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- [00:00]
Alan Cross
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 ad free on Amazon. Music included with Prime Summer is coming.
- [00:11]
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- [00:40]
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- [01:06]
Alan Cross
Go through a phase when we decide that we want to make music for ourselves. Maybe we'll do it alone, or perhaps we want to be part of a band. The first thing you need to do is decide what instrument you're going to play. Once you do that, you have to narrow things down to the exact make and model of that instrument. Now, when you're starting out, your dream instrument is probably out of reach financially, so you make do with whatever you can afford. But you never lose sight that one day you will own an iconic rock and roll machine of some sort. It might be a guitar, and if it's a guitar, you will inevitably have an opinion on amplifiers. Perhaps you're into keyboards. You might covet an expensive grand piano, or you may have your eye on a particular line and model of electronic keyboard. The same applies to drums. So what are these iconic dream instruments? What are the instruments that are famous and desired by musicians around the regardless of their level of expertise? And what is it about these particular music making thingies that make them so desirable? Let's investigate. This is a look at the most iconic instruments. These are the goats of the tools of rock and roll. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Crazy. We all love to dream. One day I will have that car or someday I will have a house in this neighborhood. And if you're a musician, you have a very good idea of what instruments you'd like to own. If you know what you're doing. You can get the job done on any instrument. But if you're able to choose anything. I'm Alan Cross and this show is all about iconic musical instruments. The makes and models that have endured for decades and in doing so have become legendary not only for their sound and playability, but for also which famous musicians have chosen this gear to be part of their signature image. Let's start with the electric guitar. There are hundreds and hundreds of makes and models out there. But when it comes to the most familiar, two names stand out. Gibson and Fender. Orville Gibson founded his company in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1894. The first factory manufactured mandolins. Orville then invented the archtop guitar. This means the front of the guitar's body has a slight arch, a curve to it. Orville got this idea from how violins are constructed. The Depression and World War II were the best and worst times for Gibson. Between 1924 and 1948, the company was run by Guy Hart. During lean times, he had Gibson manufacture high quality wooden toys. During the war, factories started producing metal parts for use by the military. They were still making guitars, but so many men had been drafted that women were employed in the factories. After the war, there was a fixation on electrifying the guitar. Playing styles had changed and more importantly, there was now a need for volume. By 1950 there was new ownership and in 1952 the company introduced their iconic guitar, the Les Paul. Now, if you don't know, Les Paul was a real person. He was a jazz and pop artist who experimented with making his own electric guitars as well as messing around with his new multi track tape machine technology. Gibson brought him in house to work as a consultant on a new type of electric guitar with Gibson designer Tim McCarty. Paul had been pestering Gibson about such things since the mid-1940s, and the company finally said, okay, all right, fine, let's see what you can do. They worked on things for about a year, trying different shapes and designs and woods and all the other materials that go into making an electric guitar. Les Paul loved the final product so much that he gave it a full throated endorsement. And Gibson returned the favor by naming the guitar after him. The first Gibson Les Paul was unveiled on June 24, 1952 at a special event for musicians in at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. It was made of mahogany and had a bright gold finish. It was a hit at the time. Hollow body guitars, the most common kind being produced, were prone to feeding back when played too loudly. The Les Paul was a solid body without the feedback problem. The Les Paul has been in production ever since and has been used by guitarists into rock, punk, metal, pop, country, soul, R and B, jazz, reggae, and virtually every other genre you want to mention. Famous players included Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Slash from Guns N Roses, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Pete Townsend of the who, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler, Billy Joe Armstrong, Jerry Cantrell, the Edge, Dave Grohl, Kirk Hammett, Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, Paul McCartney, Bob Marley, Adam Jones of Toole, and literally hundreds, maybe thousands of others. Here's an example of a Les Paul custom being played. Now, keep in mind that this is the same type of guitar George Harrison plays on. While my guitar gently weeps in another person's hands it can sound like this.
- [06:17]
Steve Jones
God take the queen.
