Keith Urban says loss of his guitars improved album sound

LONDON - Keith Urban has said that the loss of his guitars during heavy floods in Nashville in May worked for him as unfamiliar borrowed instruments gave his latest record ‘a burst of new life.’

The ‘Sweet Thing’ hitmaker was left devastated after several of his guitars and musical equipment were destroyed in a storage facility during the extreme rainstorms in the spring 2010.

The loss came just days before Urban was due in the studio to record tracks for ‘Get Closer,’ so the star was forced to borrow friends’ guitars in order to start work on the songs.

But Urban was overjoyed to discover the on-loan instruments actually improved his sound as they forced him out of his “comfort zone”.

“It was all very strange, going to the studio with borrowed guitars. But I actually think it gave this record a burst of new life that was very different to the other albums, because the new guitars, and the new amps and the new equipment - it got me out of my comfort zone in a really good way,” the Daily Express quoted him as telling CNN.com.

However, Urban is slowly restoring many of the flood-damaged instruments and he’s even managed to fix his most precious guitar.

He added, “The good news is a lot of these guitars that went underwater are being slowly brought back to life. Not all of them, but a significant amount of them.” (ANI)