In late ’74, on
the road with The Doobie Brothers, I woke up in a hotel in Kalamazoo, Michigan,
where the Gibson factory was located. (It’s in Nashville now.) So I got on the
phone and spoke to their PR. Come on down, he said, and an hour later I was
given the red carpet treatment in exchange for a story in MM.
I saw the whole process, how a plank of wood
was turned into a Les Paul, a Flying V or a J45. There were mechanical saws
that cut the wood to patterns, varnishing rooms and hot air drying cupboards, benches
where beading was attached and an electronics department where pick-ups were
assembled and mounted. At the end of the production line were half a dozen
booths in which guitarists played every single guitar for about 15 minutes each
to check they were OK to leave the factory. Those that weren’t went into a
reject room, even if all that was wrong was a scratch or slight discolouration.
Most of them would end up in the furnace I was told, but the PR wouldn’t let me
take away a condemned guitar as a souvenir. No chance, he said.
I was give a little book about the history of
the Gibson company and its distinguished-looking founder, Orville H. Gibson (1856-1918)
which I still have. Like Orville, the book looks really ancient, but it’s very
endearing and is probably a collector’s item by now.
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