Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast everybody. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's out there running around somewhere. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is stuff you should know about Fender and
Speaker 1: less Paul Heart Do Should we recap real quick? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so. It seems appropriate, all right. Well, where
Speaker 1: we left off with part one was Leo Fender, lifelong engineer,
Speaker 1: tinker and non musician, has made a career making amps
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out the problem with electric guitar feedback.
Speaker 1: Les Paul was a budding superstar guitar player and session player,
Speaker 1: also tinkerer, trying to figure out this problem of amplifying
Speaker 1: the electric guitar without feedback, and they were introduced in
Speaker 1: trying to figure this out together. And then enters a
Speaker 1: third gentleman who may have had more to do with
Speaker 1: the invention of the solid body electric guitars we know it,
Speaker 1: than either one of them. For real. This is where
Speaker 1: things get a little bit shady, little murky, when Carrie
Speaker 1: Grant enters what's the guy's name, Paul? His name is
Speaker 1: Paul Biggsby, and I've heard of the last name I've
Speaker 1: I've seen those guitars before. Is it still are the
Speaker 1: is the company is still around? Yeah, So here's the deal.
Speaker 1: Biggsby is now most well known for what's called the
Speaker 1: Biggsby tail piece, which is he's the guy who kind
Speaker 1: of invented the wammy bar. If you know nothing about guitars,
Speaker 1: but you've ever seen like Eddie Van Halen play. Not
Speaker 1: all guitarists use these things. But if you hit a
Speaker 1: note and then you reach below the guitar and grab
Speaker 1: that little steel bar and make it go wow, why wow,
Speaker 1: wow wow, that's a whammy bar. Bigsby invented that, and
Speaker 1: he is still most well known. Like you can get
Speaker 1: Biggsby tail piece put onto a Less Paul or an
Speaker 1: s G or uh. You can't do a two Fenders
Speaker 1: because they have their own I guess you could with
Speaker 1: a telecaster, but um, any guitar without a wammy bar
Speaker 1: you could put on a Biggsby tail piece. They're beautiful,
Speaker 1: they look great, and that's what they're kind of most
Speaker 1: well known for today. Okay, gotcha. But at the time
Speaker 1: Bigsby was he was the oldest of so Leo Fender.
Speaker 1: If you didn't realize was older than Less Paul, and
Speaker 1: Paul Bigsby was older than Leo, and he had started
Speaker 1: out his career as a motorcycle racer and then went
Speaker 1: on to start to make up motorcycle parts, I believe,
Speaker 1: and then moved on to instruments. And he Um was
Speaker 1: known to Leo Fender and that they were competitors because
Speaker 1: Um Biggsby also made electric steel guitars at the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were friendly necessarily, but I
Speaker 1: do know that they definitely worked together in Fenders workshop.
Speaker 1: UM kind of working on electric instruments together, so I
Speaker 1: would guess you'd have to be somewhat friendly. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like you know, Macy's and gimbals or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I think I think that's about right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So they definitely worked together at some point in time,
Speaker 1: and they were friendly enough to to do that, and
Speaker 1: there they were dedicated to creating that big electric sound
Speaker 1: out of a guitar. Um and Bigsby, if you ever
Speaker 1: have seen those guitars that he made, they were beautiful.
Speaker 1: They were It was a lot like Gibson. They were artisan.
Speaker 1: UM just just crafted works of art basically UM one
Speaker 1: at a time, kind of things exactly, and so he
Speaker 1: already had Um, Paul Bigsby already had a name for
Speaker 1: himself in that respect. And he was hanging out at
Speaker 1: a radio station as guitar makers do in l a
Speaker 1: um k x l A, which featured country music played
Speaker 1: live kind of like Grand Old Opry stuff, I guess,
Speaker 1: and uh, country mus sition named Merle Travis Um was there,
Speaker 1: I believe, playing, and Merle Travis knew Paul Biggsby at
Speaker 1: least by reputation, and said, Hey, you know I heard
Speaker 1: you can build anybody whatever, whatever they're looking for. If
Speaker 1: I draw you a picture of a guitar, can you
Speaker 1: make it for me? And I guess Paul Bigsby said
Speaker 1: challenge accepted, good sir, and um, we should probably fast
Speaker 1: forward about a month or two. Huh yeah. And I
Speaker 1: just again, I want to stress the fact that at
Speaker 1: one point in Les, Paul Leo Fender and Paul Bigsby
Speaker 1: are all together in a garage and county in southern California.
Speaker 1: And this is like, I mean, it makes my mind
Speaker 1: explode to think about those three men in a room
Speaker 1: together like working on something. I'm like, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of another industry where like three separate top brains
Speaker 1: got together like this, and I can't even think of
Speaker 1: a of anything to compare it to. It'd be like
Speaker 1: if um, Steve Jobs, Build Gates and Paul Giamatti all
Speaker 1: got to I couldn't. Yes. Yeah, uh So anyway, a
Speaker 1: very just special moment in history. So yeah, he comes
Speaker 1: back a few months later, uh, with this guitar. Leo
Speaker 1: Fender is backstage at a show and Merle Travis is
Speaker 1: there playing, and he pulls out this thing that Paul
Speaker 1: Bigsby made And if you look up Merl Travis Bigsby guitar,
Speaker 1: this thing is beautiful. It is a gorgeous guitar and
Speaker 1: looks like and is a real deal solid body electric guitar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he pulls it out in front of Leo Fender
Speaker 1: no Less, who said, hey, Merel, that's a pretty neat
Speaker 1: looking guitar there. Uh, you mind if I get my
Speaker 1: hands on that for a little bit and just check
Speaker 1: it out. I want to see what it's all about.
