Play It Loud

The inspiration for the Play It Loud exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art The electric guitar has long been an international symbol of freedom, beauty, and rebellion. In Play It Loud , veteran music writers Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna give us the story of this American icon. It’s a story of inventors and mythologizers, of scam artists and prodigies as varied and original as the instruments they spawned. The electric guitar looms large over the twentieth century: as an essential element in advancing racial equality in the entertainment industry, as a mirror to the rise of the teenager as a social force, as a linchpin of the punk rock ethos. And today it has come full circle, with contemporary titans such as Jack White and Annie Clark (known as St. Vincent) bringing back some of the instrument’s earliest sounds. Featuring personal interviews with Les Paul, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, and dozens more players and creators, Play It Loud shows how a group of innovators and misfits transformed an idea into a revolution.

ldquo;A thrilling narrative that weaves cultural history, musical history, race, politics, business, advertising and technological discovery.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A swooping, all-encompassing timeline of the instrument’s early days to its beyond-essential role in pop culture and music.” —The Guardian

“Fascinating. . . . A book that lives up to the urgent, innovative, all-encompassing spirit of its subject.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
“A cultural history, calling up the tastes, styles and fads, the economics and even the geopolitics of 90 years of music-making.” —Dallas Morning News 

“The definitive book about the history and business of the electric guitar.” —Forbes.com

“Fascinating, elegantly written, page-turning. . . . It’s all here—the history, the science, the musicians, and of course, the stringed beauties and the sounds they helped create.” —Jonathan Kellerman, author of *The Murderer’s Daughter
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“Everything knowable now becomes known about the plugged-in ax that changed the world. A comprehensive history of the electric guitar in cultural context is something long wanted, awaited and needed. At long last, it has arrived.” —Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top guitarist/vocalist and Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame inductee

“A marvelous survey of how the electric guitar has rocked its way into the hearts and minds of millions of music lovers. This is a rich trove of unforgettable anecdotes and vignettes. Highly recommended!” —Douglas Brinkley, author of *Rightful Heritage
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“Providing a holistic overview packed with contextual insights, music journalists Tolinksi and Di Perna skillfully pinpoint the watershed innovations and key musicians who turned a novelty into a mainstay of popular music. . . . An engaging introduction to a fun topic with broad appeal.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“The electric guitar changed the world, and Tolinski and di Perna impressively reveal its epic story.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“A comprehensive history of the electric guitar, tracing its roots in George Beauchamp’s experiments in search of a way to amplify a guitar’s vibrations. . . . The authors engagingly explore the importance of amplifiers on artists’ sounds.” —Publisher’s Weekly

Autorentext

Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna; Foreword by Carlos Santana

Klappentext

The inspiration for the Play It Loud exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The electric guitar has long been an international symbol of freedom, beauty, and rebellion. In Play It Loud, veteran music writers Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna give us the story of this American icon. It’s a story of inventors and mythologizers, of scam artists and prodigies as varied and original as the instruments they spawned.
 
The electric guitar looms large over the twentieth century: as an essential element in advancing racial equality in the entertainment industry, as a mirror to the rise of the teenager as a social force, as a linchpin of the punk rock ethos. And today it has come full circle, with contemporary titans such as Jack White and Annie Clark (known as St. Vincent) bringing back some of the instrument’s earliest sounds. Featuring personal interviews with Les Paul, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, and dozens more players and creators, Play It Loud shows how a group of innovators and misfits transformed an idea into a revolution.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Brother Musician, Listen to a Miracle!

For as long as there have been guitars, there have been young guitar players who have forsaken their rural hometowns for the bright lights of the big city, hoping that their six-­string mastery will win them fame and fortune. This epic quest—­a kind of latter-­day pilgrimage—­is no doubt what impelled George Delmetia Beauchamp to leave rural Texas and set himself up in Hollywood in the early years of the 1920s. Young Beauchamp (pronounced “Bee-­chum”) was in his mid-­twenties at the time. And while he did all right for himself as a guitarist in the L.A. area, he is not at all remembered today among the guitar-­playing immortals. We don’t even have any recordings to give us an idea of what he sounded like.

Outside of a small circle of guitar obsessives, in fact, Beau­champ isn’t even remembered for his most outstanding achievement— his pivotal role in the development of the electric guitar. His name may not resound through the decades like those of Les Paul, Leo Fender, or Charlie Christian, but the electric guitar may never have come into being without George Beauchamp. He not only invented the first fully functional guitar pickup, he also put it to work in his pioneering design for the world’s first successful, commercially produced electric guitar.

The pickup can be regarded as the most important part of any electric guitar. It’s what converts the guitar strings’ vibrations into electrical signals that can be amplified. A pickup to an electric guitar is what wheels are to a car. Without that, you’re going nowhere.

Beauchamp’s friend and business partner Adolph Rickenbacker once described him as “a young Texas boy [who] got too fat to pick cotton.” That wasn’t entirely kind or accurate. Surviving photographs of Beauchamp show him to be a dapper (and rather trim) gent—­a professional entertainer and entrepreneur with hair neatly slicked back and a sporty predilection for bow ties.

But he had indeed been born in Texas, on March 18, 1899, one of nine children brought into this world by Saybird and Fanny Beauchamp. George took violin lessons as a child but eventually switched to the guitar. When he grew to manhood and made his move to Los Angeles, he was accompanied by his brother Alton, also a guitar player. Not that the brothers Beauchamp immediately had all Hollywood at their feet. Like most musicians, they needed a day gig at first, so they found work as house painters.

It must have been an incredibly exciting time for a young man to land in a city like L.A. The film business had recently relocated there from New York; Hollywood had embarked on what would be known as its golden age. It was also well on the way toward acquiring a somewhat deserved reputation as a city of sin, Hollywood Babylon. Real estate was cheap and there was plenty of easy money around. People wanted to be entertained. It was a good place to make your mark as a musician.

George Beauchamp seems to have had …