Fred Mangan's Flying Organ: This Guitar's Got Some Hot Pipes
In the past week, this is the second instrument we've seen that was built from the remains of a church. This "Flying Organ" comes from pieces of an old church organ. After undergoing an organ transplant, it found new life as this crucifix shaped guitar which was based off of the first unconventional guitar Fred made.
The first guitar had a four foot crucifix for a body, and some great tone to match up. If you want to hear that guitar, check out Queens of the Stone Age's Era Vulgaris. Josh Homme uses it on the recording.
FRED MANGAN: This is the second guitar I wanted to show you guys. This is called the Flying Organ. It's made from the pipes of an old church organ from the 1800s. A church burned down on the south side of Chicago, half of it, and they gutted it. I asked the reverend if I could have what was left of the pipes, and he gave them to me. And actually, this is based off the very first guitar I made. I crossed two pipes together and I slapped the neck on it and it looked like a crucifix but like a 4-foot crucifix.
[FRED MANGAN PLAYING ON THE FLYING ORGAN GUITAR]
I got lucky with one of the pickups and it had an incredible sound. I think it was an old Hagstrom pickup from the '60s.
[FRED MANGAN PLAYING ON THE FLYING ORGAN GUITAR]
I put it together and had this incredibly freakish like 4-foot crucifix guitar, and I got invited backstage to talk to my buddy, Josh Homme, of Queens of the Stone Age.
[FRED MANGAN PLAYING ON THE FLYING ORGAN GUITAR]
He liked it so much that he tracked the last "Era Vulgaris" album, a lot of the quieter parts, and that he tracked with it so I'm really proud of that guitar. It's got it's own sound. That's it. It's just got its own sound. When you put this stuff together, it isn't a solid piece of wood. It isn't a semi-hollow piece of wood. It's kind of all of it, slapped together and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I smash it and start over.
I don't know if it's fortunate or unfortunate. Most of these guitars end up in galleries. God bless them. It seems the women are the ones that like it the most and they buy them not to play but to hang on their walls, but basically this is based off of that guitar. Instead of taking a pipe and crossing it and then putting a neck on, I had this idea to make it look like a rocket ship kind of thing I would have liked to play when I was 12 years old. I put it together and tried a bunch of different pickups and it sounded horrible, and I almost gave up on it. I think I changed the bridge and found this guy, which is just a garbagey 1970s pawnshop-type pickup like a Canter, Teisco, or something like that, and put it in. It's unbelievable.
[FRED MANGAN PLAYING ON THE FLYING ORGAN GUITAR]
And it's clean, it's round and bell-like sort of tone, and when you turn it up it just starts to rip, and ripping away that I remember Maxwell Street sounding in the '70s.
[FRED MANGAN PLAYING ON THE FLYING ORGAN GUITAR]
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