THE JAGUAR AND THE THUNDERBIRD

THE JAGUAR AND THE THUNDERBIRD

EXTENSION CHORDS

by

Allen Hester

"Cadillac rollin' bout ninety-five, goin bumpety-bump from side to side Cadillac rollin bout a hundred and four Caint nothin outrun my V-8 Ford Maybelline, why caint you be true? —'"Maybelline, Chuck Berry

Fast cars and fast women: thats where rock n roll started and that is where it remains today. The very phraserock n roll is a description of how automobiles sway from side to side as they go screaming down the highway. From Chuck Berrys many songs about cars (˜Maybelline,The Jaguar And The Thunderbird,You Cant Catch Me,No Money Down) to the Beach Boys ("Little Deuce Coupe,Fun, Fun, Fun,Shut Down,") to Bruce Springsteen ("Thunder Road, "Born To Run,Cadillac Ranch,Stolen Car,Drive All Night,The Wreck On The Highway) the automobile and the escape it offers are inextricably woven into the fabric of rock n roll songs, names of groups, and the real-life escapades and tragedies of the people who wrote and sang hit after hit across the last three decades.

A guy takes pride in his car, sometimes when he doesnt seem to give a damn about anything or anybody else; some Saturday night, that machine has got to be clean and mean. Forget about fuel economy and Ralph Nader, the hot-roddes are still out there crusin for burgers, fust as they were before rock 'n roll music was conceived in somebodys back seat. Even though Detroit has had to deal with the onslaught of Japanese imports, higher fuel prices, rising labor costs and all the rest, there is still a place on the streets of our fair; land for a V-S Ford with headers and a gas-guzzling Holley carb. Purple taillight lenses have long been outlawed, but go to any Street Rodders Convention and check it out...the purple taillight lens lives! But be careful; start up a conversation with a hot-rodder and a guitar player, and the shop talk could get confusing. Ford made a Thunderbird, but so did Gibson, and both are collectors items today. Cars and guitars are very similar in some ways|jand a few ways they are similar to the point that one begins to wonder if they werent all designed at the same corporate drawing board.

Take the Mustang, for example (What s Mustang? A wild, untamed horse that once roamed the canyons of the American West). When Ford introduced the Mustang car in mid-1964, it was a relatively lowpriced model designed for the working class guy who couldnt afford the bigger cars. The Ford Mustang caught on quickly and boosted Fords sagging sales figures to new record levels. Remember the Mustang fastbacks with factory competition racing stripes? Well, Fender had the same thing in a low-priced guitar, the Mustang, complete with competition racing striped across the body, from the factory. It was designed for the guy who couldnt afford the luxury models, such as the Jaguar, which Fender introduced in 1961. The Jaguar had more switches, knobs, mutes and controls than any guitar Fender had ever built, and it, like the Jaguar automobile, represented top-of-the-line prestige and luxury. However, /Fenders Jaguar proved not to be such a popular model, and it wasnt until the oncoming of New Wave that guitar players began to pick up on Jaguar guitars as instruments worth using onstage. Nowadays people are starting to add Jaguars to their guitar collections.

In fact, Fender (the name itself conjures up car images) had several other models that sounded like they just came off the assembly line in Detroit instead of Fullerton, California: the Malibu was an acoustic guitar; the Bronco was a beginner electric guitar, with matching Bronco amp; the Montego I and II were arched-top electric/ acoustic instruments, and the LTD was Fenders finest hand-carved hollow-body jazz model, with all the luxuries and options of riding first class. All these guitars were around in the 60s and early 70s; when Leo Fender re-entered the musical instrument race in the late 70s he brought along the Sting Ray guitar and the Sting Ray bass. Anybody who listened well to their surf music knows that it was a Sting Ray and a Jaguar that fateful night on Dead Mans Curve.

Then of course there is the Firebird, the sister model to Gibsons Thunderbird bass, which had a sleek body and headstock design, long before Pontiac came out with their Firebird. Years ago, Epiphone made a little solid body guitar called the .Zephyr. Ask any motorhead what a Zephyr is, and he will swear to the high heavens that it is a Mercury!

There was a time, before the present day woes of the Chrysler Corporation, when their New Yorker was considered a really prestigious American car. Likewise the DAngelico New Yorker, hand-made by the late master luthier John DAngelico of New York, represented the very best that money could buy in an American product.

