masterpei

audio sucks pretty much, but, that guitar…

Fifty-Five years ago this week on November 1, 1962, an Epiphone ES-230TD hollowbody archtop, also known as a Casino, with the serial number of #84075, rolled off the assembly line at the Gibson & Epiphone factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan and was placed in a standard-issue black particle wood case. From there, #84075 was put on a truck for a roughly 12-hour drive along Interstate 80 East to its next destination, a shipping port in Manhattan, where it was then put on a cargo ship bound for England (perhaps even docking in Liverpool).

After a five or six day voyage, #84075 was dutifully logged in and then put on a lorry where it was driven to the Rosetti distribution warehouse just outside of London. Once at Rosetti, #84075 –perhaps for the first time since being polished and tuned up in Michigan—was opened, inspected for cracks, strummed once or twice, and then put back in its case where it was next placed in the care of another lorry driver who drove #84075 to Charing Cross Road in the heart of London to its new temporary home, Sound City Music. There, the store proprietor, probably sporting thick glasses, a white dress shirt, and a thin black tie, took #84075 out of its case, noted the store’s new addition in his own inventory log, and tagged the guitar with its sales tag: 162 guineas or £172.20 English pounds (about $2,900 today). With little additional ceremony, #84075 then most likely took its place on the wall with other quite expensive instruments recently imported from America. By that time, the Christmas buying season had all but passed and in 1962, who could afford a nearly £200 guitar? Who even wanted an electric guitar in 1962?

So, for nearly two years, #84075 went un-sold. Meanwhile outside, a revolution of sorts was brewing as a new generation of teenagers, newly freed from a childhood of food rationing, were discovering pop music (along with espresso, sweets, and amphetamines) in the form of a new rock and roll group from Liverpool, the Beatles. Take a listen to one of their surviving broadcasts from the BBC’s Saturday Club radio hour. On stage, the lads were a loud, aggressive, guitar-driven band with tight harmonies and catchy songs. In interviews, they were funny, irreverent, and teased the staid BBC disc jockeys for being “posh.” In the two years #84075 had hung on the wall at Sound City, the Liverpool group had become a national sensation and in December 1964, had just returned from a world tour where they had topped the music charts in virtually every country on the planet.

So in December 1964, the band’s 22 year old stage bassist, multi-instrumentalist, and newly minted millionaire Paul McCartney came to visit Sound City seeking an electric guitar to use in the studio. Specifically, he wanted a guitar that would “feedback.” He had recently spent time with local blues legend and record collector John Mayall whose passion for guitar had inspired McCartney to bring some new sounds to the group.