Vox Pop: How Dartford Powered the British Beat Boom

It's the early '60s. And a legion of British bands are ready for

action. The Americans have been shooting rock 'n' roll at us over

the Atlantic for years. And the mop-top troops of the UK are about

to return fire. He said, "They're called the Beatles." But as the

British invasion is about to be launched, where will the troops get

the weapons? Most things that are worth doing are dangerous. Who will

give them the tools to do the job? The distortion factor on it is very,

very low indeed. We're about to do the story of one small company

which took on the world. With a handful of valves in an old shed in

Dartford. They broke the rules. told him no! And defined the sound

of the '60s. It sounded like a rhino being killed! It's a story

that begins with bombs... And ends in tears. He was crying and I've

never seen a man cry before. He was ANGELIC MUSIC. I'm Iain Lee, and I

can tell you that that isn't any old guitar amplifier. It is in fact

a classic Vox AC30. Built by Jennings Musical Industries of

Dartford in 1964. Many guitarists say that the AC30 was the best amp

ever made. The AC30 really is kind of a gift from God. The sound was

so sweet. It really sung. Just a wonderful sound. And that, with

that Vox, the AC30, is the first time it all came together.

time it all came together. time it all came together.

music is my life's passion. But the story of how Dartford powered the

British beat-boom in the '60s has long been forgotten. Even by the

people of Dartford. This is how it happened. It was rock 'n' roll

which brought us the electric guitar. Before that, things were

very different. In the 1950s, there was only one thing better than an

accordion. And that's two accordions. This TV show was

extremely popular, and the squeezebox was all the rage over

the world. Tom Jennings was an accordionist. During the war, he

used to work at an armaments factory. There he met a guitar

player called Dick Denny. They would play together in the air-raid

shelters as the bombs dropped around them. And everyone used to

have a singsong. So everyone was sort of calm during the air-raids.

After the war, Tom opened up a music shop in Dartford where they

specialised in refurbishing old accordions. But he wanted to get

into manufacturing. Not accordions, but something a bit more space-age.

What on earth is this? This is the UniVox. It was the first electronic

CRACKLING. Steady on! Bear in mind it's 60-

years-old. It was basically a kind of valve synthesiser. It may be on

its last legs. We've killed it. Rest in peace! Many pop music geeks

are convinced that the UniVox was the instrument used on the number-

one single by The Tornados, Telstar. Others say it definitely wasn't.

But that doesn't matter. The important thing is that Tom

Jennings had started to make musical equipment. And his next

move would define the sound of the '60s.

Rock 'n' roll arrived from America. Suddenly, everyone wanted electric

guitars. And when they got them, they'd need amplifiers as well. Tom

saw his chance and cannibalised the UniVox. The UniVox had inside it an

amplifier and from this the first rock sound, the G10, was developed.

And it was basically a reworking of the UniVox amp. But it wasn't great.

So Tom roped in his old wartime charm Dick Denny because Dick knew

about electronics and he was also a guitarist. What he came up with

used AC electricity and it put out 15 Watts of power. So it was called

the AC15. And the sound that it made was seized upon by the guest

band in Britain, The Shadows. don't know who contacted who, but

don't know who contacted who, but we finished up with Vox AC15s.

