I can turn that down a little if you want.
Over the last 50 years, one black box has, probably more than anything
else, come to define the sound of rock - the Marshall amplifier.
It's been behind some of the biggest names in rock history, literally.
From the most humble beginnings, it caused nothing less than
a musical revolution - giving the guitar a new voice.
And behind it all lay a man the rock world is lining up to celebrate.
Known in the music business as the Father of Loud,
his name was Jim Marshall.
The brand he created is now virtually synonymous with
the sound of rock, and one of the most successful in musical history.
But Jim's long
and colourful life started a long way from stadium stages.
50 years ago, in a shop in West London, Jim spotted a new
trend in music that would, in time, take over the world.
And he capitalised on it, spectacularly.
In doing so, he helped create a sound that revolutionised
the electric guitar.
And a volume that meant guitarists could step out of the shadows
and take their place centre stage in the biggest venues.
It became the standard of rock'n'roll.
There is no amplifier that can touch it.
It was a fabulous sound and suddenly guitars were no longer polite.
When this thing came out,
there wasn't any limit to the volume you could get out of it.
It was like, if you didn't have a Marshall, you weren't cool.
Listen, I've always liked Marshall amps, so I used them,
and I've used them ever since.
# I can't explain... #
The wanted loud, they wanted distorted.
Marshall is a symbol of the rise of British rock.
That was what it was all about. Marshall stacks.
Though now a global enterprise,
the Marshall business started off as a cottage industry.
And the beginnings of the amp's history are still clearly
remembered in the modern business.
Phil Wells is head of Marshall's Heritage and Archive
and has worked here for over 35 years.
When I started all those years ago, Jim used to spend the morning
covering in the covering department and then the afternoon
he would do his normal business side of the company.
And he did that for probably for 18 months to two years
when I first started here.
The reason why our units are now signed was because of Jim,
mainly because when he was covering -
if one was badly covered, everybody else would blame Jim.
So he said, "From now on, everybody signs their unit
"then whoever has badly covered it, I won't get the blame."
There's always been something fundamental
about the Marshall sound.
And whatever amp there is, whether it's one of the small
practice amps, right through to the big valve stuff and the stacks,
you know, they all have something within them and that kind of stems
from the beginning where, back in the '60s,
when Jim started the company.
Jim...Jim is a great character.
He could roll up his sleeves,
he could go on to the bench and he could show the people what to do.
And he understood the works, the mechanics of the company.
To the point that he used to open the post.
It's a strange thing for the owner of a company to do,
to open the post, but by opening the post, you understand the ethos
and what's going on in the company just from that one small task.
And that was Jim, he did everything.
Jim, though, also enjoyed life at the top.
His success not only brought him fame, but also fortune.
Not to mention a deep respect from the industry that he loved.
His was an empire built on sheer hard work and grit.
Jim's single mindedness probably had its roots in his childhood.
As a young boy, he endured years in hospital, cocooned in plaster,
suffering from a terrible condition called tubercular bones.
Finally, aged 13, he was set free.
His father suggested that tap dancing might help build his bones.
It was a suggestion that would change his life. He found rhythm.
This was the era of the big band.
The glamour and energy of the sound drew him to the drums,
he was a natural.
Jim was a really good musician and he was a fine drummer
and he could also sing and do both at the same time.
And he was so good that a lot of students would ask him
if he could teach them to play the drums
because he was doing such a good job in the dance bands of the era.
In the late '40s, early '50s, I had a following of youngsters
everywhere I appeared and eventually I was being chased to teach.
Firstly, I thought I would not like teaching
and I kept saying, "No, I'm not interested in being a teacher."
But then I gave in to two pupils
and found that I liked teaching.
Young hopefuls would make their way to Jim's unimposing
semi in deepest West London.
I saw an advert for Jim Marshall drum tuition and he sat me
behind a drum kit and then said, "Right, go on, have a go."
My connection with Jim started, and John Entwistle's started,
very, very early. We were 12,
and we were in a jazz band.
We used to be called The Confederates.
And our drummer was Chris Sherwin.
Jim's teaching was phenomenal.
I thought he was wonderful as a teacher.
Every rehearsal, at the end, Chris would close by showing us
his latest drum lesson.
Chris used to go completely mad.
HE MIMICS DRUMMING
Now I didn't see that again until Keith Moon walked on the stage
but Chris was doing this, you know, when we were 12.
MUSIC: Take The A Train by Duke Ellington
Taking us to see bands, particularly the American bands,
was just phenomenal.
Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Duke Ellington.
I had massive respect for Jim
because he knew what was what at that time and I didn't.
At the most, I had 64 pupils in a week,
which meant that was 64 hours teaching a week.
With a considerable teaching income,
Jim was able to quit life on the road.
# The warden threw a party in the county jail... #
Jim's younger students began to talk about an exciting,
new, American music.
# You should've heard those knocked out jailbirds sing
# Let's rock
# Everybody, let's rock... #
The glimpses of rock'n'roll that we were getting at that moment
were so occasional that it needed a sort of home-grown movement.
