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Bill
Lawrence - legally known as Willi Lorenz Stich, professionally know
as Billy Lorento, and once almost known as Bela Lorentowsky - runs
Bill Lawrence Products which manufactures pickups and strings. That
doesn’t tell all. He was probably the first well-known, single-string
jazz guitarist in Germany. He is, as well - literally and figuratively
- a towering legend in the pickup field, having served as a consultant
for companies foreign-based ( Framus) and domestic
( Gibson) where he helped to revolutionize the design of pickups,
be they magnetic, single - or double-coil, standard or humbucking.
As an instrument customizer, he and Dan Armstrong once even had
a go at rewiring Jimi Hendrix’s guitars ( though they both remain
mum to this day about what exactly they did [ see "Guitars, Amps
and Devices," GP, Sept. '75] ).
Lawrence was born March 24, 1931, in Wahn-Heide, eight miles southeast
of Cologne, West Germany. Hitler came into power when Bill was two.
War came into his neighborhood when Bill was eight. You would not
think him to be especially sensitive to subaudible vibrations. The
most impressionable chunk of Lawrence's life was spent with Germany's
largest artillery range in his backyard. "Quite noisy," he says.
"Germany became an army camp. There were streets blocked off for
troop training with 88mm antiaircraft guns. When the military had
maneuvers, they lost ammunition and equipment all the time. It was
quite common for a kid to walk into school and say, "Look, I found
a machine gun." Or, if it were only part of a machine gun, the other
kids would bring out their fragments and try to piece together an
entire weapon together.
Such was Bill's early experience with things mechanical. It also
included removing pins from grenades, hoarding gunpowder and spent
shells, building rockets, and digging detonation devices out of
1,000-lb bombs. The youngsters even played darts on a grand scale
with homemade rockets 40" long and 4" in diameter, with a five mile
range. "The boys would say," Bill says, "Look! You see that tree
over there? Let's see if we can hit it." There was little margin
for error in his days, any of which could turn out to be a Fourth
of July or twelfth of never for someone. Still, even when one friend
was killed, Bill recalls, "The kids didn't take it seriously. They
just said, 'He was careless; this cannot happen to us.'" This did
not happen to Bill, but "it" tried. Lawrence shot himself through
the leg with a homemade gun when he was eight. And today, his hands
are etched with scars - the thin, white, reminders of explosions
in his paws.
Given
the environment and times, this was all normal boyhood behavior,
and, as is normal, it soon gave way to greater variety. At age eight,
Bill began supplementing his rocketry with violin lessons and the
study of counterpoint. But it was he and not his concert violin
career that was launched one fine day five years later. Bill had
attached rockets to the rear of his bicycle for extra umph. But
at blast-off he coursed a more erratic trajectory than planned.
He rolled, pitched, and yawed his flesh and bones down, through
and under a haystack. At least it hadn't been a wall. At least he
was alive. He sat in a hospital and raised arms like fishhooks with
surprises. From his right hung a hand with a single break. From
his left dangled a mitt with seven fractures. A specialist did his
best, and Bill tried his hardest for several more years, but he
just could never could hold that violin right again, ever.
When Lawrence was 14 years and one week old, the Americans occupied
Cologne, and, for the residents there, the war was over. With high
marks in English, Lawrence became an interpreter for the American
Army stationed in Cologne. After four months the American forces
were moved to the south, and northwest Germany became British occupied
territory. Bill then worked as an interpreter for the British military
and half a year later for the Royal Air Force. During this time
he first heard recordings of the King Cole Trio, the Les Paul Trio,
and the big bands led by Glen Miller, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman,
Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, and others.
Particularly struck with the playing of guitar innovators Charlie
Christian, Barney Kessel, Oscar Moore and Les Paul, Bill abandoned
violin and embraced guitar. He began thumping out single-string
lines of his own. Soon his was proficient. Soon he was the best
in Germany. " I switched to the guitar in 1946, " Lawrence says.
"With six others I started a group, and we played successfully in
British and Belgian military clubs. The radio we listened to was
AFN {American Forces Network}. That's where we first heard Dizzy
Gillespie and Charlie Parker. We started to play bebop. I had an
English 20-watt military amp with a big, metal outdoor speaker.
I mounted a record player cartridge into the bridge of my guitar
to amplify it. The sound was horrible, loud, and distorted. The
first gig I got playing electric was at a dinner party in a Belgian
officers club. We started with 'Cherokee' fast and loud, and before
the tune was ended, we found ourselves with our instruments in the
street. We had no penny in our pockets and had to walk eight miles
to get home. With the help of an engineer in a tape recorder company
I built my first magnetic pickup. Now I sounded nice - still distorted,
but nice."
After the War, money had no value. There was little food, and the
currency in the streets was American or English cigarettes. Star
salary for a musician was 50 cigarettes a night. With cigarettes
one could buy butter, bread or meat. For two cartons of Lucky Stripes
one could buy a Leica camera. By 1947, Lawrence started to perform
in Cologne at the Hot Club '47. He also played and jammed in the
Cafe Arnold. Still, his growing preemminence as a musician did not
ensure the safety of his flesh. Bill and his "dirty American music"
kept attracting bricks from the hands of irate locals. "Such people
were a part of a low-clan mob that still lived in a time where books
had been burned if the author was not Aryan," Bill explained. "Any
kind of Gypsy, Black or Jewish music had been forbidden. It's poor
situation when culture is defined by its Aryan or non-Aryan origin.
And that's just what happened. It was absurd. Goebbels, the German
Minister of Propaganda, had even gone so far as to ask Richard Strauss
to write a new theme for Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream since
the original music had been written by Felix Mendelssohn, who was
Jewish, the same Felix Mendelssohn who rediscovered and performed
the works of Joahnn Sebastian Bach which had been forgotten. Strauss
refused Goebbel's order. Strauss asked, "How can anyone write a
piece of music that is more perfectly suited to this play?" That
took courage. Musicians, composers and conductors, not to mention
great inventors teachers, writers, scholars and sciencists - Albert
Einstein, for instance - had been forced to leave Germany or were
thrown into concentration camps. To even read a poem by Heinrich
Heine could have led you to imprisonment or death. Musicians had
found a way around some of this. If you wanted to play something
by someone like Gershwin, you just wrote some phony, dumb title
in German on top of the printed lead sheet. 'Tiger Rag" they'd call
'Tiger Jagd.'" Clever but not funny. Lawrence says the memory of
that era still makes him feel sick.
By 1948, the center of jazz in Germany had shifted to Frankfurt.
Lawrence moved there. Still a pile of rubble, the town was aswarm
with American and German jazz players, scurrying like rats at four
in the morning to the next jam session. Nazi racism gradually lifted.
Forbidden styles came back into vogue. Jazz became acceptable, in
some quarters, even popular.
By 1951, Bill was established as the best known of the emerging
crop of German guitarists.
More to come.....
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