Andy Babiuk

A textbook case of someone whose candle burns at both ends, pioneering garage-rocker and renowned instrument collector/author Andy Babiuk lives a sleep-deprived existence. “My days start early and I go to bed late,” he says of his routine, which started in the mid ’90s while researching his first book, Beatles Gear, while he also worked a day gig at a guitar shop and was recording/touring with garage-rock godfathers The Chesterfield Kings. “I’ve learned to live on maybe five hours of sleep most nights, then crashing for 10 hours every eighth or ninth day. Doing books, there’s no way around it, given the sheer amount of work they require.” We caught up with him at his guitar shop in Rochester, New York, as Chesterfield Kings prepared for shows on Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise with Social Distortion, X, Rockets From The Crypt, The Hellacopters, Reverend Horton Heat, and Old 97s. In June, they’re touring Scotland, England, Spain, and France before returning to prepare new songs for an album tentatively set for release in August of 2026. How did music first enter your life? I blame it on the Beatles. I was born in 1963, but had two older sisters, and one was obsessed with the Beatles – their bedroom had a bunch of pictures on the wall and I thought it was so cool. I got my first Beatles album as a kid, by extortion (laughs); my sister had Beatles 65, and I wanted it really bad. Our parents grew up with no money, and their girls wearing makeup was a big no-no. Well, one day I was coming down the stairs and a purse was hanging on the railing – full of makeup. So, I held it up and said, “Give me the Beatles record or I’ll drop this and mom will find out!” She gave me the record (laughs), and I played it so many times on my little Motorola. I could tell you every note on both sides, and I stared at the cover. At dinner a few years later, my parents asked, “When you grow up, what do you want to do?” I said, “I want to be a Beatle,” and they had to convince me I couldn’t go to school for that (laughs). But I went on to discover other cool British bands – the Rolling Stones and Kinks – as well as American bands like Paul Revere and the Raiders. When I met Ringo while going through his drums for Beatles Gear, I had that record with me so I could tell him the story, and he very graciously offered to sign it for me. What led to your learning to play guitar? My grandmother came from Ukraine and was in the theater there, where she sang and learned to play on an Eastern European seven-string acoustic. When my sister and I wanted to learn, she showed us these Ukrainian folk songs in open tunings. That’s all I knew, and of course, kids in school were like, “What are you doing?” Now, I keep one of my guitars tuned like that, and I’ve tried to re-learn those songs. Before my grandmother passed away from dementia, I bought her a guitar and she played it and started singing. My kids and I were astonished that she could remember those old songs. What was your first guitar? Our parents bought my sister a cheap classical and she’d let me borrow it. But I had a paper route and used my money to buy a used Danelectro Convertible, which I still have. Later, I bought a green Kapa Continental, which was made in Chicago and had some Höfner parts. It was cool. What did you plug them into? I had to make my own amplifier! I don’t remember how I figured this out, but my parents had a console stereo – big wooden box with speakers on both sides, basically furniture – and I cut the end off of a guitar cable and connected the wires to leads coming off the amplifier, and my guitar would come through the speakers. When my parents weren’t home, I’d do that for hours. My dad came home from work one day in the summer and said, “We’re going to do a project,” and we took the stereo apart – took the amplifier out, removed the speakers, and built two speaker cabinets and a little box for the chassis, and that was my first amp. I was so proud of it because it was loud (laughs). I didn’t know how to play, but I loved making a racket. I started talking to other kids who played and if I saw one do a song I liked, I’d have them show me. What music were you listening to at that point? In the ’70s, there a lot of what I call “car sickness music” on the radio because it reminds me of Dad taking us to school in the middle of winter with the windows rolled up on our ’62 Impala while he’d smoke a cigarette and a Helen Reddy song was playing. When the station would play a rock-and-roll song, it would catch my attention and I’d try to learn it from memory once I got home. I went to the library a lot once I realized it had records. Do you remember the first song you learned to play? It was probably a Ukrainian folk song from the 1800s. The first rock-and-roll song was Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music” or something off Beatles 65. When did you first jam with other kids? In the summer, my parents would send us to camps with other Ukrainian kids, and we’d take guitars. That’s where I remember learning “Blowing In The Wind,” with three or four of us strumming at once. I remember learning “As Tears Go By” and thinking it was so cool. What was your first serious band? Freshman or sophomore year. I met guys who played drums and guitar, and we’d get together. It was horrible but we had a good time and played in some girl’s garage for her birthday. I used that homemade amp and my Kapa. When did your first upgrade guitar come along? When I was 15, I worked in an Italian grocery – one of those corner stores where they did cold cuts. They had to pay me under the table because I wasn’t old enough to work legally. One evening, I was slicing