Music Before the Money

In a previous post I wrote that guitar virtuoso Les Paul brought a solid-body guitar to his friends at Gibson in 1941 but they rebuffed the famed player until Leo Fender designed and marketed such an instrument with the introduction of the “Broadcaster” in 1948.

Clarence Leonidas Fender was born in 1909 near Anaheim, California, not far from the future site of his guitar factory on Fullerton. He studied to be an accountant, and was hired as one, but his love was electronics. As a part-time radio repairman he got involved with musical instruments when a local band asked him to design a P.A. system for them. After that he opened up his own electronics shop and quit his job.

Besides the demand for amplifiers and P.A. systems his guitar-playing customers would bring in their external pickups for their stage guitars for him to repair.  Guitarists at that time attached pickups to the tops of their hollow-bodied guitars. This led him to experiment with guitars and the sound from different pickup designs. Then, in 1948, his Broadcaster came out which, two years later, was renamed the Telelcaster. Amplifiers with his name began appearing and, as well, microphones and other accessories.

The introduction of the Precision Bass in 1950 brought a revolution in music. It relieved bass players of the cumbersome stand-up basses and created a new sound in bass reinforcement. Then, in 1954, he brought out the Stratocaster, a contoured, 3-pickup style that is the gold-standard for rock and country guitars the world over.

In 1965, Fender sold his business to CBS Musical Instruments. This was an auspicious occasion for guitar owners because it is widely received that, for many years afterward, the quality of the guitars went down.  The pre-CBS Fender is still the most sought-after guitars in the world.

In the 1970s, a rejuvenated Fender designed guitars, basses, and amplifiers for Music Man. Then in 1979 he started G&L Musical Products and took out new patents on magnetic pickups, vibrato systems, and neck construction among other innovations.

The name “Fender” will always be synonymous with rock and country music.

The Mesa Boogie guitar amplifier came on the scene in 1970 when most bands were stacking speakers all over the stage. The thought was, “The bigger the speaker cabinets, the better the sound.” Smaller amps like the Fender Tremolux and Deluxe Reverb were literally buried on stage by stacks of Marshall, Acoustic and Kustom amps

It is said by the Mesa Boogie company that the first Boogie was built as a practical joke to see how much they could drive a small amp without it blowing up. It looked like a tiny Fender Princeton in the old-fashioned Fender tweed case. In fact, it was. The originator, Randall Smith, literally gutted Princeton amps and, like putting a ship in a bottle, fit high power electronics, big transformers and a 12″ JBL speaker (in a space meant for a 10″ one) back into the case.But it was worth the effort.

Santana Names the Small Amp

Word spread around the music community and Carlos Santana tried one at a jam. His quote was “Shit, that little thing really Boogies!” and the rest is history. From 1967 to 1970, in a converted dog kennel, over 200 Princeton amps were sacrificed to make these incredible amps. Many of these so-called “pre-Boogies” are still around.

With the success of the small amp Smith moved out of the kennel into a garage and had to start making his own cabinets. Word was out that Fender was getting suspicious as to the amount of amps and high-powered transformers he was ordering.

Garage Amps

Smith started building the second generation Boogie in a two-story garage with wood rejected by a lumber mill. Except for the custom-made transformers almost every part of those first Mark I Boogies was produced in the garage:

• Silk-screened, sheet metal chasses were hand punched
• Wiring and cabinet building were done by hand.
• Printed circuit boards were screened and etched there.
• Unlike the newer solid-state amps, tubes were the heart of the Boogie.

It was a true cottage industry with a host of friends doing small projects like the foot switch boxes and positioning shielded cables. And Smith, a fan of Mercedes, watched over the process with an eagle eye for detail and made sure every amp was perfect.

Why did such a small amp push its way into the big amp market? One of the big reasons, besides its great sound, is the fact that sound systems were getting better and amps were being miked so the amplifier, itself, did not need to have 4 -15″ JBL speakers.

George Harrison, the youngest Beatle, was also dubbed “the quiet Beatle,” but this was because the reporters never got around to asking him questions. He probably one of the most under-rated of the ’60’s guitarists.

