Justin Hawkins may be the frontman of glam-rock group the Darkness, but he identifies most with the guitar. "I started as a guitar player. I always see myself as a lead guitarist, really," he says.
As Hawkins explains in this episode of It Goes to 11, his most prized guitar — a custom Gibson electric — took some effort to find. He had to travel from the band's hometown of Lowestoft, England, all the way to Nashville, Tennessee. But the trip was worth it: The guitar has become a "family heirloom" that he hopes to pass down to his daughter one day.
"It is the Gibson Sea Shell. There's only one of these in the whole wide world. Isn't she lovely?" the singer/songwriter gushes, holding up his cream-colored electric guitar that features a seashell pattern and three holes carved into the body.
He first encountered the Sea Shell while the Darkness was on tour in the U.S., and the band was invited to tour the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville. "We watched the process, we saw how they selected the woods, did all the carpentry stuff, and then they said, 'Why don't you have a look through some of these drawers?" Hawkins remembers.
Inside the drawers, Hawkins found custom guitar after custom guitar — and specifically, he noticed the instruments that had been crafted by a particular luthier well-known for decorative inlay work, named Bruce Kunkel. That's when he first saw it: The Gibson Sea Shell, hand-crafted to look just like a shell that you might find on the beach of the coastal English town where the Darkness first became a band.
"It was destiny. That's what it was," Hawkins says, speaking of the first time he laid eyes on the instrument. "It's a family heirloom now, as I've gotta look after it and keep it all nice. I've got to save that one. That's one that my daughter will have after I shed this mortal coil."
Press play on the video above to see the guitar in action, and keep checking GRAMMY.com for more episodes of It Goes to 11.