People who used to work for Jennings Musical Industries in

Dartford will vouch for the fact that the AC15 was a major step

forward. The company was doing OK with Dick Denny's electronic

creations and Tom Jennings at the helm. He was a very motivated

individual. Extremely hard-working. Good sense of humour. He was really

nice man. Tom is a nice man, very approachable. When you come in, he

was the boss. He was also quite volatile. He could go up like a

volcano. If things weren't quite going how they should be, he could

be... He would come down just as quick. Dick Denny, what was he

like? Very nice man. Very, very nice man. He used to wear his

cardies. And he would have pockets there, and he'd put his hands in

his pockets and he used to do these puppets with the liners of this

pocket. And tell stories with these puppets. An entertainer. Always an

entertainer. But The Shadows came to Dick with a request about his

AC15. Is there any chance of sort of making this amplifier bigger or

louder? The kids were screaming at Cliff, you know, and we couldn't

hear anything. So Dick wanted to make a kind of double amp, with two

speakers in it. He went to see Tom. No no no, says Tom. Too heavy, too

loud, too big. All the rest of it. Go away, forget about it. Dick

wasn't taking no for an answer. He began knocking up some twin

versions of the AC15 on the quiet. Just to help out bands like The

Shadows who wanted more volume. But he got caught out when Tom spotted

the paperwork for the parts. looked at it and went, "I told him

no!" Unfortunately, Dick was walking past the office, the door

opens, Tom comes out. "Dick, in my office, now!" Tom and Dick had a

huge row. Eventually, the door opens and out comes Dick, white-

faced. We expected him to have this P45 in his hand. And we said, "What

happened, Dick?" He said, "He says we can make 10 and on my own head

be it." And that was the birth of the AC30. Dick had come up with

this. Recognised by many guitarists to this day as the classic of all

They're just great amplifiers. We could suddenly hear the amps above

all the screaming. Shake it, baby. Come on over.

The main criteria was the sound had to be good. And the sound was good.

It was a vast improvement on any British amp that had come before.

Everything just seemed to come right in it. All the molecules of

the whole amplifier and the guitars seemed to line up into this most

beautiful kind of order. So what's the difference between the Vox

sound and its main competitors? The Fender and the Marshall. The Fender

sound is all clean, lots of treble and it's the sound of America in

the '60s. Let's go over to the Marshall. What

does that sound like? Bigger box. More power. More distortion. This

is rock. The Vox, what's so distinctive

about that sound? It's a very different kind of circuit. Clean,

classy. For me, at least, the Vox Things were going quite well. But

Vox had no idea what was about to hit them. It began when the manager

of an unknown band walked into their retail shop in London. His

band was a bit hard-up and he said he wanted some amplification.

said, "Well, we can sell you that." He said, "No, I don't want to buy

it. I want you to give it to them." "Oh. Who is this band?" He said,

"They're called the Beatles. They've been playing in the Star

club in Hamburg." I said, "I see. Well, we don't give stuff away." So,

he said, "Yeah, but the advertising that you'll get from this will be

enormous." So Reg got on the phone to the governor, Tom Jennings, who

didn't take kindly to the idea. "Do what?" he said, screaming over the

phone? What's he think we are? Some philanthropic society?" He used a

stronger word, but I censored that. He said, "Who is this band?" I said,

"They're called the Beatles." He said, "That's not a very good name

for a start." Nevertheless, Reg did a part-exchange deal with the cash-

strapped manager, Brian Epstein, who made him a promise. "Whilst I'm

manager of the Beatles, they will never use anything else other than

Vox." And they never did. She loves you, yeah, yeah.

Within a year, Vox find themselves being promoted by the biggest band

of all time. You know it's up to you.

I think it's only fair. How much did that cost? Absolutely

nothing. Apologise to her.

Because she loves you. Back in Dartford, sometime in the

mid-'60s, a potential customer was worried that the Vox valves would

be too fragile to go on the road. Were they reliable? So we rolled it

down three flights of stone steps. Took it back up on the lift,

plugged it in and Dick could play it through perfectly. So we said,

"Is that reliable enough for you!?" Simultaneously, there was another

product of Kent that was about to hit the big time.

I was born in a crossfire hurricane...

No, you weren't, Mick. You were born in Dartford. In fact, Mick

Jagger was born here at the Livingstone Hospital in 1943. And

so was Keith Richards. 19 years later, Mick and Keith met on the

Dartford train. They got together with a bunch of other teenage

musicians and they formed the Rolling Stones. The Stones then

began a very close relationship with Vox. One of their early

managers, Eric Easton, used to work at the company. Their early gigs

So, Vox products were fully endorsed by the Beatles, the

Rolling Stones, The Shadows and practically every big name you

could mention. They were a hit. And That's how Dartford became the

powerhouse of British rock 'n' roll. We went down to Dartford, I think,

a couple of times. Obviously to meet Dick and see where they did it

all. The switchboard put us straight through to this guy. He

said, "Hi, Dick here." He was almost more enthusiastic than we

were. We could go to Dartford and they'd literally say, "Yeah,

whatever you want." All through the '60s, it was like Christmas every

day. It just felt like Christmas. We had all the pop groups. The

Hollies, The Searchers, you name it, The Animals. I mean, and some of

We know that Vox sounds different. But what makes it sound different?

