"How rock and roll sounded": the story of the brand Marshall
This name can be seen at almost any live concert. Their amplifiers are also popular with small beginner groups, and with mastodons such as System of a Down, Papa Roach and Deftones.
For more than 50 years of existence, the Marshall brand has become associated with the true sound of rock and roll. About who was behind the success story of the company, we will tell further.
Photo by Federico Ettlin CC
')
Jim Marshall was born in 1923 in one of the working districts of London. His father, James, acted as a sparring partner for boxing professionals, which is what his family earned. At age five, Jim is diagnosed with a difficult diagnosis of bone tuberculosis.
This "shell" was removed once every three months for just a few minutes, and in this form Marshall lived for seven years of his childhood. He was taught to read and write at home; naturally, the boy had no friends.
Only by the age of 12, Jim was freed from the plaster "shell" and almost immediately began working. After the recent Great Depression, there was almost no money left for the family, and it was very difficult for Jim, who had almost no education, to go to school, so he persuaded his father to allow him to quit and go to make money.
Suddenly, Marshall showed a talent for singing. At the insistence of his father, and in order to strengthen the bones, Jim went to do tap dance. The teacher was at a loss: “You are the only boy in my class, and I do not know what to do with you”. He invited Jim to sing for several numbers while the girls would dance tap dance around him.
So, for the first time singing at 14 years old, Marshall broke a storm of applause. At one of the performances, Marshall noticed Charlie Holmes, the owner of the best orchestra in London of those years, and offered Jim the place of the singer. Marshall performed with the orchestra several times a week, but the rest of the time he continued to work on the elaborations.
When the war came to England in 1940, Jim Marshall was 17. Among other young people, he went to the military enlistment office to get to the front, but because of the illness he had suffered in childhood, he was unfit for service. Therefore, Marshall went to work at the aircraft factory Heston Aircraft.
Despite the war and hard work at the factory, Marshall continued to perform with the orchestra of Charlie Holmes, who was at the peak of popularity. Often in the intervals between songs, as Jim himself said, there were fights in pubs, because the audience had nothing to do.
Then the pianist invited him to take pauses playing the drums - after all, Jim's dancing past provided him with a sense of rhythm for the drummer.
Marshall agreed, and it really helped - drum solos distracted the snooty audience. And later the permanent drummer of the orchestra was drafted into the army, and Marshall was offered to take his place so as not to look for a new member of the team and divide the proceeds not into seven, but into six. So Jim Marshall became a singing drummer.
We can say that everything worked out: Marshall removed the phalanx of one finger, and he was able to continue his career as a singing drummer.
Jim never received a musical education over the years of his pop career - to improve his skills, he just watched the playing of professional drummers. However, Marshall still had to study: once the orchestra was offered to play something from Latin American melodies that the self-taught drummer had no idea about. Then Jim went to the famous drummer Max Abrams, who studied for two years.
At the same time, Marshall begins to attract a lot of beginning musicians to his performances, so he finally quits his job at the plant and starts teaching.
He took 64 students a week, sometimes working 20 hours a day. Marshall gave lessons in a small garret, which was located in his house. There he made noise isolation so that the neighbors would not complain, put a drum set, two speakers and a 35 watt amplifier.
Due to his hard work, Jim Marshall began to earn incredible amounts for the time: he received five thousand pounds per year. According to Marshall, he attracted such a number of students because he was the first to teach rock and roll.
First, 37-year-old Jim Marshall wanted to open exactly the drum business. Giving lessons, he preferred to play the Premier drums, and Marshall students adopted the preferences of their teacher. This prompted Jim to contact the manufacturer with a proposal to sponsor his drum set to work with students in exchange for advertising. But in Premier they understood that Marshall was already making a profit for them, and agreed only on coupons with a 10% discount for students.
The popularity of the new place grew, in particular, thanks to Jim's students, and soon the store began selling more than 20 drum sets per month.
Photo by Arnaud Abadie CC
At the same time, Jim Marshall realizes that the “singing drummer,” as he himself once was, needs to hear the melody and harmony as clearly as possible.
For this, he began to design his own columns. Jim continued to do this after opening the store, putting up for sale his self-made acoustic systems that buyers were keenly interested in.
Among them was Pete Townsend , the founder of The Who. The drummer Keith Moon led him to the store to Marshall, who at one time took a couple of lessons of the game from Jim. The musicians who visited Jim's shop wondered why he didn’t sell products for guitarists. Then Marshall realized that by expanding his product range, he would attract more customers, which means that more people would hear about his store.
