If you have been to a rock concert in the last 55 years, then you have probably seen a Marshall amp on the stage. Even if you haven’t noticed it. The amplification company has powered musicians since the mid-1960s. It was a misfortunate event that happened to the mod rock band The Who that provided Marshall with the opportunity to be the loudest sound out there. This week The Beat Marches On to the year 1965 and the beginning of loud.
If you were to listen to the early performances of the British invasion bands of the early 1960s then well, you wouldn’t be able to hear them. Look up the Beatles famous performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964 and you can’t hear the band singing in places. You are just hearing delirious fans. One of the reasons why the Beatles stopped touring was because the sound couldn’t keep up with the meteoric rise of music in the band. At Shea Stadium they had to guess they were playing the right song because of the poor amplification and the screaming fans.
The Who at this point wasn’t as big as the Beatles but were starting to make their way to the top. Having released their breakthrough singles in 1965 with “My Generation” and “I Can’t Explain” The band had released some singles beforehand, but they didn’t have much if any, impact on the charts.
The early touring days for the band were just as frustrating as the other bigger bands at the time: They just weren’t loud enough. Guitarist Pete Townsend was frustrated that he could hear people talking over the music he was performing. What didn’t help was how loud his drummer Keith Moon was playing as well. They were hit with such force that all you could hear was the cymbals crashing. The band’s touring van didn’t lock properly and was at risk of being stolen so the band decided for security they would get a guard dog to protect them when they were not around. They decided to go to Battersea Dog’s Home, which is a big rescue dog centre in South West London. While they were shopping for dogs the band’s van was stolen. And the £ 5,000 worth of equipment that was stored in there. However, this was a blessing in disguise for the band and a new up-and-coming amplification manufacturer.
Jim Marshall was a big band drummer back in the 1940s and 50s. After the big band scene calmed down and rock and roll became the dominant music genre Marshall decided that he would open an instrument shop in West London with his son Terry. By this time, it was the early 1960s and the British scene was just starting to pick up pace. When a lot of the British Invasion bands bought their first guitars from the store by 1962, they started producing amplification for the new guitars they were selling.
By 1963 the amplifiers were selling like hotcakes and everyone starting a band wanted to be powered by Marshall. They opened a factory to help the demand of the orders. The company stock was on the up and up.
After the stolen van incident, The Who rented some Vox amplifiers to help fulfil their commitments, but the band wasn’t happy with the sound. They were still drowned out by Keith Moon’s drumming. They started experimenting with their sound at this time. Bass player John Entwistle had two 50-watt amps from Marshall stacked on top of each other. Guitarist Pete Townsend hadn’t started to stack amps on top yet, but he started raising the placement of where the amp is. At one of the regular places they were performing, there was an old piano at the back of the stage. Instead of having the amp on the floor Townsend put his amp on top of the piano and loved the sound that was being produced.
With the experimentation that Townsend and Entwistle were doing at this time helped lay the groundwork for what Marshall was doing with their amplification. Even before the van incident, the guitarist was inquiring about getting louder. He walked into the store one day and demanded a louder sound. So, Jim Marshall got to work.
Marshall with the help of Ken Brown and his apprentice Dudley Craven started designing an amplifier that could withstand the power that was needed for the time. The result of this is a beast of an amp. 8×12” speakers built into one cabinet as Townsend suggested. Marshall was a bit susceptible to the design as the weight would be too heavy for the roadies to lift but The Who guitarists scoffed “They get paid”
A couple of weeks later Townsend came back to Marshall asking it to be smaller after many complaints from the roadies. So, Marshall and his team went back to an original design where instead of the huge 8×12” cabinet it would be two 4×12” cabinets on top of each other with the amp on top. The technical name would be the Marshall JTM-100 but it was more commonly known as the “Plexi Stack”
Marshall made three stacks originally. Two of these went to Pete Townsend and John Entwistle of The Who, who helped pave the forward with the design. The third went to a young up-and-coming guitarist who would eventually become a member of the Rolling Stones, Ronnie Wood who was only 17 at the time and needed his parent’s permission to place an order.
By mid-November 1965, The Who was performing with the newly designed Marshall stack and bursting ear drums across Europe. Within this time the band had released their breakthrough single My Generation and were starting to rise in the fame ranks.
Unfortunately, when The Who went to America to tour in 1967, they couldn’t bring their stacks over because they couldn’t afford the transportation fees and had to rent equipment. So, the sound reputation they had in Europe didn’t cross over to the US. That plaudit went to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix who used the amps for their bands Cream and The Experience respectively.
Over the next 55 years, the Marshall Stack is what any young budding musician would want to have to produce their sound. The reputation the company got from the late 60s onwards made it essential. It helped bands to perform in bigger venues, without the amplifier there would not be any festivals or stadium gigs.
Even though technology has advanced through P.A. systems since the launch of the stack and the sound quality has improved to an extent that you don’t need anything as powerful, Artists still use a Marshall 4×12” stack. Why? For the look. All the different musical artists that perform today use the amps because their influences did. And nothing looks cooler.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football).
If anyone reading this would like to read more about this story, the sites used for research were
http://thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/marshallstack.html
https://guitar.com/features/marshall-amp-history/
https://marshall.com/about/marshall-history
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