- [06:20]
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We mean it.
- [06:21]
Steve Jones
Mad we're at my queen Both sides. God take the queen.
- [06:32]
Alan Cross
That's Steve Jones and the sex pistols from 1977. He's playing a Gibson Les Paul custom that has been overdubbed unto itself around 20 times to get that thick, heavy sound. Not all Les Pauls are the same. There are many different models. Standard, custom, deluxe, studio, recording, professional and more. Each is very versatile, but can also be used for specialty applications and specific musical situations. Like I said earlier, making electric guitars had their challenges with feedback. Gibson had sorted that out with Les Paul, but at the expense of having an instrument that's able to produce dark and warmer tones. The solution came in 1958 with the Gibson ES335, a semi acoustic, semi hollow body guitar. You can identify an ES355 by the 2F holes cut into the front. This gives them the look of a giant violin. And the chief designer was again, Tim McCarty. The design solved the dark and warm problem at the expense of a body that was slightly larger. But at the same time it was much lighter than the Les Paul. After all, it was partly hollow. It was easy to play high on the fretboard because of double cutaways. Those are the dips cut into the body that allow you to play those frets closest to the body. With the ES335, players could reach all the way up to the 22nd fret, something that no other guitar offered at the time. Basically, it offered the best of both worlds, between the solid bodies and the hollow bodies. You can amplify the hell out of it with no feedback. And the hollow parts give it warm, round tones reminiscent of what we get from acoustic guitars, which are 100% hollow, of course. Like the Les Paul, the ES335 came in different models and usually differed in the types of pickups used. We got the ES345, the ES347, the ES355, the ES355 Pro, the ES355 CRS, and so on. Technically, this is an Epiphone and not a Gibson. Epiphone was a standalone company formed in izmir, Turkey in 1873, and their business was largely devoted to making banjos. But then in 1958, it was bought by Gibson's parent company and the two lines were merged. So it's an Epiphone, but it's owned by Gibson? Well, it was. Things got a little murky after 1969 when Gibson moved production to Korea and then China and then Indonesia. The result was that some Epiphone 355s are produced by Gibson and other models are made by other companies under license. The ES335 series became a favorite of Chuck Berry, B.B. king, Keith Richards, Alex Lifeson, Noel Gallagher, Chris Cornell, Bono, and many, many others, including Dave Grohl. Dave Grohl loves his ES355 so much that he got together with Gibson in 2005 to design a signature guitar. And it's called, of course, the DG355. Dave's guitar is based on a model used by Trini Lopez used back in the 1960s. His absolute favorite guitar is a 1967 ES335. It's been used to track every single guitar part on every single Foo Fighters song ever recorded. Like this one, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters. And Everlong, featuring Dave's favorite favorite guitar, the Gibsonephone ES335. You can probably guess what our third iconic instrument is. It's the Fender Stratocaster, a double cutaway solid body guitar unveiled in 1954. Leo Fender, the owner of the company who couldn't play guitar by the way, was one of the co designers. Its main features were three pickups, double cutaways for access up to the 21st fret, nice balance and a vibrato bar on some models. Although this wasn't the original purpose of the Strat, the way it was constructed allowed players to take them apart and modify them in a million different ways. Other manufacturers took note and made their guitars customizable too. Think of Eddie Van Halen's Frankenstraat, which was always being modified as Eddie chased the guitar tones he heard in his head. David Gilmour's Beautiful solo on Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, or was played on his famous Black Strat, a guitar he bought at Manny's Music in New York in 1970. He used it for every Pink Floyd album and tour thereafter. It sold at auction for nearly US$4 million to Jim Israe, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts. Strats are immediately recognizable by their shape, especially those big horns on the body that not only form the cutaways, but also help with balance. They're so popular that signature models have been made for Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Randy