by Ian Port
It made Carol Kaye feel more alive, too. In “Lipstick Traces” and other recordings, like Irma Thomas’s “Wish Someone Would Care,” it’s almost possible to hear how much the Fender changed her attitude toward playing in the studio—indeed, how much it changed her life. She loved the punchy sound of the Fender Precision, which she played with a heavy pick through a four-speaker Fender guitar amp. Working down in the lower registers, driving the bus, inventing complex routes through the simple pop songs of the time, brought Carol a joy that playing guitar in the studios never had.
The job of a session musician is to make songs into hits, and producers soon found that having Carol play bass increased a record’s chances of reaching the charts. She, in turn, recognized that the instrument she’d stumbled into playing would occupy an ever more important role in the music coming through the LA studios. She changed her listing in the local musicians’ union directory, putting her name under “Fender bass” as well as guitar, but word spread organically through the recording community that she was available for dates on the instrument and had a powerful new style. Brian Wilson, who’d chosen Carol to play guitar on a few early Beach Boys recordings, took note. A bass player himself, and an acolyte of Phil Spector’s, he wanted to work with someone who could execute his very specific vision of the instrument’s role.
Soon Carol was the first bass player many Los Angeles producers would call for a recording session. After a fellow bass pro left to direct music on a TV show, Carol got even more work. In 1964, she started earning $104 per three-hour session, an astronomical sum at a time when gas was 30 cents a gallon, her mortgage $233 a month. The money she was earning made it possible to hire a live-in nanny to care for her kids and the house she now owned on a quiet corner in Toluca Lake. With no more prejudice to accommodate from a husband—she’d left that abusive spouse late the previous year—Carol Kaye was free to lay down all the Fender bass grooves the Hollywood studios wanted. She enjoyed playing music again, and she was changing the sound and structure of it with each new session. Her main problem now was getting enough sleep.
31.
“IT’S A RICKENBACKER”
SANTA ANA AND NEW YORK CITY, NOVEMBER 1963–FEBRUARY 1964
The photograph reached Francis Carey Hall in the fall of 1963—a letter from across the world that would change his life, and the story of the electric guitar, forever. In the eight years since Leo Fender and Don Randall had severed their relationship with him, furious over his purchase of the factory that produced Rickenbacker guitars, Hall had utterly modernized the brand, shifting the Rickenbacker line from electric steel guitars to electric standard models. He’d set technical specifications on new instruments himself, had hired designers and luthiers who saw to it that Rickenbacker offered some of the most striking body shapes in the industry.
It was those unmistakable outlines—quirky, asymmetrical, half art deco and half atomic age—that Hall saw in the photograph he received in November 1963. The black-and-white image, cut out of an English newspaper, showed three male musicians in identical collarless jackets and shirts. Their band was just a specter in the States then, an oddity creeping into news stories from across the Atlantic. Adults at NBC News and the New York Times were quizzically reporting a new obsession among British teenagers, something about musical bugs—handsome insects who caused screaming fits, near-riots, ridiculous holdups at airports. Who had “pudding-bowl haircuts.” In America, Capitol Records had done its best to ignore them, refusing to issue music its British parent company, EMI, found so successful at home.
But there they were: the Beatles—three of them, anyway—in the picture on F. C. Hall’s desk. The only visible head belonged to the drummer, and was turned to show just a shaggy brown scalp. The other two figures consisted of merely shoulders and chests—but those were all that mattered, because in front of them hung Hall’s own Rickenbacker electric guitars.
The cover letter from the company’s London distributor ran just two sentences: “This shows both the Rickenbacker’s [sic] used by the group I mentioned to you,” Roy Morris wrote. “We’ll need samples of both these models, please.” His clear urgency was cloaked in British understatement. But how, knowing nothing about this group or the tsunami it was causing in England, could Hall have grasped that?
By late December, Morris showed even more excitement. “We think it would be an excellent idea if you, as the manufacturer of Rickenbacker guitars, were to contact The Beatles’ manager and offer them a certain amount of American publicity on their forthcoming visit to the States,” he wrote to Hall. Three days later, Capitol Records at last issued the single “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” accompanied by a massive promotional campaign, and Beatlemania began in the United States. It reached even a middle-aged businessman in Orange County who’d seemed, to Leo Fender and Don Randall, about as dynamic as a church pew.
