- #7
- Publié par
frisko le 18 Juin 2005, 13:25
Commentaires de Bill Lawrence sur le déclin de Gibson au début des années 80... (sorry en Anglais)... faut pas trop tapper sur le dos de Norlin... ce fut au contraire le début du "redressement"
The problems started many years earlier, around 1973/74. Gibson was looked at as a money-making project. The owners of that time were in the beer business, the spirit that is so important in instrument making was lacking. I often had the feeling that the company was being degraded into a furniture factory. Instead of making the instruments by hand in a first-class way, they looked for the fault in the models themselves. They experimented on the market with new instruments that were not well thought out or fully worked out. The owners understood absolutely nothing about the guitar business. They hired top managers who had been educated at first-class universities, but who had a flaw: For them, instrument making was a book with seven seals. They came to me with things that I knew right from the very beginning would not work. If I made my objections known, they said I just didn't know anything at all about business. That fact that that really bothered me is the reason I left Gibson, but in my subconscious I had the feeling that someone would come along who would bring the business up again, and I already had a plan firmly in mind about how that could be done! But before that came to pass, the company was turned over to new people who were not even worth talking about. This involved a consortium of banks or something, to this day we don't know anything more about it. Then Gibson/Norlin was really golden by comparison, because then you could still talk to real people, be a real person. Truly, all the bankers could see was a killing to be made. Nothing was repaired, all of the machines fell apart. It was a crying shame.
A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo... but doesn't !
