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

Touring their massive, Grammy-nominated 2007 album ‘Cross’ at a time when fellow French electronic acts like Daft Punk were all over the radio, DJ duo Justice would be flanked by a wall of Marshall amps that harked back to the theatrics of Kiss and AC/DC. Their synth-heavy, basement rave bangers were a world away from the rock bands Marshall had been previously associated with – but Justice knew that for DJs to win over guitar-loving crowds at Coachella, Reading and Leeds, and Rock en Seine, Marshall would bridge the gap.

			In the world of hip hop, Jay-Z also turned to Marshall to elevate his live shows around this time. The Brooklyn juggernaut had made history as the first rapper to headline the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in 2008, despite the protests of Noel Gallagher. At that festival, Jay-Z was backed by a thunderous live band who could crunch the message home: an emcee with a microphone could make the same impact as a rocker with an axe.

Subsequent Jay-Z tours and festival appearances – including those at Rock Am Ring, Isle of Wight Festival, and Coachella – were maximised by an arsenal of Marshall hardware (including the same models that were used to record Oasis’ 1995 mega-hit ‘Wonderwall’). A skyscraper of Marshall stacks supplied part of the show’s digital backdrop, as well. “We thought it was gonna be turned up to 10,” Jay-Z said while introducing ’99 Problems’ at Coachella in 2010. “But tonight… we’re gonna turn it all the way up to 99.”

			With hip hop a mainstay on the festival circuit forever thereafter (most recently with Kendrick Lamar headlining Glastonbury in 2022), it’s safe to say Jay-Z’s mission was accomplished.