One of my attractions to this Tom Johnston composition about the loss of a girlfriend was the sound of the guitars. At the time, I wasn’t sure how they achieved this sound. This was before the popularity of phase shifters and chorus effects and it never dawned on me that the guitars were run through a Leslie rotating speaker.
At the beginning, the Leslie is set on the slow speed, but later in the tune, it is played at the fast setting. In the past few months, I got a chance to appreciate Leslie speakers as a friend of mine, Steve Hoffman, inherited one and I had the opportunity to watch him rebuild it. He was a braver man that I would have been for tackling this project which also had him work on the guts of a Hammond organ as well.
While you can get similar effects with phase shifters and chorus pedals, nothing quite matches the sound of an old school Leslie. In addition to the Leslie, listen for the occasional guitar harmonics that adds another flavor to the song. This is no doubt one of the best windows down, cruising songs.
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