THE POWER OF TWELVE THE ORAL HISTORY OF THE RICKENBACKER 12-STRING
This oral history is about the early days of the Rickenbacker electric 12-string, a remarkable guitar with a newly popular sound that the company introduced in 1964. Melody Maker called it “the beat boys’ secret weapon” as players inspired by the likes of The Beatles’ George Harrison and The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn lined up to add it to their guitar arsenal.
The voices here come from interviews I’ve conducted for my books about guitars. The people you’ll hear from are: Suzi Arden, a showband singer, fiddle-player, and guitarist whose Suzi Arden Show was a regular on the Las Vegas circuit; Dick Burke, who worked at Rickenbacker from 1958 to 2004; Mike Campbell, guitarist in Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, and more recently with Fleetwood Mac; Francis (F.C.) Hall, who ran the Rickenbacker company from 1953 to 1984; John Hall, who took over the running of Rickenbacker from his father, Francis Hall, in 1984; Roger McGuinn, guitarist with The Byrds; and Mike Pender, guitarist with The Searchers.
A NEW ERA FOR RICKENBACKER
Francis [F.C.] Hall
“I acquired the Rickenbacker guitar business from Adolph Rickenbacker in 1953. They were selling basically to teaching studios, so they built a lot of student-model steel guitars. Then we started developing the other style of guitar, the Spanish electrics, and that started taking over. I thought there’d be more sales volume in that style.
“I hired some engineers to work on it, to design something that was different than what was being produced at that time. Roger Rossmeisl was one of them – Paul Barth, who was managing the plant, hired him. Barth was a very good fella and a good manager.
“I had a lot of input from musicians. I’d go out to
