Stapled to the baby blue front wall of Subway Guitars is a page of sheet music for the 1942 standard “There Will Never Be Another You.” It’s unclear whether it was intended as an elegy for Fat Dog, the founder and owner of the Berkeley shop that has served as a musical mecca for generations. But as news of his death on Oct. 30 at the age of 80 spread on social media, it seems like a perfect fanfare for a man who embodied Berkeley’s countercultural contradictions by turning his creative passion into a welcoming, self-sustaining empire that elevated everyone who crossed the threshold.
Little by little the weird old Berkeley fades away. The loss of Fat Dog (the moniker was bestowed by his mother; he also went by Fatdog, Fatdawg or Fatty, but rarely his birth name Samuel Cohen) represents a long stride away from an Aquarian era that brought affordable guitars to the people. A quintessential tinkerer who delighted in working with his hands, he built guitars out of discarded parts, and was known for crafting unusual instruments using pieces from different makes and models. Once purchased, a Subway guitar was assured of being lovingly tended by the store’s employees, many of whom Fat Dog mentored.
“If I needed parts or guitar knowledge Fat Dog was always available in his kindly gruff way,” wrote John Binkov, guitarist for the pioneering San Francisco punk band VKTMS on Instagram. “I learned so much from him and it never seemed like I was annoying even in my early, unformed days. Just standing outside looking at the political posters and announcements was going to school.”…