Speaker 1: You know, this little prototype out of the way right, uh,
Speaker 1: And Merle Travis was kind enough to let Leo Fender
Speaker 1: borrow it, and Leo Fender and so should we should
Speaker 1: caveat this? Supposedly, Leo Fender, where he alive today, would
Speaker 1: be like, no, no, that's not true. No, this is
Speaker 1: not correct. But supposedly there are informed people who say
Speaker 1: that Merle Travis let um that let Leo Fender take
Speaker 1: his guitar that Paul Bigsby had made for him back
Speaker 1: to Leo Fender's workshop and basically have a reverse engineer
Speaker 1: session all over it. Yeah, this is where it gets
Speaker 1: a little hinky, because Leo Fender was a great man
Speaker 1: and a great inventor of things. Um, but what he
Speaker 1: was really really good at was improving things. He was
Speaker 1: like the Japanese, Yeah, and um, they make some pretty
Speaker 1: good guitars to it, think right, but there, well, the
Speaker 1: Japanese are well known for taking something that's pretty cool
Speaker 1: and then just improving the heck out of it, and
Speaker 1: like he say, you should do it? Yeah exactly. Uh
Speaker 1: so Yeah, I mean definitely a point in history sort
Speaker 1: of a crossroads where some people are like Leo Fender
Speaker 1: stole this from Paul Bigsby and was able to mass
Speaker 1: produce it, whereas Bigsby was intent on making these artists
Speaker 1: and pieces one by one and just got left in
Speaker 1: the dust. Um, there may be something to that. If
Speaker 1: you look at the headstock for that original Bigsby guitar,
Speaker 1: and you look at the head stock and the head
Speaker 1: stock is at the the very end of the neck
Speaker 1: where the strings end up and where the little tuning
Speaker 1: pegs are, it looks a lot like the Stratocaster headstock,
Speaker 1: almost exactly like it. And he denied kind of even
Speaker 1: ganking that, but in meetings at Fender later on, there
Speaker 1: were higher ups at Fender that said, go out and
Speaker 1: make us something like that Biggsby, Like they literally said that.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of undeniable at this point. Um. He
Speaker 1: was even sued. There was a lawsuit that Bigsby sent
Speaker 1: about the head stock and they basically said, you know,
Speaker 1: they were there were too many just sort of similar
Speaker 1: kinds of things before this, so it's not gonna hold water. Well,
Speaker 1: not only that, Um, there there is some there are
Speaker 1: other similarities to like you talked about that little wammy bar. Um,
Speaker 1: the biggs By had one. It's called the biggs By
Speaker 1: pure vibrato, where basically you're you're you're pushing pushing down
Speaker 1: on a bar that's actually manipula I don't understand. Actually, Chuck,
Speaker 1: what is manipulation? Maybe you should take this part. All
Speaker 1: I know is that it affects the sound like wa
Speaker 1: wa wa wah like that, But I don't know the
Speaker 1: mechanism by which it does the wa wah wah wah.
Speaker 1: It's really easy because it's purely mechanical. It's the guitar
Speaker 1: bridge is the part where you're, if you're right handed players,
Speaker 1: where the right hand is, and that's where the strings
Speaker 1: are rooted. So what the wammy bar and what the
Speaker 1: Bigsby tailpiece did is it lifts up the back of
Speaker 1: the bridge and it literally manually loosens the guitar strings
Speaker 1: until you release it, and then it snaps them back.
Speaker 1: So if you press on it, it just it's literally
Speaker 1: losing the guitar string enough to make it go wait
Speaker 1: wait waiting. And you remember when you do this around
Speaker 1: the pickup the metal strings and steel strings affect the
Speaker 1: the electrical signal that's produced. So if you're messing with
Speaker 1: the strings, you're messing with the electrical signal and hence
Speaker 1: the sound. Right. Uh. The other thing we should point
Speaker 1: out that Leo Fender probably kind of stole was the
Speaker 1: all the tuning pegs on the headstock are all on
Speaker 1: top and in one line. So if you look at
Speaker 1: telecasters and strato casters, and that's sort of the Fender thing,
Speaker 1: they're all in a row because it's just really easy
Speaker 1: to access them as a player, whereas uh Gibson models
Speaker 1: were based on acoustic or Spanish guitars, where there's three
Speaker 1: on one side and three on the other. And in
Speaker 1: order to turn to tune those lower strings or I
Speaker 1: guess the higher strings, you have to reach under and around.
Speaker 1: And Leo Fender was I guess he saw this design
Speaker 1: was like, hey, that's kind of brilliant. Actually to put
Speaker 1: them all on one side, that's superior. Frankly. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really tough to get around. Like if you put
Speaker 1: the there's plenty of pictures out there. If you put
Speaker 1: that first Bigsby Merle Travis guitar next to the first
Speaker 1: guitar that Fender ever mass produced, it's pretty much the
Speaker 1: same thing in a lot of ways. Um, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It was tough to swallow it. But
Speaker 1: like you said, the idea UM, the idea of impugning
Speaker 1: um Leo Fender's character, it just doesn't it doesn't quite
Speaker 1: make sense because he was a great guy and he
Speaker 1: did do a lot um for the industry, and he
Speaker 1: founded Fender, which just that alone is pretty amazing too.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that he doesn't necessarily get
Speaker 1: credit for UM at least outside of like musicians circles
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, but UM is the basse that he created, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Precision basse um. Before the electric bass guitar. The
Speaker 1: basses were all the big standard upright basses, and they
Speaker 1: were a problem because they were huge. You either had
Speaker 1: to drop it to the strap it to the top
Speaker 1: of your car, uh and you know, potentially have it
Speaker 1: get beat up by weather, or you had to ride
Speaker 1: separately from the rest of the band because that thing
Speaker 1: filled up the entire back seat. They were just big
Speaker 1: and bulky and hard to transport. So uh leo. Fender
Speaker 1: again was not the first UM. A guy named Paul
Speaker 1: tut Mark who worked on He was a big lap
Speaker 1: steel maker and he founded the Audiobox company, which is
Speaker 1: still around fifteen years before the Fender p base. The
Speaker 1: Precision base. He invented what's generally known as the first
Speaker 1: electric solid body bass guitar. It just didn't take off
Speaker 1: like the precision. And again the p bass is called
Speaker 1: a precision because the upright basse doesn't have frets. So
Speaker 1: if you knew how to play it, you know how
Speaker 1: to play it, but you couldn't be like go to
Speaker 1: the fourth fret. You would just sort of not guess,
Speaker 1: but you would generally know where it falls. The electric
Speaker 1: bass guitar, the p bass had frets, so they say
Speaker 1: it had more precisions, so that's why they called it that.
