem is revealed.
Roger has to painstakingly check each
of the accordion's 448 reeds to
identify the ones that are causing the squeaky notes.
So, all of these are, like, notes, then? That's correct.
So, that's kind of OK.
That's not. OK, that's quite cool, man.
So, that's how it works and I've just been checking the general
condition of these valves, these little strips of leather.
So, Roger, now you've got this apart, can you tell me
anything more about the history of it?
Well, we know it's made in Italy.
Actually, this one was made in Castelfidardo.
And the most expensive accordion would be, roughly?
Well, you pay 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 or more.
And we're going to get it working and sounding beautiful again? Yeah.
It's a lovely instrument, actually, I have to say. It just looks beautiful
and when comes back together, it will sound beautiful as well. Yeah.
Do you want me to tell you what note that is?
I think it's a B. It was...
Sorry!
Oh, that's an F flat.
Finished!
As all our experts know, every repair throws up its own surprises.
Originally, I thought I'd just need to adjust one or two of these keys,
but, actually, they all need adjusting.
And the reason why you want the keys nice and flat like this is
because it gives you a nice action, it's like the response to the
keyboard and it also aesthetically, of course, it looks a lot nicer.
OK, so now I just use my little gauge to check.
It's still a bit proud. Needs to go the other way.
Sometimes you get it right first time and other times you don't.
Hm.
If I broke one of these levers, it would be a bit of a problem.
I'm not going to!
This accordion was made around 100 years ago in Castelfidardo, Italy,
a place that became known as the capital of the accordion,
thanks to a chap called Paolo Soprani.
and, by 1905, was producing 1,200 handmade accordions a month.
up in the region to keep up with the worldwide demand.
The accordion became popular, as it was portable,
Today, Castelfidardo is home to the world's largest
accordion, over two metres high
and weighing in at 200 kilograms.
Despite the years of use,
the quality of the original craftsmanship of Iris's
accordion has really stood the test of time
with a little fine-tuning from Roger, of course!
This is the final bellows pin. So, put that in there.
And the next stage is for me to give it its final test.
How we doing, Roger? Are we ready? We are, yes, it's done.
It does look gorgeous.
The only thing left now is to hear what it sounds like. Yep.
It sounds better!
I'm not a maestro. It sounds good. That's a demo.
No, that's a good demo. So, you fixed it, then? Yeah.
Well, I've noticed it when I came in is just the case.
It looks extremely tired
and a repair that we would not be proud of.
You've done such a great job on the actual machine itself, Roger,
it seems a shame to put it in something like this, doesn't it?
Yeah, I agree. Yeah?
So, I know a man who might be able to. Will?
How we doing, my friend? Oh. We've got this. Sounds like trouble.
It is trouble. So, we need this repaired.
What's all this? I know.
But I think was thinking all we can do is take this off
and then you must have some kind of... Gosh! That's it.
Let's not make it any worse though, yeah? Not any worse.
Just so it looks uniform, I would say. Uniform.
Well, the good thing is, it's solid.
Made of plywood, I think.
Yeah, so it's just a superficial damage to the surface. Yeah.
I am going to work some magic.
In the next five minutes, yeah?
There's no rush, there's no rush,
but is it probably five to three minutes?
If you make me a cup of tea, three minutes!
I'm on it, mate, I'm on it, cup of tea, cup of tea.
Two and a half minutes now, yeah? Yeah, right. See you in a minute.
We drink a lot of tea in the barn, topping up our ten-litre urn
around three times a day.
But it's not just Yorkshire brews.
There's the Dommuccino.
There's some fruity numbers.
That looks diamond. Yeah? Yeah, that looks good.
I'm very pleased. And it is a stunning-looking instrument,
I'm going to have to say, and I am still amazed at the condition
that it's in, given its age.
I love it when families bring their repairs to us
as a surprise for their loved ones.
It gives the mend that extra layer of excitement.
Not everyone can make it to the barn,
so, sometimes, we send the items back to their original owners,
like 94-year-old Iris.
Hello. We've got a surprise lined up, in case you hadn't guessed.
Are you all right? Do you need a hand?
All right? Hello. Hello.
So, this is your surprise.
So, you know when you opened it up, it made a terrible noise?
Yeah. Oh, you had it fixed. Yeah.
Because there was a key sticking up here. Yeah, it was this one,
I think, wasn't it? And then when you opened it, it was the note,
it was... Yeah, permanent noise.
Yeah. Must be ten years since I used that.
But it's all in working order now.
Do you want to see Sarah play it? Yes, please.
She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain
She's good.
# Singing aye aye yippee yippee aye Yeehaw!
# Singing aye aye yippee yippee aye
# Singing aye aye yippee
# Aye aye yippee
# Aye aye yippee yippee aye. #
That's smashing.
Good, very good.
She was just so happy that it had been fixed.
I can't believe what they've done. I knew nothing about it.
It was a complete shock.
The best thing was her reaction to seeing Sarah play it,
without a doubt.