bologna and my hand slid into the blade and cut the tip off of my index finger, down to the bone. My first thought was, “Oh, no! I won’t be able to play guitar!” And I don’t know what possessed me, but I found the piece of skin under the bologna slices and pushed it onto my finger. My parents took me to get stitches and it took a couple months to heal; feeling didn’t come back to the tip of that finger until 10 years later. I was working one day when the place was held up at gunpoint. After that, my parents said, “You’re done” before I had saved enough to buy a new guitar. Did you have a specific guitar in mind? No, but I had $125, so the $300 I needed was like 20 grand to me at the time (laughs). But, during lunch one day at school, I talked to a girl who worked at a guitar/record store, and she said, “Why don’t you see if you could get a job there, selling guitars?” I had an aunt who owned a liquor store a few doors from the shop, so I went and asked her if she knew them. She said, “Oh yeah, they come in here all the time.” She put in a good word, I got a job, and I became the typical naive 16-year-old guitar salesman. Right away, a co-worker named Greg Prevost asked, “What kind of music do you like?” I told him I liked the Beatles, the Stones… He goes, “I’m starting a band and we’re going to do stuff from the ’60s. At the time, punk and new wave were really happening – the Cars, Sex Pistols, all that; it was 1978. The Stones were rebutting punk with Some Girls – “Emotional Rescue,” Tattoo You – in-your-face music. Anyway, what Greg was saying was music to my ears, so we got together. We were two guitars and drums – no bass player. I’d seen a Höfner 500/1 in a pawn shop for $75 and thought, “A Beatle bass!” and there went most of my money! I wasn’t intending to play bass, I just thought it was cool. The store was run by this shady guy and the bass was probably hot, and when I asked about it, he said, “What do you want that for? Why don’t you get a manly bass?” It so happened there was a more-expensive P Bass there, too. Despite his attitude, I bought Höfner, and at our next rehearsal I started playing it. What year was it? A ’64. After we started gigging, I ended up with five of them because when we started recording, I realized that some had dead spots on the fretboard, so I’d have to switch. Was that the birth of the Chesterfield Kings? Yeah, we were a four-piece, initially. We played maybe two shows before we “knew” that we should record a single. We found a guy with a four-track Tascam and printed 500 copies of a 45 that Greg got one to his friend Greg Shaw, who ran Bomp! Records. He then asked us to contribute a song to a “battle of the bands” compilation album he was doing, and he’d arranged a tour for it. We had no clue what it meant to tour – we were too young, so we couldn’t go. But they said, “Could you at least play a show in New York City?” and our third or fourth show was at the Peppermint Lounge; we played obscure songs by the Standells, Chocolate Watchband, and Moving Sidewalks. After the set, two local music writers, David Fricke and Kurt Loder, cornered us and asked “Where are you guys from?” and “What inspired you to do this?” Being little sthead kids, we said, “We hate everything that came after 1966. We only watch old TV shows like ‘The Munsters,’” and they loved it. Fricke was writing for New York Rocker and they did a three-page story on us. Next thing you know, the phone was ringing off the hook and Bomp! offered us a contract, but because we were trying so hard to be arrogant little fkheads, we turned it down. Then, Mirror Records, which was owned by the guy we worked for at House of Guitars, said they’d release our record. Since we were working for them, we figured it would be convenient because we’d still have a job when we came back from touring. So we went with them and toured the U.S., then released a bunch of records and toured Europe. Did you apply the term “garage rock” to yourselves? We never did. Some were calling us a new-wave band, but we always said we were a “’60s band.” Fricke first called us “garage rock” in writing, but I think he copped it from the Nuggets compilation albums that gathered regional hits by bands they called “garage rock.” In the wake of the Beatles, many bands became popular in their home towns and had those local hits; one example was “Talk Talk” by the The Music Machine. What was the arc of the Chesterfield Kings through the ’80s and ’90s? We played in New York City every other month. We’d get offers to play the Peppermint for two nights, or we’d open for bands; we opened for Stray Cats when they had just started getting played on MTV. We did a lot of shows with the Ramones and other bands that got really big. The Smithereens opened for us in Boston, then got way bigger. Every time we played New York City, a handful of bands would record our shows with cassette players they’d set at the front of the stage. There were a lot of bands mimicking what we were doing. Most of us were in school still and had jobs, so we’d gig in Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, or some place on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, maybe Monday – do a run and then go home, then play a weekend in Virginia and Washington, D.C. We did a lot of cool, really memorable shows. In D.C., we opened for Bo Diddley, then backed him for two nights at the 9:30 Club. The first time we went to Europe, in 1987, we were there for four months and played nearly every city, Helsinki to Barcelona, which helped cement our popularity. What kind of gear were you using? We had Gretsches, Rickenbackers, old 330s, and SGs. When it came to amps, I was obsessed. Our first album was done