Speaker 1: But that's another thing that's easy to overlook too, is
Speaker 1: like you know, the electric guitar, it's it's pretty different
Speaker 1: from like the electric Spanish guitar, but it's still in
Speaker 1: the same general it's like a progression from that. The
Speaker 1: electric bass was like hull cloth and a new invention basically,
Speaker 1: and it changed everything too. I mean, like I was
Speaker 1: reading an article I think, yeah that you sent from
Speaker 1: maybe Pitchfork UM where I was talking about like just
Speaker 1: how much that changed things having that around like basically
Speaker 1: Motown and then later on Funk like like none of
Speaker 1: that would have existed without the electric bass, and like um,
Speaker 1: like another one bites the Dust and like Pink Floyd's
Speaker 1: Dark Side of the Moon and like you know, Parliament,
Speaker 1: like all these like bands were predicated on the fact
Speaker 1: that there was like a nice slappy electric bass that, um,
Speaker 1: you just couldn't get around, You couldn't ignore it. It It
Speaker 1: became like a part of the band rather than just
Speaker 1: some background thing that was more visual than than audio
Speaker 1: or wait oral, Yeah, because the upright basse kind of
Speaker 1: ended up having the same problem as the acoustic guitar,
Speaker 1: and that once they had electric guitars, that upright bass
Speaker 1: wouldn't really cut through live, and so you had, you know,
Speaker 1: the a song is driven by the rhythm section that
Speaker 1: the bass player and the drummer. That's when you ever
Speaker 1: hear about the rhythm section. They drive the heart of
Speaker 1: the song. Everyone follows them. Like as much as you
Speaker 1: think is the guitars out front, it's not leading the band.
Speaker 1: The low end is what's actually leading the song, and
Speaker 1: everyone else kind of falls in line with that because
Speaker 1: they're setting that beat with the bass and the drums.
Speaker 1: But he's he's working on this and again not to
Speaker 1: get in the weeds with the amps, but this whole
Speaker 1: time he's making leaps and bounds on amplification that works
Speaker 1: at really high volume with these Fender amps. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then one of the other things that made Fender really
Speaker 1: innovative was he um aided the he created like instruments
Speaker 1: for everyday people. That was the big innovation for him.
Speaker 1: Like his company set out to create to bring this
Speaker 1: stuff to the masses so that you know, teenage kids
Speaker 1: could save up from like there after school job and
Speaker 1: like buy one of these things and buy an amp
Speaker 1: and start a band and maybe actually get kind of
Speaker 1: good and it like I mean, I hate to use
Speaker 1: this word because it's so over used these days, but
Speaker 1: he kind of democratized starting a band. Whereas before you
Speaker 1: had to you know, you're you had like a twenty
Speaker 1: piece band, and you had to know all these people,
Speaker 1: and you had to do dance halls and everything. And
Speaker 1: now you could you could because everything was amplified and electrified.
Speaker 1: You could get away with just you know, three or
Speaker 1: four pieces and um everybody could hear you, and they
Speaker 1: could hear you louder than they could hear the big
Speaker 1: bands from before um because it was amplified, but it
Speaker 1: was affordable. And he also made him really durable too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was because he introduced kind of like a
Speaker 1: factory process to it. Whereas over at Gibson and Rick
Speaker 1: and Bucker and Bigsby, they were all still making these
Speaker 1: hands kind of not one at a time, but they
Speaker 1: were making them by hand, very slowly. Uh. One of
Speaker 1: the big reasons he was able to factory I is
Speaker 1: it was he started he was basically the only company
Speaker 1: using a bolt on neck. Um. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you take the neck and you literally screw it into
Speaker 1: the body of the guitar on the back. And that's
Speaker 1: why anytime you see a Fender guitar on the back,
Speaker 1: they have this little silver square plate where the neck
Speaker 1: meets the body and under that it's where it's bolted together. Um.
Speaker 1: Gibson and basically everyone else was using uh what's called
Speaker 1: set neck which are glued on. And you might think that,
Speaker 1: like many bolting sounds a lot better than glue. But
Speaker 1: what glue does is that actually it hears it and
Speaker 1: makes it more like that log almost like a through neck.
Speaker 1: It makes it part of the body and gives you
Speaker 1: more warmth and a little more sustain and it's just
Speaker 1: a bit of a different it sound. Whereas the both
Speaker 1: on guitar got a little more known for sort of
Speaker 1: being kind of pluckier, and you know, they both have
Speaker 1: their advantages. Some people swear by one or the other,
Speaker 1: but uh, neither like nowadays, neither one of them is
Speaker 1: superior to the next. Really, it's just sort of two
Speaker 1: different methods. Gotcha, I got you. But I could also
Speaker 1: see that Bolt almost represents that mass production to ye
Speaker 1: for sure. So it took um Leo Fenders working on that,
Speaker 1: um big we'll call it Biggsby inspired design. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, um Les Paul is about to have
Speaker 1: a life changing experience in Oklahoma of all places. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he, like I said, was not a good husband
Speaker 1: to either his first wife or his second. Really, he
Speaker 1: had a long time affair with a woman her with
Speaker 1: her stage name of Mary Ford. She was a singer
Speaker 1: and also a champion guitar player. Uh, they had at
Speaker 1: a duo going on. It was Less Paul mary Ford,
Speaker 1: and they had tons and tons of number one hit records,
Speaker 1: and they had been together for quite a few years
Speaker 1: before he even got divorced from his first wife. But
Speaker 1: in while traveling I think back to l A from Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: they were in a really bad car accident on the
Speaker 1: icy roads of uh near Davenport, Oklahoma, and it was
Speaker 1: a really really bad wreck that could have killed both
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah. So um, they were both thrown from
Speaker 1: the car along with all their equipment. UM. And from
Speaker 1: what I understand, Mary's injuries weren't nearly as bad as
Speaker 1: less as um his spleen was all messed up a
Speaker 1: bunch of other stuff. But the big problem for less
Speaker 1: Paul was that his right elbow was shattered, and at
Speaker 1: first the doctors said, well, we're just gonna have to
Speaker 1: amputate your arm, and that obviously would have been that
Speaker 1: for his guitar playing days. Um. Apparently, when he was
Speaker 1: faced with this news, when of the first things he
Speaker 1: started doing was um coming up with how to create
Speaker 1: um an effect where you could play guitar one handed. Um.
