Rumble

One might say that “Rumble“, an instrumental originally released by Link Wray & His Ray Men in April 1958, started the whole instrumental guitar rock thing. One of its most notable features was the distorted guitar tone — largely a new idea at the time.

It was banned in several US radio markets because the term “rumble” was a slang term for a gang fight and it was feared that the piece’s harsh sound glorified juvenile delinquency. In spite of this, it became a hit in the United States, where it climbed to number 16 on the charts in the summer of 1958.

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