Bachman, the Edge, Mark Knopfler, Tom Morello, Tom DeLonge, and Kurt Cobain. Billy Corgan has his own signature model, too. And here he is playing a Strat on this song from Siamese Dream. So there are three iconic electric guitars. The one thing that they have in common is that they each have six strings. For our final iconic guitar, we're going to have to remove two of them. Which brings us to defender precision bass. Getting bass parts heard in songs used to be a real problem. Tubas worked for decades, but they weren't the coolest thing to play. The low end of a piano keyboard worked okay in some circumstances, and a saxophone could also work in a pinch. But they were all imperfect in their own ways. In the 1920s, a very large classical instrument called the double bass, an instrument that dates back hundreds of years and was most often played with a bow, started to be used in place of the tuba. Let me quote from Billboard magazine in April 1926. All over New York, it has been noticed that with most of the prominent bands, the string bass, alias bull fiddle, alias doghouse, is replacing the tuba. Leaders agree that the string bass has a far greater carrying power than the tuba and that it blends more effectively. Practically all of the exponents of the tuba double in string bass. So the only inconvenience resulting from the switch will be the difference in size of the instrument cases, which, take our word for it, is plenty. Double basses added some nice thud to early rock and roll songs, but they were still acoustic. They needed to be amplified somehow, which was tricky with the technology of the day. Leo Fender came up with a solution in 1951 in what he called the Fender precision bass. It was based on the design of the Fender Telecaster, the precursor of the Strat. And compared to the double bass, it was small, light, and could be plugged into an amplifier. It was the world's first commercially successful solid body base. Throughout the 1950s, the big double bass disappeared and it was replaced with a relatively tiny Fender Precision, which was easier to transport, play, amplify and modify it, and basses like them soon became the standard Fender precision. Users include Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Duff McKagan of Guns N Roses, Sting, Brian Wilson, Guy Berryman of Coldplay, and Carol Kay of the bass player for the most famous studio outfit of all time, the Wrecking Crew. Mike Dirndt of Green Day loves his Fender. In fact, his name comes from his bass. Mike Dirnt's real name is Michael Ryan Pritchard. He got the name Dirnd because he was always making that sound while playing air bass. Walking around school, he'd just go around going, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, Green Day with Mike Dirndt playing his Fender Precision bass. When we come back, we'll segue to the thing that makes electric guitars complete, and that is the guitar amplifier.
- [15:13]
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- [16:06]
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- [16:14]
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- [16:44]
Alan Cross
This episode is about the most iconic musical instruments in the history of rock. We've covered guitars, so it's logical for us to talk about guitar amplifiers. And since we left off with the Fender precision bass, we should probably talk about the Fender bass man. When the Fender bass was introduced in 1951, there was a problem. Because there were no bass guitars, there were no bass amps, so Fender had to invent that too. The first solution was to pair it with a guitar amplifier, which was okay, but inadequate for big bass and high volumes. It sounded awfully thin. It wasn't until a year later in 1952, when Fender introduced an amp designed just for bass guitars. They called it the Bassman. It was built with heavy duty speakers, a cabinet that enhanced bass response and enough raw wattage and power to allow the basses to be heard along with the rest of the band. Several iterations followed in the 1950s because people were using the bass band for guitars and harmonicas. By 1957, Fender realized that they needed to work harder at creating an amp that was just for bass guitars. The most popular of the era was probably the 5Fs basement, the last of the so called tweed amps, which referred to the grilles on the front of the cabinet. These were the cleanest, most accurate, loudest and most reliable bass amps to that point. And 40 watts, which was a lot for that time. Mike