The inside story
Coincidence
It all started when I needed a 12AT7 reverb driver valve for a classic Rivera era Fender Super Champ I had sold on e-Bay.
Popping in to see Denis Cornell to buy the valve, we discussed the possibility of working together on some sales and marketing ideas.
As luck would have it, the buyer of the Fender combo turned out to be Craig ‘Hoppy’ Hope, the guitar tech for Chris Martin of COLDPLAY!
Rather than just send it to him, as I’d had dealings with COLDPLAY when I worked at Marshall, I decided to get on a train and meet up with him in London. I thought he might be interested in doing something with Cornell.
During our two hour catch up meeting at the Brewhouse & Kitchen microbrewery on Corsica Street, Islington, Craig happened to mention that he had recently done some tech work for PLACEBO, as Adi Vines, Brian Molko’s guitar tech had taken a couple of weeks off to get married. I said that I’d give him a call as I hadn’t spoken to him for ages.
Standing outside The Garage music venue in Islington, I called Adi only to get an overseas ringtone. He was in Frankfurt doing a show with PLACEBO.
I explained that I was helping Denis Cornell, and that if he was interested, I’d love to go through the Cornell range with him when he was back in the UK.
About a week later he called me from Hamburg. He said that he was having trouble with Brian’s Fender ’65 Twin Reissue that was struggling as it was being run flat out with a bunch of distortion pedals, pushing it to its limit, and that it was starting to make some strange noises of its own!
He said that he’d had a similar problem with a ’60’s Fender Bassman back in the day, when he looked after Gavin Rossdale of BUSH.
The solution back then, was to have a more powerful custom copy made by another valve amp maker.
With this in mind, he asked if Denis would be interested in quoting against another custom amp builder…
After a few consultations it was a natural decision to select Cornell for the Placebo project. Denis Cornell has such a solid understanding of the issues and how to solve them, and has decades of experience building touring-grade equipment that world class artists can rely on.
Read the whole article here
Sources and photo credits: http://www.envisioning.co.uk
