MUSIC INFLUENCES

Sometimes I’m Hank Marvin

You’ve got to be a damn good guitarist for your name to go into the dictionary

A red-bodied Fender Stratocaster. Image by JaniSnellman from Pixabay

I’m not often Hank Marvin, but it can happen.

I’m occasionally Hank Marvin when I first get up in the morning or after a long run. Sometimes my wife is Hank Marvin too. She didn’t know this at first because she’s not from England so I had to explain it to her.

When you’re a guitar legend, like Hank Marvin, you can become an adjective in British English — Hank Marvin means very hungry; it’s Cockney rhyming slang for starvin’ (starving).

Will the real Hank Marvin please stand up and play?

Hank Marvin is one of England’s greatest and most influential rock and pop guitarists. He influenced most of the UK’s next generation of rock guitarists in the ’60s and ’70s.

Hank Marvin fully deserves to be in the British English dictionary as an adjective because Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, George Harrison, Mark Knopfler, Brian May, Jimmy Page, and Pete Townsend all said so. He influenced every one of them.

Hank Marvin was not his real name though; he was born Brian Rankin in Newcastle England but Brian Rankin isn’t very rock and roll…