Dirnt uses basement amps and so does Mike Kerr of Royal Blood. There is a reason I mentioned a bass amplifier ahead of any other amp. And that's because without the Fender bassmen, there would be no Marshall stack, which is the most iconic of all the guitar amp setups. And for this, guitarists not only have bass players to thank, but also a drummer. In 1962, Jim Marshall was a drummer playing around London and giving lessons at his music shop. Musicians were constantly visiting, including a lot of soon to be famous British players like Pete Townshend and Richie Blackmore and others. And the one thing that they always talked about, the one thing they always pushed Jim for, was a bigger, more powerful and louder amplifier. Can you design one? They asked Jim. And can you make them with this design, this sound and this flexibility? Jim took up the challenge and by 1963 he had created the first ever Marshall amplifier, the JT M45. It pushed out a screaming 100 watts, an unheard of amount for 1963. They also used tubes rather than the hot new solid state circuitry, which gave them a wonderfully warm sound. And here's the thing that relates back to the Fender basement. Before he started building his own amps, Jim Marshall imported units from elsewhere. And that included a ton of Fender basements, even though they were very expensive. The good news is that the basements provided a starting point for Jim. He took one apart to see how it worked using that design and after six attempts, Jim and three employees working in a series of garden sheds created the JT M45, the first high power guitar amp designed to survive and thrive in a super intense rock and roll environment. Why JTM the J is for Jim, the T is for his son Terry, and the M is for Marshall of course. And the 45, well that was its original output, 45 watts. The first live performance was at a pub gig in September 1963. Within 18 months, Marshalls were the most popular amps in all of the uk, even blowing away Vox amplifiers which were used by the Beatles. The amplifier was separate from the speaker cabinets. It's known as a head, which was a new way of looking at things. And as things evolved, it became possible to string more and more heads and cabinets together. It became a thing for heavy bands to have giant walls of Marshall cabinets on stage and to be honest, only some of them were actually plugged in. But having so many speaker cabinets on stage looked awesome. Today Marshall amps have their own sound and are used around the planet. Here's a Kerry King of Slayer uses Marshall stacks and the model JCM 800 which first appeared in 1981. This is not the JTM 45 but a descendant and therefore it's also a descendant of the Fender baseman Slayers carry King making the most of his marshal stack setup. There's one more iconic amplifier that we need to talk about and that's the Fender Twin Reverb. This is one of the all time classic amps introduced in 1952. Between the introduction of the Fender Telecaster A1 pickup electric, which was also the world's first mass produced and commercially successful electric guitar, and the unveiling of the Stratocaster in 1954, Leo Fender realized that his line of electric guitars was useless if they could not be amplified. In an era before distortion and effects pedals and fuzz and deliberate guitar noise, the Fender Twin Reverb was coveted for its exceptionally clean sound. There were many different models, starting with the Tweed era and again that referred to the Tweed fabric covering the speakers. The twin reverb came in different sizes and shapes and finishes with different grills. Silver Blonde, Blackface, Brownface and so on. There were situations where Fender reissued classic versions of the amp with modern adjustments. The Fender Twin continues to be a favorite of guitarists who were looking for a specific, clean, distortion free sound. Think about how Mark Knopfler sounds with Dire Straits. Eric Clapton has his own signature model. Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and various members of the Beatles all used Fender twin reverbs at one time. The amp even found use in the grunge era, which seems a little weird given that grunge was all about distortion. Kurt Cobain used a borrowed Silver Face Twin reverb on the Bleach album. He liked it so much that he went out and bought his own. And we hear that original Silverface on this song Nirvana and about a girl with Kurt playing his parts through a silver face Fender Twin reverb. What about iconic keyboards? We'll look at a few of those.
