Ian S. Port is an award-winning writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Village Voice, The Threepenny Review, and The Believer, among others. He is also the former music editor of the San Francisco Weekly. A lifelong guitar player and California native, he and his wife now live in New York City. The Birth of Loud is his first book.
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
“In The Birth of Loud, Ian S. Port has sorted out the facts of the
electric guitar’s much-mythologized genesis and cultural conquest.
He turns them into a hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century
American history. With appropriately flashy prose, he 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. The Birth
of Loud rightfully celebrates an earlier time, when wood, steel,
copper wire, microphones and loudspeakers could redefine reality.
Tracing material choices that echoed through generations, the book
captures the quirks of human inventiveness and the power of
sound.”
—Jon Pareles, New York Times Book Review
“Fascinating . . . one of Port’s true strengths [is] his ability to
marry an agreeably anecdotal writing style to a musician’s ear. The
way a Telecaster snaps and sizzles, the way a Les Paul
purrs with liquid, violin-like tones; he just gets it. . . The
story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar
era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new.”
—Washington Post
“[An] excellent dual portrait . . . In the second half of the book,
Mr. Port, a veteran music journalist, touches on the work of every
major guitar player of rock’s golden age, from Muddy Waters to
Buddy Holly—whose appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” electrified
(the pun is unavoidable) Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney and John
Lennon—and continuing through Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and, of
course, Bob Dylan, whose notorious switch from acoustic to electric
at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival scandalized his fans. Not
everyone played a Fender or a Les Paul—the Beatles were
Rickenbacker fans, and Gretsch guitars had a significant market
share—but, as Mr. Port says, the wildfire popularity of those two
guitars fueled a world-changing demand for electric guitars of
every type.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Rich in description . . . full of imagist sound-summonings,
spot-on human characterizations, and erotic paeans to the bodies of
guitars . . . Port can write lovingly, such as when he
describes an early, solid-wood model that belonged to the country
twanger Merle Travis. . . And he can write with technical lyricism
. . . He 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.”
—The Atlantic
“Ian S. Port’s The Birth of Loud reframes the standard
history of rock ’n’ roll around the dual creators of the modern
electric guitar. . . . Instead of a parade of frontmen and
songwriters dueling it out in the charts, Port presents a ground-up
account of an at-times begrudging friendship between two Angelenos
who created the sound of what we instinctively understand as
‘rock.’ . . . Port’s research is thorough and his prose is lucid.
If the evanescence of the internet and the machine-like qualities
of synthpop make you want to put words to that vague cultural
hunger for something more tactile, more connected to physical
reality, this is your book. . . . The Birth of Loud is a
compelling addition to the misremembered history of the time.”
—SF Weekly
“Ian S. Port knows a thing or two about guitar heroes. . . . [With]
lyrical, evocative prose, The Birth of Loud includes
vivid scenes of Muddy Waters inventing Chicago blues, the Rolling
Stones' sex-drenched appearance on The T.A.M.I. Show, Buddy
Holly's TV debut with Ed Sullivan, Bob Dylan going electric at
Newport and more. Along the way, Fender and Paul hone their
inventions to perfection, vie for endorsements from the hottest
players, and engage in that age-old driver of American innovation:
cutthroat competition.”
—KQED “Arts”
“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 . . . A lively, difficult-to-put-down
portrait of an important era of American art that enhances readers'
appreciation for the music it depicts.”
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“A page-turning look at two central players [Leo Fender and Les
Paul] in the sonic evolution of popular music. Port explores their
trials and tribulations with an expert hand. This is a long-overdue
cultural biography of music innovation. VERDICT: 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.”
—Library Journal (Starred Review)
“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."
—Booklist
“[The] definitive history of the electric guitar and its two
foundational personalities [Leo Fender and Les Paul]. Theirs is a
fascinating and compelling story, especially in the hands of a
writer as committed to lively narrative . . . Port can spin out
evocative, succinct rock ’n’ roll writing with the best of
them.”
—The New York Journal of Books
“Lushly descriptive and detailed…[the book] is richly illustrative
in bringing these rock giants and the tools of their trade to life
in a squall of beautiful feedback.”
—Publishers Weekly
“More than an essential, colorful, and gripping history of the
electric guitar, The Birth of Loud introduces Ian Port, the best
new non-fiction writer of the past twenty years.”
—Daniel J. Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music
“Ian Port’s found a way to tell the story of the birth of rock ‘n’
roll—for some of us, among the postwar American stories, those that
help define who we feel ourselves to be—in beautifully-evoked dual
portraits of the men who made the instruments. In doing so, he
re-situates this story in its context so neatly it is as if it had
never been told before at all.”
—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of
Solitude
"Ian Port has created a perfect blend of popular history, social
commentary, and enough guitar details to satisfy the most rabid
six-string geek. This is a fascinating book."
—Jonathan Kellerman, bestselling novelist and author of With
Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars
"Guitar players are partly born, partly made, and every one has a
story. So, too, are guitars, including the electric guitars that
changed the world more than half a century ago. This is their
story, and the story of their makers, well-told."
—Gary Marcus, author of Guitar Zero
“Long before Les Paul and Leo Fender were brand names who
revolutionized music and changed culture, they were two
guys—obsessively tinkering to recreate sounds in their heads. In
The Birth of Loud Ian S. Port vividly captures the compulsion and
competition that drove these fascinating oddballs to rock the
world.”
—Alan Light, former editor-in-chief of Vibe and Spin and author of
The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley and the
Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah”
“It’s hard for me to think of an invention more crucial to my
interior life than the electric guitar, so in a way The Birth of
Loud, Ian Port’s moving, riveting account of the instrument’s
development and rise to ubiquity, feels like a sacred text—the
story of how I came to be. It’s also a rich and fascinating tale of
obsession, ingenuity, and American abandon. Thank heavens for Les
Paul, thank heavens for Leo Fender, and thank heavens for Ian
Port.”
—Amanda Petrusich, author Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild,
Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records
“The Birth of Loud is more than history, journalism or
criticism—it’s a killer rock ’n’ roll story, complete with money,
egos, star power and, yes, electric guitars.”
—Steve Knopper, author of MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson and
Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record
Industry in the Digital Age
“The Birth of Loud channels trickles of intriguing new information
into a confluence of big ideas about the history of the electric
guitar. This book is essential reading for guitar history
maniacs!”
—Deke Dickerson, guitar historian, bandleader, and author
of The Strat in the Attic
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