Speaker 1: But he luckily did never have to actually follow through
Speaker 1: and invent that, because uh, some doctor was aware of
Speaker 1: his status and that he played guitar and like that.
Speaker 1: He just they couldn't take his arm, so he set
Speaker 1: about trying to figure out how to solve the problem
Speaker 1: while keeping his arm and allowing less Paul to somehow
Speaker 1: play one way or another. Yeah, I mean, he basically
Speaker 1: gave less Paul the choice. He was like, you can
Speaker 1: either amputate it, or we can try this procedure where
Speaker 1: we kind of screw your arm back together and we
Speaker 1: don't know if it'll work. And he he said, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna be permanently bent in some kind of direction.
Speaker 1: And less Paul said, why don't we at least try
Speaker 1: it first so we know if it works before we
Speaker 1: cut the arm off, And he said, and just bend
Speaker 1: it and pointed towards my belly button and leave it there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he could play guitar. And that's what they did,
Speaker 1: and for the rest of less Paul's life. Like if
Speaker 1: you ever see a picture of less Paul, that right
Speaker 1: arm is bent. Yeah, and the doctor just to put
Speaker 1: a little flourish on it, made it so that his
Speaker 1: thumb was always in the thumbs up position, so it
Speaker 1: always looks like Les Paul was really happy about whatever
Speaker 1: was going on when that picture was taken. Alright, So
Speaker 1: that's where Les Paul is. He recovers. It literally takes
Speaker 1: him about a year in the hospital to fully recover
Speaker 1: from his injuries. So he's on pause when Leo Fender
Speaker 1: builds Uh the Fender Esquire guitar and debuts it at
Speaker 1: the nineteen National Association of Music Merchants Convention in Chicago.
Speaker 1: I say we take a break here and then we
Speaker 1: come back and talk about that and keep going. How
Speaker 1: about that? It sounds great. Okay, we'll be right back
Speaker 1: and shock alright, chuck so um so. Leo Fender takes
Speaker 1: his um Paul Bigsby inspired guitar and creates a prototype
Speaker 1: out of it that's known as the Esquire. And I
Speaker 1: think there's some differences between the Esquire and what would
Speaker 1: become later known as a Telecaster, Right, it's not the
Speaker 1: exact same thing, just with a different name. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think there was only one pick up
Speaker 1: and the Telly ended up having a couple, but it
Speaker 1: was when you look at pictures of the Esquire, it's
Speaker 1: the same body shape, very utilitarian. Uh, not the most
Speaker 1: comfortable guitar to play. Um, which we'll see later on
Speaker 1: what's kind of a big deal in the creation of
Speaker 1: the strap a cast. But it was a real deal
Speaker 1: guitar and it was loud, it was clear it could
Speaker 1: be mass produced, and everybody basically said this is the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's had the National Association of Music Merchants convention going, hey,
Speaker 1: you like you like it this, you like it this guitar,
Speaker 1: and they all said yes very much. So he went
Speaker 1: back after the convention and kind of tinkered with it
Speaker 1: a little more. Um. He had a collaborator named George Fullerton, uh,
Speaker 1: and they ended up producing from the Esquire. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of problems with it, apparently from the steel
Speaker 1: strings when they were tuned tightly. Um, eventually the neck
Speaker 1: would start to warp a little bit. That's a big problem.
Speaker 1: So they figured out how to reinforce it with the rod,
Speaker 1: and they solved some other small problems and then ended
Speaker 1: up coming up with the broadcaster. Right, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: A guy we should mention here is Um. I think
Speaker 1: Dave called him as marketing sales guy. It's true he
Speaker 1: was that Don Randall, but he was Leo Fenders d
Speaker 1: fifty partner in the Fender Music Corporation and a huge,
Speaker 1: huge part of this story that we really won't get into.
Speaker 1: But Don Randall was there the whole time and and
Speaker 1: sort of was everything that Leo Fender wasn't as far
Speaker 1: as when you're looking for a good business partner, UM
Speaker 1: out there hitting the bricks selling this thing, drumming up deals,
Speaker 1: and the Broadcaster. You know, the ads came out and
Speaker 1: he got that first cease and desist from Gretch. The
Speaker 1: they made drums and guitars, and there was actually a
Speaker 1: drum set called the Broadcaster with a k. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a sound you make when you burp and choke
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, broadcaster, no Gretch. Oh I
Speaker 1: misread that one. Sorry, broadcaster with the case sounds evil?
Speaker 1: Remember yeah, yeah, yeah, um Gretch still makes beautiful guitars
Speaker 1: and great drums, but they had a drum set with
Speaker 1: a k. Uh. So they said, all right, we gotta
Speaker 1: think of a different name. And so TV was the
Speaker 1: latest thing, and so they literally called it the Telecaster
Speaker 1: because of that, I know, and people were like, boy, howdy,
Speaker 1: I love this. They did, so that was a big deal.
Speaker 1: The Telecaster was I guess the first mass produced, widely
Speaker 1: available electric guitar, solid body electric guitar that shredded, that
Speaker 1: you could shred on. I guess. Yeah. It kind of
Speaker 1: started at all. Yeah, and so um Less Paul by
Speaker 1: this time he had gotten in that car rec in
Speaker 1: n you said. It took him about a year to recover. Um.
