Guitarist Magazine June 2022 Back Issue

Reading through this month’s cover feature on the 60th anniversary of Marshall amps, I was struck by something that sometimes gets overlooked when we think about how guitar gear evolves. Jim Marshall’s shop on Uxbridge Road – and his later premises a few doors down – may have been modest at the start, but think about who came through its doors to talk about amps: Pete Townshend, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimi Hendrix… the list goes on. Jim Marshall gave them the tools to create some of the greatest music ever committed to vinyl. But Jim’s amps wouldn’t have sounded so good without the input of those players, either, especially Pete Townshend. The little scene that sprung up around Jim’s early stores was a hothouse of musical progress. And that buzz, that feeling of throwing open the doors to a new era of music, arose because of people dropping by, chatting, sharing ideas, building excitement. Looking back across the intervening six decades, it’s hard not to think we’ve lost many of those local ‘scenes’ that gave birth to incredible music – along with the instrument makers and repairers serving them. From the blues clubs of 60s London to the reggae bands of Birmingham in the 80s, the excitement of local scenes has given us so much. And yet the decline of grassroots music venues across the country and the decline of the pub itself as a place for music fans to meet has had a deadening effect on those precious breeding grounds for new sounds. Do you have a favourite local venue that’s keeping the flame alive? Or some pioneering ideas on how we could serve our local scenes better? Send them in and we may start a campaign. Enjoy the issue and here’s to another 60 years of majestic Marshall tone.