# Mama don't allow no skiffle... #
Skiffle was incredibly important.
In one sense, it was almost the punk rock of its time.
It was basically - find a cheap guitar,
three chords and you were off.
# Mama don't allow no skiffle... #
You know the old tea chests with a stick, a broomstick on it
and a bit of string and that was our bass
and we bought a couple of acoustic guitars, no amps, and we were off.
Despite the austerity, you begin to sense, you know,
this new generation coming through.
Kids raced to form rock'n'roll bands
and their influences were all American.
After Lonnie Donegan and the skiffle craze, people that picked up
a guitar and stayed with it
obviously ventured into rock'n'roll.
And the good thing about it was there were lots of places to play.
We used play down the 2i's, that's where Marty Wilde saw me.
And Marty said, "You've got to have your hair dyed blonde."
So I thought about that for all of a second and a half.
But only the most well-heeled of Britain's rock'n'rollers
could afford the shiny guitars and amps of their American heroes.
Buddy Holly was playing a Fender Stratocaster in 1950.
About '57.
So we were all looking at that and, of course, wanted one.
We just wanted to be rock'n'roll stars, you know.
# It didn't take a lifetime... #
What we were really doing with our things was playing catch-up
with the Americans. And that included our instruments as well
because you couldn't get Gibson guitars or Fender guitars.
But amp-wise, it was a nightmare, really.
There were some people that made them, like Charlie Watkins
made amps, and some of the amps he made were really good.
GUITAR PLAYS
We wanted to hear the sound that was beginning to come from guitars.
They could hold a note on.
The Watkins Westminster was one of Britain's first guitar amps,
and Charlie had discovered a secret.
I thought, that's it, get rid of that bloody hi-fi.
We don't want hi-fi, we want distortion.
# What have I done to make you blue? I'll be... #
As British rock'n'roll gathered momentum,
their amplification was lagging far behind.
There was nothing above sort of ten watts
because they were all little, tiny...
they were make-do amplifiers.
They weren't proper guitar amps.
I actually did a gig at a wedding where I plugged
into a Dansette record player, undid the wires from the pick-up.
That was the sort of things we were up to.
Yeah, I mean this, you can get a sound out of it fine,
but take it to a hall and see what it sounds like, you know.
What can you do with a soppy little ten-inch speaker, I ask you?
You can't do anything with it.
We did the best with what we had at hand.
The kind of amplifiers that we were using, that everybody started using,
everybody, including the Beatles,
were the amplifiers used by the Shadows.
By the late '50s, the famous Vox amplifier had arrived.
In those days, the Vox amp really was the king amp.
That was the amp. That's the only one you could hear
because all these other little ones, you just couldn't hear 'em.
Well, Vox were the first of the great British amplifier
manufacturers and their pride and joy was the,
still legendary to this day, Vox AC30.
I managed to acquire myself a Vox AC15 then, which was amazing.
And they all had AC30s so I really did feel like the new boy, you know.
You know, that was the sound from the '50s, the twang of guitars,
The Shadows, the first records I bought.
Wonderful though they were,
I always had a feeling that there
was a beast that was waiting to be unleashed.
MUSIC: Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker
The guy that blew me away when I first heard him was John Lee Hooker.
# Gonna shoot you right down... #
And I got one of his very early albums
and there was a track on there called The Devil's Jump.
We've got The Devil's Jump, man.
He had this idea to put the microphone inside the guitar,
restring the guitar, then do the song that way,
singing into the guitar.
# The Devil's Jump
# I Got the... #
And it was this incredible distorted noise.
This is like 1949,
so, you know,
we can't claim to have invented distortion.
The thing the guitarist wants is something else.
You know, he really doesn't want the cleanest guitar sound
in the world or we'd all would sound like the soundtrack to Bonanza.
Edgier guitar tones began to interest the eccentric
British music producer, Joe Meek.
I think Joe Meek was the first to explore that distorted,
heavier, trebly guitar sound.
Drummer Mick Underwood was summoned to Meek's strange little
studio in the Holloway Road.
It's a bit over the top. It went a bit weird.
Joe, Joe Meek says, "Come up and see us."
He said, "The Outlaws need a drummer."
So I went there and had a jam with them
and they said, "The thing is, we do need a guitarist."
And I said, "I think I know the man."
17-year-old Ritchie Blackmore joined the Outlaws
and the Meek sound turned wild.
John Peel later called Shake With Me the first heavy metal record.
Rhythm and blues became the sound of the moment
and there was only one way music was heading.
An arms race began to develop.
Could the guitar player be able to make more noise than
A - the drummer, and B - the audience.
Everybody wanted to be loud and louder, everybody.
What did we want to be as loud as?
We wanted to be as loud as the drums.
Back at the drum studio, Jim's pupils were constantly pressing him
for help in buying their first drum kit.
I used to take all of the pupils to a shop called
Lou Davis in Charing Cross Road, London.
One day the manager said to me,
"Well you're a damn fool, why don't you open your own drum store?"
Jim's first shop opened in Hanwell, West London, in July 1960.
