Rick and Roll Music

RICKENBACKER’S EXPLOSION IN popularity in the 1960s came courtesy of an unlikely and convoluted combination of circumstances: a British band selling a U.S.-made guitar back to the American audience, all thanks to an admittedly oddball model originally purchased in Germany. But while anything the Beatles laid their hands on made for an easy ride in the marketing department, the Rickenbacker 325 and its brethren proved to have a lot going for them in their own right.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Rickenbacker was born in the late ’50s or early ’60s, given the way its guitars hit the scene with John