Hambone: A Somewhat Imagined Account of Link Wray's Influence

Our story begins in the swamp woods of North Carolina, a town called Dunn, in 1937.  In true small town fashion our hero, a boy by the name of Frederick Lincoln Wray, is sitting on his front porch.  He is toying with a guitar that his brother received for his last birthday when he is approached by a mysterious figure named Hambone.  Hambone works for the traveling circus that has just come to Dunn and taken root temporarily across the street from the Wray home.  The elderly black man sees young Frederick with his guitar and approaches him.  He asks to borrow the instrument for a moment or two and Frederick obliges.  Hambone tunes the guitar before taking a bottle neck from his pocket, putting it on the neck of the guitar and playing a blues song.  As Hambone slides the glass along the strings, channeling the unimaginable pain and turmoil of his long life, Frederick Lincoln ceases to exist, and in his place is Link Wray, The Rumble Man.  Hambone planted the seed of music in Link, and Link paid if forward with his song “Rumble”.  Brian Eno said that all of the few people who bought The Velvet Underground’s debut album started bands.  One could similarly say of Link Wray that out of everyone who heard Rumble, a few of them started the greatest bands of all time.

• Pete Townshend

When Pete Townshend first hears “Rumble” in the late 50’s he feels “uneasy… yet very excited.”  He is confused by the emotions the song stirs in him.  He has never before experienced such wildly opposing ideas, he has never heard something so ugly yet beautiful, gentle but violent.  He doesn’t understand what Link has done, but he knows he has to try it for himself.  He has a guitar that his grandmother gave to him for Christmas in 1956, but he never had much interest in the Spanish instrument that looks nothing like the slick electric guitar that Chuck Berry uses.  Once Pete hears “Rumble” he gives it another shot.  It isn’t perfect but it works, and with some help from his saxophonist father he learns to play a couple of tunes.  A few years later he forms The Who with Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and fellow Link Wray fanatic Keith Moon, who writes a song called “Wasp Man” as a tribute to Link.

• Jimmy Page

In 1956 a twelve year old Jimmy Page took his first guitar lesson.  He quickly abandoned them, preferring instead to teach himself.  He spent many days over the next two years listening to music at the record store before going home to attempt to duplicate the guitar part on his own.  In 1958 one of those records was “Rumble.”  Fifty years later, after joining The Yardbirds and forming Led Zeppelin, Page remembers the influence “Rumble” had on him.  Not just the technical aspect of its innovative use of the power chord and vibrato, but more importantly, its pure “profound attitude.”  Fifty years later Jimmy Page puts the needle down on “Rumble” and plays an air guitar just as countless Led Zeppelin fans have done to “Stairway to Heaven” in the past four decades.

• Iggy Pop

A young man named Iggy is enrolled in the University of Michigan in the mid 60’s.   Iggy is much like his fellow students, stressing over their grades, desperately struggling to get through the next test, then the next, reaching for the diploma in the distance.  One day in the student union someone puts on a record in hopes of calming her nerves.  The sound of “Rumble” reaches Iggy this day, and he becomes aware.  He realizes that he is not where he belongs, he is not living the life he is meant to live.  His mind and spirit leave the school in this moment, and soon after his body follows suit.  Iggy moves to Chicago, where he forms a band called the Psychedelic Stooges, quickly becoming Iggy and the Stooges.