By January, Hall was practically chirping to his best salesman: “Buck, this is the hottest group in the world today as they have the two top records by popular poll in Europe; and, in addition, they have the two top LP albums for the same territory . . . If the boys are as popular in the United States as they are now in Britain, it would be impossible for us to begin to make enough guitars to supply the demands.”
The salesman, Harold Buckner, wrote back in agreement. “To keep them on Rickenbacker would prove a promotion so big that it could not be measured in dollars and cents,” he wrote. “But watch out for those Fender promoters, or they will have them all using Jaguars and Piggy-backs (and don’t say I didn’t warn you).”
Hall followed his distributor’s advice and arranged a meeting with the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, during the band’s upcoming visit to New York. Rickenbacker’s owner was deeply worried, however, that he might not be the only guitar maker seeking to win their favor. “Please do not mention [the meeting] to a soul,” Hall wrote to Buckner, “as I do not want our competition to know I will be in New York while they are there.”
A few weeks later, five thousand young people howled into an iron February wind while the bugs scampered off a Pan-American flight and onto the tarmac of the newly named John F. Kennedy International Airport. These greeters were the fiercest of the new fans, a mere drop in what would become, two nights later, an ocean of seventy-three million—setting a record for American television, and carving the name of The Ed Sullivan Show into history’s eternal slate.
Everything began to change the instant a TV camera panned across the screamers in the Ed Sullivan audience and revealed the four bugs onstage. The first thing heard (besides the screams themselves) was those guitars: not one but three, if you counted that odd-looking electric bass. All held by mop-headed boys in suits. What was this? How was this? There were only four of them, smiling as they stirred up a racket that seemed at once familiar and exotic, cheerful and brusque, friendly but also vaguely threatening. They wanted to hold your hand. You could take that as bubblegum, but underneath, the songs carried a toughness largely absent from the pop landscape. There was nothing in the music to soften the rasp in those voices, the grit of those electric guitars, no tinkling piano or jazzy saxophone or easygoing strings.
The closest thing America had to this were the Beach Boys, who offered lush four-part harmonies atop their undercarriage of rock ’n’ roll. Even counting their own simpler harmonies, these Brits made no similar accommodation. The Beach Boys were a vocal group; the Beatles—that ridiculous name—were a guitar band. In the two minutes and twenty-five seconds it took to deliver “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to television screens nationwide, pop in America became rhythm and blues, and rhythm and blues—or at least the closest thing to it that a quartet of Liverpudlians could muster—once again became pop.
Theirs was actually the sound of America, disguised just enough to seem foreign. English wit expressing Presleyan rebellion. English accents singing Buddy Holly’s vocal harmonies. English-cut suits on a group formatted like Holly’s Crickets. Only the haircuts and the accents—an
d some of the songs—wholly belonged to the Beatles. The rest of the tunes came from America. Delivering those familiar Chuck Berry riffs, however, were instruments largely unfamiliar to the American public.
Stateside teens had seen Stratocasters and Precision Basses on Ed Sullivan; they’d thumbed past Gibsons on the covers of their parents’ jazz records. But what were these things in the arms of the Beatles? Paul McCartney plunked an electric bass the shape of a viola, made by a German company called Hofner. George Harrison that night chose not his Rickenbacker, but a guitar from the Gretsch company out of New York called the Country Gentleman. (Three years earlier, in Hamburg, he’d meant to buy a Stratocaster, but another expat Brit beat him to the only one for sale.) Ringo’s drums were made by Ludwig (from Chicago, not Frankfurt); the amplifiers were English prototypes bearing the name Vox. Much of this was new kit to American eyes.