Some say it's the Celestion Blue G12 speakers that some of the

models had. Some say it's the EL84 valves.

But many put it down to a thing called no negative feedback. This

is how it works. If you have a hi- fi or producing equipment, the idea

is you want a speaker just to produce what you put in.

In other words, in a hi-fi, you must have as little distortion as

must have as little distortion as possible. You must have one of

these better class units which has ultra-linear output stages. The

distortion factor on it is very, very low indeed. Now, any amplifier

is going to have some distortion. But there is a good method of

getting over that called negative feedback. Hi-fi systems have a lot

of negative feedback. So they only produce what you give them.

what Dick Denny realised was that if you take the negative feedback

if you take the negative feedback out of the guitar amplifier and

allow the amp and speakers to interact and distort, it actually

makes an electric guitar sound better. What it does it is in fact

emphasises the harmonics. The combination of the guitar and the

emphasis of the extra harmonics gives you this fantastic AC30 sound.

What the Vox guys very cleverly did was take off all the negative

feedback. You get an arc which goes up in a straight line and then

gradually goes into distortion. It's that gradual arc which is the

sound that I was looking for. So Brian takes a Hank Marvin clear

sound and pushes it into distortion. At low volume, it's very nice and

clean like we were talking about. You can hear every note clearly but

if you push it up a little bit you start going to that kind of creamy

You try and get that out of a solid state amp. It's not going to happen.

That's sort of halfway up. It gives A number of things happen. It gets

more distorted. What a rich sound! It gives that lovely rich throaty

sound which seems to come from here. And as Vox took off, their

engineers would find themselves rubbing shoulders with the big

stars. Alan Harding would go on tour with The Beatles to look after

their amps. One day, he was in their dressing room on Paul

McCartney's 21st birthday. We had two big security guards come

staggering up with this giant box and it was in the outline of 21.

They were big guys and they staggered with it and got it on the

table and somehow they kind of unzipped it. It fell apart and this

scantily-clad bird came wandering out, walking around the table top

as a present for Paul. I don't know if he accepted it and took it home

but it was certainly on the table. In the years since, guitarists with

a whole range of styles have loved And that's where you can see the

distortion just starts to hit. But it isn't enough because of course

guitarists want the sound a bit longer. It's a sweet and natural

sustain and after that we wanted more and more gain circuits and

drive circuits to make - aaaah - These two pick ups are set against

each other out of phase. The Bohemian Rhapsody sort of sound.

Instead of this, which is my normal setting. It will go like this.

PLAYS SOLO FROM BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. It's got so much natural harmonics

going for it. You made me so happy there. Thank you. And then it kind

of brings it out. The whole system brings out those high harmonics and

it sounds an octave higher than it really is. # When you wake up, when

you wake up You will find me. Many young musicians today prefer the

Vox sound. But sometimes find the amps to be a bit unreliable. What

the hell's this? Recording, I turned it on and that made the most

outrageous sound. It sounded like a rhino being killed. I turn it off

Tell it to be good. Of course, Vox once did their special test to show

their amps were reliable. But has Brian May ever had any problems?

Nothing's ever gone wrong! I don't believe you for a second, Mr May.

Valves don't travel well and that has been a problem. Valves are

delicate and they will suddenly splutter and pig out on you without

any warning. You just have to be prepared and have a couple of

Valves do not travel well and that has been a problem. The valves are

delicate and they can bug out anew without any warning. It is worth it.

Most things that are worth doing a dangerous. There is an element of

risk to the whole thing. Back in the early Sixties, Brian Jones and

the rest of the lads were making a right song-and-dance about the amps.

The Stones went one step further. They used their guitars as well.

They were not just making that AC30. They produced a range of musical

instruments such as the continental keyboard and lots and lots of

guitars. This is the Fandom. The first

original design. It was a radical design when it came out and it

still is. Brian Jones club the next model. The Teardrop. The thing is,

they were not very good. A lot of the early guitars where

copies of Fender. By the mid- Sixties, they had set out to

rectify the reputation. By then, they were making some good guitars.

While all this was going on, they where in fact making history.