Jim's customers were interested in his self-made cabinets, but they went to the store primarily for popular guitars and amplifiers: Fender, Gretsch, Gibson, etc. Having understood this, Jim decides to purchase several amplifiers, including Vox and Selmer. Vox did not sell, but Selmer, on the contrary, was taken because of its cheapness.
And yet, most often buyers were interested in Fender amplifiers, which were used by famous American rock musicians of the time.
By 1961, the drum shop had become a big guitar shop, where musicians came not only to shop, but also to chat, exchange news and hang out.
Jim sold all the range of guitars that interested the musicians: Stratocaster, ES-355, Telecaster, etc., and the most popular amplifier was the Fender Bassman, although some of its musicians seemed to be too polished.
For example, Pete Townsend once came to Marshall to the store and said:
And Jim Marshall was ready to make a "more powerful gun."
The basis of the first prototype was taken by Fender Bassman , which the musicians liked so much. For preamplification, we chose the 12AX7 lamps, which were taken out in British military warehouses, changed the arrangement of elements on the amplifier circuit.
The prototype was developed for three months, and the guitarists-regulars of the Marshall and Son store, including Townsend, were invited to test. In the end, after several tests, a more “dirty”, overloaded sound came out, which the leader of the Who liked.
Called this amplifier JTM45 (John and Terry Marshall, 45 watts). In reality, he gave out only 35 watts, but even that was more powerful than the musicians had expected. JTM45 went on sale in 1962, and the first prototype was sold to a random buyer. He wanted to buy a linear (modified and released into the series) JTM45, but they did not remain for sale, then Marshall offered to purchase "prototype number 1".
A few months later, the buyer returned and still exchanged it for the serial JTM45, and the “prototype number 1” is now the most valuable exhibit that could easily be in the hands of a stranger. At one time, Gary Moore even offered Marshall a blank check in exchange for this prototype, but Jim refused to sell his brainchild, which is still in the Marshall Museum.
Despite the first success, a small team of Jim (only five people) could not cope with the volumes, and only one or two amplifiers were produced per week. In 1963, the Marshall and Son store moved to a more spacious room opposite, and Jim finally had the opportunity to organize a full-fledged showroom.
Photo Forest Floors CC
The first JTM45s were sold only as amplifiers, without speakers, but Jim continued to experiment with speakers for portal systems. Such speakers were sometimes in demand by some buyers, because more and more guitarists were among Jim's clients.
Shortly after the start of mass production, Marshall ceased to have enough space even in a new building, and in June 1964 the first Marshall plant appeared in history, which employed 15 people (at that time, 600 people worked at the same Fender company), and the production of amplifiers grew to 20 per week.
During the experiments with his brainchild - JTM45, Jim tried to make him "growl", connecting to the speakers of various configurations. As a result, he stopped at two cabinets with speakers 2 Ă— 12 inches, but the amplifier was too powerful for them, the speakers were burned one after another. Thus, the only solution was an office with four speakers for 12 inches.
Marshall built the first 4 Ă— 12 room in his garage: the Celestion G12 speakers were installed in it. Marshall cabinets gave a more aggressive sound, unlike Fender, because they had a closed structure, while a number of Fender cabinets had an open back wall.
Among the visitors to the Marshall and Son store was the legendary Eric Clapton , who quickly fell in love with the new JTM45, but the cumbersome combination with speakers did not suit him. Clapton often toured, and he needed something that could be put in the trunk. His request to do something similar can be considered a starting point for the development of a combo Marshall Bluesbreaker. The name, or rather, the nickname of the new combo amp appeared after Eric Clapton recorded the record " John Mayall Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton ".
In pursuit of a powerful sound, Pete Townsend turned to Marshall, who asked him to assemble an office with eight speakers for twelve inches. (Guitarist "the Who" John Entwisle during performances could not hear himself because of Keith Moon's drums even after Marshall boosted the JTM45 to 50 watts). Marshall warned that the design would be unwieldy, and the technicians who carry the “Who” equipment would be furious. To this, Townsend replied: "Yes, they went, they are paid for it."
But after a few weeks, Pete returned to Marshall and still asked to somehow reduce the weight of the cabinet. Then it was decided to install one combo on another - this is how the legendary stack was born.
The fashion for stacks dramatically spread around the world: for example, the KISS group put 44 such cabinets on their platforms for photo shoots, and Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth was photographed in front of 80 cabinets. The record was broken by Jim Marshall himself, for whom during his 30th anniversary his company built a stack of 175 rooms.
