For this chapter, guitar enthusiast Ron (Chris’s husband) takes over with some musing about The Shadows’ gear. This one is for the geeks and it’ll concentrate on the early days and the original four members. 

Hank’s iconic red Fender Stratocaster has become synonymous with the man himself: but surely he didn’t always play one? He’s a muso – almost by definition he must have some other guitars! And what about the other guys? What did they play?

Hank

Well, as with so many of us, Hank’s first musical instrument was the piano. He went for lessons when he was eight until eleven. In truth, he wasn’t that interested. He says he’d rather have been out playing football. When he went to grammar school Hank used the “extra homework” excuse to give it up. After a while he got interested in Trad. Jazz and used to go to shows at the Newcastle City Hall. When some of his school friends wanted to start a band, he said he’d like to play clarinet, as that was what his favourite musicians played. He couldn’t afford a clarinet, of course, so it didn’t happen. Hank’s first actual instrument turned out be the banjo, bought from a school French teacher for £2 10s, which he paid off at 2/6d a week! 

After he’d learnt a few chords (having left a string off, because he figured it was easier with just 4!) Hank joined a local Jazz band. He clearly had a knack for the instrument and he soon started taking over some of the solos. Skiffle was also very big at that time, and Bruce was nuts about it. Hank started The Crescent City Skiffle Group, while Bruce was in a rival group, The Railroaders. 

Then on his sixteenth birthday, Hank’s parents gave him his first guitar, a Höfner Congress. Coincidentally, it cost 16 guineas – a lot of money. In the UK, 

the German-made Höfner was the top brand of guitar for most people. Fenders and Gibsons were to all intents and purposes unobtainable because they were from the USA; and in post-war Britain, commercial American musical instrument imports were still prohibited. After a while Hank fitted a pickup to the Congress so that he could be heard playing solos and joined Bruce in The Railroaders. 

After the Kalin Twins tour, Hank bought a solid body Antoria LG50 for £35 from a shop in London. It wasn’t very good, but it served him for the Oh Boy! shows, the first two Shadows’ Singles and for recording Cliff’s first album in September 1959. 

With Cliff’s increasing success, it was decided in 1959 that Hank should finally have a decent guitar. They were all big fans of Buddy Holly and knew that he played a Fender Stratocaster, and they also particularly liked the sound of Ricky Nelson’s guitarist, James 

Burton. Because the Stratocaster was the top of the Fender range of guitars at that time, they assumed that James used a Strat., too. There was still a post-war trade ban on American musical instruments, but they could be imported personally. Cliff was making much more money than The Shadows so he agreed to import one and pay for it. 

They wrote off to California for a brochure, which eventually arrived. After much thumbing through and subsequent discussion, they decided on the most expensive guitar in the book: a flamingo-pink, gold-plated, tremolo-equipped Stratocaster with a bird’s-eye maple neck. When it arrived a few weeks later in its red, velvet-lined, tweed case, they gathered round, opened it up and just gaped at it. For a while Hank couldn’t bring himself to actually pick it up! It was in fact the first time he had ever seen a Strat. for real, let alone actually played one. 

The first recording featuring the Stratocaster was their third Single, Saturday Dance. Later Hank discovered that the guitar that James Burton actually played, was a Fender Telecaster. For the nerds, the serial number of the Strat. was 34346. The guitar is now in Bruce’s possession. 

By now, Hank was already using his other trademark, the echo box. Joe Brown had got one, decided he didn’t really like it and was looking for someone to take it off his hands. Hank tried it and loved it – it gave him the slap-back echo of American Rock ’n’ Roll records. He never looked back. This original one was an Italian-made Meazzi Echomatic. He subsequently used various other 

makes and models from Vox, Binson, Maestro, and others. 

All these things worked on the same principle which was based on a tape recorder. A loop of recording tape, or, in some cases, a magnetisable drum, would continuously revolve past a recording head and a series of playback heads. So the guitar signal would be recorded onto 

the tape and then, after a very short delay, would be played back several times. In this way, a series of echos was produced. Owing to their somewhat Heath Robinson nature, these echo boxes were not very reliable and Hank, who used the effect almost all the time, went through a succession of different units. 

One problem with the Fender Stratocaster is what happens when a string breaks. All guitar players break a string from time to time. Usually, it is no problem to carry on until the end of the song with only 5 strings and then change to another guitar. With a tremolo-equipped guitar, however, due to the design, the other strings will immediately go out of tune. During a live performance this is nothing short of a nightmare, so Hank soon took to keeping a spare guitar on stage next to his amplifier. 

Bruce

Bruce’s first guitar was an acoustic of unknown name, bought for just under £5 when he formed The Railroaders. 

On the Apache recording, Bruce borrowed Cliff’s Gibson J200 acoustic guitar for the first time. They found the tone was so much better that it soon became recognised as Bruce’s trademark jangly rhythm sound. However, it was almost impossible to use an acoustic guitar on stage given the then primitive state of PA systems, so for concerts he would still use his electric. 

And now –the infamous White Telecaster! There are many, many photos, all probably from the same photo session, where Bruce is holding a white Fender Telecaster. These photos appear all over the place, including on the 

cover of their first LP, THE SHADOWS, and the cover of The Shadows By Themselves paperback by Royston Ellis. However, there’s almost no photographic evidence of this guitar ever being played on stage, apart from film of some TV concerts. So where did it come from? And what happened to it afterwards? These topics are the subject of much internet debate. Bruce even claims in his book that the white Telecaster was borrowed specially for the photo session, and that the price tag is still dangling from it!

(Why? Did he forget and leave the Jazzmaster at home?) Despite Bruce’s claim, there are two videos from a TV concert on this site, clearly showing him playing the Telecaster… plus this one from a 1961 ATV Television Cliff! show:

Jet

Jet started his musical chops with a clarinet. However he soon found that in order to sound anything like reasonable, some serious learning had to be done. So within a year he had swapped the clarinet for an upright double bass. Although the Fender bass guitar was used in the USA, it was almost unknown outside. The upright bass was the standard fare for all Jazz combos in the UK. This stood him in good stead for a couple of years and he ended up being offered a job by an experienced Jazz drummer, Tony Crombie, whose band had been booked to back Wee Willie Harris on tour. 

Jet and Tony Crombie got along fine and one day (1958?) Tony suggested 

that Jet should take a look at a new contraption in a Charing Cross Road music shop. This was a 4-string Framus electric bass guitar, a German made semi-acoustic bass. Jet took one look and thought, “Yes, I’ll have a bit of that!” He immediately became one of the first electric bass guitar players in the country, if not the first one, and was consequently much in demand. 

He used the Framus bass for all the early recordings and tours and the first two of Cliff’s films – right up to the end of 1959, after which he got his first 

Fender, a Precision bass finished in “sunburst”. This was the first Fender bass in the country and was probably brought back from the American tour in early 1960. It can be seen in the Apache video. 

Tony

Having been fascinated by watching drummers on TV, Tony got his first set 

of drums for Christmas, aged 10. After a couple of years, he started playing with older friends who had guitars and saxophones. His mother bought him a better kit for £40 when he was 13 or 14 and Tony joined a dance band that played in a club in Paddington. Already he was getting paid 30 bob (£1.50) a night. That kit seemed to last him right up until his 2i’s days.