Guitar Archeology

I had to admit, Norlin had a great idea. Get Bob Moog and Les Paul together and come up with a musical instrument amplifier for the new age. Sounded good. The first corporate consideration was a name. “Gibson Amplifier” already had a funky reputation among the players. Gibson had never made an acceptable Rock unit. It had to be all new. I flew to Texas with some prototypes to show Billy Gibbons. Our friendship began in ’69 when Jimi Hendrix gave Billy his old Sunn amplifiers. I could testify to Jimi’s endorsement of the young Gibbons. I tracked Billy down early on the Gibson job because he owned one of the most famous Les Paul’s in the business. “Miz Pearly,” as in Pearly Gates or the sound you hear in heaven. It was the guitar he held in every picture. Billy was the most loyal of Gibson players, and a natural to help launch an amplifier line. ZZ had just released their fifth album on Warner Brothers and were already known as a relentless touring act, building a reputation and record sales around the world. Billy thinks big. I flew into San Antonio with engineer Roger Cox, an old friend from the Sunn days when he was with Ampeg, now Norlin’s amp wizard. We were met by two Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, or ZZ Top’s version thereof, who insisted on carrying our bags to the curb and the cherry red, w/white top 1956 Cadillac convertible with Mister Gibbons behind the wheel. He handed us cowboy hats and explained different parts of the country had different “rolls” and cowboys could tell where a dude was from by his roll. We were in Texas now. We then took a four hour drive to South Padre Island where Billy’s vacation house “Big Pink” was located right on the beach. Another brace of cheerleaders met us at the house, unloaded the car, turned on the lights and the stereo, excused themselves and disappeared. Mister Gibbons knows how to entertain. For the next three days we fished and drove to a small Mexican restaurant across the border that had live music, where the second night Mister Gibbons announced he and I would be sitting in, and we did, and for those three burnin’ songs I contemplated a comeback as a musician.

I finally had a unique instrument to work with. Since John Entwistle had almost single-handedly introduced the Alembic bass to the music business, Norlin thought he would be the perfect player to evaluate the Gibson RD 77 active-electronics bass. Could we talk to him? Actually, I couldn’t wait to get him involved. It wasn’t about the free instruments. At that point in his career he had a truck full. It was more about the exposure. Gibson has a huge advertising and promotion budget. They can put your face in music stores across the world. They can put your name on an instrument that will live on way past your record contract. This wasn’t a Who deal, this was a John Entwistle deal, and as far as I was concerned, payback for all the things he’d done for me. Like every other picker on the planet, John grew up with a Gibson catalog under his pillow, and now he would be one of those faces staring out from the pages. John and I flew into Chicago and met an assembled platoon of Gibson managers and Norlin brass from New York. It was a strange meeting of cultures. Norlin’s musician-guitarist-expert on the payroll was Bruce Bolen, a Chicago Jazz guitarist looking for his first record deal. Bruce wore the plaid pants, wide lapels and ugly tie and tried to be one of the corporate guys. It was obvious that all the managers knew about the Who and the legendary tales of destruction. They were visibly surprised that Entwistle was such a soft-spoken gentleman. During John’s tour of the offices, people hung back in awe as if waiting for the pyrotechnic finale. By dinnertime John had the group eating out of the palm of his hand. They hung on every thickly English accented word. At dinner we sat next to each other at the table with half-a-dozen other corporate heavies. Toward the end of the meal, John reached out and picked up an expended wine bottle. “Do you know why they leave this little bit of wine in the bottom of the bottle?” John asked. No one knew. “Because of the sediment” he said, illuminating the bottom of the bottle with the table candle. “Oohs”, and “Aahs”. John put the bottle down and returned to his desert. The waiter walked up to the table, picked up the wine bottle and poured the dregs into John’s glass. “Anyone care for any more wine”? John turned to me, lowered his head and gave me “the look” over the top of his glasses.

I finally found an artist to endorse the Gibson S-1 (Strat copy). Ronnie Wood had paid his dues with Rod Stewart in the Small Faces and now he was joining the Rolling Stones. He wanted his friends to know about his promotion, and what better way than a high profile advertising campaign by Gibson? I was telling the photographer not to print any pictures showing Mr. Wood playing through the Fender amplifier.