Speaker 1: He got divorced from his wife. He ended up marrying
Speaker 1: Mary Ford um, and together they actually his his music
Speaker 1: career got even even greater than it was when he
Speaker 1: was working with Bing Crosby. Um. This is when they
Speaker 1: had four slots on the Billboard top charts at one
Speaker 1: time on one week. That's enormous. They were the first
Speaker 1: to do it. I'm sure maybe some others like Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: the Beatles and a couple others have done it since,
Speaker 1: but there were only kind of gets across just how
Speaker 1: huge less Paul was as a popular musician. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mary was great and um, everyone loved her. She had
Speaker 1: a beautiful voice. Again, he was not a good husband
Speaker 1: to her. He was eventually when they got divorced, it
Speaker 1: was on grounds of cruelty. Was one of them because
Speaker 1: he was just a workaholic and would never stop, and
Speaker 1: he would not let her stop. And she was like
Speaker 1: where they were really really wealthy at this point from
Speaker 1: their career, and she was like, can we enjoy life
Speaker 1: a little bit? Can we stop and and live? And
Speaker 1: he was like no, Like, we're not getting anything accomplished
Speaker 1: if we're doing that. And the stage act was a
Speaker 1: little I mean, I guess for the time it was
Speaker 1: what it was, but it was kind of misogynistic. He
Speaker 1: would make cracks about about Mary, you know, singing in
Speaker 1: between doing the dishes and and kind of you know,
Speaker 1: making him dinner, and she would sort of laugh, and
Speaker 1: it was their banter, but it was just the whole
Speaker 1: thing was kind of gross in retrospect, Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: especially today and then the cats on the unicycles with
Speaker 1: the Sparklers. It was just widely considered to be over
Speaker 1: the top. Yeah, way over the top. So um, But
Speaker 1: because Leo knew Less Paul, I mean, like you said,
Speaker 1: they they and Paul Bigsby were all working in a
Speaker 1: garage together, working on electric guitars. Like you kne him.
Speaker 1: He was friendly with him enough so that, um, Leo
Speaker 1: Fender and Don Randall said, you know, if we could
Speaker 1: get Less Paul, who's like the most well known guitar
Speaker 1: player in the world, to endorse our Fender guitars, this
Speaker 1: would be a huge deal, huge. So they sent him
Speaker 1: a telecaster and with a note saying like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is where I'm going, I'd like you to to consider
Speaker 1: coming here with me something along I'm paraphrasing, um and uh,
Speaker 1: Less Paul was like, no, that's all right, I don't
Speaker 1: really like this guitar that much. Yeah, I think he
Speaker 1: was fairly kind about it, but he just said, this
Speaker 1: sound is too bright at that bolt on neck and
Speaker 1: you know, it's a different sound, and he didn't like it.
Speaker 1: And remember, like that was the whole reason he dedicated
Speaker 1: himself to coming up with the electric guitar and cracking
Speaker 1: this code for a decade or more a couple of
Speaker 1: decades by that, because he wanted to. He was searching
Speaker 1: for that one perfect sound and so that actually he
Speaker 1: didn't give up the quest after Fender said, you know,
Speaker 1: here's my guitar and it didn't work. Um Les Paul,
Speaker 1: despite having been turned away by Gibson a full decade before,
Speaker 1: went back to Gibson and said, hey, you guys have
Speaker 1: to listen to me this time, like it's this is
Speaker 1: this is where things are going. Look, Leo Fender has
Speaker 1: just come out with this telecaster, Like it's very clear
Speaker 1: that you guys need to be developing a solid body
Speaker 1: electric guitar. And Gibson said, funny, you should mention that
Speaker 1: because we've been working on it ever since we saw
Speaker 1: that Esquire at that music convention and it knocked our
Speaker 1: socks off, that's right, So they were kind of already
Speaker 1: on it um. They were different, they were they were
Speaker 1: sort of modeled after those acoustics with the tuning pegs
Speaker 1: on both sides. The Gibson guitar was really heavy, and
Speaker 1: that's it's funny. Later on, many many guitar players started
Speaker 1: with what would end up being the Less Paul. Eric
Speaker 1: Clapton and uh and Keith Richards and all these people
Speaker 1: played the less Paul early on, and a lot I
Speaker 1: think Pete Townsend and they all eventually switch to fenders
Speaker 1: later in their career because the less Paul weighs between
Speaker 1: nine and ten pounds and the strats and Telly's way
Speaker 1: about seven pounds, and it's difference two or three pounds
Speaker 1: strapped on your back when you're touring is a big deal.
Speaker 1: Like I can tell a difference when I play a
Speaker 1: heavy guitar, you know, being fifty years old in my
Speaker 1: basement after a few hours, so I can imagine what
Speaker 1: like touring year after year, what what kind of told
Speaker 1: that takes, for sure. But this Gibson was heavy. It
Speaker 1: had that glued on neck which gives you a little
Speaker 1: more warmth, a little more resonance, and it was a
Speaker 1: really good guitar. And so they say to less Paul like,
Speaker 1: now he's being courted by Gibson officially, like, hey, what
Speaker 1: do you think of this? We will let this be
Speaker 1: your guitar, We will slap your name on it, will
Speaker 1: give you a five percent royalty, and you've got to
Speaker 1: play it exclusively. And he said the done deal, my friends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he was like like he'd always only played Gibsons.
Speaker 1: He loved Gibson. This is like a dream come true
Speaker 1: for him, you know, and for them also to come
Speaker 1: back to him now, um had had to feel awfully sweet.
Speaker 1: But it was so stupid too, because this is a
Speaker 1: decade after he went to them with this idea of
Speaker 1: the first time and now they're finally getting around to it.
Speaker 1: But it was a big deal. So Less Paul now
Speaker 1: played Gibson guitars exclusively and they named that first model
Speaker 1: the Lebson the Gibson. Less Paul. Yeah, I wonder if
Speaker 1: in that meeting he said, can also tell people that
Speaker 1: I U I designed and invented this thing, because that's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which which is really something because he apparently didn't. There's
Speaker 1: a guy named uh, I think Paul McCarty, George McCarty.
Speaker 1: I think George McCarty. I'm sorry, I'm pretty sure his
Speaker 1: name is George McCarty. UM. He was the president of
Speaker 1: Gibson at the time. His last name is McCarty. Let's
Speaker 1: just call him that or mr X. Mr X was
Speaker 1: the president of Gibson at the time, and he um
Speaker 1: largely designed the guitar. But yeah, they kind of let
Speaker 1: I guess as part of the endorsement deal, they let
Speaker 1: um less Paul just basically claim it like he had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with it. He made some tweaks
Speaker 1: um for sure, but he never designed the less ball
Speaker 1: that that is also a fact. And he did not
Speaker 1: admit the electric guitar. A lot of people still say
Speaker 1: that Les Paul invented the electric guitar, and he was
Speaker 1: always happy to just sort of nod his head right,
Speaker 1: all right, Chuck. So like by the by the mid fifties,
Speaker 1: by the early fifties, um Fender had the Telecaster out,
Speaker 1: um Gibson had their less Palm model out, So they
Speaker 1: were now widely available electric guitars being produced, and that
Speaker 1: that sounded awesome, like this sound had finally been a
Speaker 1: cheap loudness, clarity, shredding nous, gnarly nous. All of that
Speaker 1: stuff was now extant in the world. Did not exist
Speaker 1: before now it did. But the one that really changed everything,
Speaker 1: the the electric guitar that changed at all was um Offenders.
