PART THREE: DISTORTION WAS DESTINY
In the past few articles, we delved deep into the situation and circumstance that led to what I believe is the greatest accident in guitar history – heck, maybe all of history: the birth of fuzz. Though much of what we love about guitar can be attributed to accidental discovery and the evolution of technology and ideas, this one feels different. Consider the sheer number of coincidences that had to take place in a small 1960 recording session to make it happen and you’ll agree that referring to it merely as an ‘accident’ doesn’t do it justice. ‘Destiny’ might be closer to the mark.
“Leave It In”
Country superstar Marty Robbins and his studio band have just wrapped up what should have been a simple recording for the song . But as they gather around the recording console and listen to the playback, they hear something weird. Not just weird but wrong. It’s the kind of sound that a recording engineer from the 1950s may well have dismissed as a technical malfunction. There were rules to the recording of music – and rule number-one was that a professional recording needed to be clean and clear. Many recording studios treated their profession in an almost clinical manner. Technicians at Abbey Road Studios in London even wore white lab coats and did
