Gaslight Anthem Frontman’s Prized Guitar Broken by American Airlines

April 1st, 2010

Grant Trimboli

With so many commercials touting excellent baggage handling services, you would think airlines would have gotten better at not destroying instruments. But like so many musicians before him, Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon recently had a guitar broken by careless employees. In this case, American Airlines cracked the headstock of an acoustic that Fallon used to write nearly all of his songs, including the ones on their upcoming third album, ‘American Slang.’

“I checked it and they just did what they do — they threw it,” Fallon tells Spinner. “I took it to them and they were like ‘Well, if the case isn’t broken, we’re not responsible for what’s inside.’ I said, ‘If you wrap China up in a box and you smash it to pieces, you’re not responsible?’ and they’re like ‘yeah.’ I was like ‘That’s awesome!'”

If you’re confused by American’s odd distinction, you’re not alone. “I wish I could get that policy, because with bar fights, I would never have gotten a ticket when I was young,” Fallon says. “I could’ve punched someone in the face and been like ‘Hey, your teeth fell out. I didn’t damage your face, though.’ I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble at all when I was a kid.”

Though American Airlines has refused to pay for it, Fallon still has some unfinished business with them. “The funny thing is, they just asked us to do a feature in their in-flight magazine like two days ago,” he tells Spinner, laughing. “I was like ‘I don’t think so!’ Or, ‘Yes, I will do a feature and talk about this!'”

Whether or not that comes to fruition, Fallon says the band’s trusted guitar repairman thinks he can fix the acoustic, which has already survived some hard times. “Before I got it, it was actually in a house that burned down and it survived. Like a whole wall of a house entirely burned down and this guitar was leaning on the other side of the wall,” Fallon says. “I’ve never had a broken headstock before. Some people say it’s not quite the same, some say it’s fine and some say it doesn’t work at all. I guess I’ll find out.”

The Gaslight Anthem’s ‘American Slang,’ the follow-up to 2008’s acclaimed ‘The ’59 Sound,’ is due out June 15 on via SideOneDummy.

via Spinner