The Story of the Electric Guitar - Part 2

Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music early and add free on Amazon music, included with Prime. Hey, before we start the show today, I want to tell you about something brand new we're launching with our friends and Apple podcasts called the ongoing history of new music unlimited. For $3.49 a month, $3.49, which is less than the price of your morning coffee, you can now get access to the full archive of our show's Add Free. Plus, you'll get brand new episodes two days early and special bonus episodes. It's ongoing history unlimited and it's available right now, only on Apple podcasts. For centuries, music was nice and clean. While different instruments gave notes, different timbers, the frequencies of those notes were expected to be pure and clear. Yes, you could add a little oomph by playing for Tisimo, but the dogma was, let's not overdo it. But sometimes, the situation called for overdoing things, banging a piano turns a melody and a beat into some stomping boogie-woogie. A raspy, hard-blowing saxophone brings energy to a performance. But creating pleasant distortion with either of these instruments, and we can probably name a few others, is limited to the abilities of the human body. Volume and distortion in all the energy that comes with playing this way is restricted by how hard you can hit something or blow into something. The electric guitar had no such limitations. It can be played so that the notes are pristine, or you can summon all the demons of hell with volume and distortion and power and glory. That is cool. The electric guitar is one of humankind's greatest musical inventions. Starting in the 1950s, it revolutionized many types of popular music, country, the blues, jazz, and most of all, rock. After it appeared, nothing was ever the same, and the sound of music changed forever. It's impossible to imagine what today's music would sound like had the electric guitar not been invented. But how did we get here? Let's pick up the story. This is the story of the electric guitar, Part 2. This is the ongoing history of new music podcast without rocks. That's Big Rack featuring guitarist Ian Tharnley and the Oaf from 1997. Ian has many, many guitars, and what we're mostly hearing on that song is a Gibson Chetacan's Tennesseein, which is a semi-Holo body guitar. He played this guitar a lot through the late 90s and early 2000s. He also has a signature guitar made by Sirr. It's a three pickup acts with a very close to a stratocaster. It's a Sirr classic S, which has a solid body. In fact, he has a couple of signature guitars from Sirr. Ian has also been known to play a Gibson flying V, we will get to one of those in a second, and a Gibson Les Paul standard. Stand by for that. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross and this is Part 2 of the history of the electric guitar. Last time, we started right at the very beginning and went through everything that had to happen before the first units were sold in the 1930s. From there, we followed a couple of timelines that brought us to the great Fender guitars like the telecaster and the stratocaster in the early 1950s. There was another classic guitar model that appeared at exactly the same time, and this is finally where we get to the Gibson Les Paul. The 1940s saw all kinds of experimentation with electrics. Fender freaked out everyone with the telecaster, the stratocaster, and the Fender precision base. Gibson, who had also been fiddling with electrics, realized that Fender had blown past them, so the company needed to respond and fast. But Gibson also had a reputation to uphold. The telly in the strat had their necks bolted onto the body. It was much cheaper to make a guitar this way. Gibson insisted that their electric be a finer quality, with a traditional dovetail joint and glue construction when it came to joining the neck to the body. To market this new guitar, Gibson turned to guitarist and inventor Les Paul, who was having a string of hits at the same time. Would he allow Gibson to put his name on a new guitar to help sell it? What do you think? Les agreed, and in June 1952 appeared on stage with his brand new signature guitar, the Les Paul Golden Top. This happened at the Paramount Theatre in New York. In 1954, a derivative was announced, the Les Paul Custom, which was also a hollow body, but substantially lighter than the Golden Top. The next change came in 1957 with the Les Paul Standard. This is where the legend really begins. They were quite heavy, but the sound these things made was heavenly, and they looked fantastic too, with many featuring a finish known as burst. There was sunburst, cherry burst, tobacco burst, and so on. They also include something called a humbucking pickup, which is two coils wrapped around a magnet. This construction cancels out noisier interference, like picking up a buzz from a nearby light fixture or some other electric device. But despite the praise from many musicians, the Les Paul Standard was a commercial failure, and by 1960 Gibson stopped making them. But, as interest in rock grew through the 1960s, guitars started looking around for these standards made between 1958 and 1960. Only about 1700 were ever manufactured, and today only about 700 are known to still exist. They are sought after by collectors and are very expensive. By late 1961 Gibson started making standards again. Jimmy Page of Let's Eppelin, Keith Richards of The Stones, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Jeff Beck, Slash, and many dozens of other famous guitars play Les Paul's. And so did Steve Jones of The Sector's There are over two dozen layers of guitars on that song, and some of them at least feature Steve Jones playing a Les Paul Standard. Like I said though, this guitar was initially such a flop that Gibson stopped making them for a while. In 1961 Les Paul transferred his name to a new solid body