For all these similarities and cross-pollination of names, styles and price structures, there are some equally incongruous (and funny) coincidences when it comes to cars and guitars. The Gibson Explorer guitar was introduced in the late 50s, along with the Flying V and aghost guitar called the Moderne (1 call it a ghost guitar because so few were ever really made; nobody I know has ever even seen one, except in sketches reproduced from the office of U.S. Patents, If you ever find a Moderne, you could retire, but that is another story.); anyway, the Explorer, with its radical body shape and space age flair, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Explorer pickup truck, with the possible exception that guys like Billy Gibbons and Ted Nugent probably own one of both.

Everybody knows that to own a Ford Falcon is a great excuse to take the bus to work, but on the other hand, Gretsch made an expensive*; if somewhat gaudy, electric hollow-body guitar, the White Falcon, which was the top of the line, the epitome of class and prestige at Gretsch. Stephen Stills used to play one, and they still turn up in somebodys band from time to time. But the car and the guitar, in this case, are as different as daylight and dark.

There are others, too, that are just as incongruous and far-flung. The Hagstrom Impala (made in Sweden) bears not the slightest resemblance to Chevrolets Impala, with the possible exception that both had stick shifts. The Hagstrom Impala has a sort of shift lever that changes pickups instead of gears. But whether the names of cars and guitars match up neatly every time or not, the romance that Americans have had with both the automobile and the guitar is remarkably similar, and that ongoing love affair is at the very heart of rock nroll.

What Ford and Chevrolet represented to motorists, Gibson and Fender represented to guitar players. Japanese imports have invaded both camps, taking away business and forcing both industries to overhaul themselves to survive the onslaught of foreign products. This has brought on a new age of specialization in both industries. Just as your friendly neighborhood all-service gas station has given way to the selfservice pump, the tire store, the brake specialist, the tune-up shack and the foreign car parts retail chains, so has the guitar industry been divided and compartmentalized into smaller companies that specialize in only certain areas of guitar manufacture.

What Mickey Thompson was to the hot-rodders of the 60s, Larry DiMarzio is to the guitar players of today. Instead of EdBig Daddy Roth and George Barris, youve got Seymour Duncan and Dean Zelinsky. If you want mag wheels, go to Crager or Keystone; if you want -a Teak wood Strat body, call Schecter. Wanna soup it up a little bit, get some more cubic inches, more horsepower out of it? Call Bill Bartolini for a hopped-up pickup. Need a custom paint job? Get Charvel on the phone; they offer dozens of custom finishes, everything from a camofalge job to checkerboard to orange flames, just like the flames on the front fenders of that 32 Coupe you saw at the hot-rod show last spring.

We havent even talked about the movies yet, and there are so many of them that cars figure into as part of the image of rock n roll bad boys; Thunder Road, The Wild One, Hud, Rebel Without A Cause. And then theres the biker stuff; SteppenwolfsBom To Be Wild, the James Gangs first album, the movie Easy Rider. Sure, I know that the Japanese motorcycles are faster from zero to 60 than their American counterparts, but can anyone imagine Brando on a rice-burner? Nothing on Gods earth looks or sounds like a Harley-Davidson, just as nothing else looks or sounds like a cherry-red Gibson ES-335. As the saying goes, things as American as that can be imitated, but neyer duplicated.

The same desire for the power, the freedom and the prestige that a big expensive car represents is the desire that motivates people to buy beautiful custom built guitars. Stars Cars...Stars Guitars. All a part of the CREEM dream.

The American Guitar and the American automobile have both been tested by the Japanese imports. Both industries are in a period of change, of restructuring their manufacturing and their marketing procedures. The Japanese can build both cars and guitars that are low-priced and efficient. But they will never build a 57 Thunderbird, or a 65 Mustang. These things are uniquely American; they have a spirit and a feel about them than no amount of meticulous copying or re-designing can ever capture. The one thing the Japanese cannot take a picture of, cannot computerize, can cannot duplicate is soul. You wont find the Little Deuce Coupe in downtown Tokyo. Mustang Sally is still out there cruising the streets of Detroit, and as long as shes got a dollar for gas and a quarter for the jukebox, the music will never stop.