A History of Jangle (1963-2026)

Who knows where the chime goes?

Following up on my post-with-playlist featuring the work of Robyn Hitchcock in his Janglemage aspect, here’s A History of Jangle (1963-2026), which I’ve been tinkering with and adding to over the past five or six years now.

As the ninety-nine songs on this playlist demonstrate, the great janglemages of rock have done their thing with six- and twelve-strings; with Gibsons, Fenders, Danelectros, Voxes, Gretsches, Guilds, and Hagstroms; by means of alternate tunings and multi-tracking (or both at once, as in “Nashville tuning”); by relying on the overtones and harmonics of single-coil pickups, on capos and steel picks and arpeggiation, and on studio wizardry—compression, layering, creative stereo spreads. But the symbol and instrumental avatar of jangle will always be a Rickenbacker Model 360/12 electric 12-string guitar, in the expressive hands of George Harrison, or of Roger McGuinn.

The bringer of jangle

George Harrison introduced the Rickenbacker 12-string to rock ’n’ roll, playing a Model 360/12–the second 360/12 ever made¹—on a number of tracks recorded for A Hard Day’s Night; you can hear its characteristic resonant chiming in the solos to “I Should Have Known Better” and “You Can’t Do That.” But it was the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, with his bluegrass background and fingerpicking chops, who first figured out how to deploy the Ric’s full sonic potential.

The story is that McGuinn, then calling himself Jim and fronting a trio that called itself the Jet Set, saw A Hard Day’s Night with his bandmates, Gene Clark and David Crosby, and was rocked to his core, understanding as soon as he saw the Quiet Beatle with his eloquent axe that he had to have a 360/12, too.

Harrison and the Rickenbacker 360/12, A Hard Day’s Night, 1964

Folded like a protein or a brain

In addition to its semi-hollow body, relatively narrow neck, and clever right-angles solution to the problem of fitting twelve tuning pegs onto a standard-sized head, the 360/12 has a couple of other peculiarities that make it tricky to master, even for someone already accustomed to playing a twelve-string acoustic. One is those aforementioned single-coil pickups, which produce a bright and clear signal and generate the background hum that contributes to the characteristic ringing tone of jangle, but are less forgiving than humbucking pickups of sloppy fingerings and fret pressure.

The other peculiarity is the reversed coursing of the Ric’s six pairs of strings whereby—unlike traditional acoustic 12-strings—the octave string sits behind rather than in front of its paired lower-pitched string, so that the fundamental is struck before the octave, producing interesting harmonics and overtones.

Francis C. Hall, the owner of Rickenbacker Guitars, had first presented the 360/12 to John Lennon, who may have found its intricacies and quirks, in the aggregate, a bit more than he cared to contend with. He suggested that Hall give it to Harrison, in whose agile hands and musical imagination it found a more congenial home. Harrison played around with it, liked the novel sounds he was immediately able to produce and, less than three weeks after receiving it, took it into the studio to put it to work on AHDN—to memorable but, in terms of the Ric’s potential, as yet incomplete effect.

McGuinn, on the other hand, took his 360/12 to the woodshed, practicing, by his own account, “eight hours a day.” An accomplished banjo player and student of traditional fingerpicking, McGuinn immersed himself in the sonic potential of all those quirks and intricacies. “In those days,” he once told an interviewer, “acoustic 12s had wide necks and thick strings that were spaced pretty far apart, so they were hard to play. But the Ric’s slim neck and low action let me explore jazz and blues scales up and down the fretboard, and incorporate more hammer-ons and pull-offs into my solos. I also translated some of my banjo picking techniques to the 12-string. By combining a flatpick with metal fingerpicks on my middle and ring fingers, I discovered I could instantly switch from fast single-note runs to banjo rolls and get the best of both worlds.”²

Roger McGuinn and the instrument he defined

Five months after the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night, on January 20, 1965, Roger (still Jim) McGuinn went into Columbia’s Studio A to record a cover of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,”³ which is:

1. One of the greatest covers in the history of rock music, meeting all the fundamental requirements of a great cover in that it a) reinvents and even threatens to surpass while being absolutely faithful to the spirit of the original, b) forces a re-examination or fresh appreciation of the originating artist, and c) rocks;

2. The only great cover version ever recorded (though not released) more or less simultaneously⁴ with an equally great original (at least I can’t think of another instance);

3. The song that (along with “Ticket To Ride,” recorded one month later at Abbey Road) first rang the great shimmering carillon of true jangle.

