Attack Of The Killer V (1990)
Lonnie Mack
Guitar #007
The death of a giant like Prince
eclipsed the passing of the other musical recluse who also turned off his
guitar for good on that dreadful 21st April 2016. The number 007.
The seventh Flying V that came out of the Gibson workshops and the one that
Lonnie Mack bought in 1958. That same year would witness the birth of the
genius from Minneapolis with the same six-string venom in his blood while on
the Radio Stations they were already listening to those overwhelming,
electrifying solos of that farmer from Indiana.
Lonnie McIntosh was an affable, simple guy who hated the star system; Lonnie Mack was a killer. Actually, it
was his guitar, the 'Killer V' that gave his last album its name in 1990. You
could consider that live disk the last testament of one of the pioneers who
converted our favourite instrument into a featured performer in its own right. His
Gibson was the solo voice onstage, and he knew how to make it 'sing' like no
one else could.
Born in the summer of 1941 in the middle of nowhere, the Ohio River was
the highway that took him to Cincinnati as a street musician. He had just
turned 13, been expelled from school and was making a living thanks to playing
bluegrass around the hotels in the city.
Rock ’n’ roll was stuttering when he began to experiment with Fender
guitars in the '50s, when both the Stratocaster
and especially the Telecaster were
revolutionizing country music. A little while after he decided to switch to a Gibson Les Paul, a new guitar was
announced whose design would have a tremendous impact on Lonnie, the Flying V,
another legend he would never be unfaithful to. It is the guitar's image that
fills the front cover of Attack of Killer
V, not a photo of Mack himself like the other albums in his discography.
His roots were in country music.
He held onto them in a world where blues, gospel, R&B, jazz and
rockabilly were all exploding and he had a multitude of maestros, ranging from Hank Ballard to T-Bone Walker, to learn from. He didn't waste any time: his 1964
debut album, The Wham of the Memphis Man!,
brought the trademark vibrato of his beloved and unmistakable guitar to fame.
Its arrow shape was also perfect for making an impression onstage.
The problem is that he didn't like the popularity. Lonnie Mack tossed his career overboard in the mid-'70s and left
for his Indiana home, fed up with all the rip-offs and scams of the industry.
He would prefer to work as a studio musician and avoid getting into any
trouble.
One of his biggest admirers, the great Stevie Ray Vaughan, decided to pull him off his farm a decade
later and co-produced new albums, reviving those solos that made history and
opened a path that Hendrix and Clapton would also follow.
A new phase that Lonnie himself
closed in 1990 with the attack of his
six-string killer. He would continue performing for a few years after, but
decided that this would be his final recording. Surely he decided that after
listening to it... everything he had learned was on there. All his tricks, all
his effects, all his favourite licks. It
was his legacy and his legend. He would never surpass it.