Eurovision and The Green Guitar

In January 2003 Alistair and the team returned from a successful first exhibition at the NAMM show in California to discover that a local musician called Mickey Joe Harte had made it all the way to the televised stages of the You’re A Star talent competition on Irish Television.

Alistair made contact with Mickey Joe and gave him a green X10 model guitar to use in his televised performances.
Instantly the guitar became a hit with its intriguing colour changing paint that changed from Green to Blue and the intricate silver detailing that made it extra special.

Week after week Mickey Joe performed with the guitar and it was referenced often in interviews becoming one of his signature talking points.

Mickey Joe made it all the way to the final of the series where he sang “We’ve Got The World Tonight” and topped the voting to win the series outright and take the opportunity to represent Ireland at the Eurovision song contest with his winning song.

Mickey Joe set off for Latvia in May 2003 accompanied by a large group of traveling supporters from Ireland for the finals of the Eurovision.

Once again Mickey Joe’s Green Guitar became a hit with its stand out looks on such a large stage and the performance was viewed by over 300 million people across the world.

Recently Alistair sat down with Mickey Joe to reminisce about that exciting time and how famous the guitar had become with Mickey Joe sharing a secret story about how he almost lost the famous guitar after leaving it in a taxi the night before the largest performance of his life.

Alistair said that locally people still identify him as “the guy who built the green guitar” and while they have produced many green guitars since, there will only ever be one “The green guitar”