When I was 16 I took up playing guitar and really got into it. Not just playing the guitar, but I also started working as a roadie for a local band from Arnhem. My career in the music industry eventually didn’t take off, and being an internal audit consultant nowadays, I guess I took a different turn somewhere. But nevertheless I never lost my interest in music and everything related to music.
I have always read a lot of (auto)biographies of musicians (Beastie Boys, Motley Crue, Frank Zappa, Henry Rollins), but now it was time for something different.
Therefore I recently picked up the book ” The Birth of Loud” by Ian S. Port about the guitar pioneering rivalry that shaped rock and roll. Being familiar with brandnames like Fender and Gibson, I took up this book to get to know more about the history of the guitar.
The book focuses on the early days of the life of Leo Fender who founded the Fender guitar company known for its Fender Stratocaster and the life of Les Paul who was the inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul guitar.
All these stories about how it all got started are really well documented and researched , but the book doesn’t feel like a history book. The stories are very well written and it is fun to read.
Besides the story of how the electric guitar was developed, the book also dives into music history and how the electric guitar played his or her role in it. With great stories about the Beatles, Eric Clapton and Carol Kaye.
Especially the story of Carol Kaye is an interesting one, if you want to know more about it, start with this clip from Top 2000 a gogo.
This book got me so excited again about music and especially playing music, that I bought me a really nice Fender Precision bass. Rock on!
