Billy's Silvertone guitar

Billy's Silvertone guitar is both the instrument Billy Dunne’s father left behind when he left the family and the possession around which Billy and Graham Dunne’s earliest musical life took shape. The brothers taught themselves to play, fought over who could use it, and eventually divided their instruments so that Billy kept the Silvertone while Graham took a new Strat. Once each had a guitar, they began writing songs together; the Silvertone thus belongs to the story not only as an object from their childhood, but as part of the beginning of their collaboration.

Identity and Origin

The Silvertone enters the brothers’ history in the wake of their father’s departure. He left the family in 1954, when Billy was seven and Graham was five, after telling them he was moving to Georgia. Billy remembers asking whether he could go with his father and being told no. The old guitar was what their father left behind. The account does not describe the instrument’s arrival as a gift or explain why it remained in the house; it establishes its importance through what the boys did with it afterward.

That origin gives the guitar a particular place in the family story. It is a remnant of the father who left, but the narrative’s emphasis is not on what the instrument meant to him. Instead, it follows the brothers as they take it up and make music their own. Billy and Graham were not taught to play: they taught themselves. In Billy’s recollection, playing the Silvertone was about all they did. The instrument was therefore a practical beginning for their musical lives, not merely a keepsake preserved outside them.

A Shared Instrument

Before the brothers each had a guitar, they fought over who got to play the Silvertone. The detail makes their early musical experience collective but not effortless: one instrument had to be shared, and each brother wanted access to it. Their rivalry did not prevent them from building a common practice. The guitar gave them something to play, while their self-teaching made playing an activity they pursued together rather than a skill introduced by an outside teacher.

Billy’s musical interests were not limited to the guitar. As he grew older, he sometimes stayed after school to play around on the piano in the chorus room. That detail places the Silvertone within a broader, self-directed beginning: Billy was drawn to music in more than one setting and on more than one instrument. But the guitar remains the specific object associated with the brothers’ shared childhood, and with the first arrangement they made between their separate desires.

The Christmas Exchange

When Billy was about fifteen, his mother saved enough to buy him and Graham an old Strat for Christmas. Graham wanted the Silvertone, but Billy could tell that the older guitar meant more to him. Billy let Graham have the Strat and kept the Silvertone. Graham’s recollection presents the same choice from the other side: he wanted Billy’s instrument, understood that it mattered more to Billy, and took the Strat instead. The exchange is not described as a formal bargain; its importance lies in each brother recognizing what the other wanted and accepting a different guitar.

The Christmas gift changed the practical terms of their music-making. Before then, the brothers had competed for one instrument; afterward, each had a guitar. The Silvertone did not pass to Graham, despite his wanting it, and the new Strat did not displace it in Billy’s hands. Their distinct attachments could coexist with the material solution their mother’s gift made possible. The exchange thus preserves the old guitar’s particular significance to Billy while ending the immediate contest over who could play.

From Playing to Songwriting

Graham connects the moment when each brother had a guitar to the start of their songwriting together. Billy remembers the sequence in compressed terms: everything grew from there. The account does not identify a first song or claim that the Silvertone alone produced their later work. It does show how the instrument’s story joins a series of concrete beginnings: their father leaves it behind; the boys teach themselves on it; Billy keeps it when the Strat arrives; and, with one guitar apiece, the brothers begin writing songs together.

That sequence gives the Silvertone a significance larger than its function as a musical tool, without making it a magical cause. It is the first instrument in a partnership whose next step depends on both brothers having guitars. The old instrument’s place is particular: it remains Billy’s choice, Graham’s remembered desire, and part of the material history from which their collaboration develops. The narrative traces the brothers’ musical origin through an object they first had to share and later learned to distinguish from one another’s instruments.