At the same time, in 1966, the Marshall factory expands, and the brand is experiencing an unprecedented rise: from 64 to 67, sales in America are tripled.
In these fruitful years, Jim does what he will regret all his life about: Marshall signs a contract with Rose-Morris, a major distributor of musical instruments. According to the contract, the company for 15 years received the exclusive right to sell Marshall products.
Rose-Morris drives prices up by more than 55%, positioning Marshall as premium. As a result, sales are falling, because if earlier Marshall products were considered affordable equipment, now only stars and wealthy buyers could afford them. Along with the fall in sales, revenues also fell, and in order to somehow save the situation, Marshall decides to develop the Park line of amplifiers (after his wife’s maiden name).
In this format, the company worked for 15 years - at the end of the contract, Marshall immediately reduced prices and in three years increased its turnover by 360%, and the Park line moved to the low-cost segment of the Marshall MG transistor combo amps .
The company was able to recover from this failure of 15 years: in the early 80s, the legendary Marshall JCM800 was created , for which Marshall would later receive the Royal Prize (for export).
Jim always followed the development of technology, so in the early 2010s he insisted on the release of a separate product line: Marshall Major headphones, which are made in recognizable brand forms. They were followed by Major II Bluetooth models and in - ear headphones, portable speakers and even a smartphone .
Jim Marshall died in 2012, but his company still remains one of the leaders in the market, and its creator did everything to make Marshall products understandable and accessible. Jim's amplifiers used the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Static X, and many other legendary musicians, and the signature sound of Marshall cannot be confused with anything.
Additional materials on the topic:
For more than 50 years of existence, the Marshall brand has become associated with the true sound of rock and roll. About who was behind the success story of the company, we will tell further.
Photo by Federico Ettlin CC')
Childhood in a plaster shell
Jim Marshall was born in 1923 in one of the working districts of London. His father, James, acted as a sparring partner for boxing professionals, which is what his family earned. At age five, Jim is diagnosed with a difficult diagnosis of bone tuberculosis.
His bones become so fragile and brittle that the boy is placed in a plaster suit, and he is bedridden.
This "shell" was removed once every three months for just a few minutes, and in this form Marshall lived for seven years of his childhood. He was taught to read and write at home; naturally, the boy had no friends.
Only by the age of 12, Jim was freed from the plaster "shell" and almost immediately began working. After the recent Great Depression, there was almost no money left for the family, and it was very difficult for Jim, who had almost no education, to go to school, so he persuaded his father to allow him to quit and go to make money.
Marshall got a job in a diner that his father opened in Southall, after which he changed several more jobs: a cook cook, a milkman, a shoe seller, a scrap metal carver.
Suddenly, Marshall showed a talent for singing. At the insistence of his father, and in order to strengthen the bones, Jim went to do tap dance. The teacher was at a loss: “You are the only boy in my class, and I do not know what to do with you”. He invited Jim to sing for several numbers while the girls would dance tap dance around him.
So, for the first time singing at 14 years old, Marshall broke a storm of applause. At one of the performances, Marshall noticed Charlie Holmes, the owner of the best orchestra in London of those years, and offered Jim the place of the singer. Marshall performed with the orchestra several times a week, but the rest of the time he continued to work on the elaborations.
Singing drummer
When the war came to England in 1940, Jim Marshall was 17. Among other young people, he went to the military enlistment office to get to the front, but because of the illness he had suffered in childhood, he was unfit for service. Therefore, Marshall went to work at the aircraft factory Heston Aircraft.
Despite the war and hard work at the factory, Marshall continued to perform with the orchestra of Charlie Holmes, who was at the peak of popularity. Often in the intervals between songs, as Jim himself said, there were fights in pubs, because the audience had nothing to do.
Then the pianist invited him to take pauses playing the drums - after all, Jim's dancing past provided him with a sense of rhythm for the drummer.
Marshall agreed, and it really helped - drum solos distracted the snooty audience. And later the permanent drummer of the orchestra was drafted into the army, and Marshall was offered to take his place so as not to look for a new member of the team and divide the proceeds not into seven, but into six. So Jim Marshall became a singing drummer.
Pretty soon he gained popularity, becoming one of the best drummers in London by the end of the 40s. At the same time, Marshall continued to work at the plant, and one day he almost lost his brush as a result of an industrial accident.
We can say that everything worked out: Marshall removed the phalanx of one finger, and he was able to continue his career as a singing drummer.
