The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll

The book combines the histories of multiple subjects, and topics, in an easy to read format. The author does an impressive job of keeping things flowing and never gets bogged down in minutia. Leo Fender, Les Paul and their creations are presented warts and all. It humanizes them and manages to keep an even bias towards both. Along the way some of the big, and lesser known, artists are woven into the tapestry of the story. A worthy read for any guitar player, historian or music afficiando. 5-stars.

Since the late sixties, I've owned four Fender Stratocasters. I played them through at least three different Fender Amps, too, and loved them all. I played a Les Paul, but, as many people in this book mention, it's very heavy. I did have an SG and liked it except that by the time I bought it, Gibson's vaunted workmanship was deteriorating. The book gives an overview of the music scene from the late 40's to about 1970 when most of the advances were made, and the personal anecdotes make it a fun read. The style is more workmanlike than lyrical, but Port's research is impressive. I didn't know that Fender was deeply involved in making pedal steel guitars for the country music performers long before he started experimenting with a solid-body standard guitar. His wife's job as a telephone operator actually kept the struggling business afloat until the Telecaster began to sell. I also didn't know that Paul Bigsby, Les Paul, and Leo Fender lived near each other and often hung out together, borrowing and building upon each other's ideas...until rivalry and jealousy made them accuse each other of stealing. Port himself points out that it's impossible to give one person, or even a small group credit for all the advances, but these men, along with many musicians who had specific demands for their performing gear, did most of the work. That said, the portraits painted of Fender and Paul show two men I'm glad I never really knew. Paul comes across as a selfish egomaniac (he and Colleen Summers, AKA Mary Ford, carried on a open affair for years, and Paul drove her to alcoholism with his drive to be a star). Fender was a brilliant but unschooled obsessive who drove his staff frantic because he kept tweaking his ideas so they couldn't market the products they advertised. The list of musicians who used both guitars would fill most of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I didn't know Buddy Holly tried a Les Paul first, but abandoned it for a Stratocaster because of its extreme weight. I was shocked to learn that the biggest year for Les Pauls (1959) only totaled about 650 sales. Eric Clapton popularized the guitar in the mid-sixties, but he was playing a Stratocaster by the time I saw him with Cream in 1968. The Gibson's humbucker pick-ups were better for players who wanted distortion, but Fender's single-coils could give a treble that could function as dental floss. The Gibson attracted jazz players and the Fender was popular with country musicians because of the tonal differences, but without both of them, who knows what popular music would have become from the mid-50s on? My biggest complaint about the book is the lack of pictures. The picture section is only 8 pages. Those pictures show several of the early (often NON-playing) members of Fender's team, but barely scratch the surface of important musicians whose stories are mentioned. The epilogue does a good job of putting everything in perspective.

I normally read a lot of historical non fiction, any interesting story line that makes me want to keep turning the pages. For over 50 years now , one of my other hobbies/passions has been guitar ( electric and acoustic ). That musical devotion began-haltingly and self taught-in the late 1960’s. So my “ timeline” in learning to play Gibson and Fender guitars and amps is similar to the events in this book. I was worried that is would be either a fluffy, light review of a lot of things I already knew, or a dry scholastic piece, or some combination of both. Turns out it is an incredibly well researched bit of musical history, put together in a way that moves the story line along beautifully, whether you know what happened next or not! If you happen to have ever handled the hardware that Les Paul or Leo Fender brought forth in those days, it adds an entirety new flavor to the delicious contents as the “Gear” evolved into what we use today. An easy, fun read, a surprising page turner, and a new permanent addition to my book shelf.

I enjoyed this book even though I was familiar with most of this material. It was well written and a good summation of the story.

This is not history. This is an adventure! Ian Port tells a story that never stops and never slows down. The development of the modern electric guitar is the development of our modern pop culture, pure and simple. And this is what good writing is made of: keen insight, an expert eye for the most telling details, revelatory anecdotes by the bushel, and the capacity to never take sides, to never slant the telling of events. Anyone who lived through the 1950s and 1960s will see their own experience reflected in the two men who became icons of electrified music. Port manages to show how their creations were twisted out of their hands by the next generation, how the instruments grew into icons all their own and changed the course of music to the present day. This book is as thorough as a guitar nerd would wish, but it never wallows in facts. The story moves at a rapid clip and the author is consistent in his nods to every important character, every breakthrough media appearance, and the effect they had on young music fans. Thanks to the internet, his reader can actually watch the very same appearances on e.g. Ed Sullivan or Ready Steady Go! to see for themselves what the hubbub was all about. Port's relative youth gives him an advantage here; he has the requisite distance to observe what is actually going on. And he is a very keen observer. This book is so good, I'm not just going to read it again ... I'm going to BUY it again!!

