Racing To A Red Light

Interesting timing on a number of fronts…chiefly being that a book about this very subject is being released shortly.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve really dove into all the various design details that Leo Fender engineered in the 1950′s, and my favorite parts have been talking about the designs in a historical context.  Design features like the foam mute on the P-Bass “ashtray” that helped combat issues with primitive amplification.

And while I’ve alluded to things like “there not being third party parts manufacturers at the time,” I never really touched on the industry in general.  Given that some of what I’ve written the past few weeks might be fresh in the memory, it’s a good time to look at the two titans of the guitar world, and how things came to be.

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The top picture is the two most famous electric guitar models ever made.  On the left, a reissue 1957 Gibson Les Paul “Goldtop.”  On the right, a reissue 1957 Fender Stratocaster.  The bottom picture is the third most famous electric guitar model, an original 1952 Fender Telecaster.

Fun exercise time…I’m going to take every guitar player I mentioned in my Greatest Guitarist Series, and mark if they primarily played one of these three models.  I’m going to strike any classical musicians, (non-fusion) jazz musicians, acoustic-primary guitarists and guitarists who made their impact before the Korean War.

Jimi Hendrix STRAT
Eddie Van Halen *MODIFIED STRAT
SRV STRAT
Andres Segovia
John McLaughlin
Jimmy Page LES PAUL
Eric Clapton STRAT(also played Les Pauls)
David Gilmour STRAT(has played all 3)
Steve Vai
Danny Gatton TELE (has played all 3)
Julian Bream
Chet Atkins
Pat Metheny
Duane Allman LES PAUL 
Les Paul LES PAUL
Ry Cooder STRAT(has played all 3)
Yngwie Malmsteen STRAT
Keith RichardsTELE (has played all 3)
Wes Montgomery
Tony Iommi
BB King
Charlie Christian
John Petrucci
PrinceTELE
James Hetfield
John JorgensonTELE
Chuck Berry (has played Les Pauls and Teles…famous for ES-335)
Robert Johnson
Steve Howe  (has played Les Pauls and Teles…famous for ES-175)
Joe Pass
Al DiMeola LES PAUL
Django Reinhardt
James BurtonTELE
Brian May
Jerry Garcia (has played Strats and Les Pauls)
Paco de Lucia
Paul Gilbert
Eric Johnson STRAT (has played all 3)
Brent MasonTELE
Shawn Lane 
Muddy WatersTELE
Buckethead
Billy GibbonsLES PAUL (also plays Teles) 
Slash LES PAUL
Larry Carlton (has played all 3, but his nickname was Mr. 335)
Frank ZappaSTRAT (has also played Les Pauls)
Christopher Parkening
Marty Friedman
Robben FordTELE (has played all 3)
Jeff BeckSTRAT (has played all 3)
Buddy Guy STRAT
Lowell George STRAT
Mark KnopflerSTRAT(has played all 3)
Ritchie Blackmore STRAT
Elmore JamesLES PAUL
John Lee Hooker
Joe Satriani
Woody Guthrie
Hank MarvinSTRAT
Kirk Hammett
Dimebag Darrell
Jerry Reed TELE

That is a decent representative list of great guitar players, and those three models…the Fender Telecaster, Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul…account for the easy majority.  And even if a guitarist wasn’t known for one, they likely recorded with one at some point in their careers.

It’s easy to know where to attribute Fender’s success…Leo Fender was an engineering genius.  Gibson, however, had an established reputation long before they ventured into the solid-body world…but they wouldn’t have made that transition if not for Les Paul.

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The State of Things Today

Before we get into the feud, it’s probably a good idea to get to know where each of these two companies are today.  The companies we’re going to talk about in 1952 bear little resemblance to each in the modern era, having both been passed from numerous ownership groups.

I’ve talked a lot about Leo Fender’s ouster at the hands of CBS…which led to the company’s darkest period which took more than a decade to dig out of.  CBS themselves were ousted by a group of Fender employees in 1985, and the company they started (they couldn’t use the original facilities) now boasts annual revenues well over $500 million.

It’s reflected by the company’s offerings.  Never attempting to be high-end our boutique, Fender’s brilliant branding allowed them to manufacture the same instruments that Leo designed, keeping costs low and making it easy to freshen up long-standing iconic models.

