Tag Archive for 'guitar'

Stick this in ya fuse box: Bon Scott 9 July 1946 – 19 February 1980

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 Hello, Howard, how ya doin’ friend; next door neighbour. Get your f#%*king jumbo jet outa my airport… Says Bon Scott in the end refrain of the 1976 song off AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap ‘Aint No Fun (Waitin’ ‘Round to Be a Millionaire)’. You could be forgiven – if you were unaware of the impact Ronald Belford Scott had on the international rock music industry – for thinking Bon Scott a profane and trivial lyric writer. Because, well, he did use profanity, and he did write about fairly trivial things. But it was Bon Scott’s voice, both in an auditory and a literary sense that spoke to, and for a large section of Australian culture.

Irony. Something that may often be lost on certain overseas audiences, but something that drills straight into the core of Australian working class language. Bon Scott’s lyrics are chocka-block with irony. Bon’s lifestyle and proclivities were well known. So consider the lyrics of the song ‘Overdose’ off the 1977 album Let There Be Rock (and consider how Bon died): I never smoked me no cigarettes, I never drank much booze, but I’m only a man don’t ya understand, and a man can sometimes lose. Never drank much booze? C’mon, Bon! But he isn’t trying to deceive his us. We’re in on the joke. We know he’s being ironic. Even the theme of the song is both ironic and a clever use of nomenclature. The metaphor of a drug overdose as an overdose of love. The character in the song is clean of drugs, but addicted to sex. (Of course this is now a theme song for wealthy, high profile men when they get sprung as multiple philanderers.) Another example is the above song title: ‘Aint No Fun (Waitin’ ‘Round to Be a Millionaire)’. Waiting around? To be a millionaire? Only an Australian would make such a statement. The idea of waiting around, doing as little as possible, but in the hope of one day coming into big money. And this not saying that Australians are not hard workers. It’s just an ironic statement. And Australians get it.   

AC/DC were a very hard working band. They weren’t waiting around. They were slogging it out in pubs throughout the mid 1970s. And Bon, who was quite a bit older than the rest of the band, had already been doing it for a decade with other bands. The hard work paid off. Each album sold better than the last, and with the release of Highway to Hell in 1979, the band became internationally successful. And ironically, this played a big part in Bon’s death. The band was by no means an overnight success, but playing in pubs in Australia, making just enough money for a feed and a few bottles of Stones ginger wine is a long way from living in London, rehearsing in state-of -the-art studios and having access to as much booze as you want.

Those close to Bon say although he was happy with his success – it was his life-long dream – he was not entirely on top of the world while in London writing for the follow up to Highway to Hell. He was drinking heavily – waking up late and starting the day with a glass of whiskey – according to his Japanese girlfriend at the time, Anna. The week of his death, Bon had asked Anna to move out of his flat in Victoria (London) so he could concentrate on writing. On February 18, 1980 Bon had been drinking all day and went out with an acquaintance, Alistair Kinnear, to a bar where Bon downed glass after glass of quadruple scotches. Kinnear could not rouse Bon from his car when they arrived back at, first Bon’s flat, and then Kinnear’s flat, so Kinnear left Bon in the car to sleep it off.

Circumstance conspired against Bon. It was freezing, he was passed out and his body alcohol poisoned. And Kinnear didn’t go down to check on him until part way through the following day. Bon was pronounced dead on arrival at Kings College Hospital. Acute Alcohol Poisoning was the official cause of death. No other drugs were found in Bon’s system.

No one would argue that Bon Scott joined Jimmy Hendrix, Mama Cass, Janis Joplin, John Bonham and others in that ironic hall of fame. Amazing, original talent claimed by the lifestyle that enabled that talent to flourish. 

Bon’s voice is still as loud and clear as it ever was.

A final and maybe bitter irony is that AC/DC, with Brian Johnson singing, has become one of the most successful rock bands of all time. Certainly Australia’s most successful rock band. For many though there are two AC/DCs – Bon’s, and the other one. 