Jim never received a musical education over the years of his pop career - to improve his skills, he just watched the playing of professional drummers. However, Marshall still had to study: once the orchestra was offered to play something from Latin American melodies that the self-taught drummer had no idea about. Then Jim went to the famous drummer Max Abrams, who studied for two years.
Student, teacher, businessman, engineer
At the same time, Marshall begins to attract a lot of beginning musicians to his performances, so he finally quits his job at the plant and starts teaching.
He took 64 students a week, sometimes working 20 hours a day. Marshall gave lessons in a small garret, which was located in his house. There he made noise isolation so that the neighbors would not complain, put a drum set, two speakers and a 35 watt amplifier.
Due to his hard work, Jim Marshall began to earn incredible amounts for the time: he received five thousand pounds per year. According to Marshall, he attracted such a number of students because he was the first to teach rock and roll.
Gradually, Jim realizes that he earns enough money for his own business, and reduces the number of performances with the orchestra to a minimum, and later refuses them altogether.
First, 37-year-old Jim Marshall wanted to open exactly the drum business. Giving lessons, he preferred to play the Premier drums, and Marshall students adopted the preferences of their teacher. This prompted Jim to contact the manufacturer with a proposal to sponsor his drum set to work with students in exchange for advertising. But in Premier they understood that Marshall was already making a profit for them, and agreed only on coupons with a 10% discount for students.
However, Jim soon had a new idea: instead of sending students to Premier, he decided to order the tools himself. This is how the Marshall and Son store appeared, in which 16-year-old Terry Marshall was behind the cash register.
The popularity of the new place grew, in particular, thanks to Jim's students, and soon the store began selling more than 20 drum sets per month.
Photo by Arnaud Abadie CC
At the same time, Jim Marshall realizes that the “singing drummer,” as he himself once was, needs to hear the melody and harmony as clearly as possible.
For this, he began to design his own columns. Jim continued to do this after opening the store, putting up for sale his self-made acoustic systems that buyers were keenly interested in.
Among them was Pete Townsend , the founder of The Who. The drummer Keith Moon led him to the store to Marshall, who at one time took a couple of lessons of the game from Jim. The musicians who visited Jim's shop wondered why he didn’t sell products for guitarists. Then Marshall realized that by expanding his product range, he would attract more customers, which means that more people would hear about his store.
Jim's customers were interested in his self-made cabinets, but they went to the store primarily for popular guitars and amplifiers: Fender, Gretsch, Gibson, etc. Having understood this, Jim decides to purchase several amplifiers, including Vox and Selmer. Vox did not sell, but Selmer, on the contrary, was taken because of its cheapness.
And yet, most often buyers were interested in Fender amplifiers, which were used by famous American rock musicians of the time.
By 1961, the drum shop had become a big guitar shop, where musicians came not only to shop, but also to chat, exchange news and hang out.
Jim sold all the range of guitars that interested the musicians: Stratocaster, ES-355, Telecaster, etc., and the most popular amplifier was the Fender Bassman, although some of its musicians seemed to be too polished.
For example, Pete Townsend once came to Marshall to the store and said:
“I have two amps: the Fender Pro AMP and the Fender Bassman. They are cool, but if I play, and in the front row someone yells: “What the crap?”, I hear everything. And I don't want this, so I need something bigger and more powerful. ”
And Jim Marshall was ready to make a "more powerful gun."
The birth of a legend
The basis of the first prototype was taken by Fender Bassman , which the musicians liked so much. For preamplification, we chose the 12AX7 lamps, which were taken out in British military warehouses, changed the arrangement of elements on the amplifier circuit.
The prototype was developed for three months, and the guitarists-regulars of the Marshall and Son store, including Townsend, were invited to test. In the end, after several tests, a more “dirty”, overloaded sound came out, which the leader of the Who liked.
Delighted Townsend said that this should be the signature sound of the brand Marshall.
Called this amplifier JTM45 (John and Terry Marshall, 45 watts). In reality, he gave out only 35 watts, but even that was more powerful than the musicians had expected. JTM45 went on sale in 1962, and the first prototype was sold to a random buyer. He wanted to buy a linear (modified and released into the series) JTM45, but they did not remain for sale, then Marshall offered to purchase "prototype number 1".
A few months later, the buyer returned and still exchanged it for the serial JTM45, and the “prototype number 1” is now the most valuable exhibit that could easily be in the hands of a stranger. At one time, Gary Moore even offered Marshall a blank check in exchange for this prototype, but Jim refused to sell his brainchild, which is still in the Marshall Museum.