Leo Fender and Don Randall hadn’t seen many of the Beatles’ instruments, either—save for one. Noticing it as the Beatles in three minutes conquered America, Randall must have shuddered. Leo would have, too, if he’d bothered to watch. On Ed Sullivan, and soon everywhere else, John Lennon held a bright-sounding electric guitar with a graceful silhouette and three pickups, a striking instrument that had originated all the way back in Southern California. The guitar Lennon brought across the Atlantic to change the music of the United States was a Model 325 from Rickenbacker. Randall could only watch as an instrument produced by his and Leo’s former partner rocked on the shoulders of the lead Beatle. It would become, almost overnight, the most desired electric guitar in the world. In those three minutes of black-and-white television, the near-hegemony Fender had enjoyed in early 1960s rock ’n’ roll came crashing to an end. What the kids wanted now—perhaps would want evermore—was what the Beatles had. February 9, 1964, the day of the Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan, would prove a great day for F. C. Hall and Rickenbacker. For Hall’s crosstown rivals, the British rockers’ television appearance was the first portent in years that Fender’s lofty position in the world of electric guitars might not always be so assured.
Meanwhile, Hall himself was there behind the scenes, fussily preparing for his meeting with the Beatles by arranging a miniature trade show inside his suite at the Savoy Hotel. He was willing to give the group almost anything they wanted. Amid the torrent of the band’s first days in the States, after their first rehearsal for The Ed Sullivan Show, Epstein kept the appointment. On February 8, the manager shuttled the Beatles out of the Plaza Hotel—it was thronged by fans even before their arrival—and guided them across a corner of Central Park to Hall’s nearby hotel. George Harrison, ill with the flu, stayed behind.
The Beatles arrived at the Savoy to find a spread of Rickenbacker models, along with a pro musician, Toots Thielemans, whom Hall had brought to demonstrate the instruments. Two electric guitars and an electric bass, representing the company’s finest creations, stood on stands in the room. Paul McCartney tried out the electric bass. He may have found it too heavy compared to his viola-shaped Hofner, or Hall may have brought a right-handed model, not realizing McCartney played left-handed. In any case, at the meeting, McCartney refused the Rickenbacker four-string.
One of the guitars Hall showed off was an experimental new model. Folk players had long used twelve-string acoustic guitars, whose additional six strings were tuned an octave higher than the originals to give the instrument a chiming, airy quality. Meanwhile, among Rickenbacker’s specialties were so-called semihollow guitars, hybrid models that provided a woody warmth while resisting feedback better than a full acoustic. (With their minuscule chambers, they were still dependent on amplification, but had a lighter sound than a solid-body.) Semihollow six-string guitars were common, as were fully acoustic twelve-strings. But at the Savoy, there stood a semihollow, electrified twelve-string, finished in an incandescent red fade—a Rickenbacker prototype that had yet to reach the market.
Knowing his bandmate’s interest in twelve-string guitars, John said he wanted George to try it. But of course, flu-stricken George wasn’t present. Hall, eager to accommodate, packed up the guitar, and the whole entourage—Hall, the Beatles, Epstein, and perhaps even Thielemans—put on their coats and snuck across Central Park back to the Plaza and George’s room.
The Beatles and their retinue had taken over the entire twelfth floor of the hotel, and its pillowy carpets and gilded chandeliers had become the backdrop for a 24/7 chaos machine. The band members were staying in a series of interconnected suites, with Epstein off by himself on the far side of the building, shielded from sneaking fans and pushy DJs. The group found George, laid low by the flu, lying in bed under the covers, listening to the radio. He’d just started strumming chords on the new Rickenbacker twelve-string when a radio station, besieged by teenage listeners, called his room. Harrison answered. When the DJ asked what he was doing, he explained on air that he was trying out a new guitar. The voice on the other end asked if he liked it.
“Yes,” George said dryly. “It’s a Rickenbacker.” The radio station offered to buy it for him, but Hall insisted on giving it to Harrison free of charge.
Lennon was then relying on the 1958 Rickenbacker Model 325 he’d been scuffing and strumming since the Beatles’ hardscrabble Hamburg days. Its original natural wood color had been refinished black. At the Plaza, Hall arranged to get John a replacement for the instrument, a new, black Model 325, with three pickups and a white pickguard. It would be shipped to him later in the month, while the Beatles were in Miami.