The they were the sound of the British invasion. The sound of the

Beatle Sander Rolling Stones. These bans were using not only their

amplifiers but their guitars. Their guitars themselves were radical

designs. Beautiful Pentagon shapes and teardrop shapes. They helped to

create the new-look that the acts By now, they were breaking into

America. They came to a deal with the Thomas organ Company to license

making their amps in the States. To promote the brand, they did what

only Americans would do. They built a car. The Voxmobile. It had 30 to

get an pits and the ticket around the guitar stores around the

country where kids can try out the favourite equipment.

They were now so big that 20 Dec Benny came up with his maddest

invention, the guitar organ, he was invited to go on American

television. They wanted him to explain how it

worked. The idea is to make a guitar sound like an organ. There

are generators inside which when you press the notes down, makes

electrical contact. # Way down upon the Swanee River,

far, far away. When you find yourself singing on network

television in the States, you know your company must be a success.

This is the only known footage of Dick. Of course, Vox supplied The

Beatles with equipment but they catered for other big stars as well,

such as a custom keyboard for Sooty. Such as a custom keyboard for the

cater for other big stars as well, such as accustom keyboard for Sooty.

On the top keyboard, you pressed keys and springs came out and

things blew up. Following the success of the amplifiers, Dick any

started experimenting with gadgets which would further change the

sound of the guitars. He came in with an Oxo Box. He

plugged they apparently do terrible distorted guitar. He said we have

been trying to get a clean sound and you have made this racket. He

said trust me, it will go. Within four weeks, the Rolling Stones had

made Satisfaction. So the fuzz box was born. Well dig any was in

Dartford messing with the sound of the guitar, at the Rolling Stones

were on the road Messing With Alan Harding's head.

Tell me about breakfast with the Rolling Stones? They used to

embarrass me. They quite often would come down, at least one or

two of them, with a woman's dresses on. Long frocks or something. I

used to be embarrassed and I used to drift to the other side of the

restaurant. Why were they dressed in women's clothes? The drugs used

to have an effect on the night before.

Any of the employees in the Sixties could suddenly find themselves

hanging out with superstars. Well I was a sales assistant in a shop at

the time, Jimi Hendrix came in. He was trying it effects pedals and

things and I asked him if he could show me how to play Purple haze.

Next thing, he was showing how to play it. It is amazing, after the

lesson of Jimi Hendrix. # Nothing you can do 'cause I'm

stuck like glue to my guy. I went on tour with one of my friends and

played on his Vox one night and I was like, this is so amazing. This

is perfect. It has a warmth to it. There is that warmth which is

similar to vinyl. At its peak, Vox were employing

about 150 people and were sub- contracting out work to several

other companies. Vox were flying high. They couldn't make their

products fast enough. What could possibly go wrong?

The business was so big, the factory here couldn't cope.

Jennings desperately needed money to fund the manufacture and keep up

with demand. He sold a controlling interest in his company to the

Royston Group. They were a series of military electronics companies.

One of their main products was the new black box which records what

happens when a plane crashes. But it was a bad move. Instead of

giving Vox money, and they were in fact draining money out of the

company to help finance this research and development on the

black box. Then they lost the black box contract altogether, and that

was the end of the Royston Group. Royston went down and took Vox with

them. The workers carried on, oblivious to the fact that the

receivers were meeting with Tom. came literally from the boardroom

and said, the adjective adjective guys have fired me. He had tears

rolling down his cheeks. I'll never forget the day he left. He cried,

he said I've lost my company. I said, I know. He was crying and I'd

never seen a man cry before. He was so upset. And so the Jennings era

of Vox came to an end. Tom Jennings took Dick Denny and a few other Vox

employees and started all over again, with a new company, making

the Jennings brand of amplifiers. But they weren't anywhere near as

successful. Of course, Vox didn't disappear. Over the last 40 years,

the brand was sold on through a series of companies and today is

owned by Korg. The amplifiers are made in China. The people who used

to work for Vox in the '60s have fond memories about their time in

Dartford. I've never been in a job since I loved so much. We were all

so excited. We all enjoyed our jobs. Going to work every day was a joy.

Was a joy. Any guitarist worth his salt will kill to get his hands on