Lively and vivid ... traces the dual arc of the men’s rise with consummate skill and authority ... Port does an outstanding job of tracking the ways each new musician, from Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix, vaulted over the next, engaging the new instruments with ever-surprising results. Port tells the story elegantly and economically ... Describing sound is extraordinarily difficult; Port can do it without channeling one of those weird, adjective-heavy descriptions of wine or perfume...he just gets it ... The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new.
With appropriately flashy prose, [Port] dismantles some misconceptions and credits some nearly forgotten but key figures. He also summons, exuberantly and perceptively, the look, sound and sometimes smell of pivotal scenes and songs ... scrupulously sourced ... Tracing material choices that echoed through generations, the book captures the quirks of human inventiveness and the power of sound.
... rich in description ... full of imagist sound-summonings ... spot-on human characterizations ... Port can write lovingly... And he can write with technical lyricism ... [Port] even made me like Eric Clapton for a minute. And from the fumbled genesis of the electric guitar to its expressive climax, he draws us a beautiful, educational arc ... Port gives [Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock performance] a whole chapter, his prose rising to the occasion.
Port explores their trials and tribulations with an expert hand. This is a long-overdue cultural biography of musical innovation ... Thoroughly entertaining and deeply informative, this love letter to American creativity and rock and roll belongs in every library and should be read by all rock fans.
This smartly written and genuinely exciting book walks us through the bitter rivalry between Fender and Gibson and, since there is no way to tell this story without telling the story of rock ’n’ roll itself, also provides a jaunty if necessarily abbreviated history of rock. For music buffs, this one is special.
... the most comprehensive account to date of [Les Paul and Leo Fender], while mercifully avoiding gearhead-level doses of minutiae. Written in pleasantly workmanlike prose, the book features some nice turns of phrase, though occasionally it also suffers from a rather breathless tone... and—a pet peeve—sloppy editing ... Where I find the book most valuable is in its first-hand details, many of them culled from the author’s interviews with key figures, and in its debunking of some long-held myths...
... [a] definitive history of the electric guitar ... [There are] many dramatic music scenes Port brings vividly to life in the book ... Port can spin out evocative, succinct rock ’n’ roll writing with the best of them ... But Port is at his best the conveying how Paul and Fender’s vision contributed to a musical explosion they neither anticipated nor participated in publicly, as well as the high and low moments of lives that didn’t always profit from what they brought to the world.
... a kind of biographical duet, telling the story of the development of the electric guitar through the lives of its two most famous names ... Port deftly toggles between their parallel paths, as if swiveling from one effects pedal to another.
A rip-roaring journey through the early days of rock ’n’ roll, told through the lives of the men whose innovative guitars helped usher it into existence ... The author does an excellent job following the two sparring guitars around the world, moving smoothly among a variety of musicians. Port also peoples the narrative with intriguing supporting characters ... A lively, difficult-to-put-down portrait of an important era of American art that enhances readers’ appreciation for the music it depicts.
A titanic rivalry is rendered in highly personal terms by this loud, racketing history of how two men’s obsession for perfecting the electric guitar shaped the post-WWII music scene ... Port plays up the men’s rivalry, but his lushly descriptive and detailed narrative is more interesting as an evolutionary history of how rock and roll was shaped by its primary instrument ... less illuminating on Paul and Fender’s competitiveness, but it’s richly illustrative in bringing these rock giants and the tools of their trade to life in a squall of beautiful feedback.