In the 70’s the Gibson guitars artist relations office was operated out of Buck Munger’s home basement recording studio in northeast Portland, Oregon. When the first half-inch video cameras hit the market Buck grabbed one and started shooting low key back stage interviews with Gibson artists directed at the plant workers and field reps to boost morale and increase sales. This is an intro to the first Artist Relations field tape. Buck introduces a trashed Les Paul given to him backstage by Pete Townshend. The guitar was destroyed by Pete because he discovered it had a faulty neck. When he became convinced that something was wrong he bashed it against the wall and indeed the center core of the neck was rotted. So he told Alan Rogan the roadie to save it for that guy from Gibson. In this video Buck also touts the Bo Diddley “Mark Series” model acoustic. In truth, at the time, the Mark Series acoustics were the first costly boondoggle by Gibson’s new owners the Norlin Corporation, having spent thousands to develop a whole new bridge concept outside the Gibson design team. Unfortunately, also outside the design team they added a plastic ring around the guitar’s sound hole, which instantly turned off the players and killed sales. Munger picked up the little square guitar in the office of Gibson’s Kalamazoo plant while visiting the factory with John Entwistle of the Who. After walking through the factory collecting instruments Entwistle were invited into Carl’s office. A row of unfinished prototype instruments lined the wall. One instrument stood out. A little square guitar with the new Mark Series bridge. What in the heck is this. “Oh that, says Carl. The New York Norlin guys discovered Ovation guitars (with a plastic back) and they instructed us to build them a prototype so they could evaluate the acoustical properties of plastic.” “I could see Carl was not comfortable telling this story, says Buck, these were his corporate bosses he was talking about and I was the corporate Artist Relations guy.” “Carl said he looked all over for something plastic like the back of a guitar and all he could come up with was this refrigerator vegetable drawer.” So the Gibson craftsmen, who had established the baseline for excellence in the guitar building business were forced to build a guitar on a refrigerator drawer. “I asked for it, and after all the Entwistle freebies I guess Carl was glad to get rid of it.”

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

Buck Munger w/ Pete Townshend\’s Guitar 1975

HOUSTON FEARLESS

I was now living the Large life. Handling talent, hanging with popstars and having my phone calls returned. My associations with Hendrix and the Who generated a multitude of opportunities to roll the musical dice and I knew I’d never get a better place at the table. With producers like Dave Hassinger (Stones), Terry Melc…her (Byrds) and Charlie Greene (Springfield) in and out of the Sunn office I had a variety of role models: Hassinger, the engineer, Doris Day’s golden son Terry and Charlie Greene, king of the street. Charlie was still basking in the glow of the Iron Butterfly, which had ushered in a whole new bag and generated so many sales that the RIAA had to create a new album award, called a “Platinum” record. Labels were throwing money at Charlie for acts and he was scrambling to find talent to fill the demand. The current LA Sunn demo band was a strong four-piece of nice young kids. Lead guitar, bass, drums and screaming Hammond B-3. (Vanilla Fudge meets the Grateful Dead). Bob Wall, the guitarist, sang lead and wrote most of the material, Harley Baker the organist was the volume hog, wild man, Joel Krasomil was Entwistle-steady and the band’s glue and the drummer Bill Combest played hard and looked exactly like Paul McCartney. Another set of Sinatra-lawyer management contracts and I was back in business. I shopped them to Charlie Greene who got them an album deal with Imperial. I would produce the album for Charlie’s York-Pala Productions in exchange for publishing. For the single we would cover a UK hit, “Race With The Devil.” I changed the named of the band to Houston Fearless, which came from a movie camera tripod manufacturer in west LA located right across the street from the Warehouse 9. Every night when I left the club with the Stillwaters, and drove past the sign, I thought what a great name for a band. Sunn had big plans for Houston Fearless. I reached out to the Hammond organ and Slingerland drum companies, pitched them my program and got them to agree to an endorsement deal with advertising, and tour support. A free organ and three sets of drums, and more importantly, two national advertising campaigns.

The WHO Sunn Advert

I was spending a lot of time with the Who. Of all Sunn’s acts, Pete and the lads worked hardest to promote the Sundholm brother’s little Oregon amplifier company. Before and after tours, the lads would set up camp at the Continental Hyatt House out on the Sunset Strip-shortly thereafter to be known forever as the Contine…ntal “Riot” House. When the Who were in town whole floors of the hotel would be set aside for the band and entourage. The hallways smelled funny and were jammed with beautiful Mods, Rockers and Flower People. We recorded some radio commercials with Pete & John marveling at the fact “even the Who” couldn’t destroy Sunn Amplifiers. It was true. The gear held up, and John Entwistle for one, thought it produced the best bass sound ever. I was getting closer to John, both through herding Keith and talking careers in the music business. There was a seismic power-shift taking place in the music industry at that time. Recording artists suddenly discovered all the real money was in music publishing and administering their own copyrights. All you needed was a file cabinet. John was a writer pushing to get the band to do his songs. John’s composition “Boris The Spider” was the most popular song with American audiences on the first tour. John knew there had to be room for more Entwistle tunes on the Who’s set list. John also knew of my independent producer aspirations and fed me tips on label changes and new talent. He pitched me songs and suggested names for my acts and told me the story about how he and Moon had been approached by Jimmy Page, when the Yardbirds broke up, and Page wanted John & Keith to leave the Who and join him and Jeff Beck in a new band. John said he and Keith talked about it and came to the conclusion it would go over “like a Led Zeppelin”, a name so catchy, Jimmy Page decided to keep it. The infrequent casual conversations with Jimi Hendrix had also became more and more about the music industry, how it operated and where does all that money go, anyway? Jimi was not a happy camper about his business dealings, and he didn’t try and keep it a secret.

