Even though he's best known for crafting James Hetfield’s most striking and creative axes, Kenneth Lawrence doesn’t play guitar. He’s a bassist.
As most bassists do, at age 14, he picked up the bass because his group of friends started a band and they didn’t know anyone that played it. Turns out, the bass was the right choice for Lawrence.
Inspired by Alembic designs, Lawrence transitioned to guitar building while he was attending college. But it was his collaborations with Hetfield that made him one of the metal world's most talked-about luthiers.
What inspired you to start building guitars?
“I had a job at a technical college in their bookstore. Evening class time was very boring, because hardly anybody would come by. So I talked my boss into letting me bring in my Rickenbacker bass, so I could sit and play while I was waiting for somebody to come by.
“One night I thought, ‘There’s maybe five pieces of wood in here – maybe I could figure out how to make one.’ I was already right there at college, so I took a class in introductory cabinet making. That led me into cabinetry and furniture, which I ended up doing for almost five years.
“Part of that was with a really incredible Danish cabinet company with all these European master craftsmen; that was really a lot of fun. It got me started – but there was still missing information on the guitars.
“I met some musicians from a town in northern California that were playing in and around Edmonton. They invited me to come down to Arcata to play music. I was actually looking for a way to get out of Edmonton; I was feeling a little lost there. So I jumped on it, and it turned out to be an absolutely perfect place for me to be.
“Lo and behold, down in the south part of town was a little shop named Moonstone guitars. That’s where things really took off – it gave me the information I didn’t have. I started my own business about four years later, 1986, in that very shop.”
Of course, everyone wants to know how you got started making guitars for James Hetfield.
“I met Doug West from Mesa/Boogie and we hit it off. I was still making basses, primarily – very, very occasionally a guitar would come along. We ended up playing music together and I spent a lot of time at Mesa. Doug helped get me a distributor in Japan and a distributor in Europe, which really helped take off the bass stuff.
“I would leave instruments at Mesa for Doug to show to whoever might be stopping by. He took one of the basses to a Metallica rehearsal when they were working on their guitar rigs, to see if Jason Newsted might be interested. Doug told me that James liked the workmanship on the instrument and he kept flipping it back and forth, studying it. Then he asked if we could meet.
“That was kind of a strange interview because I didn’t have a single guitar to show him – I went for a guitar commission with a carload of basses! I laid them all out on the floor, and he went, ‘Okay, let’s make a guitar.’”
How did the collaboration get started?
“I found out afterwards that he’d wanted an Explorer style guitar. He had Zach Harmon send me one of one of his older ESPs, a white one. I took a pattern of the silhouette of the body and looked at the shape of the neck and some of the setup items and all that. And I had this headstock a friend of mine had designed for a five-string bass.
“I brought those patterns to James and it was an instant fit. In retrospect, there are elements of that headstock that actually mirror the Metallica logo – it’s funny how things in the cosmos line up.
“I went to his house with some wood. A friend had started bringing in some really interesting woods from Central America. I took a couple of boards of Chechen and some Grenadillo fretboard material to show him. He said, ‘Well, let’s do it with this one, but let’s stash that one.’
My intuition with what I do with the basses has transferred very well over to the guitars
“That was one of those moments where I realized I’d better do a good job on the first one if I wanted to have a second one happen. We got through it, and it turned out even better than either of us expected. It’s been great – he’s a really cool guy and he’s got some really cool ideas. We’re up to seven, and I think he might be pondering an eighth.
“It’s funny to be doing it, because I don’t really play guitar very well. But my intuition with what I do with the basses has transferred very well over to the guitars.”
For instance?
“There are fine details when you get into what a really accomplished player wants an instrument to do. I can do that with a bass, but I don’t play guitar well enough to know if I’m splitting these hairs the right way for a guitar. But the intuition of knowing how to do that with basses has served me really, really well.
“Not only James, but some other very accomplished players have given me feedback that tells me the choices I've made, and the attention I’ve given, has been all in the right direction.”
James’ Carl guitar was made of the wood from the garage from “Metallica Mansion” in El Cerrito, California, where the band lived from 1983 to 1986 and wrote Kill ’Em All and Ride the Lightning. Was that your most challenging build?
My all time hero was Jaco Pastorius – but I don't think there would have been a collaboration there
“The Carl guitar was challenging in just being able to honor the woods that James wanted to use. But the real challenge for me was with the inlays – I had to get help on them.
“I just haven’t been able to unlock the more marquetry type of inlay, where pieces are all interconnected, as well as guys like Larry Robinson. Larry’s an absolute genius at that stuff, so I had him cut the parts and I put them in.
What else was challenging about Carl?
“Just doing things in a different order because of the way the top and the head cap needed to be built. My brother Joe, who does guitar setup and repair, came up with this term, ‘headscratchers’ – he says, ‘I got a whole room full of headscratchers.’ And that’s kind of what lutherie is.
”Unless you’re doing one thing and only that one thing, you work out your system and that’s how you work. But if you’re constantly trying to grow and try new new ideas, there’s always going to be the challenge of doing it consistently, without errors. You have to find the best way through that in order to to achieve your result.”
If you could collaborate with any musician, past or present, who would it be?
“My all time hero as a player was Jaco Pastorius – but he had his thing that he did with his J basses, so I don't think there would have been a collaboration there. It’s like if people ask about your favorite Beatles song from one era; there’s no easy answer to questions like that.”
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