Fretful Journey : Dick Clark’s Electric Guitar--World’s Largest--Heads for Indianapolis

America’s oldest teen-ager is taking the world’s biggest electric guitar home to a rock ‘n’ roll hangout in the heartland.

The guitar, all 38 feet and 1,865 pounds of it, was hoisted onto a flatbed truck Thursday for transportation to Indianapolis for rock-biz godfather Dick Clark, who plans to hang it from the ceiling in a restaurant he owns there.

Hanging it from the ceiling is a lot easier than playing it.

It does work, but coaxing a tune out of the behemoth box involves six players--three to depress the strings and three more to pluck or strum them.

Clark, who bought the guitar last year from the Jasonville, Ind., high school students who built it as a class project that got them into the Guinness Book of World Records, took it out of storage recently to display it in his new Indianapolis restaurant, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Grill. It will join a collection of rock memorabilia there that includes John Lennon’s shoes, James Brown’s cape and one of the beaded gloves worn by Michael Jackson.

“I’ve saved everything in the world,” said Clark, 64, the longtime host of television’s “American Bandstand,” cradle of much of the rock music of the 1950s and ‘60s and foundation stone of Clark’s entertainment business.

“I’m a collector. I value these things, (even) the doors of dressing rooms. It’s the world’s largest guitar and the double whammy is we’re sending it back whence it came,” he said.

“It was built in Indiana and it’s going back to Indiana to a place that commemorates American music.”

The red-and-white “Flying V” guitar, similar to those played by the late Jimi Hendrix, was built for $400 in 1991 as a class project by about 50 students at Shakamak High School. The body is pine, and the strings were custom-made.

Clark bought the guitar for thousands of dollars--he won’t say how much--after reading about the student project in a newspaper. “I got hold of the teacher and said I’d find a good home for it,” he said.

Since then, he has used it only once, as a backdrop for the 40th anniversary show of “American Bandstand.”

It took three days and five people to load the electric guitar onto the truck’s trailer at Clark’s Burbank production offices.

Truck driver Ted Rea and his wife, Shari, are making the cross-country journey for Clark, and will haul back the guitar’s protective green tarp to show it off only at the other Dick Clark American Bandstand grills in Overland Park, Kan., and Columbus, Ohio.

At the last minute Thursday, Rea and others were forced to dismantle part of the guitar in order to drive safely under overpasses.

“The biggest thing I’m worried about is the wind,” said Rea, sweating profusely from the labor of lashing down the two-story guitar. When it comes to catching the wind, “It’s like a billboard,” he said.

The guitar is expected to arrive in Indianapolis Oct. 19.

Clark will be on hand to greet it, as will its builders, said a spokeswoman for Clark.

Once again, they will pluck its giant strings, playing it through six amplifiers.

The song? Most likely “Peter Gunn” and “Smoke on the Water,” the tunes they played to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.

The ultimate in pulling strings to get into show business.