KAVUS TORABI

The frontman of psychedelic prog legends Gong and The Utopia Strong says he's pretty monogamous' when it comes to guitars but nonetheless he's owned an eclectic mix over the years...

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money

"I was in a metal band [when I was a teenager] and I had this Kramer Focus, which was a one-pickup, slopey headstock thing with a Floyd Rose and a locking nut - but I never really liked it, I never really felt a connection with it. But it was my metal guitar because the bass player of the band didn't like the idea of me playing a Westone Spectrum before that! So he bought this guitar for me and wanted me to pay him back, though I never really responded to it.

"When that band was over, I suppose I was moving away from metal and I loved the idea of having a 335 or something like that I was really into hollowbodies. I found another Westone - a Westone Rainbow - which is a beautiful kind of birdseye maple guitar like a 335, although the horns are slightly pointier. It's a really beautiful guitar and it was secondhand in this music shop but I had no way of affording it because I was on the dole. So with the aid of a friend of mine, who was working for the Prince's Trust, I said I was going to need one of these guitars because I was going to start a new life as a guitar teacher. I put in the proposal and I got the funding for it. And so I got this beautiful Westone Rainbow, which I still have, and played that for about the next 10 years."

What was the last guitar that you bought (or acquired) and why?