Mark Sebastian on his enduring love for Epiphone guitars

The “Summer in the City” songwriter is a full-fledged Casino addict, but his first Epiphone was a small-body acoustic back in the heady days of the 1960s Greenwich Village scene 

Few songs are as inextricably linked to a moment in time than The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City.” Released in July 1966, it would become the group’s only number one single and even now, 60 years on, it crackles with electricity. In the geopolitical tinderbox of the late 1960s the world was changing fast, and the lyrics perfectly capture the simultaneous sense of oppression and possibility experienced by the youth of the era.

“Summer in the City” was born out of a songwriting collaboration between Spoonful singer John Sebastian and his teenage brother Mark, who instinctively created a pop hit that spoke to a generation. Indeed, with global temperatures rising in both a literal and figurative sense, it still resonates today. 

Mark Sebastian went on to have a long and varied musical career in his own right, journeying from the Greenwich Village folk scene to Europe, where he worked with composers in the formative years of the electronic music scene before returning to the United States to collaborate with Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. His most recent album was 2025’s A Trick of the Light, which featured string arrangements from Parks alongside a supporting cast of top-drawer musicians. Mark has been an Epiphone player since his youth, and we recently caught up with him to find out more about some of his favorites. 

“I just pulled my very first Epiphone, my Cortez acoustic, out of the case,” Mark says. “I got it in like ’66, so I imagine it’s a ’66. All the Epiphones I have, I know exactly when and where they were made, but the Cortez is like a family member! I don’t need to know much about it but I know everything about it. Somebody picked it up not long ago and they said, ‘Whoever put this DeArmond® pickup in it should burn in hell!’ 

“But when I went to the UK as a youngster to perform—to be like Jimi Hendrix and be discovered in the UK because you guys were so much more sophisticated than we Yanks!—I didn’t have an electric guitar. We all were hanging out with luthiers a lot. In the Village we had three close buddies who were luthiers and they did have nutty ideas sometimes, like customizing a car, if you’ve ever had that bug. So I installed a DeArmond and it was my solution to not having an electric guitar. But I love my Cortez to death, it’s been back and forth to Europe a bunch. I like the small-body thing.”

It’s no coincidence that Mark mentions Hendrix—his Epiphone Cortez was even played by Jimi himself in 1969. “The big moment for this guitar was being played by Hendrix at his last birthday,” says Mark. “My manager had a party for him in the Village. Jimi was in the guy’s bedroom, comfortably amidst these hippy pillows and everything, so I just go in there, I start chatting with him, and I don’t remember how the conversation went but he knew I’d written ‘Summer in the City.’ It was a phenomenal night, it went on until three in the morning. He flipped my guitar upside down and played it—he didn’t have to restring it!”

To say Mark is an Epiphone Casino™ fan is an understatement—he describes his Casino obsession as “a little out of control.” “I began collecting them in the Korean-made era,” he says. “I don’t do the Lennon thing but I happen to own a lot of natural ones, but I don’t put the little black washer on it or anything like that. I have the Inspired by John Lennon model because I love that model, not because I think it’s going to make me anything like John Lennon! I stumble over those; I have a few of them! I also have a few of the Gary Clark Jr. Blak and Blu signature models, because that’s an astounding guitar. The 50th anniversary 1961 model I can’t get enough of. It’s a sickness. I have to try to stay off the used sites!” 

There’s also the small matter of a very special vintage Riviera… “My brother gave me an Epiphone Riviera in 1967 after ‘Summer in the City,’ I think it was for Christmas, and I love that guitar so much. He saw I really needed it because I was using the DeArmond on the Cortez. But during the British Invasion, everybody seemed to have one sort of Epiphone—maybe a Riviera, if not a Casino. My understanding was that the Fabs loved the Casino because they could play it in the hotel acoustically and nobody would complain. In general, it’s a great model for songwriting. Nobody’s gonna hear you in the next room, and it feels great. I love that hollowbody thing.”

Find out more about Mark Sebastian’s music on his official website.