The fantasy rocks on

THERE SHE SITS, leaning against the bed, beckoning me to caress her supple neck and curvy body.

She's foreign and high-strung, for sure, but I can't resist her classic beauty, twangy accent and bright personality.

She is a Fender Telecaster, and, thanks to her, I'm part of a global phenomenon.

I'm a baby boomer who has taken up guitar-playing in midlife. In Japan, they've got a term for us middle-aged rockers: "Oyaji." Geezers. Here in the states, we're called important — at least to the guitar industry, if no one else.

Guitar sales in the U.S. have tripled in the past decade, from 1.1 million in 1995 to 3.3 million in 2004, according to Brian Majeski, editor of Music Trades magazine, which has tracked instrument sales for more than a century.

While no definitive demographic data exists on who's buying those guitars, Majeski says anecdotal evidence suggests we're key. Andy Aldrich, owner of American Music in Fremont, calls graying guitarists the "bedrock" of his business.

We're the generation that made the guitar an icon, and now we have an itch — as well as the scratch — to stop strumming tennis rackets and pick up the real things. Sure, it's been a long time since we rock 'n' rolled, but in Seattle our ranks include architect Brice Butler, 59, who designed the storefronts for Sur La Table and Mario's; restaurateur Jeremy Hardy, 49, who co-owns Atlas Foods, Coastal Kitchen and The 5 Spot, among other eateries; and Seattle firefighter/medic Chris Hallmon, 51.

It's not easy, though, to become a middle-aged player. Butler shuddered at the prospect of publicly performing one of his own songs for the first time. "Honest to God," he says, "of all the things I've done in my life, that was the most nervous I've ever been."

But the dude plays on, going to open-mic nights, jamming with friends and singing to his grandchildren. On a recent night he sat in front of a toasty fire at his house near Lake Washington, sipping a Heineken, his border collie curled at his feet. Accompanied by his teacher, Eric Branner, he played and sang Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," Gram Parsons' "Return of the Grievous Angel," and one of his own compositions.

What is it about the six-string siren that gets under our wrinkled skin and makes us want to party like it's 1969 — to the chagrin of spouses, neighbors and howling dogs?

The snappy answer offered by sellers such as Henry Juszkiewicz, CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp., is that boomers are taking up guitar because their kids are grown, and they've got the time and disposable income to buy their dream guitar.

But that's like saying Jimi Hendrix once played the national anthem at a gig in upstate New York.

The trend is much more complicated, says Joe Vinikow, who teaches classes called Guitar for Grown Ups. "There are a million things you can do with time and money," Vinikow notes. And many of them offer a lot more instant gratification than yet another fumbling attempt at the 10-note Keith Richards' riff that begins "The Last Time."

There's something going on here, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Juszkiewicz?

GUITAR STORES can be intimidating, especially to guys eligible for AARP membership.

Walk into Pioneer Square's Emerald City Guitar. Despite the welcoming personality of owner Jay Boone, who at 51 is one of us, the place is daunting.

Guys with clothes and chops that scream "rock star" are shredding away like young Eddie Van Halens. They speak a language you can't understand, finger the fretboard in ways you can't imagine, and toss around hair you'll never be able to grow.

Lots of hair.

"If you could be a fly on the wall at stores all over the world, you'd see the same thing," says Richard McDonald, vice president of marketing for Fender, the country's Coca-Cola of guitar manufacturers. "Guys 45 to 50 finally get enough balls to go in, but they don't know the nomenclature, they have no idea how to talk the talk, and it's challenging, even scary. It requires a commitment to learn, there's a community to join, and they're almost afraid to touch the neck of the guitar because it's so cherished."

Guys at this age aren't plugging in to attract groupies. We know women tend to look at guitarists in their 50s as losers. Acoustic artist Ed Gerhard described his long career this way in a recent book by Tim Brookes: "You start off playing to get chicks and you end up talking with middle-aged men about your fingernails."

Rocking out is also time-consuming. "My wife thinks I'm a little obsessive-compulsive," says firefighter Hallmon. "Sometimes when I play she gives me this look like she'd much rather be watching 'CSI.' "

Landscape architect David Guthrie, 40, says his young children have begged him to stop playing, and his 2-year-old even turned off his amp. "My wife leaves the house," he adds.

And even if you pursue your dreams all the way to a real gig, there's this horrifying question to confront: What will I look like on stage?

That's when I start thinking about Paul Allen and a well-known photo of him at the opening of the Experience Music Project. There's Paul, with a Dale Chihuly replica guitar raised over his head, a bizarre grimace on his face, on tippy-toes in his fancy loafers. And I pray: Please Lord, don't let me look like that.

Max Newman, 43, says he's been rejected at auditions because of his age. "When you're over 40 you get responses like, 'Wow it is really cool that a guy your age is still into rock, but we're looking for someone younger.' "

Aren't we all?

Many of us, it seems, picked up guitars as teenagers, stopped playing decades ago, and now are trying to turn back the clock.

I got my first six-string at 13. We lived on a Navy base in the Philippines, next to Olongapo City and its teeming strip of bars, brothels and black marketeers. Just off the city's main drag, my nose stinging from open trenches of raw sewage, I bought a Fender Jaguar for $60.

Then we moved to a small town in New Hampshire. Chubby and lonely, I sold my Jaguar to one of the few longhairs in school, and my amp went to a polka band. I cut my hair and played football.

Talk about a misspent youth. Selling that guitar remains one of the biggest regrets in my life.

