Years ago, back when we were all insufferable idiots, and, after a rehearsal in which the guitarist was, once again, a drunken sot, the four of us who were there to actually work decided to teach him a lesson. Sadly, he was a brilliant guitarist but for his horrible addiction to alcohol. It was nights like these that, the next day, he wouldn't even remember what he had said, or done, or who he had jacked the night before.
We managed to get his back-up guitar away from him without him noticing and, later in the evening replaced his strings. No big deal except for the fact that the drummer had come up with the brilliant plan of putting them on backwards -- the high E on top followed by the B, the G, the D, the A, and then the low E on the bottom.
The next day at rehearsal, with a roomful of sweeties there watching us rehearse, and, after hearing our guitarist apologizing to us the 50th time for being so wasted the night before, I called out the next song, "Stealin" by Uriah Heep. Our drummer innocently said "hey Tico, why don't you use the Tele'. It sounds so much better on this song!"
Sure enough, he strapped it on just as the bass and the keys started rolling in -- our guitarist was on his fourth beer by now and suspected nothing. I began my vocals and, as the song progressed, sure enough he began to fill-in with quiet, gentle guitar parts that sounded absolutely . . . hideous. As the song began to build, the look of sheer panic began to grow more prominently in his face and kept growing until we reached the part where the guitar begins to thunder. Upon hitting the first power chord he jumped like he had received an electrical shock. By the third or fourth chord he began to scream (by now, the rest of us were desperately trying not to laugh).
Finally, the keys player stopped the song and said "man, you really need to tune that thing!" It took Tico almost five minutes to figure out what was wrong with his tuning. Meanwhile our drummer, the devious one, asked innocently, "man, what did you do to that guitar last night with the strings off and everything?" To this our guitarist could only sputter in frustration and rage -- not being able to remember anything from the night before!
Something must have snapped inside. He just grabbed his guitars and left. We didn't see him for another two weeks. When he returned, we were astonished to hear him ask for our help in keeping him off "the sauce."
It's been forty years. We've all moved on to different things. But, last I heard, he was still rocking and still sober. To my knowledge, he still doesn't know anything about his band-mates involvement in that "guitar tuning" incident. Though, if he reads this I'm surely dead. lol
<><Peace
