Thursday, September 3, 2009

ARP musician endorsement ad, Contemporary Keyboard 1977


ARP musician endorsement ad from inside back cover of Contemporary Keyboard magazine February 1977.

As mentioned in my last post, I'm kind of playing ARP catch-up. Also, as I mentioned in my last post, ARP was (in)famous for name-dropping. And, while doing research for an ARP 2600 ad to be posted in the near future, I found out why. It seems Alan R. Pearlman gave at least a few well-known musicians ARP gear in exchange for their professional endorsement. I'm sure they weren't the only company to do it, but ARP sure did get some good mileage out of the deal.

Take this fabulous ad, for example. I'm not going to pretend I know all the musicians, but one does stand out for me - The Who's Pete Townshend. And, according to thewho.net, the photo of him featured in the ad above was used as far back as 1972, including this ARP ad from Rolling Stone magazine. Another great 1975 ARP ad is also featured on this site.

I'm sure there are interesting stories behind each musician's photo included in the ad - but I'll leave that to others with much more knowledge than myself. Feel free to comment...

2 comments:

Christopher Winkels said...

I see Edgar Winter at the top, Jon Lord of Deep Purple below and to the right (not sure who the bloke on the left is), George Duke, Pete Townshend and Herbie Hancock below that, and (I think) Patrick Moraz beside the ARP logo below that. Not sure who the rest of the people are, but I'm surprised they couldn't get a photo of Tony Banks.

RetroSynthAds said...

Excellent work - appreciated!

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