The Powerhouse Museum has in its collection not only one of Angus Young’s Gibson SG guitars, but this very cool original iron-on transfer from 1976, and a rare picture disc record which is on display in ‘The 80s are back’ exhibition.

Meet the curator- Michael Lea

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Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Michael Lea

What is your speciality area?
Music and musical instruments. It’s a very diverse area so covers a lot of ground from historical to contemporary aspects through to musical traditions from a variety of cultures. We also look at music from a number of different angles that includes the science and design behind instruments as well as historical developments and also the way music has been used culturally in all its various forms. Music is found in many different contexts and you’ll see instruments from the collection on display in a wide variety of exhibitions at the museum.

Although I’ve got a background in music I also have a strong history and social sciences training so I’ve got a particular interest in Australian instrument makers, especially those that are now long forgotten. When possible I try to revive interest in them through research and articles and by putting their works on display or helping organise a performance where one might be played. Organising some of the performances at the museum is another part of the job.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Is that a polite question to ask? I’ve been the curator in this area since 1998 but began working with the music collection in 1985.

What is your favourite object in the collection?
The whole collection is fascinating so that’s a tough one to answer. That being said though, one of my faves is the Maccaferri plastic guitar that you can see below. Another is this small banjo mandolin I’m holding in the photo which was made in Australia in the late 1940s or 1950s. This one was donated to the museum by Melbourne instrument maker Roger Buckmaster. Pacific was the name of an instrument company that was established by Hec McLennan in Melbourne and made guitars as well as these smaller instruments. They started in the 1940s around about the same time as Maton Guitars did, but possibly initially used McLennan’s name in the early stages rather than Pacific.

One of the reasons I like them is that rather than being high end collectables or professional instruments they were a basic day-to-day instrument that anyone might play and which today aren’t very widely known. They were at the lower end of the market using fairly cheap materials, which might account for the condition of some of them today – they were probably well used as a knock-around instrument rather than kept in a pristine state which might happen to more up market models. They often used paint stencils for their name and other things such as fret markers, rather than having actual inlay in the fingerboard. The guitars they made also used stencils on the body sometimes with figures of cowboys or even palm trees to add an exotic touch. The banjo mandolin is an intriguing thing in itself – one of a range of instruments that seem to have been cross bred with something else (in this case the banjo and the mandolin). To take the idea further…we’ve also got a walking stick violin in the collection! We don’t have much information about Hec McLennan and Pacific so I’d love to hear more if anyone knows.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
In terms of research probably the work I’ve done on nineteenth century makers such as John Devereux (bowed strings) or Jordan Wainwright (flutes), both of who were amongst some of the earliest professional makers working in the European tradition in Australia and which not much was known about. Over the years we’ve also commissioned instruments from present day makers to document their work and have also commissioned some new music for exhibitions and programs from composers, both of which have been great ways for the museum to make a link with the creative process. For exhibitions one of the highlights with hindsight was working with the team on Ngaramang Bayumi: an exhibition about Australian Indigenous music and dance. It broke some new ground for the museum and involved lots of people working with us from the arts and communities around Australia. Working with Coxie and Brakie on the rock and roll exhibition, Real Wild Child, was a hoot too!

Maccaferri plastic guitar

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Collection, Powerhouse Museum

As I mentioned this is another of my favourite things in the collection. It was bought by the museum from Maccaferri’s plastics company in the USA in the 1950s as an example of what you could do with plastic, and it doesn’t sound too bad as an instrument either. Despite being made of plastic they weren’t toys but designed as well-made instruments that were cheap but also fairly reliable, as long as you didn’t drop it or turn it into one of Dali’s melting moments by putting it on a hot surface! As the instruction booklet wisely says “DO NOT drop it on a hard surface…it will break.”