Gibson on the other hand, filed for bankruptcy last year.  Long derided for resting on the laurels of their name, Gibson is another victim of predatory private equity…being used merely as a conduit to acquire more debt.  Bad news intensifies…they’re also responsible for having strict international regulation regarding the types of wood used.  Gibson got in deep doo doo for using illegally farmed woods, and varieties of woods that had been prohibited from foresting due to excessive use (Brazilian rosewood).

Their offerings were staid and stale.  Any new innovations were seen by the guitar market as clumsy and hideous.  And, making things worse, the nature of their guitars’ construction is much more expensive and labor-intensive than Fender’s ever could be.

Fender will live to see the next 50 years.  Gibson likely will not…certainly not under this ownership group.

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This is Les Paul holding his prototype solid-bodied electric guitar, nicknamed “The Log.”  Yes, it looks ridiculous.  No, another solid-bodied electric guitar did not exist at the time.

Les Paul had a longstanding relationship with Gibson.  Gibson was good to him.  Being a jazz guitarist, the whole Gibson lineup was perfect for Les, and they gave him ample ear to chew with all his (at the time) crazy ideas.  It was a great partnership.

Me being a Fender fanboy and my comments regarding their business should by no means suggest that I’m not a fan of Gibson guitars.  I absolutely love them, especially the Les Paul model.  They feel like the guitar version of driving a Cadillac…smooth, comfortable, refined, classy.

But, like I said above, Gibson was a long established company even in the late 1940′s.  They didn’t make gimmicks.  They made works of art out of the finest woods that produced these beautiful, natural, organic tones.  Even their electric hollow-body models replicated an acoustic tone as close as possible.  Philosophically, it was going to take something major to get Gibson to budge.

“If you don’t do something, Fender is going to rule the world.”

-Les Paul

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When Les Paul received Leo Fender’s prototype in 1951, he knew what it meant.

Sure, it was a gift in the sense that Leo Fender wanted him to have that instrument, but it wasn’t just an instrument, it was an overture.  Gibson was a guitar behemoth that dominated an industry that was teetering on the edge of being revolutionized.  Fender was that metaphorical disruptor.  Both were already well aware of each other.

Fender wanted Les Paul on board, plain and simple.  They were hardly even a real company at that point, and getting someone of Les Paul’s status on their roster would be a coup of epic proportions.  From a marketing and branding perspective, Les Paul was a guitarist that could’ve established their brand before they even released a product catalog.

But that wasn’t it.

Les Paul’s reputation for having prototype solid-bodied guitars had created waves.  He was a recording maven, had a giant audience, and whether Gibson wanted him to or not, exposed people to the sounds possible with a solid-bodied guitar.  Leo Fender wasn’t a musician, but he was making the same type of noise within in the industry.

Fender sent out one of his right-hand men who reported back to him on the gift-giving.  That dude thought Les Paul was kind of an egotistical dude and didn’t think much of it.  Les Paul himself actually did like the instrument a lot…a huge amount given what he said to Gibson execs…and as the two guys who were leading the solid-bodied guitar revolution, there was equal parts kinship and rivalry.

*Les Paul with Leo Fender’s gift…a 1951 “Nocaster”…called that because Fender hadn’t come up with the name Telecaster yet, and there was no model under the Fender logo.

I don’t think it needs to be said that Les Paul ended up staying at Gibson.

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In 1952, Gibson released their first solid-bodied model that had Les Paul’s name on it.  It would define their company.  Also in 1952, Leo Fender released the Telecaster (and Precision Bass), the genesis of the company that would grow into the largest guitar manufacturer in the world.

The sheer amount of music that’s been recorded using Les Pauls and Telecasters (as well as the Strat) is simply mind-boggling.  It’s almost impossible to quantify.

While the electric guitar industry might be well past the point of peaking, they’re still a major part of American culture.  Something that’s come to define us internationally as much as baseball or apple pie.  And it’s these three models from Fender and Gibson that so many people are able to instantly identify, that have recorded so much iconic music, that will live on well into the future like a Stradivarius violin or Steinway piano.

And for a brief period in the early 1950′s, it almost came to be that the two most prominent figures in the modern electric guitar world joined forces.  Almost.  It’s a shame they didn’t…might have been a good thing, given that each was given full creative control without the other’s presence…but the modern musical world was largely impacted by these two guys tinkering around in their basements.

It’s a cool story and easy to let your imagination run wild about what they could have done together.