The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'N' Roll — by Ian S. Port

“A hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century American history” — Jon Pareles, The New York Times Book Review “The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new” — Washington Post “Ian S. Port’s The Birth of Loud reframes the standard history of rock ’n’ roll around the dual creators of the modern electric guitar. . . . Instead of a parade of frontmen and songwriters dueling it out in the charts, Port presents a ground-up account of an at-times begrudging friendship between two Angelenos who created the sound of what we instinctively understand as ‘rock.’ — SF Weekly The guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo. The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'N' Roll is a one-of-a-kind narrative that masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound—Leo Fender and Les Paul—and their intense comp