They may not appear to have a ton in frequent except for first names. J Mascis, Dinosaur Jr.’s co-founder and guitarist developed a mode equal components guitar heroics and left-side-of-the-dial insouciance. In Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar helped popularize the alt-country motion by merging influences from Doug Sahm to The Stooges.

However that could be the place the divergence ends and the convergence begins, as each are behind a number of the most-influential indie albums of the late twentieth century. Each additionally proceed to tour and launch music (Farrar with Son Volt). The 2 even shared producers again within the day.

That’s the place Sean Slade and a sure SG Junior supply one other frequent thread.

Now an affiliate professor at Berklee School of Music, Slade and enterprise companion Paul Kolderie have been proprietors of Boston’s Fort Apache studio. Their credit included information by The Pixies, Radiohead, Gap, and Warren Zevon, amongst many others. Slade and Kolderie have been additionally within the management room when Dinosaur Jr. and Uncle Tupelo laid down Bug (1988) and No Melancholy (1990), respectively. At present, these albums are pillars of indie rock – and Slade’s SG Junior featured on each.

Mascis encountered the guitar when Dinosaur Jr. entered Fort Apache to document Bug in ’88.

“I’m fairly positive it was sitting on a stand,” Slade remembers. “The opposite one I owned at the moment was a ’56 TV mannequin with a single cutaway. [Mascis] gravitated towards the SG Junior. He plugged it in and began to play, and that’s the place the identify got here from, as a result of he circled and he handed it again to me and goes, ‘That guitar performs instantaneous rock.’”

Thus dubbed by the notoriously taciturn Mascis, the guitar appeared on Bug, although its function has been overstated.

“It was just for a track or two,” Slade says, noting that Mascis nonetheless favored his iconic Jazzmasters. “So, all that has been considerably inflated or exaggerated through the years. He might need used it as an overdub guitar in ‘Freak Scene,’ however it’s not the principle guitar.”

Equally apocryphal are sure accounts of how Uncle Tupelo got here to work with Slade and Kolderie – and with Prompt Rock. Slade pushes again on the notion that Uncle Tupelo (which generally coated “Freak Scene” in its stay units) journeyed to the imply streets of Boston from their house in southern Illinois as a result of they have been so taken with Bug.

“I do know that they have been all for working with us due to the Dinosaur Jr. factor, however it by no means was express,” Slade begins earlier than addressing the function of Prompt Rock. “We had this guitar and we knew it sounded nice. And the thought was ‘Oh, this may sound actually good for the loud guitar components.’”

To not say Farrar didn’t discover an affinity for Prompt Rock. Quoted in Greg Kot’s 2004 biography of Wilco (the post-Uncle Tupelo band fashioned by Farrar’s former bandmate, Jeff Tweedy), Wilco: Studying How you can Die, Slade stated when Farrar “…had that guitar in his fingers, there was a recklessness and looseness there that you simply by no means may have imagined.”

As for the way Slade got here to personal the instrument, it was a photograph of his guitar hero, Chris Spedding, with an SG Junior that satisfied him it was the axe for him.

“I purchased it at Cambridge Music,” he remembers. “It was on show in again of the counter, and I stood there for 5 minutes, being fully ignored by the clerks. I regarded uncool or one thing.”

Finally, Slade satisfied employees to take his $325 and the Junior went on to serve in his band, The Intercourse Execs, earlier than semi-retirement at Fort Apache. As a gigging instrument, the Junior suffered the indignity of getting a piece of its mahogany physique damaged off across the output jack. Jim Mouradian, a guitar tech understanding of Cambridge Music, got here to the rescue.

“He took a chunk of wooden and really artfully positioned it in there after which replicated the colour as finest he may,” Slade explains.

Mouradian additionally changed the inventory stop-tail with an adjustable bridge. Apart from fixing the guitar’s intonation issues, Slade is satisfied the brass saddles contribute to its tone. Apart from that, the Junior is similar as when Slade purchased it, right down to the unique tuners and P-90, whose overtones Slade describes as “magical.”

Noting, too, the guitar’s long-missing Quantity knob, he distills Prompt Rock’s magic: “It hasn’t been there for years, however there’s no purpose to have it as a result of all you bought to do is flip it up all the best way anyway.”

This text initially appeared in VG’s February 2024 situation. All copyrights are by the writer and Classic Guitar journal. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.