design called the SG for a couple of years, until his contract with the company ran out. The SG has been in production continuously ever since. SG stands for Solid Guitar, and there are many, many SGs out there. They come in four variants, the cheaper SG Junior, and all the way to the Deluxe SG custom. It's hard to imagine ACDC becoming as big as they are without Angus Young playing one of these things. Players also include Tony Iomi of Black Sabbath, Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, Jimmy Hendrix. Tom York likes the Gibson SG, and that's what he's playing on this song from the In Rainbows album. It's Radiohead and Body Snatchers. I want to talk about a few more Gibson guitars that appeared in the late 50s and early 1960s. First, the Gibson E.S. series. In this case, E.S. stands for Spanish Guitar, a spain, you know. They are of a semi-holy body construction, and have a curved top called an archtop. It went through a couple of dozen iterations before the company unveiled the E.S. 335. The first ever thin line archtop semi-hollow body guitar. You can tell one of those from the F holes it has in the front. That's a design element carried over from the ancient art of violin making. It has several variations, including the E.S. 345 and the E.S. 355. All of them were huge successes for the company. One of the biggest supporters of the E.S. 355 was BB King. Each of his 355s carried the name Lucille. Tom DeLong used an E.S. 335 when he was still with Blink-182. And no Gallagher uses his E.S. 355 made in 1960 for a lot of his oasis and soul with stuff. I quote from an interview, "Talk about your affinity for the Gibson E.S. 355. I've got two or three of them and some E.S. 345s too. By 1960 E.S. 355 is the greatest guitar I've ever played. It can do anything and it's become part of me." Xsmith's guitarist Johnny Marne, no less, picked it up in the studio and then looked like a startled wizard because of how great the guitar is. I got the 355 a while back for 4,000 pounds and it's the best 4,000 pounds I've ever spent. I've taken the guitar at four or five world tours and beat the living daylights of it, but it still sounds in place incredible. I'm in awe of the guitar. I put it second to my wife only because I can have sex with her. If I can have sex with that guitar, I'm not sure which I'd choose. Back with more in the story of the electric guitar, including a look back at the time when design ideas went wild. Crap salad dressing, Diana or bullseye barbecue sauce for just $198 each. Shop in store and online until January 21st. Food basics. Always more for less. Amadeus. Yeah, that amadeus shows up in Vienna at 25. He's jobless, totally free from his dad and ready to make some noise. He finds love in an amazing partner, Constance Weber, and suddenly he's dropping beats that nobody can ignore. Sally Ari was convinced that Amadeus was God's chosen one, so he had to be silenced. Tune into the story of history's most infamous musical rivalry, Amadeus. All new Mondays on showcase, stream on Stack TV. This is the second half of a program that tells the story of the electric guitar. As Rock and Roll was taking off in the 1950s, there were a number of manufacturers vying to be top dog. We've spoken about Fender, with its telecasters and strats, and we've talked about a couple of Gibson's, the less Paul, the SG, and the ES. Gibson was determined to capture as much market share as it could, so it started coming out with guitars with designs as radical as this new rock and roll music that was being played. And few instruments were more radical than the flying V, which was first introduced in 1958. The body is shaped like a big V, or maybe an arrowhead. It was harder to play sitting down because there was no cutout for your knee, but it did look really cool. It was the first of what was envisioned to be the company's modernist line. If you go back to the 1950s, everything had fins, rockets, cars, and other guitars. Actually, the flying V was a little too radical, less than 100 were sold when it debuted in 1958. Production stopped for a while, but restarted in 1967, when Gibson learned that a number of rock stars were scavenging the planet for parts for some of the flying V's that were being used. Dave Davies of the Kinks had one. Jimmy Hendrix was known to play them. Tom Petty, Paul Stanley of KISS, Richie Samboiro of Bon Jovi, and when we got to the 80s with the Spandex of Hair Metal, the pointy guitar from Gibson had its best years. Here's Lenny Kravitz using a flying V on, "Are you gonna go my way?" one more Gibson guitar before we move on. The explore. It was released at about the same time as the flying V, but sold even worse. It also had a radical modern design with the body jutting out at all sorts of weird angles. Too weird, so it was discontinued after selling maybe 50 versions of the type. But when another guitar manufacturer started putting out guitars with a similar shape, Gibson resurrected the model in 1976. The explore is one of the edges favorite guitars of all time. His 1976 model, one of the first after Gibson started making them again, appeared during every single U2 tour until about 10 years ago when it was finally retired. It was the first guitar he ever bought. He was 17 at the time and bought it in New York, brand new. And it was the first guitar he ever recorded with. And very few people were playing explorers when U2 emerged. It became like a visual signature, not only for just the edge, but the band. That old explore is all over this song. We could go on and on looking at iconic guitar brands and models. Epiphone, for example. This is a musical instrument company founded in 1873 in Turkey. That started by making fiddles and lutes. The company moved to New York in 1903 and started making mandalins and then banjos. And then about 25 years later, Epiphone got into the business of making Spanish guitars. In 1935, the first Epiphone