Maccaferri was a guitarist and had also done some training with a luthier as a younger man, so knew a thing or two about guitar design. This “inside” knowledge and understanding really shows and is comparable to when a composer for example really begins understanding an instrument like guitar and writing to bring out its unique peculiarities and capabilities, (in the classical realm I think Villa Llobos did this really well and Leo Brouwer being a guitarist has done it in more recent times.) Maccaferri began working with the French instrument company, Selmer in the late 1920s. They began making his radical wooden acoustic guitar that had an internal soundboard which was a way of trying to get rid of wolf notes. (Jose Ramirez III also experimented with this idea – creating the de camera guitar – which is another fave of mine in the collection with a really beautiful sound!!). There were some other features he included such as the shape of the sound hole and tailpiece.

I love the way Maccaferri kept on thinking about guitars even though he went in a seemingly different direction by establishing a plastics company that manufactured reeds. When Maccaferri started making his own plastic guitars in the 1950s he put some of these design features in as well as some more radical features like the way the action (the height of the strings above the fretboard) can be adjusted by moving the tailpiece up or down rather than physically having to cut down or replace the bridge or doing a whole neck adjustment. I also can’t go past the description of the materials in the instruction booklet; “Made of special, highly resounding plastic of ever lasting beauty”.

At the same time he also made ukuleles that apparently sold really well, whereas the guitars didn’t sell very well at all. Stocks of unsold guitars were found in the 1980s and started coming onto the market complete with their instruction booklets. Some wooden acoustic guitars are described as cigar boxes but I’m not sure how you’d describe this one, although the great guitar fashionista of the 1980s Guitar Player magazines, Teisco Del Rey, suggested it had a variety of uses including as a jelly mould.

Michael Lea
Curator, music & musical instruments

Meet the curator- Damian McDonald

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Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Damian McDonald

What is your specialty area?
My academic background is English literature, and I’m obsessed with guitars and rock music; however, my path to curator has been more one of Museum knowledge rather than specialist of a particular collection area. I have worked in several departments across the Museum, and as a curator, across several areas of the Museum’s collection: transport, communication, health and medicine, and Australian social history. I’ve become interested in every area I’ve researched.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Seven years

What is your favourite object in the collection?
Ibanez ‘Iceman’ electric guitar. This guitar was used by Australian Indigenous group NoKTuRNL from Alice Springs. This particular model is from the late 1990s, though the ‘Iceman’ guitar design is originally from the mid 1970s.

Ibanez, though obviously a Spanish name, is a Japanese guitar maker. Hoshino Gakki bought the Spanish guitar company Salvador Ibanez in 1935, and began using the name Ibanez to break into the European and US markets in the 1950s. By the 1970s, Ibanez guitars were almost all copies of American Fender and Gibson guitars – the market leaders of electric guitars and basses. The copies were very good – in most cases equaling the original Fenders and Gibos in feel and performance. Artists began using and endorsing Ibanez guitars, and the American guitar makers got nervous. Following a lawsuit over Ibanez copying a Gibson headstock, Gakki began designing unique Ibanez guitars in the mid 1970s. One of these was the ‘Iceman’. The body shape is striking and unconventional, yet comfortable to play – rather like the iconic Gibson ‘Explorer’ – and several musicians have adopted the ‘Iceman’ as their signature axe: Paul Stanley from rock group Kiss, and Steve Miller, who used his ‘Iceman’ on the album ‘Fly Like an Eagle’ in the 1970s, and more recently System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian.

This guitar is an ‘Iceman’ ICJ100WZ, and was co-designed by J, guitarist of the metal band White Zombie in 1996. It features a tremolo system: something previous models did not.

This guitar shouts rock with its design, and is at the same time a serious instrument. The Ibanez story is also one that echoes that of so many rock groups: beginnings in copying or ‘covering’ the masters of their art, and then honing and creating something original and worthy of reputation.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in the Museum?
I guess the diversity of objects I’ve researched: from computer control systems that administered the New South Wales high power electricity grid, to boxes of sex education material and douches, to a polygraph, or ‘lie detector’.