While contemplating a few different subjects for this month's editorial I got the call that former Car Audio editor (and later editorial director), Bill Burton, had died in Austin, Texas. Car Audio started in the late '80s and Burton was a big part of the magazine's early success. Later on he would work at Car Stereo Review, where he served as technical director for about a decade until Hachette Filipacchi decided to stop publishing the magazine (by then called Road Gear). Until 2005 Burton also contributed to Mobile Electronics.
Burton knew the music of language. He earned his degree in literature from Berkeley where he wrote his graduate thesis on James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, a musical book if there ever was one. He also knew the language of music, whether you're talking about the notes themselves or the notes as conveyed by mobile audio systems. If you're a long time reader of this magazine you'll remember Burton's fine editorials. Those of you not that familiar with him can check out www.enjoythemusic.com/billburton.htm and read the interview between him and Steve Rochlin.
A lot of Burton's time was spent on bringing people together - as a part of the media he connected manufacturers and consumers through product reviews, various people in car audio through his industry dinners, and all of those on the competition scene who benefited from his participation. He influenced an industry and its culture as much as he covered it as a journalist, and that's no small thing, at least for those of us who love the world of car audio.
-- Ben Oh
I first met Bill Burton at a sound-off at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1988, before Car Audio and Electronics first hit the newsstands and when he was the editor in charge of launching the magazine. A year later I went to work for him at CA&E and he continued as a fellow editor and colleague at this magazine and others until late 2005. While I can't exactly say Bill was always easy to work with, I admired his passion, integrity, resolve and his wacky sense of humor. And he left an indelible mark on the magazine you're now holding in your hands.
-- Doug Newcomb
The current editor of this publication has asked me, its fourth editor, to say a few words on the passing of its first editor, William "Bill" Burton. Quite frankly this isn't easy to do, but since he and I are inexorably linked together due to a long-running column we penned in an industry trade magazine after I left Car Audio and Electronics under difficult conditions almost 10 years ago, let me give it a shot.
Bill Burton was an exceptional editor, and who along with another Bill, Car Stereo Review's founding Editor William Wolfe, comprised a duo that would become known as the first two mobile electronics journalists and laid the foundation for car audio journalism as we know it. I've had the pleasure to work with both of them and have felt a loss at the passing of each, long before their times had come.
As I have said already, Bill was an exceptional editor, something of a perfectionist for the essence of style, and dare I say it, proper grammar. I know this first hand as he taught me so much in this regard. He wanted those that write about our passion of great sound in our vehicles, to express our thoughts properly. In Bill's eyes, there was no reason why Car Audio and Electronics, Car Stereo Review, or Road Gear shouldn't be as tightly edited and as free from typos as Time or Road and Track.
But most of all Bill was about music, and how could he turn others on to its faithful reproduction while on the road. Over the years, starting back in the 80s, he judged dozens, probably hundreds of competitions and he was, to my knowledge, never too busy to talk with a competitor about what was right about his or her system. But more importantly, he loved to show them how their systems could be tweaked and improved. This was Bill's greatest gift and I for one am more than sad that the next generation of mobile audio enthusiasts will not benefit from his council.
Bill and I came from the two extremes of the mobile audio universe; Bill cut his teeth in the pure world of journalism - and I've often called him a purist in this regard - while I came from the pragmatic world or car audio retail. Bill judged and commented on the systems that guys like me designed and installed.
By his own admission, Bill was not an installer but would always call me up when he added something on his own to his beloved Toyota RAV4, which was passed on down to him by his beloved sister Joy when she succumbed to cancer some years back. It was during that period, after I left Car Audio and Electronics, that Bill and I became close friends and we became somewhat infamous for our Burton-Truesdell columns that ran in Mobile Electronics Retailer. It was the perfect place for us with our backgrounds, and it was there that I really learned how to write, and more importantly, how to edit. So here's where I can offer up a belated thank you. And it was then that we truly forged a friendship that lasted until he departed this world for a place that hopefully is better for his arrival.
As your friend I know that I speak for many, you will be missed.
Richard TruesdellJune 7, 2007