Sixties

Seventies

Eighties

Nineties

Early 2000

Twenty tens

Open for business – ‘Jim Marshall and Son’

A noisy revelation – amplifier ‘Number One’

The Mods and the Rockers battle on Brighton Beach

The Marshall stack powers the British Invasion

Jimi Hendrix takes Marshall international

Demand exceeds supply for Marshall

The summer of love

Skinheads and rude boys

The glam rock revolution brings gender subversion to pop music

A historic music venue opens in New York

Marshall comes ‘Alive!’ with the wall-of-amps phenomenon

Bowie and Iggy Pop touch down in Berlin

Disco transcends racial and sexual boundaries

Music unites to Rock Against Racism

A new innovation – the JCM800

Hardcore marks the evolution of punk

Marshall goes to Hollywood

Hip hop hits the mainstream

Slash, Marshall, and an appetite for amplification

East Germany’s war on punk

The riot grrrl manifesto

Marshall’s 30th is marked with a second Queen’s Award

Guitar music dominates on both sides of the Atlantic

Rave hits the charts as Marshall turns 35

Beijing punk makes the cover of Newsweek

The great indie revival

The Jim Marshall Charitable Trust and a meeting with the Queen

Emo goes mainstream

The wall of Marshall amps reinvented

From the stage to the people – Marshall Headphones

A blow-out at Wembley marks 50 years of Marshall

A chinese venue becomes an inter­national cultural melting pot

A new signing – Marshall records

The ‘70s was a time when dance-orientated nightclubs – or discotheques – were becoming a place where people could express themselves freely, and escape from the poverty, racism and homophobia blighting cities like New York and Philadelphia. Here in the underground, women in flared trousers and jumpsuits felt empowered as the dancefloor became an arena of seduction, while homosexual and inter-race relationships were embraced away from judgmental eyes.

			<blockquote>
				...people could express themselves freely, and escape from the poverty, racism and homophobia...
			</blockquote>

The soundtrack to this revolution was ‘disco’ – an uptempo dance music style defined by four-to-the-floor drum beats and grooving bass lines mixed with vocals, synthesisers, strings and guitars. This was music that transcended racial and sexual boundaries, and here in the underground, white, African-American and Latino communities of all sexual orientations were soon combining in a thumping expression of liberty, excess and eroticism.

As R&B stars like Stevie Wonder and James Brown incorporated disco sounds into their own music, new artists like Donna Summer, Chic and Gloria Gaynor helped take the genre mainstream. At its height, hits like ‘I Feel Love’, ‘Everybody Dance’ and ‘I Will Survive’ united afro-haired celebrities and platform-shoed celebrants alike under the glittering disco balls at clubs such as New York’s Studio 54.

			<figure>
				<blockquote>
					“We all use Marshall amps. They never give us any trouble."
				</blockquote>
				<figcaption>Vince Melouney [Bee Gees] in Beat Instrumental, December 1967</figcaption>
			</figure>

			Hollywood’s disco-centric movie sensation ‘Saturday Night Fever’ would then spawn one of the biggest-selling soundtracks in history in 1977, with Bee Gees’ hits ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘Night Fever’ confirming the genre’s place at the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. The sounds and ideologies associated with disco pounded on through Africa, South America and Asia thereafter, as the seeds of house, hip hop and wider DJ culture began to sprout in the US.

Disco Transcends Boundaries