electrics went on sale. They were Hawaiian guitars. Again, that means that you played them while they lie on your lap. One of those sold for about 100 bucks back then. Spanish electrics came soon after and Epiphone rivaled Gibson to see who could make the highest quality guitars. That was all settled when Gibson bought Epiphone in 1957 while still keeping the Epiphone name. And for a while, Epiphone became Gibson's budget brand. Epiphone's made by Gibson were cheaper but carried the same names. For example, you would have the high-end Gibson Les Paul and a cheaper Epiphone Les Paul. If you couldn't afford a Gibson ES330, well then maybe you could scrape together the cash for a near-identical Epiphone Casino. The company's biggest break came in 1964 when the Beatles broke out. John Lennon was a big fan of the Epiphone Casino. And the second the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, orders came flooding in. Other Epiphone fans include Billy Joe Armstrong, Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, Alex Lifeson and Kurt Cobain. And as Roconeg of Vampire Weekend plays an Epiphone Sheraton 2 on this song. Vampire Weekend, as Roconeg playing his Epiphone Sheraton 2, we still have a few more guitar brands to go and they're coming up next. Let's look at a few more famous guitar brands. There's Gretchen, a musical instrument manufacturer that goes all the way back to a factory in Brooklyn in 1883. Friedrich Gresh, a German immigrant, began by crafting banjos and drums and tambourines. When his son took over, Spanish guitars entered the mix. The first Gretchen electric went on sale in 1939. It was called the electromagnetic, but the Gretchen guitar that broke through came in 1953 and was called the Duo Jet. It was sort of a hollow body guitar, but it also had sound chambers inside the body, which gave it a sound distinct from any Gibson's or Epiphone's or Fenders. At first, Gretchen was big with country players. Gretchen Atkins, a great finger picker, became an endorser for Gretchen and loved a model called the 6120. From there, it's used spread to rockabilly artists and finally to the new rock and rollers of the late 1950s. That included bow diddly, but some guitars made just for him. If you're a Beatles fan, you'll know that George Harrison played a Gretchen Atkins Country Gentleman model for the group's Ed Sullivan appearance in February 1964. And again, after that broadcast, orders for those guitars blew up. Production went from 5,000 a year to 13,000. And here's Duane Eddy. It's a Gretchen that gives this track so much twang. Back on part one, we talked about this next legendary guitar manufacturer and its role in the invention of the first electric guitar, Rickenbacher. As far as we know, Adolf Rickenbacher was the first to manufacture electric guitars in 1932. The company was sold in 1953 just as rock and roll was being born. The new boss dropped the old Hawaiian steel guitars and started focusing on Spanish style electrics. John Lennon bought a Model 325 when the Beatles were playing those long residences in Hamburg, Germany. That's the guitar's 73 million people saw in play when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. George Harrison was also a fan. He bought the second ever 12 string Rickenbacher electric ever made. That same weekend, when a rep from the company managed to sneak in to see the Beatles at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Later in the decade, Palmer Cartney got a Rickenbacher base, the 2001, which he used on and off of the rest of the decade. Rickenbacher's have a very distinct sound, jangle or chime or words that people use. You can pick one out immediately. You just can't mistake what George Harrison is playing for anything else. The unique sound of the Rickenbacher made it a favorite among electric folkies, British invasion bands, and those into the new psychedelic sounds of the 1960s. Think Roger McGuin of the birds, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival. While recently, Rickenbacher's have been used by Tom Petty, the Edge, Peter Buck of R.E.M., Susanna Hoffs of Bangles, and Kevin Parker of Tayman Palab. This is Johnny Mar of the Smiths. Playing in 1983, Rickenbacher, 330, was his main guitar for years. We've talked mostly about six string Rickenbacher's and four string basses, but then there's also the company's famous 12 string models, like the famous 360-12, which became a favorite of George Harrison. With the 12 string, you have six pairs of strings, with each string in the pair very close together and tuned to the same note, an octave apart for the four lower pairs and to the same note for the two higher ones. These pairings are called courses. No one's really sure who came up with this idea, but it is possible that 12 string guitars originated in Mexico towards the end of the 19th century. When Rickenbacher's 360-12 took off, Gibson, Gretchen, a few others got into the game. Again, a 12 string guitar is easy to pick out. We hear Jimmy Page play a bit of it on stairway to heaven. Closer to the heart by Rush features Alex Life's on a 12 string, Bond Jovey's dead or alive, and here's Jerry Cantrell playing with Alice and Chains on I Stay Away. We're going to cover a lot of ground on part three of our story of the electric guitar. Things changed both for the better and for the worse in the 1960s. The 70s and 80s saw tremendous upheaval and innovation, and we should talk about amplifiers, given that an electric guitar without amplification isn't really electric at all. Until then, feel free to reach out with an email to [email protected] on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. I'm always updating my website with music news and information. Check it out at a journal of musicalthings.com. Part three of the history of the electric guitar is coming up next time. Technical Productions by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross. [Music]