And his teenage son, Terry, made it a family business.
So we opened it as a music shop but it had a concentration of drums
and the guitar side was very minimal.
Well, having taught so many of the top drummers,
they brought their groups in with them. I'd known Pete Townshend
for many years, because I used to play with Pete's father.
And all of the drummers would come by and say,
"Why you don't stock guitars?
"Because every drummer needs a guitar player and other musicians
"to go along with." And so he started to stock guitars.
There'd be a few bashed up drum kits in there and a few mediocre guitars.
But if you wanted to hear what was going on in the business,
you went to Marshall's.
Oh, Jim was a lovely person. He was a very happy-go-lucky sort of guy
and he let us guys go in to his shop
and sit around and play anything on the wall.
He didn't worry that you weren't buying anything.
We just used to hang out there and it was like
a Labour Exchange for up-and-coming rock musicians, you know.
For me, when I think about Jim's shop, it was a meeting place,
a place to go with ideas, where you know you would get listened to.
And some of my ideas, the guys in my band wouldn't listen to them.
There were sorts of musicians went to Jim's shop, from every aspect,
rock'n'roll, jazz, you name it,
and it was a great learning curve for everybody.
Good for everyone, that.
Then you had Ted's cafe a couple of doors away.
# 40 cups of coffee... #
Or if you wanted something a bit more refined, you'd cross
the road to the Rendezvous. And it was just a whole social scene.
We were unique really
because he had such a vision about customer service.
The shop just exploded
and we were in the right place at the right time.
And while we were in there we used to say,
"Do you know, we couldn't half do with amplifiers.
"You don't do amplifiers, do you?"
One of Jim's regular customers was band manager
and electronic experimenter Ken Bran.
# And go like this... #
He knew that I was interested in building amplifiers,
the sound of amplifiers.
Ken began working for Jim.
This was a partnership that would last the next 40 years.
He always had this brown coat on, you know,
like Ronnie Barker in the shop.
All the kids wanted a lot more power
and the only amp that was really around was the Fender Bassman.
HE PLAYS GUITAR RIFF
The Bassman was designed for bass guitar really,
but the guitarists found that it gave a real crisp live sound.
The Fender amps were fine sounding amplifiers but they tended to,
they didn't... A - they didn't distort,
they had a very clean kind of surf music sound.
One of the guys who worked in the store had one
and he brought it in for Ken to have a look at.
We had a really good look at it to see what made it tick.
Ken discovered the Bassman used a standard circuit design that
was widely used and without any patent restrictions.
Jim seized the opportunity.
He decided there and then
that he was going to build a rock'n'roll amplifier.
I said, "Well, if you're capable, Ken, let's have a go at it."
With no access to American components, Ken was forced to
trawl London's army surplus shops for parts.
A crucial element of the Marshall sound came about
because they couldn't get the same valves that Fender had been using,
so they found another one that did sort of the same job.
The sound that it produced wasn't like a Fender amp,
but on its own terms, it worked brilliantly.
The first amplifier was taking shape. But Ken needed help.
I was a repairman, but we needed a designer,
and Jim got hold of this young whiz kid called Dudley Craven.
The 19-year-old Dudley Craven was lured from an apprenticeship
at EMI on the promise of big money.
We then took it out the basic chassis, brought
in Pete Townshend and a couple of other guys and said, "Crank it up."
When I first heard Jim's amplifier,
I felt it was almost loud enough
but it didn't have the zing of a Fender amp
so I kind of chucked it back at him.
We put it in the shop and let the guitarists play with it
and we would know whether we were getting near the sound or not.
And Pete would say, "I need more growl in this."
I wanted distortion that was happening in the amplifier,
not in the speaker, but in the amplifier.
Eventually, he came up with a sound and I said, "Ah, that's the sort of
"sound the boys have been talking to me about in the shop."
GUITAR PLAYS RIFF
And that's how the Marshall sound was born.
That was it. Pete said, "I want it."
It wasn't just a loud amplifier,
it was an amplifier that would fold in distortion.
BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
Electronic engineers always want to get rid of distortion,
but we knew that that was the sound we wanted.
Ken Bran was willing to make what every other amplifier
maker in the world would have called a bad amplifier.
Well, what it says is that Jim, Ken and Dudley Craven,
when they put the unit together, designed it and built it,
they got it right first time.
Number One has survived
and is now one of the most revered relics of rock.
We've had a couple of blank cheque offers.
We've had a couple of really silly offers for it,
but it's the beginning of Marshall.
Jim and Ken were now ready to unveil their creation.
On the first Saturday, when we put the chassis in the shop,
I think we sold 25 units the first day.
While the inspiration was very clearly from Fender, what
ended up coming out of the shop at that point, one way or another -
by design, by accident, through necessity or what have you -
ended up being quite different.
All of a sudden, there is this monster 50-watt amp
with four speakers. Even eclipsed the Fenders.
Christened the JTM 45 after Jim and Terry Marshall,
it was the loudest guitar amplifier in the world.
Jim was selling these amps like hot cakes
and I was the only one there to build them.