Besides skiffle, a style of jugband music which was popular in England in the ’50’s and ’60’s young Harrison listened to guys like Chet Atkins and Chuck Berry. Before Keith Richards played his first gig Harrison was perfecting Berry licks and these can be heard in the Beatles rendition of Roll Over Beethoven in the Beatles first album. But the Chet Atkins style comes through in the country riffs and chords and ones he uses to end songs. Like Brian Jones he dabbled with the sitar but his strength was always guitar. Later on, again like Jones, it was his slide guitar that was his virtuosity.

The guitar Harrison used on the Beatles first U.S. tour was a Gretsch Country Gentleman with a double-cutaway. It looked black but it was actually a dark chestnut brown. For example, in All My Loving, he played a Chet Atkins pick-and-finger style and parallel double stops for that rockabilly sound.

You Can’t Do That was recorded in February 1964 with a Rickenbacker 12-string that George picked up in the U.S. It played an important part in future Beatle songs like A Hard Day’s Night and influenced dozens of other bands to copy the sounds. In fact Roger McGuinn of the Byrds went out and bought one after seeing the movie, A Hard Days’ Night.

What was your favorite Harrison guitar song?

“Uh . .I’d like to thank Elton and the boys for having me up tonight . . .
I’m trying to think of a number that I can finish off with
So’s I can get out of here and be sick . . . ha, ha . . .
And I thought we’d do a . . . do a number of an
old estranged fiance of mine, called Paul . . .
This is one I never sang,
it’s an old Beatle number and we just about know it . . .”

- John Lennon on stage with Elton John
at Madison Square Gardens,
November 28, 1974

Thirty-three years ago, on Thanksgiving, John Lennon jumped up onto the stage at Madison Square Gardens to join his friend Elton John for, what it turned out to be, John Lennon’s last live performance. His parting song was I Saw Her Standing There, a song Paul McCartney always sang on stage with The Beatles.

It all started when Lennon asked Elton John to sing back-up on his new album featuring the hit single Whatever Gets Your Through the Night. Elton agreed but made Lennon promise that if the album went to #1 Lennon would have to appear on stage with him in New York later that year. Of course, Lennon never thought it would even chart let alone go to Number 1.

After all, he had made himself a pariah around the clubs in L.A. and New York after he split from Yoko Ono. His exploits with his entourage of drunken friends including Harry Nilsson and Keith Moon was legendary.To everyone’s surprise it became his first and only solo Number 1 hit (Imagine only made it to #2) so Lennon joined Elton for 3 songs at Madison Square Garden on November 28, 1974. This was his last live performance. And with Paul McCartney having had three number 1 hits and George Harrison and Ringo Starr having two each, Lennon became the last of the Beatles to have one.

This Thanksgiving concert was remarkable in another way. In the audience was Yoko, who surprised him backstage. This led to a reconciliation in early 1975 and Lennon retired from music for five years to become a full-time father.

I first heard Neil Young as the lead guitarist for Buffalo Springfield but I didn’t know it at the time. The next time was on an 8-track tape Neil Young and Crazy Horse where I played Down By the River over and over again. But After the Gold Rush was the album that put me into Neil’s fold. Yeah, Harvest, was fabulous but not as poignant to me as Gold Rush.

Remember reading in my previous blogs on learning songs off the jukebox? Well, Sugar Mountain was one of these. It wasn’t released on an album at the time so I had to pour quarters in the jukebox to get the guitar and lyrics.

Hammer-Ons (Hammers-On?)

The beginning chord of Sugar Mountain is actually a standard C- chord but two frets up in a sort of D-position. This creates a suspended harmony. I use a hammer-on from the open D to F# and then when I step back down to the C position the same hammer-on from the open D resolves to the E.

The intro to Tell Me Why has a bass walk up to the C-chord and the similar hammer-on from C to E for this position as Sugar Mountain. Then Neil plays a B as the C resonates giving a Major 7th resonance and the 6th when he next plays the A. These were the little tricks to harmony that I learned from Neil’s acoustic playing. A hammer-on is also a primary tonal trick in Southern Man and Cowgirl in the Sand too.

Neil did some amazing things, both with acoustic s and electrics. My favorite has always been his pre-Rust Never Sleeps stuff. But my all-time favorite is Long May You Run, written for Neil’s beloved Pontiac hearse, “Mortimer Hearseburg.” Neil drove “Mort” from Toronto to Los Angeles, where he met Stephen Stills and then they formed Buffalo Springfield. Mort broke down in Blind River in June 1965.