PDF The Birth of Loud Leo Fender Les Paul and the GuitarPioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll Audible Audio Edition Ian S Port Pete Simonelli Simon Schuster Audio Books
Download As PDF : The Birth of Loud Leo Fender Les Paul and the GuitarPioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll Audible Audio Edition Ian S Port Pete Simonelli Simon Schuster Audio Books
A riveting saga in the history of rock 'n' roll the decades-long rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar's amplified sound - Leo Fender and Les Paul - and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.
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 outmaneuvered, 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.Â
PDF The Birth of Loud Leo Fender Les Paul and the GuitarPioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll Audible Audio Edition Ian S Port Pete Simonelli Simon Schuster Audio Books
"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.""
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The Birth of Loud Leo Fender Les Paul and the GuitarPioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll Audible Audio Edition Ian S Port Pete Simonelli Simon Schuster Audio Books Reviews :
The Birth of Loud Leo Fender Les Paul and the GuitarPioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll Audible Audio Edition Ian S Port Pete Simonelli Simon Schuster Audio Books Reviews
- 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!
- 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." - This is not history. This is an adventure! Ian Port tells a story that never stops and never slows down. The development of the modern electric guitar is the development of our modern pop culture, pure and simple. And this is what good writing is made of keen insight, an expert eye for the most telling details, revelatory anecdotes by the bushel, and the capacity to never take sides, to never slant the telling of events.
Anyone who lived through the 1950s and 1960s will see their own experience reflected in the two men who became icons of electrified music. Port manages to show how their creations were twisted out of their hands by the next generation, how the instruments grew into icons all their own and changed the course of music to the present day.
This book is as thorough as a guitar nerd would wish, but it never wallows in facts. The story moves at a rapid clip and the author is consistent in his nods to every important character, every breakthrough media appearance, and the effect they had on young music fans. Thanks to the internet, his reader can actually watch the very same appearances on e.g. Ed Sullivan or Ready Steady Go! to see for themselves what the hubbub was all about. Port's relative youth gives him an advantage here; he has the requisite distance to observe what is actually going on. And he is a very keen observer.
This book is so good, I'm not just going to read it again ... I'm going to BUY it again!! - Enjoyable quick read but somewhat lacking in rigor and direction. Meanders a bit on subject matter and chronology. Skims across the lives of Leo Fender and Les Paul without significant depth but as a result presents a good overview of the development of these two guitar types.
Once the book gets to Buddy Holly (the last third), the author appears to be on a deadline and moves too quickly from Holly to Hendrix. A few good stories on Eric Clapton but barely a sentence on Keith Richards and Jimmy Page.
And no mention of Peter Frampton's 1954 Gibson Les Paul (see cover of Frampton Comes Alive album) and the incredible story of it being missing for 30 years and returned to Frampton in 2010. Huge miss on author's part.
Photos of the actual guitars covered in the book would have been really helpful. - I've read many of Ian's writings when he was Music Editor for San Francisco Weekly and loved his humor and his insight. If this book is anywhere as good as his other published work it is exciting and fun! I read the Washington Post Review that came out on the 11th which gives this book a rave review. Can't wait to get my hands on it tomorrow! It's about time someone wrote this history!!!