With little room in Ken's workshop, Dudley started a production line
with his old school friend, Ken Flegg.
And a cottage industry began.
Well, in actual fact, I made them in my bedroom, the ones that I did.
He had a very small shed that he used to do his part of the work with.
We had only just started at technical college, so
our knowledge was extremely limited and we used to wing most of it.
As the business exploded, Jim took production to their first factory.
Even with more staff, it was now all hands on deck.
My father used to do covering
and my mum was gluing up for my dad to do covering.
There was a good team spirit
and a willingness to make the product work.
They would make these through the week, sell them on a Friday
and Saturday and then the money they made from that, they'd make
the ones for the next week. So it was hand to mouth, if you like.
We needed cash flow, the retail shop supported quite often
the factory in the early days.
Ken struggled to source parts
and build the amps fast enough as the sales began to clock up.
Well the best way to market any piece of musical equipment is
to have it used by people who sound great and also to have a
bloody huge logo on the front of it, so, you know, even at the back
of the room, people can see what these guys are sounding great with.
Jim said, "We're going to be producing amps from now on.
"Good amplifiers, do you want to have a go?"
The Tremeloes gave up their Fenders and moved to Marshall.
Soon to be followed by the Nashville Teens
and top American star Roy Orbison.
It was the amplifier that sold it.
How it was put together
and what it sounded like that sold the amplifier.
It was only very quickly that Jim's name, Marshall,
became synonymous with that style of music.
GUITAR PLAYS ROCK MUSIC
When this thing came out,
there wasn't any limit to the volume you could get out of them.
# Can't explain
# I think it's love... #
Pete Townshend and John Entwistle were the first to really
explore the new amp's limits.
It made instruments capable of all different kinds of timbres
and harmonics and, you know, it made it possible for me
to make more than music.
West London became the improbable focus of a music scene that
produced dozens of new bands.
# $600... #
All the new guitar talent could be found jamming with
Alexis Korner at the Ealing Blues Club.
They were playing, particularly the Stones, through Alexis,
had this grungy sort of blues sound to them.
The West London scene stretched from Shepherd's Bush Hammersmith
all the way to Uxbridge.
So you could walk from Cyril Davis to Cliff Bennett
and on the way, you'd get lots of action.
# I was alone, I took a ride... #
We all congregated around that West London area. Jim was right there.
Jim Marshall saw all of this, like Alexis did,
and like other people who were just maybe a little bit older than this
generation and therefore could act as father figures to these new kids
who were coming through.
We had all the local musicians who were potentially
the stars of the future.
You know, Pete Townshend, Ritchie Blackmore, Eric Clapton,
they were all our customers.
And it was no surprise that Eric should find
himself at the Hanwell shop.
During his first stint with John Mayall,
he was playing the JTM 45 half-stack with the 4x12 cabinet.
And then during his second stint with John Mayall,
which is notably when the album, the Beano album was recorded,
he was using a 2x12 45-watt combo.
You know, he'd been using that set up at gigs.
He had the amp all the way up, he loved the sound it was making
and when it was time to record,
that was the sound he wanted on the record.
It was unbelievably loud and the engineers were absolutely
freaking out going, "Oh, no, all our needles are all going
"into the red." You know.
"Tell the young beast to turn it down." And he wouldn't.
And the sound was born that people are still aspiring to,
listening to and are trying to recreate today.
But the business was still relying on Jim's shop
and word of mouth for new sales.
The time had come to move up a gear.
In 1964, Jim signed a distribution agreement with Rose Morris.
It was worldwide agreement for them to distribute their products.
What Rose Morris did for Marshall was take it from
relative obscurity to make it a worldwide, well-known brand.
The deal put the amps into music shops across the world
and with that, came an iconic new logo.
As soon as they got the white scrolly lettering,
the amps pretty much sold themselves.
With Rose Morris, whatever we supplied one week,
we were paid the following week.
And they gave us an order book that kept us going every single month.
But as gigs got bigger,
The Who's guitarist discovered that 50 watts was no longer loud enough.
I seem to remember once saying to Jim, like, almost pinning him
up against the wall and saying, "Jim, I need bigger weapons."
The challenge was on and Ken found a way to create the world's
first 100-watt amp.
He went back in and he fiddled about and a couple of days later,
he came back and instead of two power tubes, we had four.
# I can go anywhere... #
I said, "What I've decided to do is use one 4x12 at the bottom and then
"I'm going to put another one on top so it's level with the guitar."
And he said, "Oh, no, Pete, that'll fall down, it'll hurt somebody.
"They are not meant to be stacked."
Anyway, that's exactly what happened. I banged it with my guitar
and down it went.
But it kept going.
The Marshall stack was born.
The Who arrived with chaos.
# People try to put us d-down
# Talkin' 'bout my generation... #
They wanted loud, they wanted distorted.
# Talkin' 'bout my generation... #
And at the first gig I'd just started up with Heatwave
and I was in a state of shock.
# Talkin' 'bout my generation
# I hope I die before I get old... #
I'd never heard anything so exciting,
so loud and energetic ever.
