Opeth’s lead vocalist and guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt recently had the chance to visit the Martin Guitar factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania where he was graced with the opportunity to play several historic instruments.
Reflecting on the experience in a recent interview with Revolver, Åkerfeldt said it “was like visiting the Holy Land.”
A few of the instruments he was offered to try out were so old he feared damaging them: “I played a guitar from the 1800s. I got scared. They held it up to me and I kept backing away. It’s invaluable, you know? I don’t know what the value in money would be, but it’s an artifact. I get nervous around those kinds of things. But I did play it.”
One of the most notable guitars Åkerfeldt had the honor of playing while at the factory was Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s old Martin, though he was anything but impressed.
“It was very beat up. It didn’t feel that good. There was nothing special about it, other than it had belonged to Kurt,” he said of the guitar.
According to Åkerfeldt, though, Cobain’s axe has developed quite a reputation at the factory. “Someone told us that guitar was haunted like people who had that guitar had accidents,” he said, before adding: “It was just a regular guitar to me.”
Åkerfeldt is not one to usually be wowed by extravagant things, however. When asked about the “most rock-star thing” he has ever bought, he said:
“Maybe a house? Two houses, actually, but since I got divorced my ex-wife got the first house. But is that rock-star? I’ve got a mortgage, like anyone else. The most expensive guitar I’ve bought was about $3,000, which is high, maybe, but not morbid. And I’ve never bought a drug in my life, apart from alcohol.”