You don't have to be a guitar geek to love this book -- or even a hard-core rock fan. This is a thoroughly engaging ride through the through the 20th Century, from the dusty 20's to the mud of Woodstock, on a wave of music, passion, discovery, triumph, heartbreak and almost unfathomably well-researched visceral detail. It's not just Fender and Paul --though their stories pull you from one chapter to the next -- it's also pioneering women guitarists and bassists that I'd never heard of before, and I'll bet you haven't either. And it's a tale of imagination and invention and their intersection with -- and sometimes collision with -- barriers of technology and economics and race and gender. And it's not just the story he tells as he follows the trail of the progress and influence of the electric guitar on our music and our society, it's the beauty of the writing. Sometimes painstakingly detailed, sometimes lyrical, sometimes jarring, and sometimes ... just magical ... throwing you up against a sentence that forces you to stop, and behold it, and roll it around in your mind, and say "wow -- yes."

Guitar porn! Also an extremely excellent and interesting rendition on the history of music, it’s instruments and performers, as well as it’s cultural influences and nuances. I have received a novice’s education in one reading: a logistically pleasant introduction providing a rudimentary understanding of both the vast power of music in our time and the delicious intrigue of it’s evolution. I am no longer lost in time; I feel grounded in my own country’s history as told by the changing of it’s musical guards. Les Paul and Leo Fender seem to me now like beloved uncles, their lives so intimately described. This tailored temporal accounting of the musical greats we all know and love—their foibles, triumphs, & legacies—is immersive and captivating; grateful am I to have stumbled upon it! I recommend The Birth of Loud as a must-read to anyone interested in their own musical ancestry, as it spans that of us all. Thanks to Mr. Port for his unwavering diligence in completing such an ambitious and inspired endeavor-your work has fulfilled a shameful dearth in my repertoire of popular knowledge, and I will always be grateful! :)

A friend (that’s an amazing guitar player) recommended this book so I ordered it. Really a great read if you play guitar. And a good read if you’re not. Not a lot of photos but most I’d never seen before. I thought I knew about Fender, Gibson and Rickenbacker guitars - nope! Learned a lot of new (to me) information. Hard to put the book down once started.

Very well researched and interesting read that charts the roots and evolution of the electric guitar, and in particular the rivalry that existed from the 1950s between the Fender and Gibson guitar brands. It’s a very reader-friendly book, with each chapter length making it the perfect book to read at bedtime, and also each chapter delivering some great ‘nuggets’ of inside knowledge about both the instruments and the artists of the time. I learnt a lot, and for me this was genuinely a book that I kept picking up to read at every opportunity. Highly recommended!

The real history of guitar and the people who made it a cultural icon is presented is this book with such a “novel”way of writing.

エレキギターの双璧、フェンダー社とギブソン社を創設又は関わりのあったレオフェンダーとレスポールのお話。知らないことばかりで大変面白かったです。 レオは西海岸生まれ、内気で大学にすら進学させて貰えなかったラジオ／電気修理工。レスは東海岸生まれ、社交的でトップチャートを賑わせたギタリスト。レオのエレキギターのエンドースを期待されたのに、それを裏切ってギブソン社を焚き付けて自身の名を冠したソリッドギターを作らせたレス。対照的な二人の共通点が瀕死の重傷を負う経験というのも悲しいです。 ベース弾きとしては大音量と持ち運びを目的に開発された世界初のプレシジョンベースがジャズミュージシャンに受け入れられず、その為にジャズベースが生まれたという逸話が印象的でした。 後半は彼等のギターを愛したミュージシャン、音楽業界の変遷、2社の栄枯盛衰で、総花的とも言えますが全体としてよくバランスが取れています。

what a little gem, this book wins hands down for anyone who loves to learn about music heritage, my brothers birthday gift was a book he couldn't put down, easy to read, take anywhere commodity, printed with good text.

Bra om Leo