I got off the plane in Nashville looking for my guide, Earl Owens. After all the emphasis on Hendrix, the Who and Cream, the marketing department decided Sunn could use some exposure in Country music. Through a dealer in Nashville, Charlie Louvin, who owned a unit, expressed an interest in an endorsement agreement. Charlie had been a member of the Grand Ol’ Opry since 1955 and a hit recording act with his brother Ira, as the Louvin Brothers, on over a dozen Capitol albums. Ira had been killed three years before in an automobile accident and Charlie was building a solo career touring through the Opry circuits in the south and midwest. It was a rainy Friday night in Nashville and as we were driving in from the airport, the Grand Ol’ Opry came on the air. Earl Owens, Charlie Louvin’s manager, dialed WSM in on the radio, as we drove toward the Ryman Auditorium. “Charlie might be comin’ on any minute here,” and sure enough there was Charlie Louvin loud and clear on the radio, “Howdy ya’ll, some band introductions and then, “And I’d like to welcome Buck Munger to Nashville from the Sunn Amplifier Company up in Oregon.” It was a real shock to hear my name over a car radio on the Grand Ol’ Opry. Earl smiled. These guys really knew how to promote. My tour of the Ryman Auditorium and backstage look at the Grand Ol’ Opry was illuminating. This was a live radio show with a cast of many. You had to know when you were on, and nail it when you got there. There were no retakes. The audience was exuberant. The parking lot was filled with out of state license plates. I could see a dozen musicians mingling around in the wings, but unlike any major rock-n-roll concert I had ever attended, I detected absolutely no stress in either the artists or the crew. Every rock performance had backstage high drama about something but not here. These people were complete professionals. I enjoyed my few days in Nashville. Earl Owens steered me from dawn to dawn and on my last night got me called up on stage to sit-in on drums. These guys really knew how to promote. In the morning, as we ate breakfast in the airport, Earl said he had a present for me from “The Sheriff”, who knew of my stint with the Phoenix PD. He produced a .38 snub-nosed Smith & Wesson, a box of shells and a State of Tennessee Deputy Sheriff’s badge. “You are duly sworn,” he said. “Oh, and here, try these, they’re what all the bus drivers use to stay awake,” as he handed me a plastic bottle described only as “uppers”. Because this was 1968, I had no trouble flying back to LA with the gun, badge and uppers in my briefcase.

The Louvin Brothers Video here;

The Louvin Brothers

I was having trouble keeping all the Sunn artists happy. The relationship with the Jimi Hendrix Experience was up and down. Noel Redding loved his Sunn gear and rarely missed a chance to talk it up in the music press. Jimi however was up and down. Giving Sunn one of the biggest engineering tips in its history, he informe…d them that the Coliseum PA head, at 120 watts RMS was a better guitar amplifier than the 100S at 60 watts RMS. There was a lot of confusion about power ratings about this time because the English marketed their amplifiers using Peak Power ratings whereas American manufacturers used RMS Power ratings. So, a British amp that was rated at 200 watts might actually be less powerful than an American amp at 60 watts. The 60 watt Sunn amps had a peak power of 250 watts. Unfortunately, most players couldn’t get their heads around this problem and approached it by simply opening it up all the way to see how loud it was. Sunn took Jimi seriously and introduced a 1000S guitar amp and a 2000S bass amp, both essentially revamped Coliseum power heads. The Sunn engineers also tried to outsmart Jimi with a little internal tweaking. As noted, Jimi turned the volume all the way up to ten to play. When the engineers did this at the factory it was like fingernails across a very loud blackboard. They heard the thing audio engineers loathe most; noise. How could Hendrix stand all that distortion? They solved the problem by adjusting the volume knob to read 10 when the amp was only really at 8, which, is about where the distortion started. To the engineers this was brilliant. Jimi could twist that knob wide-open to 10 and the unit would deliver a cleaner, more acceptable sound. I was there when Jimi got his new 1000S set-up. It took him about 30 seconds to figure out what was happening. Cleaner was not what Jimi was looking for. Note to the factory: “distortion” is no longer a bad word. This incident was reported extensively in Guitar Player magazine and reprinted in the liner notes of The Essential Jimi Hendrix. As it says in the liner notes: “Soon thereafter, Jimi went back to Marshalls”. And Spinal Tap turned it up to eleven.