at a big studio here in Rochester, and the engineer hated us. His claim to fame was that he had recorded Chuck Mangione, so he knew how to record jazz, and at the time, the dominant technique was to isolate everything, which created a very sterile sound; in the ’60s, bands basically stood together in a room. Anyway, we’d listen to mixes and it was terrible. I’d say, “This doesn’t sound like the Stones. Doesn’t sound like the Beatles.” So we felt like we needed cooler amps, and that’s when I learned that Thomas Organ Vox amps were different from the British stuff (laughs). Was that the beginning of your deeper gear education? Well, working in a guitar store, I tried everything that came in. I’d find old catalogs and talk to anyone who knew something. It got to where when someone came into the store asking about old amps, the staff would tell him, “You should talk to Andy.” One of the guys, Steve White, said to me, “You should get a case of beer and lock yourself in your house for the weekend and write down everything you know about the Beatles’ equipment. You’d have a book.” I thought, “Yeah, maybe I will.” So between the band, the store, and writing, what were your days like? That’s when I taught myself to live on five hours of sleep, sometimes four. If I wasn’t on the road with the band, I’d come home from work, eat something, say “Hi” to the kids, make some coffee, and get to work. This was before the internet and cell phones, so I was spending a lot of money on long distance calls and FedEx shipments. My wife thought I was nuts. After five years, I had $26,000 in bills related to the book. Where were you sourcing old catalogs and whatever else? Well, on Chesterfield Kings tours I met a lot of people who were into collecting guitars and gear, and I started calling. A friend in New York had every issue of Beat Instrumental, from England. She sent them in a huge box and I went through every one and scanned everything that was relevant. Discovery was an insane amount of work; a lot of interviews over the phone, using a suction-cup microphone and a cassette player. I captured a lot of valuable information from people who’ve since passed away. Dick Denney, who invented the AC30, told me amazing stories. Don Randall told me things about how some of Fender’s business was handled in the U.K. that would be a revelation in the vintage market today. There were far fewer reference books at the time. There wasn’t much. Richard Smith’s Rickenbacker book was a big deal. I love that book and the research he did, but it’s primitive compared to the way we do books now. Tony Bacon was one of the first to do a specific instrument book that was a different level of quality. Miller-Freeman published his The Gibson Les Paul Book, and that’s why I reached out to him about publishing Beatles Gear. How did you make direct connections with the Beatles? I called a lot of people and said, “I’m writing this book about their equipment…” I remember reaching out to George Harrison after learning that the sister of his wife, Olivia, was one of his assistants. The Beatles Anthology had just been released and she told me, “George is Beatled out. He doesn’t want to talk about the band…” I said, “I don’t want to talk to him about the band. He was the guitar guy – changed his own strings and could replace tubes in an amp. I want to talk to him about that, and that’s all.” So, I sent the questions and she would reply – all by fax – and I got an answer back two weeks later saying George would talk about his equipment, “…please send questions in written form.” So I typed 12 or 15 questions and she forwarded them to him and told me it may take some time. But then someone broke into his home and stabbed him. While he was being treated, an MRI found cancer and he went directly into treatment, and we all know what happened. After the book came out, I did a presentation at a Beatles convention, and a few people actually said to me, “Even if he was sick, you should have talked to him.” I was shocked – they thought I should be chatting with the guy about a Rickenbacker 12-string when he’s fighting for his life. The book was released in October of 2001. Yeah, and we’d planned several launch appearances – at Madame Tussauds in London, one at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, at a guitar show in Birmingham, and at the guitar stores on Charing Cross Road and Denmark Street. There was also a New York City launch at a bookstore in the Trade Center concourse. But on 9/11, the world came to a halt. Two weeks later, the publishers told me the offer was still good, but they also understood if I was reluctant to travel. I thought about it and decided that, given all the extra security and metal detectors and everything, “I’m doing it. I may never write another book.” I flew to London on a 747 with maybe 20 people on it. At Madam Tussauds, Tony Bacon, who was the book’s editor, did a Q&A with me in front of a sofa with Beatles’ wax figures sitting on a couch (laughs). It was really funny. In New York City, we ended up at Manny’s because the Beatles had bought stuff there. There was enormous response from virtually every Beatles fan, gear nerd, the guitar press… I was very fortunate, and blown away by the range of people who responded to it. I got a note from Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of England, saying he loved it. Dallas Schoo, who works for U2, told me that Bono and Edge sent him out to buy examples of every guitar in the book. By then, Chesterfield Kings had become the first band signed to Little Steven Van Zandt’s record label, Wicked Cool Records, and because of that, we were cast to perform as ourselves on “The Sopranos” and then got to meet Bruce Springsteen at one of his shows on The Rising tour. Steven, Max Weinberg, and a bunch of us were having dinner when Bruce says to me – Bruce talks kind of quietly and everybody shuts up so they can hear what he’s saying – and he says, “Andy, that book you wrote is something else,” and I said, “Oh, thanks, man!” He goes, “No, you don’t understand. When we were in the studio, Max was reading it and I said, ‘What is that?’ And he gave it to me… I couldn’t put it down. We had to stop the session. I’ve got to tell you something. When I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, it really changed me; I loved their music, I loved their haircuts, the suits, the boots – everything. But I liked their equipment just as much as I liked their music. I never told that to anybody. I thought it would be weird. And then I saw your book, and I thought, I’m not the only weird guy out there.” That was the coolest compliment ever. Blew me away. I had a lot of those moments where well-known people from different walks of life told me something similar. Mark Hudson, who produced some of Ringo’s albums, told me that on one session they wanted to cop sounds off Beatles records, and Ringo pulled out the book and said, “This tells everything I used.” Did any other notable folks chime in about it? Everyone from politicians to actors to guys on the street, Olivia and Dhani Harrison told me they keep it in the studio and refer to it all the time. What spurred the revised edition? Well, a piece of work like that is never truly finished. Stuff comes out of the woodwork afterward, and it’s a simple reality that not everything could fit in one book, but the fact it sold so well made it possible to refresh it. To date, it has sold more than 200,000 copies and is still selling. Did its success make The Rolling Stones Gear book easier? For sure, because once people see what you’re after and that it worked so well, they’re less-guarded. The twist with the Stones, though, was they were still a band. The internet made the legwork a thousand times easier, as well. Whose idea was the Stones Gear book? The publisher was after me as soon as they saw the sales numbers for Beatles Gear, which they had to reprint within the first month. They asked, “So… hypothetically, what if you were to write another one?” How long after the launch of Beatles Gear did they call? At least a couple months later (laughs). They originally wanted a series of books, including one on the Grateful Dead, but I didn’t want to right away. I was overwhelmed and told them, “If I do another book, it’s going to be The Stones.” Third on my list was The Who. A lot of bands approached me – Steven Tyler talked to me about one on Aerosmith. Did you commit right away to the Stones book? I made some sort of initial deal but I wouldn’t take money up-front because that would’ve forced me into a deadline. At the time, I was considering taking jobs at Korg USA and Fender, but both would’ve involved moving my wife and six kids. Around the same time, Fred Gretsch asked me to do a book about Paul Bigsby and his guitars. I told him I’d think about it, and six months later he called again, then came to visit. This was right after I’d left House of Guitars, so I agreed and it took me a year to do The Story of Paul Bigsby: The Father of the Modern Electric Solid Body Guitar. When I was done, I thought, “That wasn’t bad,” so I started on Stones Gear. Was it more manageable because you could make it your full-time gig? Yeah, and technology had evolved immensely. The only hitch was Chesterfield Kings were getting busier. We played on Conan O’Brien’s show on NBC, did Jimmy Kimmel, did “The Sopranos.” We were touring constantly in Europe and the States. And as I was starting the Stones book, I opened a guitar store that eventually became Andy Babiuk’s Fab Gear, which has a sales and repair staff of five plus several guitar teachers. We have two warehouses and a recording studio with a ton of vintage stuff. There are several lesson rooms we call Fab Gear Rock and Roll Academy, and its focus is getting kids to play guitar. We work with schools here and promote playing guitar and drums. We see about 160 students per week. Is the studio close to the store? It’s two minutes away, in a suburb of Rochester called Fairport. It’s in an old Crossman BB gun factory. We recorded a lot of the Chesterfield Kings albums there, as well as the two Empty Hearts albums, which I formed in 2013 with Clem Burke on drums, Elliot Easton and Wally Palmar on guitar, and Ian McLagan playing keys (Ed Note: McLagan passed away in 2014, Burke in April of ’25). How have you obtained most of your gear through the years? I actively looked for some of it, like the Baldwin electric harpsichord because the Beatles used one. There were only about 400 made and I found it at the University of Wisconsin, had it refurbished, and we used it on the latest record, We’re Still All The Same. Some things fall in my lap, like my ’68 plexi Marshall Super Tremolo with serial number 5. It’s mint condition and walked in the shop with a local fan of the Chesterfield Kings and Empty Hearts. He’s one of those guys that comes in every so often just to talk shop. I’ve known him for a long time and one day he asked, “Hey, do you buy amps?” I told him I did and he showed up with it. And of course I’m a magnet for anybody with something they think is Beatles or Stones related. What’s in your immediate future? I’m working on songs for a new Chesterfield Kings album and we’re touring Europe soon. I’m looking forward to seeing friends there I haven’t seen in a while. This article originally appeared in VG’s July 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.