Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum (www.rockhall.com) has added new artifacts from sound company Heil Sound (Fairview Heights, Ill., www.heilsound.com) to augment its technology and music exhibits. Heil provided live sound production in the late 1960s through the 1970s for such groups as The Who, ZZ Top, the Grateful Dead, Joe Walsh, The Eagles, Peter Frampton, Humble Pie, the James Gang and more.
Items on display include the Mavis mixer built for Pete Townshend and The Who’s Quadrophenia tour, as well as Townshend’s guitar and Roger Daltrey’s microphone, which is still wrapped in red gaffers tape to prevent the mic from being launched into the crowd as the singer twirled it overhead. Other historic pieces include the Langevin recording console, which was transformed into a live sound mixer for the Grateful Dead, as well as a Heil Talk Box unit (serial #1) that’s signed by Walsh and Frampton.
“I am thrilled and honored to have this exhibit represent my body of work in live sound,” Bob Heil says. “Those years in live sound were an incredible ride. I started out as this small music store, Ye Old Music Shop in Marissa, Illinois. I was catering mostly to the Hammond organ market, and boy did things change — quickly. Now I look back at those years with amazement.”
