Title: The Birth of Loud Pdf Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll
In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into the primordial elements of rock ’n’ roll—and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul—whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought—to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.
While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman from rural Orange County, Paul was a brilliant but egomaniacal pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s—including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton—adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By the time Jimi Hendrix played “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock in 1969 on his Fender Stratocaster, it was clear that electric instruments—Fender or Gibson—had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.
Compelling read -- not just for guitar geeks! You don't have to be a guitar geek to love this book -- or even a hard-core rock fan. This is a thoroughly engaging ride through the through the 20th Century, from the dusty 20's to the mud of Woodstock, on a wave of music, passion, discovery, triumph, heartbreak and almost unfathomably well-researched visceral detail. It's not just Fender and Paul --though their stories pull you from one chapter to the next -- it's also pioneering women guitarists and bassists that I'd never heard of before, and I'll bet you haven't either.And it's a tale of imagination and invention and their intersection with -- and sometimes collision with -- barriers of technology and economics and race and gender.And it's not just the story he tells as he follows the trail of the progress and influence of the electric guitar on our music and our society, it's the beauty of the writing. Sometimes painstakingly detailed, sometimes lyrical, sometimes jarring, and sometimes ... just magical ... throwing you up against a sentence that forces you to stop, and behold it, and roll it around in your mind, and say "wow -- yes."A masterful narrative of music history and innovation The Birth of Loud is an incredible read! I'm no guitar head, or especially into 60s rock, but this book was a true page turner: Port uses the battle to electrify rock and pop as a way to explore weird old California, the psychology of innovation, and how just a few seemingly small inventions--the solid-body guitar, the electric bass, the pickup and amp--in many ways allowed icons like Clapton, Jimi, and others to express their true selves and potential, which in turn, of course, allowed the 60s to become its true rollicking, counter-culture self. And Port manages to do all this in writing that's engaging on every page--the chapters zip by!Great Anecdotal History Since the late sixties, I've owned four Fender Stratocasters. I played them through at least three different Fender Amps, too, and loved them all. I played a Les Paul, but, as many people in this book mention, it's very heavy. I did have an SG and liked it except that by the time I bought it, Gibson's vaunted workmanship was deteriorating.The book gives an overview of the music scene from the late 40's to about 1970 when most of the advances were made, and the personal anecdotes make it a fun read. The style is more workmanlike than lyrical, but Port's research is impressive. I didn't know that Fender was deeply involved in making pedal steel guitars for the country music performers long before he started experimenting with a solid-body standard guitar. His wife's job as a telephone operator actually kept the struggling business afloat until the Telecaster began to sell. I also didn't know that Paul Bigsby, Les Paul, and Leo Fender lived near each other and often hung out together, borrowing and building upon each other's ideas...until rivalry and jealousy made them accuse each other of stealing.Port himself points out that it's impossible to give one person, or even a small group credit for all the advances, but these men, along with many musicians who had specific demands for their performing gear, did most of the work. That said, the portraits painted of Fender and Paul show two men I'm glad I never really knew. Paul comes across as a selfish egomaniac (he and Colleen Summers, AKA Mary Ford, carried on a open affair for years, and Paul drove her to alcoholism with his drive to be a star). Fender was a brilliant but unschooled obsessive who drove his staff frantic because he kept tweaking his ideas so they couldn't market the products they advertised.The list of musicians who used both guitars would fill most of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I didn't know Buddy Holly tried a Les Paul first, but abandoned it for a Stratocaster because of its extreme weight. I was shocked to learn that the biggest year for Les Pauls (1959) only totaled about 650 sales. Eric Clapton popularized the guitar in the mid-sixties, but he was playing a Stratocaster by the time I saw him with Cream in 1968. The Gibson's humbucker pick-ups were better for players who wanted distortion, but Fender's single-coils could give a treble that could function as dental floss. The Gibson attracted jazz players and the Fender was popular with country musicians because of the tonal differences, but without both of them, who knows what popular music would have become from the mid-50s on?My biggest complaint about the book is the lack of pictures. The picture section is only 8 pages. Those pictures show several of the early (often NON-playing) members of Fender's team, but barely scratch the surface of important musicians whose stories are mentioned.The epilogue does a good job of putting everything in perspective.
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