tagged w/ pete townshend
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The Washington Post...
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Bert Weedon, British guitarist whose how-to guide taught rock-and-roll royalty, dies at 91
By Matt Schudel, Saturday, April 21, 4:30 PM
Bert Weedon, a British guitarist whose popular “Play in a Day” instructional manual introduced a generation of rock-and-roll stars to the power of the guitar, died April 20 at his home in Beaconsfield, England. He was 91.
Friends confirmed his death to British news agencies but did not disclose the cause.
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PHOTO:
(Chris Ware/GETTY IMAGES) - From the archives: Popular English guitarist Bert Weedon at his home in Wembley, chilling out on the floor with his guitar lying beside him.
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Long before he gained fame as the author of a top-selling guide to the guitar, Mr. Weedon was known as a versatile performer who could play virtually any style of music at a glance. He performed with such renowned jazz artists as Stephane Grappelli and George Shearing, accompanied singers Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Judy Garland, and was a regular on BBC broadcasts in the 1940s and 1950s.
Mr. Weedon was an early rock-and-roll guitar star in Britain in the late 1950s, with a series of instrumental hits that included “Guitar Boogie Shuffle,” “Apache” and “Nashville Boogie.” But when his instructional book was first published in 1957, he became something of a spiritual godfather to a generation of would-be guitar heroes.
Its title — “Play in a Day” — offered the hope of instant musical gratification. The lessons began at the most basic level, with an illustration of how to hold a guitar. Mr. Weedon taught novices how to get through many rock-and-roll tunes with three basic chords and included pointers on how to play a few basic tunes.
His guide, which was updated through the 1980s, sold millions of copies, leading Britain’s Independent newspaper to call Mr. Weedon “the man who taught the world to play the guitar.”
Many top rock stars, including Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Keith Richards, the Who’s Pete Townshend and three of the Beatles — George Harrison, John Lennon and Paul McCartney — studied Mr. Weedon’s book.
“I like to think that I’ve helped in some way,” Mr. Weedon said in 1997, “to make the guitar the most popular instrument in the world.”
Herbert Maurice Weedon was born in London on May 10, 1920. His father was a subway driver and amateur singer.
Mr. Weedon was 12 when he bought a secondhand guitar. He wanted to learn to play jazz, but his first teacher — an elderly music-shop owner — refused to teach him anything but classical music.
“He picked up his guitar and played Chopin’s Prelude No. 7,” Mr. Weedon told London’s Daily Mail newspaper in 1995. “I had never heard anything so beautiful in my life. I sat transfixed and he said: ‘That’s what I’m going to teach you.’ And I said: ‘Yes, please.’ ”
By 14, Mr. Weedon was performing in dance bands. He was a featured soloist before World War II.
He volunteered with rescue units during the London bombing blitz of World War II and, after the war, replaced Django Reinhardt in a group led by Grappelli, a prominent jazz violinist.
As a member of a BBC band in the 1950s, he was known for his ability to sight-read any style of music from jazz to classical to flamenco to rock. He was the host of children’s television shows and performed with many acclaimed singers, including Sinatra.
“He asked me if I’d like to go and play guitar in America,” Mr. Weedon recalled in 1995. “He was the greatest pop singer in the world and I was immensely flattered. I thanked him very much, but I told him no. I said I’d rather be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.”
Mr. Weedon recorded well into the 1980s, and one of his albums from the 1970s, “22 Golden Guitar Greats,” reached No. 1 on the British charts, knocking Led Zeppelin out of the top slot.
His first marriage, to Doris Weedon, ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 53 years, Maggie Weedon; and two sons.
In 2003, he received a settlement after suing the BBC over a statement that Mr. Weedon had learned to play guitar “while a convict.”
“It may not always be fashionable in the rock music world,” Mr. Weedon’s attorney said at the time, “but my client is rightly proud of his unblemished past and does not want that legacy damaged at this late stage of his private life and professional career.”
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The New York Times...
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Jim Marshall, Maker of Famed Fuzzy Amplifiers, Dies at 88
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
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Jim Marshall, who made rock ’n’ roll rawer and noisier by inventing the amplifier that helped define guitarists from Jimi Hendrix to members of countless garage bands, died on Thursday at a hospice in London. He was 88.
His death was announced by the company he founded, Marshall Amplification. The Associated Press said the cause was cancer.
Mr. Marshall was part of the English music scene as a drummer, drumming teacher and owner of a store in London that sold drums as the new rock music was gathering momentum in the early 1960s. Musicians urged him to add guitars and amplifiers to his wares. One of them, Pete Townshend of the Who, said he told Mr. Marshall that he wanted something “bigger and louder.”
“I was demanding a more powerful machine gun” to “blow people away all around the world,” Mr. Townshend told NPR in 2002. “I wanted it to be as big as the atomic bomb had been.”
With his sixth prototype, Mr. Marshall and his helpers came up with a harmless-looking black box with a speaker inside and controls on top. It would become the basis for the formidable wall of amplifiers used by Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and almost every other major rock guitarist in the ’60s and ’70s and by the next generation of guitarists as well, including Kurt Cobain, Eddie Van Halen and Slash.
This acoustic artillery came to be called the “wall of Marshalls” or “Marshall stacks.” Mr. Marshall became known as “the father of loud.”