- [23:51]
Steve Jones
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- [24:25]
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- [24:54]
Alan Cross
Let'S wrap up this look at iconic instruments by looking at a few legendary keyboards, and I think we have to start with the Hammond B3. The manufacture of Hammond organs dates back to 1935, and the first organs were marketed to churches as an alternative to giant, expensive pipe organs or pianos, which could be too quiet for large choirs and congregations. The big Hammonds are known for having two 61 key keyboards stacked one above the other, and because it's an electric instrument, a note plays as long as the key is depressed. Tones and sounds are created and modified with a series of pulls called drawbars. There are many models of Hammonds, but the one that captured the attention of rock players was the B3, introduced in 1954, and they stayed in production for 20 years. Some players elected to send their playing through a tone cabinet, which is a large external speaker. And the best known of all these external cabinets was the Leslie speaker, which had a rotating horn. Without getting too complicated, you can get some pretty cool Doppler effects by increasing and decreasing the speed at which the horn rotates. Hammond B3s were used by Booker T and the MGS Proko Harem. We Hear it on A Whiter Shade Of Pale and this song. Other players included John Lord of Deep Purple, Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lincoln Palmer, Richard Wright of Pink Floyd, Tony Banks of Genesis, and a ton of other prog rock players. There was a time during the punk era when Hammonds were seen as old, outdated and part of the generation of dinosaur rockers. But like everything else in music, trends come and go, and by the time we get to the early 1990s, the Hammond B3, or at least the Hammond B3 sound, was back. Here's Rob Collins with the Charlatans UK playing an actual B3. Rob Collins with the Charlatans and his B3 sound. The final instrument on this list is the Minimoog, the world's first affordable and portable analog synthesizer. It was introduced in 1970 as an alternative to the giant modular synthesizers of the day that could be the size of a refrigerator or bigger. But modular synths were hideously expensive to manufacture and thus expensive to buy. Bob Moog and his people knew if they didn't come up with something different, the company was doomed. So the engineers created a tiny, self contained synth. It wasn't perfect, but that, paradoxically, is what made the Minimoog so perfect. It wasn't very reliable when it came to staying in tune and holding settings, because engineers couldn't get the thing's three oscillators, the devices that controlled voltage and the sound to sync up properly. This turned out to be just fine, because the wonky oscillators allowed the Mini Moogs to create some really wild and crazy sounds. It also came with a thing called a pitch wheel, which allowed players to bend notes like a guitarist bends strings. Moog had no hope for the Mini Moog, thinking that the company might sell a hundred of them. But once they were discovered by musicians looking for new, otherworldly sounds, Minimoogs started selling by the Thousands. At least 12,000 were sold between 1970 and 1981, when production stopped. The Minimoog was the first synth to become a classic. I think it's the most famous synth in history, given how much it was used in rock, pop, disco, funk, R and B and jazz. Geddy Lee used a lot of Mini Mog on Rush songs, including Tom Sawyer. If you listen to Bob Marley's Stirred up, you'll hear a Mini Moog. A Mini Moog, left unattended in a studio inspired Gary Newman to give up on guitars completely, resulting in new wave technopop hits like Cars and Our Friends Electric. And Trent Reznor has been a big Mini Moog fan from the beginning. There's one in here somewhere. Might be that bass. Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. A big fan of the original minimoog. If you can find one in good condition and at a reasonable price, grab it. Nothing sounds like these things and vintage units can go for big money. I hope you enjoyed this trip through the iconic instruments of rock. This was only a partial list too. Perhaps in the future we can look at things like the Fender Telecaster, the Yamaha DX7 synth, the saxophone, which is one of rock's earliest instruments, by the way. And we never touched on drums at all. Okay, next time. There are hundreds of ongoing history shows available on demand as podcasts. They're all free, so you can download as many of them as you want wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, grab a few episodes of Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. That's my Music meets True Crime podcast. Let me know what you think. We can connect on most of the social media networks, I'm always updating my website with music news and information, which is ajournalofmusicalthings.com it comes with a free newsletter that you should get and you can always email me about anything. I'm available through AllenAllencross CA Technical Productions by Rob Johnston. Talk to you next time. I'm Alan Cross. The best high concept sci fi rigamarole in the universe is back. What the hell? Oh, how long was I out?
- [30:53]
Steve Jones
Close airlock seven.
- [30:57]
Alan Cross
Seth, please let me out.
- [30:58]
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- [31:01]
Steve Jones
Just.
- [31:03]
Alan Cross
Get back here. This is for your own good.
- [31:06]
Steve Jones
Rick and Morty.
- [31:07]
Alan Cross
New season Sundays on Adult Swim stream on Stack tv. Get your mouth rounded.