We wanted to blow their minds, go blahh.
Turn up the amplifiers so that they couldn't hear themselves think.
# ..dig what we all s-say Talkin' 'bout my generation... #
You know I was just a punk kid, art student, you know.
I didn't give a shit for anybody, you know.
I'd just had my thesis which was, you know, to make this band
and blow it up in a cloud of smoke.
LOUD FEEDBACK
In those days, you can't imagine the fact those guys were
buying in excess of a £1,000 worth of equipment a month.
Everything was hire purchase in those days.
Which is one of the reasons I was able to smash a few
guitars in close succession cos he allowed me to buy them on tick.
I can remember once not having a guitar for a gig and I ran into
the store and grabbed this guitar and went, "OK, if I pay you later?"
Just with my fingers crossed. And he went, "Yeah, go on, go on."
So between Jim Marshall and The Who, they were building a foundation
for what rock would look and sound like for the years to come.
That sound just - that started it all off.
I remember going to see the Small Faces
and when they came on and played, they blew the place apart.
I mean, it just changed everything.
When I saw Peter Green and then Eric Clapton playing
with them it was like, "Oh, hang on, this is big league,
"this is everything, and everybody's going for these now."
It was a statement about power.
Remember also, we're entering the psychedelic era now
and people wanted to be literally blown away with volume.
Cream, Britain's first super group, used a wall of stacks.
What seemed to matter now, was power and image.
That was how it was in those days, you know.
If you wanted to be louder,
it wasn't the PA that did it, it was the amount of physical hardware.
There's no doubt there is an iconic look to seeing
a stack of Marshall speakers.
It's almost the look of rock'n'roll.
It's incredible actually.
No sooner had Cream reached their peak,
than a musical earthquake hit Britain.
You know, there was a sort of hierarchy of London guitar players.
When Hendrix arrived, it was like, "OK, everybody budge up one."
MUSIC: Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix
I think Jimi came along at the right time,
as far as the Marshall amplifier was concerned.
Jimi not only appreciated the fact that
I made the amplifier with the sound that he wanted, but also his
name was James Marshall Hendrix and he got a kick out of that as well.
It was a fabulous screaming sound
and you got the sense of the guy playing through feedback.
# I'm a voodoo chile... #
And again, Marshall was at the centre.
# I'm a voodoo chile, babe... #
Immediately, he started playing guitar in Britain, all these
great guitarists, the Eric Claptons, and Peter Greens,
and Pete Townshends and Keith Richards and all just went, "Wow!"
You know, Clapton was God, but Jimi killed God, man.
The Marshall name was like Jimi Hendrix,
Clapton in Cream, The Who, Marshall.
And we all had stacks.
HE LAUGHS
Britain was in the grips of a deep counter culture.
The message was turn on, tune in and drop out.
MUSIC: Valley Of Neptune by Jimi Hendrix
It was also a time of change for the sleepy hamlet of Milton Keynes,
near Bletchley, 50 miles north of London.
With growing international sales, the company had
outgrown their tiny West London factory.
The new town was offering generous relocation grants
and Jim put the idea to the workforce.
We went to lots of discussions on different places and things
we were going to do, but it opened up that Bletchley was offering
factories, accommodation for workers, and it looked quite promising.
Jim led the way north.
The first few weeks, I know they were all sleeping in the factory.
Virtually all of his staff then followed.
As rock developed, the super group began harnessing
the power of the pounding guitar riff.
Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was the absolute master.
Again, it's impossible to overstate how big Led Zeppelin were.
They were absolutely massive.
They were the Beatles of the '70s in terms of popularity levels.
And, you know, I travelled with Robert quite a lot during that time.
And one of the challenges was to figure out how to fill
an entire stadium with that sound.
I think that the change came in that later part of the '60s
when somebody developed proper public address systems that
were designed for music, not saying, "Would the owner of vehicle..."
Because you could now have amps that were as loud as hell.
The Marshall amp as a back-line, well, there's nothing better.
It was like opening the doors and there we are, we are away now.
It was just exactly like it was supposed to sound.
All the other amps, you had to like twiddle, whereas with
a Marshall, you just plug it in and it's like, like it's supposed to be.
The spectacle of Paul Kossoff with his legs apart, with his head back,
like a lion, roaring, wailing on his Les Paul,
it was like a spectacle of biblical proportions to someone at
15, 16 years old.
Everything was ten for Paul,
if 11 had been available by then, he would have done it been there.
No, all the knobs went to the right
and he would stand as close or as far away as he wanted to
for the feedback and just play.
It's kind of nice because I was there at the start of it all
with Purple and, you know, it was the Marshall and
this bass in particular that was the sound of our first hit, Hush.
It sort of went...
PLAYS OPENING RIFF OF HUSH
MUSIC: Hush by Deep Purple
You know, my 50-watt Marshall and Ritchie Blackmore's 30-watt Vox
wasn't going to be what we needed, so I suggested that we
go and see Jim down at the factory and we bought stacks for ourselves
and started to build our reputation as the loudest band in the world.
