‘I discovered the most cost effective Strat in all of the outlets,” says Nile Rodgers, chatting with me from Miami Seaside, the very place he went trawling for what would later be considered the world’s biggest electrical guitar. “I traded in my Gibson Barney Kessel. The man behind the counter gave me the Strat – and $300 again. It was the true runt of the litter.”
In a nod to the mannequin performed by his hero Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock in 1969, Rodgers stripped the guitar and painted it Olympic white. He then locked himself in his lavatory for 3 days – “woodshedding” he calls it – till he’d mastered “chucking”, a blinding new approach that blended offbeat strumming with the muting of fretted notes. It’s a method made for the Strat’s wealthy percussive qualities and slick really feel.
Armed with this new instrument, a 1960 mannequin with a 1959 neck, Rodgers set about reinventing music. His distinctive sound turned the gyrating spine of disco – he knocked out hits for Diana Ross, Sister Sledge and his personal band, Stylish. Different acts quickly got here calling, from David Bowie to Grace Jones, Madonna, Duran Duran and Daft Punk. Rodgers’ Strat could be heard on information which have offered tons of of thousands and thousands of copies, incomes the “runt of the litter” not one however two nicknames: the “hitmaker” and the “$2bn guitar”.
“It’s what individuals ask for once they ask for me,” he says. “And I swear, I at all times go in to a recording session considering, ‘That’s not what they need.’ Then I see them wanting disenchanted. ‘What’s fallacious?’ I ask. ‘That is cool – these chords are nice!’ They are saying, ‘Are you able to play the Nile Rodgers Stratocaster factor?’ So I get my Strat and do my factor. They usually at all times look so blissful. That guitar modified my life 1,000%.”
Celebrating its seventieth birthday this spring, the Strat – or Fender Stratocaster – might now be essentially the most recognisable musical instrument of all time. It’s nearly actually the bestselling guitar, cherished by legions of riffing stars. “The Strat is as sturdy and powerful as a mule,” Keith Richards as soon as mentioned, “but it has the magnificence of a racehorse. It’s acquired every thing you want, and that’s uncommon to seek out in something.”
Bonnie Raitt acquired her first one in 1969, shopping for it on the road at 3am after a gig. She has performed it at each one in all her reveals since, and it was pivotal to her 13 Grammy wins. “There’s only a tone that doesn’t occur with different guitars,” she says. “It’s all about that center pickup – you simply can’t beat it.”
Radio restore man turned inventor Leo Fender couldn’t probably have recognized what he was beginning when he started designing the Strat within the early Nineteen Fifties. Maybe as a result of he wasn’t a guitarist, he approached the design in a different way, with a watch on not simply manufacture but in addition repairability. Therefore the bolt-on, slightly than glued-in, neck. He had hit the mark just a few years earlier with the Broadcaster, later renamed the Telecaster as a result of a authorized wrangle with rival producer Gretsch. He additionally designed the Fender Precision bass. Each have been immediate successes, standard with western swing bands, however the Telecaster was and stays a slab-like, utilitarian workhorse – two pickups, no nonsense. And as a lot as musicians cherished its sound, they typically complained that its sq. edges dug into their ribs and banged their hip bones.
The Strat, with its neatly nipped navel and two-horned cutaways, might be what first involves thoughts when anybody hears the phrases “electrical guitar”. Hundreds of thousands of gamers have discovered on a Strat – whether or not made by Fender, its price range Squier imprint, or one of many quite a few corporations producing copies. Many others dream of proudly owning a top-of-the-range mannequin from the Fender customized store, costing a five-figure sum. Then there are the secondhand Strats with one earlier well-known proprietor. The black 1969 mannequin that Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour performed on The Darkish Facet of the Moon, Want You Have been Right here and The Wall went underneath the hammer for nearly $4m, in help of a local weather change charity.
So what does a Strat sound like? Something you need. You may get a style of its vary on all these tracks: Misirlou, Apache, Nowhere Man, Little Wing, Smoke on the Water, Comfortably Numb, There Is a Gentle That By no means Goes Out, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Final Nite, and I Guess You Look Good on the Dancefloor.
Blues maestro Joe Bonamassa has one of many world’s largest guitar collections, together with many museum-grade classic Strats in addition to the Howard Reed, the primary black Strat. “Speak about Leo Fender getting it proper the primary time!” he says of the person whose small California firm modified the world. “Little or no has modified between 1954 and now,” he provides. “It’s basically been the identical guitar for 70 years.”
Certainly, there have been solely a handful of alterations. In 1956, alder changed ash for the physique, whereas rosewood fretboards arrived in 1959. Tone knobs have modified form, lacquer has been improved, wiring has been tinkered with and necks have morphed. However a Strat has at all times been a Strat.
“Fender are in a bizarre enterprise,” says Bonamassa, whose favorite is his 1955 “Sunburst” Strat, nicknamed Bonnie. “Think about being the CEO of Ford and your core enterprise is making a automotive that appears the identical because the one you made within the Nineteen Fifties. And your prospects don’t need enhancements like satnav or electrical engines. Guitar corporations are promoting nostalgia – but in addition one thing that’s timeless so it stays related. In case you have some creativity, ingenuity and a little bit chutzpah, you’ll be able to rule the world with a Strat.”
Justin Norvell has given these unusual necessities a substantial amount of thought throughout his 28 years at Fender. As government vice-president of merchandise, he has the job of protecting the Strat related. “We’ve to encapsulate the previous, current and future,” he says. “It’s who we’re, from Hank Marvin to Mark Bowen from Idles. We’ve to work out how an instrument that’s oddly unchanged since 1954 strikes ahead.