Hallmon took a similar path. He grew up on a U.S. Army base in Germany. Turned on by a Hendrix concert he saw in Stuttgart, he formed a teen band called the Fifth Reich.

Then he moved to Tacoma and started playing football and basketball instead of guitar. In college, he pawned a guitar his high-school girlfriend had given him.

Ten years ago, Hallmon says, he found himself standing outside a Capitol Hill pawn shop, staring at guitars. Several years later, he bought a $2,600 Gibson Les Paul. "It just progressed from there."

Now he owns 12 electric guitars and takes lessons. During breaks, he plays with other firefighters. "There are so many quality musicians in the Seattle Fire Department," he says.

Butler, the architect, was in a Roosevelt High-based band (Little Dickie and the Throbs) in the early '60s with Doug Hastings, who went on to replace Neil Young in the folk-rock supergroup Buffalo Springfield.

But his high-school sweetheart was jealous of his guitar, hated it, even. "She thought it was like being with another woman. She'd catch me playing, and she'd come up behind me and clamp down on the strings and say 'Stop!' "

Butler married his sweetheart, became a dad and stopped playing — for almost 40 years. Two years ago, he took his first lesson from Branner. "When I met my teacher for the first time, I told him my deepest, darkest secrets, that I really wanted to play and how intimidating it was."

Now he's Branner's ace pupil, and so dedicated his teacher recently put him on "scholarship," saying Butler doesn't have to pay for lessons — as long as he keeps writing songs.

SEATTLE PROBABLY has more boomer guitarists than comparably-sized cities, says McDonald of Fender, thanks to the region's populist history with the guitar — from the Wailers' garage anthem "Louie, Louie" to Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement, which made guitar raw and accessible again after a period of dominance by virtuosos like Van Halen.

"Seattle did more to dismantle the virtuoso barrier to guitar in current history than probably anything else," McDonald adds. "All those (grunge) bands came out, and it was 'Dude, three chords and the truth.' People just flocked to the guitar."

People like Butler, Hallmon and Hardy come back to the guitar, it seems, to fulfill a complex set of needs — ones that can't be satisfied by a trek to Nepal or one of Michael Jordan's fantasy basketball camps.

For starters, it helps them stay young. Besides getting weak-kneed about guitars, Hallmon has had his nipples pierced, his hair bleached blond and a bunch of tattoos etched on his legs. "I don't want any regrets," he adds. "I'm kind of a progressive old guy."

Strapping on a guitar also provides an outlet for boomers who can't get satisfaction from their day jobs. "Maybe you don't get the fulfillment you expected from your career," says Aldrich, 62, of American Music. "At some point the question pops up: Is this all there is?"

As he races from restaurant to restaurant, from Ballard to Fauntleroy, Hardy says he'll often stop at American Music or Dusty Strings in Fremont just to play a guitar. "I've got almost 300 employees, and work takes it out of you. With a guitar, you can just stretch and take risks you wouldn't in the business world."

Still, there are a lot of paths to peace, love and understanding. Why choose guitar?

Vinikow, a teacher who's played for almost 40 years, notes the guitar's romantic appeal. "Guitar has always been the instrument of cowboys, sharecroppers and gypsies," he says.

Guitars also evoke comparisons to the female figure. "A guitar is an extremely intimate instrument," he says. "You cradle it in your arms, sit it in your lap, and your hands touch the strings directly. In that sense it's an extremely sensuous instrument."

If that wasn't enough reason to dig guitars, they're also good investments and fine works of craftsmanship.

Chuck Simison, 62, collected vintage hot rods and motorcycles, including a 1942 Harley, before he bought his first guitar.

Now he's got 22 of them, including a Gibson worth $16,000, as well as guitars once owned by Dave Dederer of the Presidents of the United States of America and Michael Wilton of Queensryche.

After dabbling in rock and jazz, Simison started taking classical lessons two years ago. Now Simison, a sales manager for an environmental-services company, practices every night. "I play for self-satisfaction. It's all a great learning process."

Most midlife guitarists don't expect to become anything remotely near a star. Their dreams are modest. Butler aspires to play eight hours a day and sing to his grandchildren. Hallmon hopes to land in a band in a year or so, saying, "I just want to be tight." Hardy wants to delve into jazz and teach other older players.

As for me, I'm taking the long view. I'm giving myself five years to hit the stage with my dream group: a Kinks-Clash cover band called The Kalashnikovs. By then I'll have celebrated a few 49th birthdays and had time to work on my fingernails. More importantly, I'll have the fun I missed in high school when I chose conformity over instinct. It'll be like a do-over of my teen years.

It's the same for lawyer Mike Nesteroff, who says he's now experiencing a bit of coolness that eluded him as a gangly geek in high school, when he would "drool" over the guitars at a Tacoma instrument shop he couldn't afford and his father wouldn't buy.

A few years ago Nesteroff started playing rock 'n' roll with other lawyers at the Seattle firm where he works. Soon, they formed a band, named The Big Lubersky in tribute to a founding partner at the firm. The band went on to win Seattle's first Lawyerpalooza competition. "It was like my high-school dreams come true," Nesteroff says of performing in a packed ballroom with his wife dancing at the front of the crowd.

The Big Lubersky hasn't played lately, though.

They're on hiatus because of what rockers euphemistically call "health problems" — only in this case instead of drug rehab, the drummer is getting hip-replacement surgery.

For a second time.

Bob Young is a Seattle Times staff writer. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.