Deep Purple stretched the amp's power to the limits.
You look back now and forget how big Deep Purple were.
They were the equivalent of Black Sabbath, and certainly no
question about it, but what Purple had was almost the dual guitar
situation because of the way that Lord and Blackmore interplayed -
they competed at times, but they also complemented at others.
MUSIC: Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple
There's no doubt that without Marshall, there wouldn't have
been the sound that Lord and Blackmore were able to create.
And it was Blackmore's virtuosity and Lord's classical leanings
towards filling in the gaps that Blackmore didn't
that made Purple sound so magnificent, so epic.
I am still using, right through this period, the direct-injection
Hammond organ, not going through the Leslie speakers but going
direct from the organ amplifier out into a Marshall 200 watt.
I could get that really hard,
raw organ sound to compete with Ritchie.
That's the beauty of what Deep Purple had, there was a warmth
to Richard Blackmore and Jon Lord in the way they competed and
combined and a lot of that was down to the way they used
the Marshall amps.
MUSIC: Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple
What Marshall gave you was that feeling of, you've got four horses
in front of you and you're driving them as hard as you can.
We were very, very stoned.
HE LAUGHS
Yeah, and we were...
We had this 6ft 2in woman with 52 inch tits,
painted blue, and dancing on stage every night.
I suppose you could say it was pretty loose.
She didn't have an amplifier at all.
# I, I just took a ride... #
I'd only been with them four months, I think, and none of the others
could sing it and I could. So I sang it and it went to Number One.
On the front of the NME,
I had a picture of just me and it said, "Hawkwind at Number One."
It was great.
It's a very loud kind of music.
What has it done to your ears for instance?
Eh?
MUSIC: Ballroom Blitz by The Sweet
Guitar sounds, because they were so thick and big,
you didn't need much more on the recording.
You didn't need to now start putting handclaps and tambourines
and things in there because the space wasn't there.
The drum sound was a powerhouse, the guitar was a powerhouse
and the bottom end of the bass.
What else did you need? You didn't need anything else.
# And the girl in the corner said "Boy, I wanna warn you" And it turned into a ballroom blitz
# Ballroom blitz... #
The actual sheer weight of air movement that made your
trousers flap.
You know, of everything happening on stage was just incredible.
The way the Marshall amp sounds gives a unique opportunity to
musicians to play their instruments in the way
they want to, knowing it will actually be projected to everybody.
A pop group in full voice, as it were, can produce just about the
same amount of noise as a 707
thundering a few hundred feet overhead.
And that's what it was all about then.
We're a rock band - it's got to be loud, you know.
And Slade were louder than us.
Oh, really? OK, well, we'll turn it up then.
# Here we are Oh, here we are
# Oh here we go... #
You know, we used to tear audiences' heads off.
We had about 34 cabinets on stage
and we used to call it the Wall of Death.
And at our height, I mean, they were somewhere up there
and you had to sort of reach up to try and adjust your volume.
Not that it needed a lot of adjusting because it was flat out.
MUSIC: Dancing with the Moonlit Knight by Genesis
Les Paul, Marshall stack everything I wanted to do, everything
I wanted to be...
there it was.
These days, we talk about you know searching for the upper harmonic
and all that, but in those days,
we would just go, "My God, it's so alive, it's screaming."
And I think guitarists are always looking for the slightly
out of control thing.
But just as progressive rock had reached its peak,
music received a sudden and dramatic wake up call.
Everything had arrived at the stage where it all needed a huge,
great kick and of course punk arrived kind of in the nick of time.
# I am an antichrist... #
The punk revolution unleashed a torrent of new talent.
# Don't know what I want But I know how to get it... #
Gritty guitars and the three-minute pop song were back with attitude.
# Cos I want to be... #
And it inspired more than just the anarchists.
# ..anarchy... #
I think Never Mind The Bollocks was more of an early heavy metal
album than punk, to be honest.
The minute you saw Steve Jones on the TV,
I thought, "Oh, I see, right."
You don't have to be Ritchie Blackmore then, it is
possible to write three chords and get yourself up on stage.
Diamond Head were one of the first of the
new wave of British heavy metal.
Punk and heavy metal were remarkably connected.
What happened around about 1978 was it all started to coalesce.
The media started to pick up on, hang on, the most exciting young
bands around the country, be they from Sheffield, Newcastle,
London, Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow, happened to all
fit into this funny little thing called hard or heavy rock, and
the term new wave of British heavy metal, which just trips off
the tongue now, sounds so ridiculous and so very complicated.
But it summed it up because
it was a young feeling in the country for metal.
I think it was just a natural progression where we came out
with all the energy, going at it hammer and tongues, you know
arms flailing, ripping.
# Wheels of steel... #
I can still remember this kid at the front shouting,
"It's great! It's just like punk. I love it"
Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, just to use as examples,
would look at that. What do I hear them play? Ah, they use Marshalls,
which were identifiable and instantly recognisable
and gave the sound and the warmth they wanted.
They started to use Marshalls because it was the obvious amp
to use, nothing else came close.
