Up To Eleven

I just read The Birth Of Loud, a fun and fascinating book by Ian S. Port about the development of the electric guitar, centering on the rivalry between Leo Fender and Les Paul.

The electric guitar had been around since the early 30s, and both Fender and Paul became fascinated by the instrument.  Paul because he played it professionally and was an innovator, and Fender because he loved electronics and inventing and wanted to help musicians--he wasn't one himself--find the perfect sound.

Acoustic guitars--i.e., all guitars before electricity got involved--had hollow bodies to make sound.  So did early electric guitars, though that could lead to feedback.  Eventually people such as Fender and Paul helped develop the solid-body guitar, an impossibility without electric pickups to amplify the sound.

Fender started a small shop, making guitars and related musical appliances.  He liked to tinker and would often be late with shipments because he cared deeply about getting it right.  No matter how big he got, he was always the guy in the warehouse working on various problems--employees would mistake him for the janitor.  Fender was friends with Les Paul, a well-known sideman who built a studio in his garage and would sometimes try out Fender's latest.  Paul, along with singer-guitarist-wife Mary Ford, started experimenting in multi-tracking, and became a huge recording artist in the early 50s.

Not long before, guitars were background accompaniment.  Electricity allowed them to be heard, finally, along with the other instruments in big bands, but they rarely took the lead. Paul helped the electric guitar become a major player in the industry.  Fender, who was developing a new solid-body, wanted Paul's endorsement, but Paul instead went with Fender's bigger rival, Gibson.  That started the rivalry, but neither could know how big the electric guitar was about to become.

Because in the mid-50s rock and roll started to take over.  This new music had much less need for brass or woodwinds than jazz did.  Now, if you wanted to form a band, you bought an electric guitar.  At this point, Port goes beyond Fender and Paul and their associates, devoting many pages to those who helped bring the electric guitar (and bass) to the fore, such as Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Dick Dale, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Carol Kaye (of the Wrecking Crew), James Jamerson (of Motown), Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. In the rock era, guitars became highly desirable, then practically mandatory.

It may not have been the music Fender expected, but his line--which included the Telecaster, the Stratocaster, the Precision Bass and various Amps--exploded.  He gave rockers what they wanted--something light and contoured for the body, for one thing. (Big Band players sat, rockers stood when they played.)  When he finally sold his company in the mid-60s, he became a multimillionaire.

Meanwhile, time had passed Paul by, musically.  By the late 50s he was a nostalgia act.  And the line of guitars Gibson had named after him were poor sellers.  Then something odd happened.  Some major rock artists, especially Eric Clapton, started playing the "Les Paul" guitar, and now everyone wanted them.  The originals from the 50s became collectors items, and Gibson started a new, highly popular line in the late 60s. (Not everyone played a Les Paul.  The Beatles helped make Rickenbackers famous, and Hendrix and many others stuck with Fender.)

Guitars still sell, though not as much as they did in the heyday of the rock revolution.  And thanks to that revolution, Leo Fender and Les Paul--probably to their surprise--will not be forgotten.