El padre del ruido

Falleció "el padre del ruido", uno de los cuatro grandes por los que hay R&R, las palabras en el comunicado de prensa dicen mucho:

"El hombre responsable por el 'sonido del rock'... Jim se convirtió en uno de los responsables de crear las herramientas que permitieron a la guitarra eléctrica ser lo que hoy conocemos y amamos. El innovador cuarteto también incluye a Leo Fender, Les Paul y Seth Lover – junto con Jim, son las verdaderas piedras angulares de todas las cosas que son rock".

La mala noticia inmediatamente me recordó un fragmento de Life, la biografía de Keith Richards, que está plagada de detalles de antes de todo lo que fue rock and roll, aunque no es sobre un amplificador Marshall, las siguientes líneas dan una idea de como eran las cosas por aquella época en la que Jim Marshall ya empezaba a trabajar en sus innovadoras cajas de ruido.

"I had a thing called a DeArmond pickup. And it was unique. You could clamp it above the soundboard and it slid up and down on a spindle. You didn't have a bass pickup or a treble pickup. If you wanted a softer sound, you slid the fucker up the spindle towards the neck and so you got a bassier sound up there. And if you wanted treble, you slid it down the pole again. And of course this played havoc with its wiring. I used to carry a soldering kit for emergencies, because you'd be sliding this thing up and down, and it was just so breakable. I was always soldering and rewiring behind the amp, a Little Giant amp the size of a radio. I was one of the first to get an amp. We were all using tape recorders before that. Dick Taylor used to plug into his sister's Bush record player.


My first amp was a radio; I just took that apart. My mother was pissed off. The radio's not working because I've got it apart and I'm plugging, zzzz, just trying to get a sound. In that respect good training for later on--honing your sound, matching guitars to amps. We started from scratch, with the tubes and valves. Sometimes if you take one valve out, you can get this really raunchy, dirty sound because you're pushing the machine and it's got to work overtime. If you put the double-A valve back in, then you've got this sweeter sound. That's how I got electrocuted so many times. I kept forgetting to unplug the fucker before I started poking around in the back".