Once AC/DC hit on their sound and their rhythm,
there was nothing to add and nothing to take away.
It was just perfect, and it still is.
There's nothing that you need to do to it.
Powering rock perfection may be one thing, but new challenges lay ahead.
A seismic shift was beginning in the music younger audiences wanted.
MUSIC: D.I.S.C.O. by Ottowan
Disco was a threat to all live music,
and that included the market for amps.
Even though, in those days, disco records were still being
made in the studios by musicians, it wasn't about the big live
performance and therefore they didn't require the huge amps
that, in the days before PA systems seriously got sorted out,
were necessary to fill the bigger and bigger rooms.
All rock bands recorded albums because they wanted to tour.
They wanted to be seen, and that's where the expression
comes across, and disco undermined it or tried to undermine it
by making records more important but much more transient as well.
And people used to say to me,
"Well, the Marshall is very good once you can afford it."
They were starting to get cheeky little oiks on their home turf
like Orange, Sound City and Hiwatt.
And they were building Marshall-style amplifiers,
some of them were undercutting Marshall in terms of price.
Some of them, like Orange and Hiwatt, had quite distinctive sounds
of their own, so they weren't precisely just copying.
Marshall's dominance was collapsing and sales plummeted.
In 1981, we were down to 17 people on the clock.
To survive, they desperately needed a new flagship amp.
But the dilemma was whether to switch to cheaper transistor
technology or to stick with their valve heritage.
I think there will always be guitarists that will want to
play valve amplifiers, whether it's because they think it sounds
better or because there's a certain nostalgia.
The more you progress as a musician, you're only really after one
particular sound that becomes your own.
And that's the valve-type sound.
They take a signal, they add a bunch of noise,
distort the crap out of it.
What goes in is not what comes out, bigger. It completely mashes it,
but in a glorious musical way that has a third dimension.
It rounds off the edge. It sounds peculiar, but you get a cleaner
distortion, you get less harshness than you would out of a digital amp.
Beethoven, Mozart, the great composers,
use symphonies to get across their thoughts and ideas.
If they had a Marshall amp, you don't think Beethoven would have
been plugging in and blasting away, or Mozart?
Of course they would've done.
The decision was made.
The new JCM800 kept the valve technology
so crucial to the distinctive Marshall sound.
At its launch in 1980, everything rested on its success.
They were lucky.
British heavy metal hit the big time, and Marshall with it.
The stack was back as the ultimate symbol of rock power.
If you went to a show and you saw a wall of Marshalls,
you knew exactly what to expect.
The gamble with valves had paid off.
By the mid '80s, the company was totally resurgent.
MUSIC: Hungry Years by Saxon
Sold out gigs, wall of Marshalls,
wailing guitar, singing crowd, all in uniform - fantastic.
It was the best feeling in the world.
And we did have our own dress code. It went a little bit wrong
later on cos I think America went a little bit Motley Crue.
But it became very popular, so you were kind of tugged
between pretty boys and being nasty like Motorhead, you know.
I remember he sent me some JCM800's and I sent them back to him.
I didn't like them, they were too quiet, you know.
Nah, I just turned it up
and hit the thing very hard, you know, that's...the secret.
Shows got ridiculously big
because the money was there,
and, if you've got a 20,000-capacity arena,
it's a little different to having a 20-capacity park.
You have to project and have something
that people to latch onto, so they did become
so over the top and so ridiculous and also gave the opportunity
to the lampoonists to come along
and say, "Oh, look at that. We have an idea.
"We can actually take the piss out of all those bands
"who do huge stage sets."
This is the loudest...
Rock'n'roll! Rock'n'roll!
..most explosive band in heavy metal history.
This is Spinal Tap.
I think the film Spinal Tap
probably had a lot to do with a resurgence of the use of Marshall.
If you can see... Yeah. ..the numbers all go to 11.
Look, right across the board. Oh.
11, 11, 11.
And most amps go up to ten? Exactly.
Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Well, it's one louder, isn't it?
Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number
and make that a little louder?
These go to 11.
It goes to 11.
And it made me laugh so much that they actually...they built me one.
I think everyone likes to think it's about them.
Everybody claims that, but Harry Shearer actually came on tour
with us, did the research and put things from us in.
If you talk to people about Spinal Tap and Nigel Tufnel
and "goes to 11", they associate all of that still with Marshall.
It might go up to number 11,
but it also works very well at number 1 or number 2.
You know, I think that's what's important.
I've got a JCM800
and it...
I only ever have it on 2.5.
That's as high as I dare take it because it's such a beast.
Players began to seek their own signature guitar tone.
If this was going to be a performance here,
I might put an X on the spot where it goes into like...
GUITAR SOUNDS Let's see.
HOLDS SOUND ON GUITAR
All right, well, that's going to go forever,
so I'll put an X right there.
I can remember there were more significant things occurred
in the late '70s, early '80s
and I think prior and maybe afterwards as well.
Like you had Van Halen come out who revolutionised it,
then you... When you thought it couldn't get any better than you had
Randy Rhoads come out, for example.