Speaker 1: If not their second model, they're definitely their second well
Speaker 1: known model, the Stratocaster, right, which came out in nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a huge innovation because the problems with the
Speaker 1: Telly is that it uh like I said it was
Speaker 1: it was. It wasn't rounded, it wasn't sharp, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the edges of it. It was you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of dug into your body and wasn't super comfortable.
Speaker 1: So Leo Finder does what he does, which is making
Speaker 1: improvements like the Japanese, and he got into the back
Speaker 1: of it and he he carved out where the top
Speaker 1: of the back of the guitar meets your belly. He
Speaker 1: shaved that down to where it was contoured and then
Speaker 1: where your right arm if you're right and player your
Speaker 1: pick hand, where it where your forearm kind of rests
Speaker 1: on the top front of the guitar. He carved that
Speaker 1: down to and contoured it so your arm and your
Speaker 1: belly weren't pressed against these sharp edges, and it was
Speaker 1: just a more comfortable guitar all the way around. It
Speaker 1: had a had a cool look. This was a time
Speaker 1: in the early fifties, mid fifties when you know, these
Speaker 1: these cars has had these big fins on them and
Speaker 1: everything just had this sort of look like it's hard
Speaker 1: to describe what the how weird the stratocaster and how
Speaker 1: sort of modern and futuristic it looked at the time
Speaker 1: because we all just see that it's like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: what a guitar looks like. But at the time it
Speaker 1: was revolutionary and everyone literally was like, what in the
Speaker 1: world is that hot looking thing? Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: other things that made it look hot, those fins had
Speaker 1: a purpose. The horns at the top of the guitar,
Speaker 1: where the neck met the body. Um, it carved out
Speaker 1: space so you could get your fingers to press those
Speaker 1: frets on the higher notes a lot more easily than
Speaker 1: you could have before when you were reaching all the
Speaker 1: way around it, which again allowed for greater shredding. That's right,
Speaker 1: And the fenders did those on both sides, whereas the
Speaker 1: Less Paul was only carved on the underside, so you
Speaker 1: could still get into some strings, but it took a
Speaker 1: little bit of finagling. Uh. Later on, Les Paul would
Speaker 1: come up and I have one of these two what's
Speaker 1: called the double cut where it's cut on both sides,
Speaker 1: and the Gibson s G which is cut on both sides.
Speaker 1: But originally it was just Fender doing that, and then
Speaker 1: the Less Paul did something that just did away with
Speaker 1: that all together and made the coolest guitar of all time,
Speaker 1: the Flying V, which is the one I always associated
Speaker 1: with heavy metal. And by Less Paul, of course I
Speaker 1: mean Gibson, but that that that's the one. Like Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hendricks played that one, like, um, I can't remember, like
Speaker 1: a bunch of people played it. You've seen this before,
Speaker 1: but when he looked, well, he also played a Flying
Speaker 1: V I've seen. I've seen pictures on of it on
Speaker 1: the internet. Um, but the the UM like it's what
Speaker 1: you associate with, like like just just rocking out with
Speaker 1: a guitar, and it turns out the thing was designed
Speaker 1: in It's one of the most mind blowing facts I
Speaker 1: learned in this podcast. I couldn't believe because I associated
Speaker 1: with eighties hair metal, and um, it's been it was.
Speaker 1: It had been around for a good thirty years by then,
Speaker 1: and it like the fifties is when this thing came out.
Speaker 1: It's like the coolest looking guitar of all time for
Speaker 1: my money. No, I love the Flying V and I'll
Speaker 1: probably own one at one point. At some point, you
Speaker 1: should look up reverse Flying be because they were one
Speaker 1: of the ugliest guitars. Yeah, I've seen that before, but yeah,
Speaker 1: Gibson was tinkering around. They made the Flying V, and
Speaker 1: they made the Explorer, which is the one that's kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a lightning bolt. Uh, and then the
Speaker 1: Firebird and those all did okay, but they weren't like
Speaker 1: you know, and Leo fendered the same thing. After the
Speaker 1: Stratocaster success, he came up with the jazz Master and
Speaker 1: the Jaguar, and he thought these were all improvements on
Speaker 1: those guitars because they added a lot more options for
Speaker 1: switches and switching in additional pickups. But they were I mean,
Speaker 1: they're kind of cool now, but they were a little
Speaker 1: busy for a lot of players back then, so they
Speaker 1: didn't take off like the strat did. It was just
Speaker 1: this utilitarian, really comfortable players guitar that everyone really wanted
Speaker 1: after Buddy Holly jumped on TV and and played one.
Speaker 1: Because Buddy Holly was huge. Yeah, he was huge, and
Speaker 1: he was actually bigger in the UK than he was
Speaker 1: in America at the time. UM, and I didn't realize
Speaker 1: to see this is another factor the podcast. There were
Speaker 1: two tours of the UK and ninety that changed music history.
Speaker 1: I just think it's so cool. But one was Buddy Holly,
Speaker 1: who Buddy Holly and the Crickets went on tour with
Speaker 1: the Stratocaster front and center. And then Muddy Waters came
Speaker 1: to the UK. And Muddy Waters have been around for
Speaker 1: years by then. He actually was just kind of like
Speaker 1: an old relic in America by then. But it was
Speaker 1: super cool in the sixties and the UK to be
Speaker 1: into old style blues, so they brought Muddy Waters over
Speaker 1: and Muddy Waters didn't show up with the Spanish style guitar.
Speaker 1: He showed up with the strato caster and blared it.
