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Glenn Cornick bass timeline pre-JT through Wild Turkey and Paris - updated

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Denis:
Bah, not being able to see the photos while I'm doing this is not working for me.
I'll have to figure something out.

Denis:
Okay, let's try this again, now that I'm using Imgur.
I want to thank Jules for letting me use any of his Glenn Cornick interview on Fly Guitar I wanted. I also want to thank Drew Cornick for the color photo of his dad with the jazz bass. He told me he got it off the internet but since I hadn't seen it before, big thanks to him.

I'm copying these posts from a Tull forum I originally posted them on, and I consider them living posts and will edit, correct and add as time goes by.

I'm going to attempt to create a brief pictorial history of Glenn Cornick's basses, pre-Jethro Tull through at least some of his Wild Turkey days.
I'll try to put them in approximate order, though his use of some of the basses probably overlap. I'm sure this will take a few posts...
Don't judge me too harshly and feel free to point out errors!



I'll start with Glenn's Fender Jazz bass, which he used through 1969 or so.

This is the earliest photo I found, definitely pre-JT, although it would make it into the JT days. It's the '62 Fender Jazz bass, which appears to have been stripped of the original paint and spray bombed in places. It would be white and painted over or natural finish and painted over. Notice that this Jazz bass still has the original neck on it.



A little bit later, it looks like more spray paint was added to the Jazz bass. The right handed neck was replaced with a left-handed neck. Glenn's comments (courtesy the FlyGuitars.com interview) are as follows: "The reverse neck fender was a 62 Jazz Bass and I hated the neck so I exchanged necks with someone with a Precision except it happened to be a left handed Precision. That was in late 66 I think. In the end the frets were so thrashed that it was almost unplayable. No one at that time did regretting."



I always wondered what this bass looked like in color, so here's the photo I got from Drew.

Denis:
Continuing with the Jazz bass...
In Stockholm in 1969 he played it again, this time with the lefty P-bass neck replaced with the neck from a Vox Symphonic (that company's P-bass copy). Note that unlike the earlier photos of this bass, it appears to now have a pick guard. I pulled this image from a video clip of that performance, although Jules had posted a different shot from the same performance.

Denis:
Overlapping his use of the Jazz bass in 1968, Glenn briefly used a 1959 EBO. When asked when he got the EBO after the multiple Jazz bass neck switches, his comments, again from Jules' site FlyGuitars.com were "Yes, it was a 1959 EB0 which I bought on our first tour in Chicago. Was never able to use it on stage because it was far too bassy but used it on 'Stand Up' on 'Nothing is Easy'. It had a wonderful neck and I loved it but it wasn't practical."
I think he may have been mistaken (or he may have forgotten) as far as using it on stage because this photo clearly shows him using it in a performance. It certainly was not seen in many photographs.

Denis:
At this point, Glenn pretty much gave up on the Jazz bass and the EBO and began using the well known Gibson EB3. It's probably the most recognizable of his basses during his Tull days and probably the most photographed.



However, according to Glenn, the EB3 suffered repeated failures due to faulty soldering at the factory. When it failed in Texas on a tour, he picked up an EB2 which he said was the only bass available at the time he could get his hands on. His comments on this bass were as follows: "Sorry but it was the worst instrument I have ever owned and the only time it was ever used was to record 'Witch's Promise' (as it was the only bass I could get to at the time). I used it occasionally on TV lip synch shows because it looked pretty good."



At this time, Glenn also picked up a Precision bass as a backup to the failures of the EB3. Glenn said, "Until my EB3 went out during a set, I never even carried a spare. After that I usually had a P Bass as backup."
My feelings about this photo is that the EB3 had failed and he wasn't using the EB2, so the backup P bass was used in this performance. The photographer, Claude Nobs, dated this photo to 1968.

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