The amp's reputation had spread across the Atlantic.
The American musicians embraced it so much
and they actually took it to another level.
If a young British musician had two or three Marshalls on stage,
they had ten.
It used to be in Los Angeles in the early '80s -
"Wanted guitar player. Must have Marshall, Gibson and a car."
Whether it's a pop song, a disco song, a rock song,
uh, metal song. I mean, whatever genre the music is,
God only knows how many recordings a Marshall has been on.
These are bands that suddenly started to sell
tens of millions of albums with what one could call big-hair rock,
glam rock, call it what you will, great anthemic songs,
great image and a sense of power.
And the Marshall amp was part of it
because they were proud to be photographed and filmed
with Marshalls. They had them on stage everywhere you went.
As rock music evolved in the '80s from rock to hard rock
to heavy rock to heavy metal, so Marshall evolved with it,
meeting the needs of those guitar players,
and they were the amplifier of choice and becoming louder
and being seen on stage to be louder.
For me, it's all about the energy and the confidence
to be able to go up there and just do your thing, right?
So I spend very little time tweaking amps and doing all that shit.
I set it up, it takes me five minutes, you know.
Either it sounds good or it doesn't.
MUSIC: Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses
I remember being intimidated by it, the first time I ever...
It was somebody else's amp. And you plug it in
and it was above and beyond anything I'd ever used,
so it was a little bit out of my sort of experience.
It's not a cure for anything.
If you suck and you buy a Marshall, you'll still suck,
but you will suck louder
and with better tone than you've ever sucked before in your life.
The respect and adulation for the elder statesmen of rock
has increased many fold.
They are now held up with great esteem
and awe rather than being regarded as boring old farts.
Psychologically, you knew that what was coming out of those speakers
sounded great.
You know, we didn't use pedals.
I might have had a Crybaby or a wah-wah pedal or something.
But you just knew that you had a great guitar sound
because you were trying to emulate your heroes from before.
It gave you that confidence to know that you were now...
As soon as you hit that chord,
you know, the crowd jumped up and - bang, you were there,
you were rock stars.
GUITAR RIFF TO CAROLINE
At least it's tried and tested.
You know what you're going to get with it.
It does what it says on the tin.
It kick... Well, it doesn't actually say, "Kick arse," on there
but that would be quite good to have on there, wouldn't it?
"Marshall Kick Arse." Yeah.
But it does... It does what you want it to do.
Like, my particular thing is always about a hard-driven
but warm, natural kind of a sound,
and that was what brought me to
Marshall in the first place because it had the volume and the gain
and all that to rock as hard as it could possibly...
anybody could ever possibly ever want.
# Watch me burn... #
Still, today there's new bands coming out with new music
using a Marshall and saying, "We do this.
"This is how we do it, and this is how we sound."
You take a 14-year-old just getting into metal
and you show them a picture from 1971-72 of a band on stage
using a Marshall amp,
they'll connect with it.
You take a 14-year-old in 1971-72
and show them what equipment was on stage in the 1930s
they'll just look at it and go, "Alien,"
and that's the big difference. Marshall has transcended.
# I am electric
# I am electric! #
CROWD CHEERS AND SCREAMS
Marshall amplification has remained independent and British,
just as Jim intended it to be.
Even into old age, he still led the company,
never letting up on his ambition or control,
but time was catching up.
After a series of strokes, Jim was forced to take a back seat.
We went and had dinner with him a couple of times
and he was kind of getting frailer and frailer, you know.
It's a terrible thing.
In April 2012, Jim Marshall died peacefully.
It was a shock but it was not unexpected.
And it was international news within a few hours of him passing.
Now, he was known as the Father of Loud.
Jim Marshall, the man who helped shape the sound of rock, has died
at the age of 88.
The outpouring was huge because he was a very significant figure.
There will never be another Jim Marshall.
I remember him with such affection.
And such a gentle, sweet, kind man,
and, uh, to me, anyway.
# Your love made it well worth waiting
# For someone
# Like you. #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Jim never lived to see the Marshall 50th concert,
but it became rock's tribute to his life.
So, tonight, it's a mixed emotion.
I was going out with the sole intention of doing this for Jim.
He was supposed to be out there
either sitting on the side of the stage or out of the sound desk.
You know, cos he still loved his rock'n'roll, you know.
And I must admit, it's quite loud out there,
but it's his fault, isn't it? You know.
HE LAUGHS
6,000 fans filled London's Wembley Arena to hear some of the world's
greatest guitarists play their own respects to the Father of Loud.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
It's a beautiful old amp.
This is where it all started.
Proud and sentimental. Bringing tears to my eyes.
Jim got it.
Jim was one of the first people.
I have to say, I don't think that many others did.
This is the guy that has left one of the most amazing legacies.
I think, without Jim, this wouldn't have happened.
We wouldn't have been able to do this stuff on stage.
I suppose I've been very lucky, really,
because I've liked everything that I've done in life.
And I suppose the thing that makes it more interesting
is the fact that whatever I've done has been associated with music.