Speaker 1: Then those two tours produced bands like the Beatles, The Who,
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, UM like basically every band
Speaker 1: in the British Invasion were in the audience as kids
Speaker 1: are slightly younger men, uh for those two tours and
Speaker 1: were inspired to go on and form some really amazing
Speaker 1: bands afterward. Yeah, it was funny. It was kind of
Speaker 1: like either you were in the Beatles camp where you
Speaker 1: saw Buddy Holly and you wanted to do sort of
Speaker 1: upbeat pop music, or you were Eric Clapton going to
Speaker 1: see Muddy Waters and you wanted to do this sort
Speaker 1: of raunchy blues rock thing. But either way, it was
Speaker 1: a strato caster front and center and another. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess we should take a break now before we get
Speaker 1: to the next guy. Right, all right, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: take our final break and talk about surf guitar legend
Speaker 1: Dick Dale right after this blooms and shock. Okay, welcome, Wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, let me do it differently. We're back, all right.
Speaker 1: So all these people are being influenced by people like
Speaker 1: Buddy Holly and Muddy Waters. Then comes a gentleman named
Speaker 1: Dick Dale in the nineteen fifties, the you know everyone
Speaker 1: knows him now, of course, is the the head of
Speaker 1: the surf guitar surf music movement. And that was big.
Speaker 1: That wasn't just like a sort of like, oh, some
Speaker 1: people are listening to that. That was like the most
Speaker 1: popular form of music for a little while in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. And Dick Dale's thing was he wanted He
Speaker 1: was the first guy to really want enormous amounts of volume,
Speaker 1: like more than just like let me amplify this so
Speaker 1: we can cut through. He wanted to blow people's ear
Speaker 1: drums out, and he actually accidentally blew out Leo Fender's
Speaker 1: ear drum when they were working together trying to figure
Speaker 1: out this problem. Leo Fender bent down and said he
Speaker 1: he thinks he hears a hum. He said, don't play
Speaker 1: for a minute. He literally put his ear on the
Speaker 1: amplifier speaker, and no one knows what happened. If he
Speaker 1: bumped the guitar or something, but cranked all the way up,
Speaker 1: which is how you would listen for a buzz or
Speaker 1: a hum. He literally destroyed one of Leo Fender's ear
Speaker 1: so now he's down to one ear and one eye. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Leo Fender famously clutched his ears and went, cratch my ears,
Speaker 1: and they said, hey, we'll see you for that. It's
Speaker 1: like Marty McFly getting blown across the room and Doc Yeah,
Speaker 1: Slan sort of is. But he was a huge, huge
Speaker 1: influence on UM achieving volume for rock bands that would
Speaker 1: come along later. I actually saw him in Athens, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: towards not towards the end of his life, because he
Speaker 1: just died a few years ago, but it was saw
Speaker 1: him at forty. What it was amazing, that's awesome, but
Speaker 1: that was Yeah. Supposedly he inspired Jimmy Hendrix. Um, he
Speaker 1: was like a guitar god himself, for sure, an overlooked one.
Speaker 1: I saw I think an article you sent that he's
Speaker 1: not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which
Speaker 1: is like the cookiest thing I've heard in a while.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. Yeah, so he's playing the strat the Beach
Speaker 1: Boys are playing Fenders. Uh, we have to shout out
Speaker 1: legendary session bass player Carol Kaye, a woman among men
Speaker 1: who played the Fender Precision bass. Yeah. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think of just about any popular song from the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties, there's probably about a chance that
Speaker 1: Carol k played bass on it. Yeah, motown song, every
Speaker 1: Beach Boys up record like you name it. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: really cool. I hadn't heard of her. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: there's a great documentary called The wreck and Crew about
Speaker 1: these legendary studio musicians who basically played all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Like the Beach Boys didn't play their instruments on the records.
Speaker 1: What it was the Wrecking Crew. Be quiet, don't tell
Speaker 1: me things like that. I'm sorry. Brian Wilson's a genius,
Speaker 1: but he played bass on stage. Carol k played bass
Speaker 1: in the studio. Okay, so, um, Leo Fender, here's the
Speaker 1: thing about him. Remember we said that he was a
Speaker 1: tinker and engineer. Those guys don't translate to head of
Speaker 1: highly successful and quickly growing company very well. They tend
Speaker 1: to get a little stressed out and overwhelmed. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened to good old Leo. He apparently had ulcers,
Speaker 1: which has nothing to do with stress, as we learned
Speaker 1: thanks to the guinea pig scientists who drank a bunch
Speaker 1: of that bacteria to prove that it was caused by
Speaker 1: a bacteria rather than stress anyway, So he tried to
Speaker 1: s l out in the early sixties, I believe, yeah,
Speaker 1: And um, I guess Randall didn't accept that. What do
Speaker 1: you why? Why not? I think they had been partners
Speaker 1: for so long at Randall. It seems like genuinely thought, like,
Speaker 1: you don't understand the value of this company asking for
Speaker 1: a million dollars, And so he started uh courting other companies.
Speaker 1: He courted Baldwin to sell the whole company. He courted
Speaker 1: eventually CBS UH, CBS, CBS Records UH, and they ended
Speaker 1: up paying what would be the equivalent of a hundred
Speaker 1: and ten million dollars for the Fender Music Corporation, and
Speaker 1: Don Randall and Leo Fender each got checks uh for
Speaker 1: five million bucks, which is about fifty something million dollars today.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Wow. Don Randall was great, great kind of
Speaker 1: have in your corner. Huh. He really was, um and
Speaker 1: they were friends. And I think you know, Leo also
Speaker 1: had this. He was just always in bad health. He
Speaker 1: had this and I had never heard of this, be
Speaker 1: in a case of strep that apparently literally never went
Speaker 1: away like he had it for years and years and
Speaker 1: years and was always so a week sucks. But I
Speaker 1: can't imagine having a chronic case of strip. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he I think part of the terms of the deal
Speaker 1: was there were two parts of the company that were
Speaker 1: brand new that didn't make any money. Actually lost money,
Speaker 1: which was the Fender Rhodes Electric piano, which everyone was like,
Speaker 1: what the heck is this? Of course now it's amazing,
Speaker 1: and then the Fender Acoustic division, which really never did
Speaker 1: take off, like I mentioned earlier. And part of the
Speaker 1: deal was that they had to include those even though
Speaker 1: they weren't profitable. As he said, fine, and then they
Speaker 1: had to keep Leo on for five years as a consultant,
Speaker 1: which they were happy to do. And I think he
Speaker 1: couldn't do anything else with anyone. I think he had
Speaker 1: a noncompete for ten years. But he would go on
Speaker 1: later to start new companies even after that, and he
Speaker 1: died in Um. He lived a pretty pretty good life,
Speaker 1: pretty good long life, got to tinker for a pretty
Speaker 1: long time, ended up being a wealthy man, and really
Speaker 1: kind of like became one of the people who's known
Speaker 1: as the inventor of the electric guitar. For better or worse,
Speaker 1: UM and Less Paul's story kind of took a slightly
Speaker 1: different turn um than Leo Fenders. Leo wanted to fade
Speaker 1: into the background. That decision was made for Less Paul,
Speaker 1: not necessarily UM in conjunction with his wishes, his innovations
Speaker 1: with electric guitar. His and Leo fenders creation and introduction
Speaker 1: of electric guitars changed music like we saw Um created
Speaker 1: rock and roll or led the found created the foundation
Speaker 1: that rock and roll was built on. And all the
Speaker 1: kids said, we don't really like less Paul's music anymore.