She got quite emotional because it brought back memories for her,
but it was also, you know, passing that legacy on to her granddaughter.
I hope that my granddaughter will look after it and play it
and enjoy it as much as I did.
Life goes on.
It's great to see the accordion survive for another generation.
After the war years, technology allowed musicians to entertain
owned by Danny Wilson and his mum Margaret provided the beat.
It's the perfect repair for guitar maestro David Kennett.
David used to be a firefighter,
but his passion for guitars led him to a local guitar-making course,
where he discovered his skills in woodworking
and a love of luthiery. Well, that's guitar repairing to you and me.
So what have we got here, then? So this is a Fender bass guitar.
Tell me a bit about this. Whose is it?
This is my father's. My father was a musician. Still is a musician...
Right. ..in the '60s and '70s.
You might have heard of the band, Hot Chocolate. Is it? Yeah. OK.
Oh! I'm old enough to remember them.
So am I! You're not on your own there.
Would you believe it? Danny's dad is none other than Tony Wilson,
one of the founding members of Hot Chocolate,
who ruled the airwaves in the '70s and '80s with hits like
# Sexy thing... #
Tony had started out as the band's lead singer, but when Errol Brown
took to the mic, Tony stuck to his true love of playing bass
and bought this guitar off the band's manager
for just a tenner.
OK. And he couldn't take everything with him, so this stayed with us,
and it's been in Mum's garage since he went.
And then, why do you want to get it repaired or restored now?
Are you going to start playing? That's it.
That's the plan. You are? Yeah, that is the plan.
It's something that I'm quite disappointed in myself,
to be honest, that I haven't done, is learnt an instrument
with my dad being who he is and what he does.
Does your dad know that you've brought this in? He does, actually.
And he's over the moon. Right. He's over the moon.
And when I told him that I was going to learn how to play it as well,
double happy. Was it one of his very early...?
Was it his first bass guitar? His only bass guitar
as far as I know. His only bass? His only bass guitar.
Yeah, so this is from 1966. Right. And he's never owned a...
This is the only one he's ever owned.
When you come to work on a guitar of this age...
..there are two immediate considerations.
One is making it playable because if it's not playable then,
you know, what is...? It's not a proper instrument.
But also, doing that restoration sympathetically to the age
of the guitar. This is the life and the character of the guitar.
And so, it's all those years where your dad has stood on stage,
it's no longer your dad's guitar.
Right. No, absolutely. Everything you said there makes perfect sense.
I mean, it just needs some TLC.
If you turn it over, up here, it's worn away. Yeah.
This has got a very high action, I can see here.
So it would be really hard to play this guitar.
What I wanted to ask you about is these stickers.
They will all remain nameless, but someone decided that
the bass guitar that Dad used in the '60s and '70s
for Hot Chocolate should be a sticker book. OK. Right.
So, David, if you could remove those, kindly. Yeah, that's fine.
Yeah. That's an easy job.
So what would it mean to both of you to get this restored?
Well, there's a lot of memories in... Well, mainly for my mum.
Yeah. You know, those memories will be sort of kept alive
by the guitar being restored
and, obviously, to me, I'm going to learn it,
so it would be a great thing, a great piece to learn on.
OK. Even if it's going to be difficult. It would be deja vu
for me, wouldn't it, because he looks like him,
sounds like him? Yeah.
All I can say is thank you for bringing it in. No problem.
And, yeah, once it's fully done,
I can't wait to come to your first concert.
That's what I'm going to say. Neither can I!
So, no pressure. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers, Jay.
No problem. Looking forward to working on it.
You take care now. All the best. Bye. All right. Bye-bye.
We're very excited about leaving the guitar here.
It's got a lot of history, a lot of memories for Mum,
and, potentially, it's got a lot of future enjoyment for myself.
So, it's a very exciting time for us.
I've seen it on stage many times.
I've seen it on Top Of The Pops many times.
And how nice would it be if I could get Dan to learn it, too?
That's a nice story, innit?
It's lovely. Lovely to meet him, wasn't it? Yeah.
So, are you going to do a lovely sympathetic restoration on this one?
It's about making it playable so it doesn't destroy the character
and the history attached to this guitar. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant.
The bass guitar was an evolution of the acoustic double bass.
Big bands fell out of favour after World War II,
but the smaller combos still needed a big bass beat.
Luckily, amplified music was being tried and tested,
but real success only came when radio repairman
Leo Fender stepped in.
After working on the first amplified lap steel guitar in 1944,
his company produced the first amplified bass in 1951 -
an instrument both louder and easier to transport
than its acoustic predecessor.
Fender set the benchmark for making quality electric guitars.
His original solid-bodied design meant that mass production boomed,
putting electric guitars and basses into the hands of
thousands of wannabe pop stars, like Tony Wilson.
This guitar is not particularly playable at the moment.
It's missing a few parts.
There's a bridge cover that goes over here.
So it'd be nice to replace those.