So later that afternoon, as Hall strolled back through the winter-barren corner of Central Park that separated his hotel from the Plaza, he must have felt satisfied. He’d given the Beatles two new Rickenbacker guitars, including a prototype of a new model. But even he probably couldn’t have understood the magnitude of what he’d accomplished. Lennon’s new Model 325 would remain with the Beatle through the group’s long career, becoming the guitar with which he was most closely associated. Harrison would begin using his red twelve-string immediately. Recording at Abbey Road studios in London later that year, he’d reach for it to play the iconic opening chord (and every other subsequent one) of a new song called “A Hard Day’s Night.”
Thus, in only an hour or two with the Beatles, F. C. Hall had outfitted George and John with what would become their most iconic set of guitars, had ensured that the Beatles-Rickenbacker link would endure for decades. Before long, Rickenbacker’s London distributor would be advertising some of the company’s models as “Beatle backers.” As Hall’s firm rode the wave of Beatlemania sweeping the world, he would be forced to radically expand his little Rickenbacker factory in Santa Ana. It stood just a few miles from the wholesale radio parts store Hall still owned, the store from which onetime stock boy Don Randall had sold the very first Fender instruments.
32.
“I’D BROKEN MY CARDINAL RULE”
NEW YORK AND FULLERTON, 1964
The arrival of the Beatles transformed the American music industry. The band tore open the market for electric guitars, and launched formerly secondary players like Rickenbacker and Gretsch to new prominence. For Don Randall, who watched as his local rival experienced a sudden onslaught of new business, the situation looked like an emergency. Beatlemania threatened to consume anything and everything having to do with music in America. Beatles gear was the fashion of the day, and legions of copycat bands began appearing overnight. As ever, kids wanted to play what their heroes played. Fender could not be left out. Randall knew he must try to get his equipment into the hands of these new arrivals, whatever it took.
In the early months of 1964, though, Don Randall had another major challenge before him. Leo Fender, the partner with whom he hadn’t seen eye to eye in years, had declared that he was finished with their companies. Leo wanted to sell Fender off, to get out of it entirely.
Leo firmly believed that his strep infection, from which he’d been suffering for nearly a decade, was going to kill him. He saw a doctor
several times a year for shots of penicillin or streptomycin, but the medications only helped in the short term. The infection, centered in his sinuses, leaked fluid all down the back of his throat, especially in cold weather. His insides burned with a soreness that no remedy could ease. Having tried seemingly endless fixes—new diets, juices, doctors, stress relief via boating—Leo gloomily assumed that strep would soon end him completely. In his own mind, he was a worn-out tool, a machine that would soon have no more utility to offer.
Looking at his company, now spread across twenty-seven buildings in Fullerton and Anaheim, Leo could hardly recognize it. Hundreds of cars clogged the parking lot each day. Daily operations proved so massive, so absorbing, that Leo couldn’t, as he wanted, completely dedicate himself to the task of research and development. And when he did, his efforts didn’t have the world-rearranging effects they’d once had. After introducing the Jazz Bass, an updated and modified Precision Bass, in 1960, Fender’s instrumental innovations often faltered. The six-string bass Leo invented to rival Danelectro’s Longhorn missed the point of its cheaper and simpler competitor. The design of his latest, supposedly high-end guitar, the Jaguar, also got bogged down in needless frills. Of late, the only truly great new Fender design was the black-panel amplifier series, including the Twin Reverb and the Deluxe Reverb, which would rank among the most iconic and popular guitar amplifiers ever made.
Fullerton employees had formed a union to represent themselves back in the 1950s, and relations between the hundreds of union members and the ten or so managers had long been amicable. The employees were paid on an incentive system that allowed them ample freedom and comfortable pay. By the early 1960s, however, new employees rekindled talks of an outside union. Forrest White strongly discouraged the effort, posting an antiunion screed on a company bulletin board. Like Leo, he was a fiscal conservative who loathed taxes and any other perceived interference in business. Leo left the union issue to White to deal with, but he seems to have regarded it as yet another sign that the company he’d built had grown far too large.