Despite the first success, a small team of Jim (only five people) could not cope with the volumes, and only one or two amplifiers were produced per week. In 1963, the Marshall and Son store moved to a more spacious room opposite, and Jim finally had the opportunity to organize a full-fledged showroom.
Photo Forest Floors CC
The first JTM45s were sold only as amplifiers, without speakers, but Jim continued to experiment with speakers for portal systems. Such speakers were sometimes in demand by some buyers, because more and more guitarists were among Jim's clients.
Shortly after the start of mass production, Marshall ceased to have enough space even in a new building, and in June 1964 the first Marshall plant appeared in history, which employed 15 people (at that time, 600 people worked at the same Fender company), and the production of amplifiers grew to 20 per week.
"Broken blues" and the appearance of the stack
During the experiments with his brainchild - JTM45, Jim tried to make him "growl", connecting to the speakers of various configurations. As a result, he stopped at two cabinets with speakers 2 Ă— 12 inches, but the amplifier was too powerful for them, the speakers were burned one after another. Thus, the only solution was an office with four speakers for 12 inches.
Marshall built the first 4 Ă— 12 room in his garage: the Celestion G12 speakers were installed in it. Marshall cabinets gave a more aggressive sound, unlike Fender, because they had a closed structure, while a number of Fender cabinets had an open back wall.
Interestingly, the first room Marshall had a straight front wall. Branded sloping, which almost became the "calling card" of the brand, according to Jim himself, at first appeared only for aesthetic purposes.
Among the visitors to the Marshall and Son store was the legendary Eric Clapton , who quickly fell in love with the new JTM45, but the cumbersome combination with speakers did not suit him. Clapton often toured, and he needed something that could be put in the trunk. His request to do something similar can be considered a starting point for the development of a combo Marshall Bluesbreaker. The name, or rather, the nickname of the new combo amp appeared after Eric Clapton recorded the record " John Mayall Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton ".
In pursuit of a powerful sound, Pete Townsend turned to Marshall, who asked him to assemble an office with eight speakers for twelve inches. (Guitarist "the Who" John Entwisle during performances could not hear himself because of Keith Moon's drums even after Marshall boosted the JTM45 to 50 watts). Marshall warned that the design would be unwieldy, and the technicians who carry the “Who” equipment would be furious. To this, Townsend replied: "Yes, they went, they are paid for it."
But after a few weeks, Pete returned to Marshall and still asked to somehow reduce the weight of the cabinet. Then it was decided to install one combo on another - this is how the legendary stack was born.
The fashion for stacks dramatically spread around the world: for example, the KISS group put 44 such cabinets on their platforms for photo shoots, and Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth was photographed in front of 80 cabinets. The record was broken by Jim Marshall himself, for whom during his 30th anniversary his company built a stack of 175 rooms.
At the same time, in 1966, the Marshall factory expands, and the brand is experiencing an unprecedented rise: from 64 to 67, sales in America are tripled.
Lifetime bug
In these fruitful years, Jim does what he will regret all his life about: Marshall signs a contract with Rose-Morris, a major distributor of musical instruments. According to the contract, the company for 15 years received the exclusive right to sell Marshall products.
Rose-Morris drives prices up by more than 55%, positioning Marshall as premium. As a result, sales are falling, because if earlier Marshall products were considered affordable equipment, now only stars and wealthy buyers could afford them. Along with the fall in sales, revenues also fell, and in order to somehow save the situation, Marshall decides to develop the Park line of amplifiers (after his wife’s maiden name).
In this format, the company worked for 15 years - at the end of the contract, Marshall immediately reduced prices and in three years increased its turnover by 360%, and the Park line moved to the low-cost segment of the Marshall MG transistor combo amps .
The company was able to recover from this failure of 15 years: in the early 80s, the legendary Marshall JCM800 was created , for which Marshall would later receive the Royal Prize (for export).
Marshall today
Jim always followed the development of technology, so in the early 2010s he insisted on the release of a separate product line: Marshall Major headphones, which are made in recognizable brand forms. They were followed by Major II Bluetooth models and in - ear headphones, portable speakers and even a smartphone .
Jim Marshall died in 2012, but his company still remains one of the leaders in the market, and its creator did everything to make Marshall products understandable and accessible. Jim's amplifiers used the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Static X, and many other legendary musicians, and the signature sound of Marshall cannot be confused with anything.
Additional materials on the topic:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/370483/
All Articles