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Giving Number One a behind-the-head workout, 1983 © Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis

I know you did a lot of repairs to the neck of Number One…

"The term 'repair' can mean a lot of things. I refretted it and I put in a bone nut, or an ivory nut. I joined Steve in 1985 and I refretted the guitar maybe once a year, and I replaced the ivory nut probably as many times. You can't use the same nut once you refret the guitar - the action would be too low.

"The last time I refretted it, I told him it would be the last time. He asked me why and I told him that I had to plane to fingerboard every time I put new frets in. He would really dig in; he not only wore the frets out, but he would wear out some of the wood, as well.

"After a while, the fingerboard was getting thin and I told him I'd have to put a new one on. We decided to replace the neck and keep the original until I had time to made that repair. But I never got a chance to do that, so the neck that is back on Number One is all original."

You used to put jumbo-sized frets on the guitar, right?

"Yes. He used to use medium-sized frets, but he'd wear them out, so I said, 'You're probably better off with jumbos.' That way, I could work with them through the year, reshape them so he could continue to play. He enjoyed them - they gave him more access to sliding up and down."

Did he use heavy gauge strings?

"He did. He started with a .013 and ended with a .060. They were big, yes, but that wasn't the only thing; it was the action, the height of the strings. I used to adjust the screws down at the bridge to raise the height, and I would run out of thread - I couldn't make the strings any higher."

A lot of this runs counter to the way many guitarists like their instruments set up, particularly players who favor bending strings. Most players would ask for slinky strings and for their action to be set low.

"Yeah, well, it's just the way he liked to get his tone. He had very strong hands; the way he attacked the guitar, it all came from his hands. Plus, he had his guitar tuned to E-flat, which compensated for other variables. I asked him about it once and he just said, 'I can't sing in E; it's gotta be in E-flat.'

"Even so, the guitar was hard to play, and he would literally be drawing blood from the tips of his fingers. I saw some blood on the guitar one day and I said, 'Hey, are you OK?' And he said, 'Aw, my tips are starting to get cut, you know.'"

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