“My favorite time period for that is ‘colouring contained in the strains’. The Strat exists – and there are issues you’ll be able to tinker with inside that. It’s what Leo Fender did and it’s what we proceed to do. What’s fascinating is that it has by no means change into a relic. That’s right down to new bands coming alongside and blowing up the music scene with a 70-year-old design. The Strat is reinvented with every era.”
For all its immediate recognisability in the present day, the Strat that Fender first designed was principally a glorified Telecaster. However the arrival of designer and engineer Freddie Tavares modified that. He took inspiration from the two-horned Precision bass whereas including modern touches together with the gamechanging tremolo bridge – incorrectly named because the pitch-shifting impact the brief metallic arm creates is definitely vibrato. Three pickups and superior switching provided larger tonal variation than nearly some other guitar available on the market, whereas curves, contours and chamfers have been added in all the best locations, which means the Strat sits on the hip and clings to the physique extra like an merchandise of clothes than a musical instrument.
The Stratocaster – named by Fender gross sales chief Don Randall – debuted on the Nationwide Affiliation of Music Retailers commerce present in January 1954 and appeared in outlets that April. It was not an instantaneous success. Gross sales weren’t good, regardless of rock’n’roll taking off. As Tom Wheeler writes in his 2004 e book The Stratocaster Chronicles, the instrument seemed to be “as far faraway from standard guitars as, say, a baritone ukulele or perhaps a banjo”. He added: “Loads of skilled musicians noticed the brand new Fender as unworthy of significant consideration. Merely a software, a gimmicky contraption – even a joke.”
Issues have been worse within the UK, the place it wasn’t even potential to get one. As a consequence of a British embargo, Strats didn’t formally arrive till the early Nineteen Sixties – though the primary mannequin someway arrived in 1959. This was a fiesta-red mannequin that Cliff Richard gave to Hank Marvin, the guitarist of his band the Shadows. Marvin immediately turned Britain’s first guitar hero – and loads of future stars have been watching.
“My first guitar needed to be pink due to Hank Marvin,” says Dire Straits co-founder Mark Knopfler, who used to move a guitar store on his approach residence from college. He recollects urgent his nostril to the window to get a better take a look at a pink Strat. He would finally personal one, famously taking part in it on Dire Straits’ 1978 breakout hit Sultans of Swing.
The Strat’s reputation grew all through the Nineteen Sixties. The tipping level got here when Hendrix arrived, probably essentially the most influential guitarist of all time and infrequently seen taking part in something however a Strat. “One of many fascinating nuances about Jimi,” says his sister Janie, “was that his guitars weren’t simply devices to him, however extensions of him, a part of his persona.”
When the Stone Roses have been recording their eponymous debut album in 1988, the producer John Leckie was unimpressed with the skinny sound coming from John Squire’s Gretsch Nation Gentleman, so rented him a Strat. “I ended up shopping for it,” says Squire. “It was a battered pink one – and it was an incredible guitar.”
Squire says he’s not a collector, though, whereas he’ss chatting with me by cellphone from his residence, there are 4 Strats round him. His favorite is a sweet apple pink that may be seen within the video for Simply One other Rainbow, the latest single from his collaboration with Liam Gallagher. This 2012 masterbuilt 57 reissue is “throughout” their new album: Squire says if might get away with it, it could be the one guitar he’d play. “They’re like a Swiss Military Knife,” he says. “They’ll do every thing. There’s a sound in there that jogs my memory of Hendrix’s much less ferocious moments. I consider them like a pair of shoes – one thing that simply doesn’t want any extra refinement.”
Simon Neil of Biffy Clyro was given his first Strat by a bandmate’s dad. “I recorded our first three information on that Stratocaster,” he says. “It’s essentially the most expressive guitar I’ve ever performed. There’s a motive I’m nonetheless taking part in it now. I don’t suppose I might write music in the best way I do with out the Stratocaster.”
Mac DeMarco, in the meantime, says he was initially intimidated by artists equivalent to Hendrix, Clapton and Jeff Beck, given their affiliation with the Strat. “These guitar gods!” he says. “I felt like I needed to carve my very own path. Jeff Beck was the boss of this guitar. You couldn’t compete. However, at a sure level, after attempting different issues and never getting on with them, I caved and acquired a Seventies Strat. Arms down the nicest instrument I’ve ever owned. Then I realised that so many individuals have performed Strats that it truly makes them clean slates. It’s like a Toyota – they’re simply so dependable. It’s the one factor you want.”
Leo Fender offered his firm to media large CBS in 1965. Whereas collectors covet pre-takeover devices, citing a drop in high quality underneath CBS, the corporate elevated gross sales by 30% in its first 12 months, and 45% the 12 months after, taking the electrical guitar to dizzying new heights. After a gradual decline in gross sales within the Seventies and 80s, although, CBS offered the agency to a gaggle of buyers, together with staff in 1985. Today, Fender is basically owned by Servco Pacific. As a personal firm, it doesn’t launch gross sales figures, however Norvell nods after I counsel there might be thousands and thousands, probably tens of thousands and thousands, of Strats in existence. It was additionally reported that the pandemic years noticed Fender’s greatest ever gross sales, suggesting there’s nonetheless loads of urge for food for this 70-year-old traditional.
And all this from the thoughts of Leo Fender, a person who apparently couldn’t even tune a guitar, and who used to say that if he had $100 to make one thing, he would “spend $99 making it work and $1 making it fairly”.
Mission achieved.