A true jangle song, as I define it, doesn’t simply feature a trebly guitar intro and solo besprinkled with overtones. It must be built on a jangling guitar riff or pattern, built around it, built from it. Its purpose, its raison d’être, is to sound the heavenly bells, to thrum and spark like sonic St. Elmo’s fire, to mimic the firing of neurons, the formation of frost crystals on a windowpane. True jangle writhes, seethes, and crackles, from start to finish, weaving interlocking figures out of runs of arpeggiated notes.

That’s why I haven’t included any of the (sterling, immortal) songs from A Hard Day’s Night on this playlist; George Harrison needed a little more time (and a little more friendly rivalry with McGuinn) to arrive at true jangle, peaking, in my opinion, with “If I Needed Someone,” from Rubber Soul, recorded in October 1965.

I have started this chronological history, however, with two songs written or co-written by the great Jackie DeShannon before the release of the Rickenbacker 360/12, and before the cross-pollination of Harrison’s and McGuinn‘s musical ideas, and even though the first doesn’t quite meet the criteria for true jangle laid out above: “When You Walk In the Room,” (DeShannon, 1963), and the Searchers’ version of “Needles and Pins” (DeShannon/Bono, 1964).

Jackie DeShannon teaching Jimmy Page how to rock and roll, London, 1964.

Why? How about this: when the Beatles were touring the US with her, in 1965, George Harrison confided to Jackie DeShannon that the opening riff of “When You Walk In the Room,” composed by DeShannon, had inspired his approach to playing the Rickenbacker on AHDN; playing that had in turn inspired both Roger McGuinn and Mike Pender, lead guitarist of the Searchers. And how about this: that pioneering riff from “When You Walk In the Room” was played (by Glen Campbell, then a semi-anonymous studio ace!) on a makeshift Frankenstein’s jangle monster constructed by, or designed to the specifications of, the great studio bassist (and guitarist) Carol Kaye.⁵

Carol Kay, innovator

There is, therefore, an argument to be made that two relatively neglected women co-invented jangle, along with two very celebrated men, and that the world, sorely cursed in so many ways, owes the sparkling, intricately figured blessing of jangle in part to a pair of gifted female geniuses. So, that’s why.

Apart from a curious lull or bare patch between 1967 (the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” which must by then have felt like a kind of rear-guard action) and 1972 (Todd Rundgren’s “Couldn’t I Just Tell You?”, which unmistakably felt like a revival), beautiful works of jangle have been turned out almost continuously by some of the finest, most innovative, and most important rock bands of their day, right up to the present day. The history of jangle is epic, and it deserves an epic playlist. Here you go.

1. The first went to the little-remembered Suzi Arden.

2. https://www.guitarplayer.com/guitarists/how-george-harrison-inspired-roger-mcguinn-s-invention-of-folk-rock

3. Whether some, none, or all of the other Byrds accompanied him is apparently a matter of debate. Only Clark and Crosby appear on the recording, singing backup; bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke had been deemed too unpracticed and inexperienced on their respective instruments by session producer Terry Melcher.

4. Dylan had cut his “Mr. Tambourine Man” only five days earlier, at Columbia’s Studio A in New York City.

5. “I also used the Gibson acoustic 12-string guitar 1957-2000 which I converted to an elec. 12-string guitar with my D'Amand pickup in its round-hole […] I also had a custom elec. 12-string guitar made out of an ordinary Guild T-100D 6-string elec. guitar (by repairman ace Milt Owen - he replaced pickups at my request, and fitted in the extra 6 strings on the headstock - it was a thin neck and played good).” Carol Kaye, quoted here.