Electro-HarmonixElectro-Harmonix
“My father said, ‘Well,
you’ve got to have a
profession.’ So, for no
particular reason, I
registered in electrical
engineering. Between the
electrical engineering,
being into business, and
being a musician, it was
sort of natural for me to
fall into this industry.”
– Mike Matthews
Then came rock ’n’ roll. “I really got into
it in college, but I didn’t know what the
hell I wanted to do. My father said, ‘Well,
you’ve got to have a profession.’ So, for no
particular reason, I registered in electrical
engineering. Between the electrical engineering, being into business, and being a
musician, it was sort of natural for me to fall
into this industry.”
Even as he was beginning this free-fall toward
immortality in the pantheon of stompbox
pioneers, Matthews got married and started
to feel his literal mortality. “I got married
young,” he says, “and my first wife told me I
should work toward a goal. So I took that to the
ultimate extreme—this was right at the beginning of Electro-Harmonix—and that goal was . .
. to whip death. In my own lifetime.”
Back up. Weren’t we talking about effects
pedals here? Rock ’n’ roll?
“If you look at each generation,” says Matthews,
“they live longer than the last. I thought if you
look ahead a hundred years, people will be
regularly living to 100, 120, maybe even 200
years. A thousand years from now, they’ll cross
the threshold where they just won’t die.”
Smacking Rather Than Stomping: Matthews lets loose on an Electro-Harmonix Mini-Synth, circa 1979.
be a star. The ladies, the money, the glory.
Basically the glory, y’know.” [Laughs.]
136 PREMIER GUITAR NOVEMBER 2010
Rediscovering Roots
Though he’d had his head in the electrical
engineering space, Matthews couldn’t stay
out of the rock world for long. The road to
becoming a guitar-gear kingpin began with
Matthews wanting to get back into playing
music—which he had given up temporarily
to take a straight job as a salesman for IBM.
“You know how it is,” he says, “once it gets
into your blood, you want to get back. You
like the people digging you. You want to
As Matthews rediscovered his rock roots,
he also witnessed the renaissance that was
unfolding around him in Greenwich Village.
He gigged around the area and got close
to some of the biggest players of the day,
including Jimi Hendrix. The two met when
the future Strat master was working as a
sideman for Curtis Knight and the Squires,
and Matthews says he encouraged Hendrix
to develop his vocal abilities so he could
move on to establish his own career. Hendrix
apparently did so, and soon went off to
England as Matthews went his own way.
The future pedal guru was in and out of
day jobs and night gigs, but through it all
he clung to the dream of breaking out. And
slowly but surely, Matthews found ways to
make money from music.
www.premierguitar.com
“My relationship with Hendrix had really
no effect on my work,” he says, “because I
wanted to start playing again. At that time,
‘Satisfaction’ was a big hit. It was Number
One for 13 weeks, I think. Everybody
wanted a fuzz tone, but Maestro couldn’t
make them fast enough. I started building
fuzz tones to make some quick money so
I could quit my day gig at IBM and play
music again.”
