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Glenn Cornick bass timeline pre-JT through Wild Turkey and Paris - updated
Denis:
After the EB3, the short-lived replacement EB2 and the backup P bass, Glenn finally got a Thunderbird II in 1970. Gibson only built 718 Thunderbird IIs between 1963 and the 1965 discontinuation date (edit: removed lawsuit remark, DCL).
Glenn LOVED Thunderbirds from this moment on and played them consistently with JT and then Wild Turkey for the next few years.
Pick guards on these Thunderbirds were white so notice the replacement black pick guard with the name "Neil Clark" where the hot stamped Tbird logo would normally appear. I have no idea as yet who Neil Clark is. It's possible he was a friend of Glenn's or the luthier who modified his basses. Or not!
Glenn's remarks about the Thunderbird were "I loved everything about it but never got to record with it with Tull though I used it all the time on stage as soon as I got it. I used it at the Isle of Wight festival. Ian (Anderson) preferred the EB3 to the T Bird. It was stolen late in 1971 and I never had another Gibson reverse."
He added: "I always wanted another original reverse Thunderbird but never got one. I was so attached to the one that got stolen that I swore I would never again get so attached to any one instrument or play anything that was so difficult to replace."
By this time, Gibson had not made that style Thunderbird in 6 years. The attrition rate was probably pretty high because of the fragility of the super thin neck and huge headstock.
Denis:
"Benefit" was released in April, 1970. Since Glenn got the Thunderbird only in late 1970, the overlap of his time with JT and performances with the Thunderbird must have been brief.
After he left Jethro Tull, Glenn formed Wild Turkey and bought his first Non-Reverse Thunderbird II, a white one, from Manny's in New York in 1971. He said "They had a stack of them unsold in the basement and they were $100 each with soft case." They had a stack of them because these were not very popular basses, being very long and as with the original Thunderbirds, suffering from the same weaknesses of the thin neck and huge headstock. Gibson only made 435 Thunderbird IIs between 1965 and 1969.
True to form, the headstock of this bass broke off after only a few months. I have never found a photo of Glenn with this bass.
After his first NR broke, he had another shipped from England, an Inverness Green NR Thunderbird II. This color, as with most of the other custom colors Gibson used on the Thunderbirds, were from the General Motors catalog.
This first excellent photo shows Glenn with the green NR before any modifications at all. (Personal note: It's probably my favorite photo of Glenn with ANY of his basses.)
Glenn started modifying this bass soon after he bought it. This photo shows a Guild pickup in place of the original Gibson and the pick guard has been removed. This is the only color photo of this bass that I have found so far. I've been in touch with Drew Cornick who offered to try and locate a few more photos of this bass for reference in the restoration of mine.
I feel it's rather important from a documentation standpoint to mention that the sides of the fretboard appear to be unpainted. Many Gibson experts, including some friends who have original NR Thunderbirds, state that Gibson always painted the sides of the fretboards on custom color basses. Knowing how Gibson did things it seems entirely possible they painted some fretboard sides and left some unpainted.
Denis:
Glenn continued modifying his green NR. The original single pickup was moved towards the bridge and as mentioned earlier, a Guild pickup was installed where the original had been located. He had a much larger custom pick guard made and installed and added a Gibson Vibrola. It "worked well except that the arms used to break and I had to have someone make one out of heavy duty steel!" said Glenn from the FlyGuitars interview.
Here he is in Holland in 1973. As with his first NR Tbird, the neck eventually broke on this bass and it was parted out. Notice the Precision bass lying on top of the keyboard, which I will get to shortly.
His comments about Tbirds in general and the Vibrola specifically and the tone were pretty funny so I'm including them here. "Tone and volume usually all the way up. For a short while I used a distortion box only for my bass solo with Wild Turkey to get feedback and other generally obnoxious effects! - especially funny with the Vibrola! There might be some vibrola stuff on the Live Wild Turkey stuff that came out recently but I've never listened to it!"
He also added "For your interest reverse and non-reverse Firebirds and Thunderbirds were always known as 'Upside Down Gibsons' and 'Right Way Up Gibsons' in Britain in those days."
Now, back to that Precision bass lying on the keyboard. It does not appear to be the backup P bass seen in the photo I posted earlier (unless it was repainted, which is possible) from his JT days so I was having trouble fitting it in the timeline. Honestly, I'd been mystified by the below photo, in part because I had never noticed it in the above photo. Now it fits in the timeline and I can say with some certainty that he used this bass with Wild Turkey.
Denis:
Around 1973 and possibly after his last NR Thunderbird was broken, Glenn started trying out other basses, including this very strange Reverse Flying V bass, from a Detief Kinsler photo. The "claw" tailpiece resembles those used on Gibsons and Epiphones so it's possible it came from the broken green NR. The neck looks like it is from a Fender Jazz bass, which by this time used blocks as fret inlays rather than dots as on earlier Jazz basses.
I have very little information on this bass as yet.
Denis:
A surprise came to me only yesterday and that was noticing in a live Wild Turkey performance of "Good Old Days" that Glenn was using a Rickenbacker 4001 (corrected, thanks to geostrehl's comment) . While I've found no photos of it so far, I'm attaching three snapshots from the video. Glenn is shown only very briefly but knowing that it is Glenn, the photos together verify it's a Rickenbacker.
As my last comment to this thread for now, I'll go ahead and mention that he used a "Gibson EB1 reissue in about 1975 which I used with the band Paris though I didn't use it on record - I used an Eccleshall (British Custom Luthier) reverse Thunderbird using all the parts from the green non-reverse T Bird for the first Paris (1975) album played through a Pignose!"
So far I do not have any photos of these two basses.
It's interesting that he thought enough of the NR Thunderbirds to hold onto the parts for years and use them on other custom basses.
This has been a fun exercise and I hope that you guys find it interesting and possibly even useful. There are probably other basses I've left out and I've probably made errors but I've tried to include all those basses I could document and find either photos or Glenn's own comments mentioning them.
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