"And he said 'George wants you to know that he wrote this song based on your lick in 'Bells of Rhymney.''. a little three-inch reel of tape," McGuinn remembers. "We all lived in Laurel Canyon and came over to my house with this reel-to-reel tape. Harrison's Rubber Soul track "If I Needed Someone" was, as McGuinn was made aware by Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, directly inspired by the Byrds' "The Bells of Rhymney." The Beatles' influence would come full circle in 1965. Tambourine Man," " Eight Miles High" and " Turn! Turn! Turn!" Within a few years, it would be difficult to detach the sound of Laurel Canyon folk rock from the jangle of a 12-string Rickenbacker. McGuinn frequently used his 12-string Rickenbacker on Byrds songs, lending an air of light, airy charm to classics like " Mr. With McGuinn's help, the guitar went from a fairly obscure American brand to a coveted instrument worldwide. "And I said it's like a uranium isotope in a ball of butterscotch." "Tim Dixon, our first manager asked me to describe the sound of it," McGuinn tells UCR. McGuinn traded a couple of other guitars for his first Rickenbacker and he was smitten from the get-go. Watch the Beatles Perform 'A Hard Day's Night' I thought that was really effective, a great sound." "George used it in a really cool way - he played melody lines up and down the G string. At the time, Gibson and Fender were the most popular brands available Rickenbacker was still fairly obscure, but Harrison's 12-string, in particular, caught McGuinn's attention. “When we came out of the theater, David Crosby was swinging around a light pole like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain saying, ‘This is what I wanna do, this is great!’" McGuinn recalls in the book. The Byrds co-founder first saw Rickenbackers used by the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night. He'd seen the movie with his bandmates, all of whom became enamored with the idea of becoming bona fide rock 'n' roll musicians. Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo also includes sections devoted to artists who brought the sight and sound of Rickenbackers to the wider public, like Lennon and Harrison, but also Tom Petty, Paul Weller, Susanna Hoffs, Johnny Marr, Geddy Lee, Peter Buck and probably the instrument's biggest fan, Roger McGuinn. Cramming 90 years of history into a 330-page book was certainly a challenge, but I’m pleased with how it turned out." "Electronic music and popular culture evolved simultaneously and that’s something that has always fascinated me - how technology enabled musicians and how the musicians helped to drive that technology forward," Martin Kelly tells UCR. (The pair also authored 2010's Fender: The Golden Age 1946-1970.) The evolution of the instrument, from initial design blueprints to its place on the international rock 'n' roll stage, is chronicled inside the book. The Rickenbacker had a fascinating history before the Beatles, as chronicled in the recently released book Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo by Martin and Paul Kelly.
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