Twangs for the memories
QUESTION Is it true that guitarist Duane Eddy’s record producer bought an enormous empty water tank to use as an echo chamber in order to enhance his ‘twangy’ sound?
HE did, though there is some debate as to whether the tank was designed to store grain or water.
Duane Eddy was a very successful instrumental rocker, perhaps the man most responsible for popularising the electric rock guitar.
His distinctively low, twangy riffs could be heard on 19 Top 40 UK chart hits between 1958 and 1963. He sold 12million records, and his songs included Rebel Rouser, Peter Gunn and Pepe. The twangy sound was devised with producer Lee Hazlewood, an Arizona DJ whom Eddy had met while hanging out at a radio station as a teenager.
Hazlewood was interested in experimental sound and production techniques. Looking for the perfect echo, he famously spent days visiting farms and yelling into metal storage tanks.
Eddy cut the million-selling Rebel Rouser, the so-called ‘Twang Heard Around The World’, at Audio Recorders of Arizona in 1958. Hazelwood recalled: ‘I went to Phoenix and told Floyd Ramsey, “We need an ultrasound room. We need that for new and better recordings”. To avoid high costs, I proposed to buy a tank where you stored grain.
‘We went out and tried everything by shouting in it. Finally I found one that did what I wanted. We paid $200 and put this big castiron grain tank in a corner of the lot with a $4 mic at one end and a 60 cent speaker at the other.’
There does seem to be disagreement as to whether it was a grain or a water tank – it probably could have functioned as either. Eddy said in a 2011 interview: ‘We didn’t have an echo chamber. Before I started we all went down to Salt River and found a 2,000-gallon water tank. We ran my guitar and the other instruments through it and it gave us the echo.’
Adrian DeVine, London SW4.
QUESTION Who was the author and what was the title of the poem that begins: ‘Two steps down and into the garden/ Through the gate and into the lane/ Nobody’s seen me/ I’m all by myself and out in the rain’?
IT is called Out In The Rain and can be found in an anthology of children’s poems written by Marion St John Webb and is titled The Littlest One. It was my favourite book when I was learning to read.
Marion was born in Hampstead, north London, on December 5, 1888. She was the daughter of the poet Arthur St John Adcock and Marion Louise Taylor.
She wrote poems for a series of fairy books, illustrated by the famous illustrator Margaret Tarrant. The childhood they pictured was typical of the times, but it is now regarded as rather sentimental. I think that her poems and novels possess an innocence, which is sadly lacking in children’s literature today. Marion St John Webb had no children, and died on May 2, 1930, aged 41. Here is the complete poem: ‘Two steps down. An’ into the garden, Through the gate, An’ into the lane. Nobody’s seen me! Nobody’s seen me! All by myself I am out in the rain. Brown little puddles, The mud makes me slip, Rain from the willow trees, Drip, drip, drip. A little worm wriggles across over there,
And I laugh, an’ I’m runnin’ with rain in my hair. Through the gate An’ back in the garden. Two steps up An’ into the hall. Nothin’ an’ nobody’s nice at all!’ Ros Richards, Worthing, West Sussex.
QUESTION I read a novel 40 years ago in which all the plastic in the world begins to disintegrate, with disastrous consequences. Does anyone know who wrote it?
THIS is Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater, by Dr Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, co-creators of the Cybermen for Doctor Who and of another TV series, Doomwatch, where the story originated (in the first-season episode The Plastic Eaters). This concerned a microorganism which broke down various plastics. This was accidentally released into the environment, where it attacked components in things such as aircraft, with appalling consequences.
Although the story originated from Doomwatch, the book didn’t feature any of the Doomwatch scientists such as Toby Wren or Dr Spencer Quist, instead featuring a new set of protagonists in a greatly expanded story.
Pedler and Davis collaborated on two further novels. Brainrack was about lead pollution which affected people’s brains, reducing intelligence and ability to concentrate – another idea taken from Doomwatch, although again without any of its characters.
The Dynostar Menace described a power-generating satellite in orbit above the Earth affected by sabotage and murder, leading to the threat of a huge pulse of radiation devastating the planet.
The three books came out between 1972 and 1976. Matt McLean, Odiham, Hampshire.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.