Speaker 1: So this he created this monster that ended up swallowing
Speaker 1: him basically, Um, and he kind of faded off into uh,
Speaker 1: into nothingness there for a little while. He was gonna
Speaker 1: become this obscure, incredibly wealthy guy. Yeah, he got divorced
Speaker 1: from Mary. Like I said earlier, Um, he ended up
Speaker 1: getting custody the kids, which was just crazy at the time,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of the only thing she wanted.
Speaker 1: It was really ugly, kind of public divorce. It was
Speaker 1: very sad. And he uh, you know, I mentioned the
Speaker 1: Gibson SG earlier, the solid guitar they made that to
Speaker 1: be lighter and to kind of compete with these. That
Speaker 1: was originally called the Gibson Les Paul s G. And
Speaker 1: eventually he didn't like it at all, so they took
Speaker 1: his name off of it and then it was just
Speaker 1: the Gibson s G. And Yeah, he just kind of
Speaker 1: faded away. He he lived to be ninety two. I
Speaker 1: mean he had a great life, like you said, as
Speaker 1: a wealthy guy who he would always play these live
Speaker 1: kind of small club gigs in New York, and very
Speaker 1: famous people like Slash would stop through and everyone would
Speaker 1: come through to play with Less Paul and he would
Speaker 1: regale people's stories. And it wasn't like a sideshow act.
Speaker 1: He just he couldn't fill large halls anymore. Basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he you know, he he got the recognition that
Speaker 1: he I'm sure liked. I mean, he seemed like a
Speaker 1: pretty good guy as long as you weren't married to him. Um.
Speaker 1: But he Uh, he's known as like the guitar God's
Speaker 1: guitar god. I saw put somewhere that like, if you
Speaker 1: are a guitar player, guitar hero, you look up till
Speaker 1: Less Paul for what he did, not just with creating
Speaker 1: or helping to create or at least saying that he
Speaker 1: created the electric guitar, but also for all the other
Speaker 1: innovations that he really did invent, like multi track recording
Speaker 1: and sound sound you know. Yeah, and just to sort
Speaker 1: of button up the story of the guitar itself, Uh,
Speaker 1: they only made them in fifty nine sixty and I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: fifty fifty nine and sixty made of these. And after
Speaker 1: Muddy Waters is when people like Eric Clapton and Pete
Speaker 1: Townsend and uh like kind of any big English guitar
Speaker 1: player at the time played less Paul's. Remember how seeing
Speaker 1: at the very beginning in the first episode, how when
Speaker 1: Finder was up less Paul was down on the other
Speaker 1: way around, the strat kind of changed the world. And
Speaker 1: then the strat became kind of uncool for a little
Speaker 1: while in the six stas when all these guys started
Speaker 1: playing the less Paul Jimmy page of course, and um,
Speaker 1: people are like, wait a minute, we need less Paul's.
Speaker 1: Like there was only of them, so they started making
Speaker 1: them again by popular demand, and I think sixty something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty eight, and they never went out of production again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty eight to start making him again. And since then
Speaker 1: it's you know, there are plenty of people who have both,
Speaker 1: but the questions sort of always unless you play like
Speaker 1: an off like like a Rick and Bucker or something,
Speaker 1: people are always like you Gibson person or a or
Speaker 1: a Fender person, And I'm a Gibson person, always have been.
Speaker 1: That's well, less Paul ended up he died in two
Speaker 1: does and nine, but he ended up being the only
Speaker 1: person to date who has been inducted in both the
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, which is pretty cool, pretty amazing. Great story.
Speaker 1: That's it, the story of the solid body electric guitar,
Speaker 1: as told through the eyes of Leo Fender. Unless Paul
Speaker 1: the end, thanks for indulging me on this. That was
Speaker 1: a good one, man. It was nice to hear you
Speaker 1: just so just jazzed like a precision jazz bass. Well,
Speaker 1: after thirteen years, it was we finally tackled something. I
Speaker 1: knew something. Whatever. Well, if you want to know more
Speaker 1: about the electric guitar, go pick one up, see what happens,
Speaker 1: and maybe you'll start your own shredding rock band yourself.
Speaker 1: And since I said shredding rock band, of course, it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. You know what, Let's not
Speaker 1: do a listener mail today. And we we do this
Speaker 1: occasionally where we will not do listener mail and ask
Speaker 1: people for a favor. We do this like once every
Speaker 1: three years. Never been good at self marketing, but we
Speaker 1: like to call out occasionally for people to go on
Speaker 1: iTunes or your pod player of choice. Leave reviews, leave ratings.
Speaker 1: It helps us out. I don't care how long we've
Speaker 1: been around, we still need people saying positive, hopefully positive
Speaker 1: things about us out there. So instead of listener mail,
Speaker 1: just do us favorite telefriend about us, tell a relative,
Speaker 1: tell a coworker that they might hate us or love us.
Speaker 1: Well done. That's why we only do this at once
Speaker 1: every three years. That's right, so clunky. Well, Like Chuck said,
Speaker 1: we would love it if you left us a review,
Speaker 1: specifically a positive one. But whatever, you know, speak from
Speaker 1: your heart. How about that? That's what Josh and Chuck
Speaker 1: think you should do. And in the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us as well as always,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.