The Marshall amps were cheaper than the ones made by Fender, which produced a more precise sound. But the emerging rockers wanted something rougher and rowdier. In a tribute on Twitter, Mötley Crüe’s bassist, Nikki Sixx, said Mr. Marshall had been “responsible for some of the greatest audio moments in music’s history — and 50 percent responsible for all our hearing loss.”
James Charles Marshall was born in London on July 29, 1923, to parents who owned a fish-and-chips shop. He was stricken with tuberculosis of the bones and spent much of his early youth in a plaster cast from his knees to his armpits. When he was 13, sinking family fortunes forced him to take jobs in a scrap-metal yard, a jam factory and a shoe shop. Having learned to tap dance at 14, he was hired as a dancer and singer with a 16-piece orchestra. He took up drumming and rode his bicycle to performances, pulling his drum kit in a trailer.
During World War II he worked at an engineering firm after failing his draft physical and read engineering books on his own. After the war he taught drumming and eventually had 65 students.
He used his teaching profits to buy his music store. One of the musicians who came into the store regularly was Ken Bran, who visited with his band, Peppy and the New York Twisters. Mr. Marshall hired him as a service engineer.
Mr. Bran suggested that they build their own amplifiers, and brought in a young engineer, Dudley Craven, to help them. They collected ideas from musicians about creating a fuzzier, more rambunctious sound then in demand. The sound became known as “the Marshall crunch.”
The first model, made in 1962, attracted 23 orders the first day. Two years later Mr. Marshall had 16 people in a factory making 20 amplifiers a week. Exports began in 1964 with an order from Roy Orbison. More growth followed as the company supplied mammoth sound systems to acts like Deep Purple and Elton John.
One of Mr. Marshall’s biggest breaks came in 1967 when Hendrix visited his showroom. In just months Hendrix would have a huge hit with his album “Are You Experienced,” but at the time, Mr. Marshall recalled, he thought the guitarist was “just another American chap wanting things for free.” Hendrix assured him that he intended to pay, and ultimately bought four complete stage setups.
“He was our greatest ambassador, without a doubt,” said Mr. Marshall, who considered Hendrix the best guitarist ever.
Mr. Marshall is survived by two children, two stepchildren, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, The A.P. reported.
A connoisseur of Cuban cigars and a single-malt Scotch bottled for him, Mr. Marshall many times refused to sell Marshall Amplification. “You can’t take it with you, you can only live in one house and drive one car at a time,” he said. “It’s the name that means something to me — because it is my name.”
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Child AbuseWatch.Net are demanding that Super Bowl organizers remove The Who from performing at the NFL Super Bowl XLIV halftime show set to take place February 7. The organization, which aims to protect children from child abuse, wants organizers to drop the band, but more specifically drop guitarist Pete Townshend.Child AbuseWatch.Net are demanding that Super Bowl organizers remove The Who from... more
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"Pete Townshend has announced plans for a new musical, songs from which will appear on a new album by the Who. Forget mods, rockers and pinball wizards – the production, Floss, concerns the angst of the ageing Baby Boomer generation.
"I am writing a new musical," Townshend blogged. "Floss is an ambitious new project for me, in the style of Tommy and Quadrophenia. In this case the songs are interspersed with surround-sound 'soundscapes' featuring complex sound effects and musical montages."
Townshend said the album is designed as an outdoor "son et lumière piece", to be debuted in 2011. He is in talks with producers in New York but hopes to release some of the musical's more "conventional" songs on a new Who album next year.
The musical tells the story of Walter, a pub-rock musician, who hits it big when one of his songs appears in a car advert. Suddenly wealthy, Walter becomes a "house-husband" as his wife, Floss, takes up horse riding. "When [Walter] tries to return to music after a 15-year hiatus," Townshend wrote, "he finds that what he hears and what he composes evoke the ecologically rooted, apocalyptic mindset of his generation. Shaken by this and torn by personal difficulties, he and Floss become estranged."
Townshend described the piece as a sort of response to My Generation, the 1965 hit he calls "the most explicitly ageist song in rock". "At 64," he wrote, "I now want to take on ageing and mortality, using the powerfully angry context of rock'n'roll."
The guitarist's announcement comes as a pleasant surprise after a year and a half of depressing interviews in which Townshend said things like "I am no longer a member of a band called the Who". Singer Roger Daltrey made similar comments, saying, "I think [the Who] have done enough already. It would be great to have something new, but it doesn't really matter." The Who's last album was 2006's Endless Wire.""Pete Townshend has announced plans for a new musical, songs from which will... more
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The 31st annual Kennedy Center honors has brought together some of the biggest names in entertainment and politics.The 31st annual Kennedy Center honors has brought together some of the biggest names... more
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Photographs of the rock and roll band The Who performing at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ on Wednesday, October 29, 2008.Photographs of the rock and roll band The Who performing at the Izod Center in East... more
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The Who are to treat their fan club members to two intimate shows in London this Christmas.
Playing the indig02 on December 14 and 15, legendary rockers Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend will play their smallest shows in years as a "thank you" to fans, also known as 'Wholigans.'
Ticket prices start at £45 and will be available as first come first served from the band's website www.thewho.com, from Friday October 24 at 11am.
Tickets will be issued with passcodes to the buyers to prevent them being touted on.The Who are to treat their fan club members to two intimate shows in London this... more
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