And the frets are very, very low now.
And I think it's time to replace those frets. They're 50 years old.
They look like original frets to me.
And, hopefully, Dan will have many hours of enjoyment playing
this guitar which means so much to him. So, for me, it's a real joy
to be part of the story of bringing this guitar back to life again.
So what I'm using is a soldering iron...
..which just helps to...
..heat up the fibres of the wood.
So these frets have got a barb that sits in the wood.
And if you don't do this carefully,
then that fret tang can tear out chunks of the wood.
With half a century of gigging history, it's not surprising
that the instrument has a few bumps and bruises.
This guitar has got this rather nasty sort of gouge
in the neck here.
So, what I'm actually doing is just starting to thin down the neck...
..using a spokeshave until I start to...
..come down below the surface and get into fresh wood.
Sanding and staining is a vital part of any guitar repair.
That looks really nice to me. I'm happy with that.
Fitting new frets is another painstaking job.
Luckily, David is a man with some super cool tools.
What I need to do now is to curve these frets
so they all sit properly into this fretboard.
And, to do that, I'm using this tool.
Just pass the frets through,
and I'm looking for the radius
of this fret wire to be just slightly more curved
than the fretboard.
These frets have to be perfectly level.
You could have the nicest-looking wood, the best pickups,
the whole guitar could look nice,
but unless the frets are bang-on perfect, the guitar will not
play as well as it can.
So this is one of the most important parts of restoring a guitar.
And the way I'm going to do it is just use this tool,
which is the same radius as this guitar
and just inserts even pressure
on the fret as I'm pushing it in.
Instruments this old have often lost a few parts over the years.
But new fittings can stick out like a sore thumb.
David's solution is pure rock and roll.
What I have here is a specially selected stone,
and I'm just going to put some marks and dents in this.
This is very unscientific.
And a bigger one.
An etching solution gives
any new part its weathered look.
So I'm just going to leave this for a few minutes now
and let the ferric chloride do its job,
then it'll start to go black.
The revolution of Fender's amplified electric guitar
Leading guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page
and Eric Clapton now took centre-stage, wowing audiences
with soaring guitar solos.
Clapton's guitar playing was, in turn, a major influence
on the young Ed Sheeran. He's been seen using a replica guitar
in homage to his idol in some of his high-profile gigs.
The bass has been integral in changing the sound
and rhythm of music with its distinctive bass-line beat,
just like the funk and soul grooves of Hot Chocolate.
# Every blind man will use his eyes to see... #
For me, Hot Chocolate also made a real impression
as they were one of the first multiracial bands
that I had ever seen on TV.
Who would have thought I'd be meeting Tony Wilson's son
in the barn more than 40 years later?
# Every man will sing, love, I love you... #
You know, I hope that Dan will get much enjoyment
you know, many years of pleasure out of this instrument.
And it's been a pleasure to work on this. I've enjoyed this very much.
This is something that we've been looking forward to for a while.
It's just exciting to see what David's done with it,
and I'm looking forward to playing it.
We're always excited by a bit of nostalgia at the barn,
especially keen musician and horologist Steve.
Nice to see you both again. Hello, I'm Steve. Hello, Steve.
Hello, Margaret, how are you doing? Hi, David. Hello.
And we were very excited when we went away to see
how it would turn out. Remember, we talked about a restoration
that keeps the integrity of the guitar, but also it's still
your dad's guitar.
Fantastic. Oh.
Oh, that's amazing.
It's brilliant, isn't it? That's fantastic.
It's great, David. Really, really great. Thank you.
It's a miracle.
Well, I believe in miracles, so...
I had to get that one in there. I had to.
So what do you think your father, Tony Wilson, would think of it now?
He'd be thrilled. He would be absolutely thrilled with that.
Yeah? Really. To look at it and for him to see it like this,
I will obviously take pictures and... He might ask for it back.
No chance, he's not getting it back. No, no, no.
I'm going to start to learn it now. So, I'm sure he'll be thrilled.
Do you want to hear what it sounds like? Love to.
I don't play bass, but I can make some noises.
That's about all I can play now.
You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate
Brilliant. That's one for you to learn. Yeah.
Incredible. Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Dad would be amazed, wouldn't he?
He certainly would.
Well, it's been a pleasure to work on it and bring it back to life.
Fantastic. We hope you'll have many years' enjoyment playing at.
We can't thank you enough, David, really. It's fantastic.
It's brilliant.
Right, let's go learn. Well done. Thank you. Bye-bye.
See you. Bye-bye.
Over the moon. And Dad would be really chuffed. Really chuffed.
It'll be like deja vu if Danny learns to play the bass.
It's great.
I feel quite emotional, actually.
The first time I've seen Mum lost for words, I think.
Mending musical instruments like these brings the barn alive.
Not only do they sound great,
but they come with stories that remind us of how live music
brings us all together.
It's a miracle.
It's a privilege to work on them,
and a real joy to hear them play so beautifully again.
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