Why Roger McGuinn Loves Rickenbacker Guitars: Unique Interview

Because the Byrds declared in 1967, if you wish to be a rock ‘n’ roll star, “Simply get an electrical guitar, then take a while and discover ways to play.”

For a lot of aspiring artists within the ’60s, the electrical guitar of selection was a Rickenbacker, which the Beatles popularized with their look on The Ed Sullivan Present. John Lennon had a Rickenbacker slung throughout his physique in 1964; George Harrison incessantly used one on tour, too, successfully cementing the Rickenbacker as the guitar for aspiring rockers. Since then, few devices have held such an iconic foothold within the historical past of rock music because the Rickenbacker guitar. It is immediately recognizable to seasoned musicians and informal followers, due to its distinct form and burning Fireglo end.

The Rickenbacker had an interesting historical past earlier than the Beatles, as chronicled in the lately launched e-book Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo by Martin and Paul Kelly. (The pair additionally authored 2010’s Fender: The Golden Age 1946-1970.) The evolution of the instrument, from preliminary design blueprints to its place on the worldwide rock ‘n’ roll stage, is chronicled contained in the e-book.

“Digital music and standard tradition developed concurrently and that’s one thing that has all the time fascinated me — how expertise enabled musicians and the way the musicians helped to drive that expertise ahead,” Martin Kelly tells UCR. “It modified our world. Cramming 90 years of historical past right into a 330-page e-book was actually a problem, however I’m happy with the way it turned out.”

Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo additionally consists of sections dedicated to artists who introduced the sight and sound of Rickenbackers to the wider public, like Lennon and Harrison, but in addition Tom Petty, Paul Weller, Susanna Hoffs, Johnny Marr, Geddy Lee, Peter Buck and in all probability the instrument’s greatest fan, Roger McGuinn. The Byrds co-founder first noticed Rickenbackers utilized by the Beatles in A Exhausting Day’s Night time. He’d seen the film with his bandmates, all of whom grew to become enamored with the thought of changing into bona fide rock ‘n’ roll musicians.

“Once we got here out of the theater, David Crosby was swinging round a light-weight pole like Gene Kelly in Singin’ within the Rain saying, ‘That is what I wanna do, that is nice!’” McGuinn remembers in the e-book. On the time, Gibson and Fender had been the preferred manufacturers obtainable; Rickenbacker was nonetheless pretty obscure, however Harrison’s 12-string, specifically, caught McGuinn’s consideration. “George used it in a extremely cool approach – he performed melody traces up and down the G string. I believed that was actually efficient, an incredible sound.”

Watch the Beatles Carry out ‘A Exhausting Day’s Night time’ 

McGuinn traded a few different guitars for his first Rickenbacker and he was smitten from the get-go. “Tim Dixon, our first supervisor requested me to explain the sound of it,” McGuinn tells UCR. “And I mentioned it is like a uranium isotope in a ball of butterscotch.”

With McGuinn’s assist, the guitar went from a reasonably obscure American model to a coveted instrument worldwide. McGuinn incessantly used his 12-string Rickenbacker on Byrds songs, lending an air of sunshine, ethereal appeal to classics like “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Eight Miles Excessive” and “Flip! Flip! Flip!” Inside a couple of years, it will be tough to detach the sound of Laurel Canyon folks rock from the jangle of a 12-string Rickenbacker.

The Beatles’ affect would come full circle in 1965. Harrison’s Rubber Soul observe “If I Wanted Somebody” was, as McGuinn was made conscious by Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, immediately impressed by the Byrds’ “The Bells of Rhymney.”

“All of us lived in Laurel Canyon and [Taylor] came visiting to my home with this reel-to-reel tape … just a little three-inch reel of tape,” McGuinn remembers. “And he mentioned ‘George needs you to know that he wrote this tune primarily based in your lick in ‘Bells of Rhymney.” … I could not consider it. It was such an honor.”

Take heed to the Byrds’ ‘The Bells of Rhymney’

Years later, the pair would spend time collectively at Harrison’s Friar Park property, the place Harrison introduced out the identical Rickenbacker he used on A Exhausting Day’s Night time.

In plenty of methods, Kelly says, the visibility of the Rickenbacker – on TV or well-known album covers, like Petty’s Rattling the Torpedoes — is a big motive the instrument has caught round. “Participant affiliation has been an enormous a part of Rickenbacker’s success and longevity. In terms of rock ’n’ roll and popular culture, picture is every part,” he says, noting that after the Beatles’ look on The Ed Sullivan Present, Rickenbacker CEO F.C. Corridor was savvy sufficient to journey to New York to fulfill the band and provide them with extra devices.

“[McGuinn] was the primary American participant to actually put Rickenbacker on the map, and his endorsement result in Mike Campbell and Tom Petty selecting Ricks,” Kelly says. “The baton nonetheless will get handed on from the likes of Radiohead to youthful gamers like Laura Jane Grace from In opposition to Me!”

For guitar aficionados, there’s loads of technical discuss in Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo, however the e-book is not only for gear geeks. “You don’t have to be a painter to understand artwork, and also you don’t have to be a guitarist to benefit from the Rickenbacker e-book,” Kelly notes. “As objects, Rickenbacker guitars are artistic endeavors, however the e-book is as a lot in regards to the music and the musicians who performed them because the guitars themselves.”