Rock 'n' Roll in Orange County
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Over the years, Fender would go on to design many world-renowned guitars that became the favored models of such virtuosos as Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughn. And he did so all from his Orange County plant located in Fullerton, not far from where he was born.
Leo Fender passed away on March 21, 1991. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease for a number of years. At the time of his death, he was working on a guitar. Today, at the Fullerton Museum in Fullerton, California, there is a permanent exhibit in honor of the musical legend.
AFTERWORD
WITH JIM WASHBURN
Jim Washburn has covered music and popular culture for the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times, OC Weekly and other publications. He is the coauthor of two books, including a history of Martin Guitars and has curated several museum exhibits. His merit badge requirements include running a record store, being a roadie, being a radio DJ, public speaking and playing the role of Mr. Peanut at a supermarket grand reopening.
When I was growing up, I never really thought about the music that actually came out of Orange County where I lived. It was later, after I learned about the Chantays being from Orange County, that I got impressed. Or the Righteous Brothers. I heard all of those records on the radio growing up, but I had no idea that this is where they came from.
In the 1960s, Orange County was perceived as a very right wing, John Birch Society bedroom community, which was all true to a point. But in some ways, that didn’t work against music. I remember this congressman here back then talking about how rock ’n’ roll was a communist plot, but a lot of people still thought that if kids could find a way to turn a buck while playing music, then great. If you could make some money, that’s what it was about and so in that sense Orange County was even kind of inviting in terms of making music. The turning point was Vietnam in the late 1960s, when it became more of an “Us versus Them” situation and when the antiwar movement became more expressed in music. That’s when Orange County became a lot more repressive, at least musically. It became very hard to get booked in places, and that changed things a great deal.
But then things loosened up when everyone realized how much money there was to be made, and that’s when we started getting a lot of great national acts coming to play at the Anaheim Convention Center. The very first show I saw in Orange County was there, and it was Cream, with Spirit opening up. Cream was good, but I fell in love with Spirit and saw them a bunch of other times in Orange County, especially at the Golden Bear. I remember seeing Led Zeppelin at the Convention Center when I was about thirteen years old. I was there with a friend and we were looking very closely at what the guys were playing, noticing the Echo-plex that Jimmy Page had with the acoustic 360 that John Paul Jones was playing. This girl in front of us turned around and said, “You guys are like two little encyclopedias.” I thought she was saying we were cool. Later on I realized it was the exact opposite.
When the punk thing started to happen in Orange County [in the] early 1970s, it didn’t really work for me. With a lot of the bands, I felt like once you heard one song, you’d heard every song. So I was never really that into a lot of the bands around here that were classified as “punk.” Around that time, I was more interested in Elvis Costello, the Blasters, X and bands like that, that while part of what was called the “punk” movement, were just, I felt, better bands.
I’ve seen a lot of great shows in Orange County over the years at some special venues like Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim and Safari Sam’s in Huntington Beach. One show at Sam’s really stands out. I got them to book Jonathan Richman, and this was also when Ted Hawkins was an absolute unknown. He would be signed five years later and called the “Next Sam Cooke,” but back then, he was a struggling street musician in Venice. Jonathan liked him, as did I, and so he opened up the series of four shows. Ted had never played before a sit-down audience. Jonathan encouraged him, and he got up there and did his songs about being broke and homeless—people were in tears. I get tears just thinking about it.
Who really knows if the world would be any different if no music had ever come out of Orange County? But then again, when you think of the simple fact of the Rillera brothers playing at Disneyland in the early ’60s and thousands of kids hearing live electric guitar for the first time, who knows how many of those kids ran home and got out the Sears catalogue to buy a guitar?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Epting is an award-winning music and travel journalist and author of more than twenty pop-culture books, including Led Zeppelin Crashed Here: The Locations of America’s Rock and Roll Landmarks, Roadside Baseball and James Dean Died Here. He writes extensively about music for a variety of outlets, including Loudwire and Ultimate Classic Rock. He recently completed writing a memoir with Phil Collen from Def Leppard and, as of this writing, is starting a new memoir project with singer/songwriter John Oates. Originally from New York, Chris lives in Huntington Beach with his wife and two children. Visit www.chrisepting.com for more information, or follow Chris on Twitter: @chrisepting.
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