The Lost Legacy of Daniel Hecht

The sole reason I know about Daniel Hecht is because he was an old friend of my stepfather. Growing up, I'd been to his house for dinner and I'd seen strange black & white photographs of Daniel looking very much like a cross between a model and a rock star, and then there was that thing...

I actually spent some time playing around with the monstrous hydraulic "custom capo" system you see in that video. It had grown bigger since this video was shot. It was also no longer attached to a guitar and I had no context whatsoever -- as best I understood it, the device was a crude prototype of a robot hand. "Robot Hands" was something I could definitely get with at the time...two hand tapping routines and open chord voicings, not so much.

At his model/rockstar peak, Daniel Hecht was signed to Windham Hill records and leading the vanguard of the "New Age" movement and the steel string renaissance underway in those days. He also played a Somogyi guitar, which cost more than most houses even then. He released three albums then vanished from the scene, a disappearing act that reality could never full adjust for. Today he's basically unknown and I was stunned to find actual video evidence of his existence on The Youtubes. It made something pretty clear to me: this is history that needs to be documented. I aim to do exactly that. Expect to see an interview with the man here in the next few weeks.