![]() ![]() I don’t know if I traced the bass to begin with, but I don’t think so. Rusan recalls that he “had drawn a new shape on a piece of paper. Sometimes I’d try and get roadies to ask him stuff, and even then, it was hard.”Īn agreement on the “Customized Guitar” was drafted and signed by store co-owner Karl Dedolph and Prince Nelson. Rusan said he “never talked directly to Prince once. He wanted spade markers and he wanted features of that bass, the horn and such, but reimagined as a guitar, and that was about it.” Rusan notes that Jeff Hill communicated these few specifications to him. That’s all I remember.” Rusan remembers that Prince “had certain specific things he wanted that were relayed to me: It had to be white, it had to have gold hardware, it had to have EMGs. ![]() It had no truss rod and it had bar frets. Rusan remembers the bass as “basically a weird piece of shit. Prince brought in a uniquely shaped bass that he wanted this new guitar modeled after. But Prince had a meeting with Jeff.” According to Rusan, after that meeting, Hill instructed him to build the first Cloud Guitar. They were already doing things, whatever you do, pre-production or maybe some of the acting scenes, I don’t know. I remember that they were already starting on. He recalls that “Prince had a meeting with Jeff and they went in the back room. ![]() Rusan was the first guitar tech hired by the store in the mid-1970s and worked there on and off for the next decade. According to Rusan, when he arrived back to Minneapolis in November 1983 from a stint working at a music store in London, England, he immediately went back to work at his former employer, Knut Koupée. Knut Koupée’s former employees relate a few different versions of what actually happened in the basement shop 36 years ago, but luthier Dave Rusan tells what has become the most widely accepted version of the Cloud Guitar’s origins. Knut Koupée proudly displaying Prince’s For You album poster in the window, circa 1978. Photo courtesy of the Errol Joki Collection I was baffled, but as I would later find out, it was something that had just been known around town. At one point, Roger told me that the white guitar Prince used in the movie Purple Rain was built from an O’Hagan Shark model guitar. As I got to know him, Roger shared that before he started his store in 1981, he built for the Minnesota guitar company O’Hagan Guitars. I took his advice, and instead was bench-tested for three months by Roger Benedict. If I wanted to study how to repair and build I should look elsewhere. ![]() Jim said he rarely took on apprentices, but I apparently caught him at the right time, as his backlog was starting to get daunting, but he told me he was strictly a builder and that there would be no incoming repairs. I wanted to focus on and build acoustic guitars, and working in Olson’s shop would be the ultimate gig. I was 19 at the time and had been in contact with Minnesota luthiers Jim Olson and Roger Benedict, as well. Certainly, something could be made here, but the Cloud Guitar? It was inconceivable. What I saw, however, was a sad, windowless basement with a very used bandsaw, router table, drill press, horizontal sander and some random hand tools. Knowing that this was the home of the Cloud Guitar featured in the film Purple Rain, I expected a luthier’s paradise of woodworking tools, replete with a library of guitar jigs, perhaps even the jig for the Cloud Guitar itself. I was halfway through my my studies in Red Wing Technical College’s stringed instrument program in 1991 when I interviewed for the repair shop at Knut Koupée, the famed music store that for a time served as the guitar-maker for Prince. The book will combine the features of a historical whodunnit with a broader cultural history of the Minneapolis music scene and the talented craftspeople and artists who supported it in the 1980s. Included will be information on the store where the Cloud Guitars were made, Knut Koupée Music, as well as the luthiers that worked there between 19. These are excerpts from Woodland and Ronning’s forthcoming book, Look Up in the Air: The Origin of Prince’s Cloud Guitar. It’s a fascinating snapshot into the iconic (and confusing) Cloud guitar’s history. Though many Cloud copies exist, this particular guitar was Prince’s primary performance instrument from 1984 (when it was built) to 1993. Fretboard Journal contributor John Woodland helped verify the instrument’s provenance and, given the news, we’re reprinting the Cloud history that he and Gerald Ronning published in the FJ #45 here. Julien’s Auctions has announced that, on June 19, 2020, Prince’s “Blue Angel” Cloud guitar (pictured above, courtesy Julien’s) will be auctioned with an estimate is $400,000-600,000. ![]()
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