VAPOR TRAILS

Nearly 40 years on, Dave Rusan's visionary Cloud guitar is a lasting presence in the gear world firmament.

- ART THOMPSON

IN THE WORLD of instantly recognizable custom guitars, perhaps none stands out more than the aptly named Cloud that Prince played in the final scenes of the 1984 film Purple Rain. Luthier Dave Rusan designed and built the Cloud, with its whimsical curves and distinctive prong on the upper bout. Rusan grew up in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, and became interested playing guitar as teenager. He says he didn't think of it as just a musical instrument, however, but as a beautiful and mysterious machine.

"Soon after my dad bought me my second guitar, a Mosrite, I took off the neck and removed the pickguard to see what was going on inside," he recounts to Guitar Player. "I started modifying my guitars, but with almost no books to refer to, my efforts were based largely on trial and error. I improved, though, and was soon working on my friend's guitars. I felt I'd reached a major milestone when I finished my first re-fret."

Rusan was playing in "decent" bands in the Saint Cloud area, but, seeking to expand his horizons, he moved to Minneapolis to pursue the music scene there. "I found better musicians to work with and played all the major clubs," he says. "I had the opportunity to do session work at Sound 80, where Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens would do some recording. I also wanted to continue to pursue a career in guitar repair and started contacting music stores in the Minneapolis area. However, the owners of these stores were almost all at least a generation older than their customers, who played in rock bands. They had been in business for years, going back at least to the craze for accordions that had been engendered by The Lawrence Welk Show in the 1950s. It was like being in a store owned by your un hip uncle."

There was one music store that was cool, however, and it changed Rusan's life.