He sits in the silence of the garden shed, but wonderful musicians have brought the magnificent tones of his guitars to millions. David Charters reports THE big star asked the man to make him a guitar and when this was done, the star paid the man £90 which his wife used to buy their first Hoovermatic twin-tub washing-machine. “It was lovely. We had it for over 20 years,” she says, warming to the memory. For, by the values of the market-place, a beautiful musical instrument, with a timbre to soothe the souls of the tormented, can be compared to a domestic appliance in which you spin your smalls. It depends on what you want in life. But to incorrigible romantics, the guitar is the most potent totem to have arisen from the popular culture of the 20th century. Elvis standing alone was a good-looking young man. But Elvis posing with a guitar was a troubadour visiting the dreams of girls while promising boys an escape from the hum-drum life. Well, Stan Francis never made a guitar for the king of rock and roll, but there are some famous names in the customers’ records, which he keeps on cards in a little brown box in his semi-detached house in the Liverpool suburb of West Derby. Among them are Lonnie Donegan, who ordered one when he was at the zenith of his fame in the late 1950s; Pete Seeger, one of the finest folk song men in America, whose ballads of the land and its people encouraged the young Bob Dylan; Robin Hall and Jimmie MacGregor, the folk duo watched by millions every day on BBC TV’s Tonight programme (1957-65); and Tom Springfield, who sang and played guitar in the Springfields with his sister Dusty, scoring Top Five hits with Island of Dreams (1962) and Say I Won’t Be There (1963). Keith Richards, of The Rolling Stones has one of Stan’s guitars as well, though, in his modest manner, Stan meanders around that fact, before being directed by his wife – the smiling nurse June Love, whom he married 57 years ago. The 12-string guitar had been ordered by another customer. He took it to London and contacted The Rolling Stones, who wanted a new guitar. Richards sent his chauffeur round telling him to buy it if he liked it. He did. In the back-garden is the shed where Stan, 80, makes the guitars. It was built by his father, George, who knew that you needed a place to go sometimes – just to rest and rub the stubble on your chin, while the rest of the world does all those things that the world does, without noticing that you are not there. This heavy timber structure has been moved from house to house with the family, much to the chagrin of the sweating removal men. A few yards from the shed is a bird-house, which Stan made. He’s a kind man, this old boy of Broad Square Council School, Norris Green, and Alsop High School, Walton. Anyone can see that, as he sits on the couch opposite the oak grandmother clock, fitted with a Matthias Hipp movement. His father made that, as well – during the General Strike of 1926, when he had stopped work as a transport driver, along with all his comrades in the Liverpool and District Carters’ and Motormen’s Union. Stan has made 70 guitars, but never for a living, though word of his skill spread in folk music circles – as he had played himself in The Spinners before they were famous. After serving his time as a marine engineer at the Cammell Laird shipyard, in Birkenhead, Stan sailed with the Merchant Navy and then worked at Merseyside factories including BICC, English Electric, Lucas and Unilever. | 
