'I “I found the cheapest Strat in every store,” Nile Rodgers told me from Miami Beach, the very place he trawled for what would later be considered the best electric guitar in the world. . “I traded in a Gibson Barney Kessel. The guy behind the counter gave me a Strat – and gave me $300 back. It was a real piece of trash.”
In honor of the model played by his hero Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock in 1969, Rogers stripped the guitar and painted it Olympic white. He then holed up in his bathroom for three days until he mastered “chucking,” a dazzling new technique that combines eccentric strumming and muting the sound of frets. He called it “woodshedding.” This is a style created with the Strat's rich percussive character and smooth feel in mind.
Armed with this new instrument, a 1960 model with a 1959 neck, Rogers set out to reinvent music. His unique sound became the whirling backbone of disco, producing hits for Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, and his own band, Chic. Other artists were quick to speak out, from David Bowie to Grace Jones, Madonna, Duran Duran and Daft Punk. Rogers' Strat can be heard on records that have sold hundreds of millions of copies and earned him not one but two “trash” nicknames: “The Hitmaker” and “The Two Billion Dollar Guitar.” .
“That's what people want from me,” he says. “And I swear to you, I always go into a recording session thinking, 'That's not what they want.' And I see the disappointed look on their face. 'What's up?' they ask. 'This is cool, these chords are great!' 'Can you play Nile Rodgers' Stratocaster for me?' they say. So I get a Strat and do my thing. And they always look so happy. That guitar changed my life 1000%. ”
Celebrating its 70th anniversary this spring, the Strat (or Fender Stratocaster) may now be the most famous instrument of all time. This is arguably the best-selling guitar, loved by legions of riffsters. “Strats are as tough and strong as mules,” Keith Richards once said. “Yet it has the grace of a racehorse. It has everything you need, and that's something you don't find anywhere else.”
Bonnie Raitt first got it in 1969, buying it on the street at 3 a.m. after a show. She has performed this song at every show since then, and it played a pivotal role in her winning her 13 Grammy Awards. “It has tones that don't happen on other guitars,” she says. “It's all about the middle pickup. You can't beat that.”
Radio repairman turned inventor Leo Fender probably had no idea what he was getting into when he started designing the Strat in the early 1950s. Perhaps because he was not a guitarist, he approached the design differently, looking not only at manufacturing but also at ease of repair. Therefore, the neck is bolt-on rather than glued. He found success with the Broadcaster a few years ago, but it was later renamed the Telecaster due to a legal dispute with rival manufacturer Gretsch. He also designed his Fender Precision bass. Both were instant successes and popular with Western swing bands, but the Telecaster remains a no-nonsense, slate-like practical workhorse with two pickups. And while musicians loved the sound, they often complained that its square edges dug into their ribs and hit their hip bones.
When you hear the words “electric guitar,” the first thing that probably comes to mind is a Strat with a neat belly button and two corner cutaways. Millions of players have learned to play Strats, whether they're made by Fender, the low-cost Squier company, or one of the many companies that make copies. Many others dream of owning Fender's top-of-the-line model of his custom shop, with prices reaching his five-figure sums. Then there's a used Strat that had a famous previous owner. His 1969 black model, which Pink Floyd's David Gilmour played with on “The Dark Side of the Moon,” “Wish You Were Here” and “The Wall,” is being donated to support climate change charities. It was sold for approximately $4 million.
So what kind of sound does a Strat make? Whatever you want. You can taste the range on every track, including Misirlou, Apache, Nowhere Man, Little Wing, Smoke on the Water, Comfortably Numb, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Last Nite, and I . You'll definitely look great on the dance floor.
Blues maestro Joe Bonamassa owns one of the world's largest guitar collections, including a museum-quality vintage Strat and the first black Strat, a Howard Reed. “Talk about the first time Leo Fender did it right!” he says of the man who changed the world at a small California company. “Not much has changed between 1954 and now,” he adds. “It's basically the same guitar for 70 years.”
In fact, only a handful have changed. In 1956, the body replaced ash with alder, and in 1959 a rosewood fingerboard was introduced. The tone knob was reshaped, the lacquer was improved, the wiring was tweaked, and the neck was transformed. But a Strat will always be a Strat.
“Fender is in a strange business,” says Bonamassa. His favorite is his 1955 “Sunburst” Strat, nicknamed Bonnie. “Imagine you're the CEO of Ford, and your day job is to make cars that look the same as the ones they made in the 1950s, and your customers don't want improvements like navigation or electric engines.'' The company sells itself on nostalgia, but it's also timeless and current. With creativity, ingenuity, and a little bit of stupidity, you can rule the world with your Strat. ”
Justin Norvell has thought deeply about these strange requirements during his 28 years at Fender. As VP of Product, he is charged with keeping his Strat relevant. “It needs to encapsulate the past, present and future,” he says. “From Hank Marvin to Mark Bowen of Idols, that's who we are. We have to figure out how to move forward with an instrument that has remained strangely unchanged since 1954.
“My favorite term for this is 'color inside the lines.' Strat exists and there are things you can play around with inside it. That's what Leo Fender did and what we continue to do. What's interesting is that it never became a relic. It's all about new bands coming up and exploding the music scene with 70-year-old designs. Strats are reinvented with each generation. ”
Although it's instantly recognizable today, the first Strat designed by Fender was basically a glorified Telecaster. However, the arrival of designer and engineer Freddy Tavares changed things. He takes inspiration from his two-horn precision bass and adds innovative touches, while adding an innovative tremolo to his bridge (a short metal arm produces a pitch-shifting effect that is actually vibrato). (misnamed). Three pickups and advanced switching offer more tonal variation than most other guitars on the market, while adding curves, contours, and bevels in all the right places, making the Strat It sits on your waist and fits snugly to your body like a garment. than an instrument.
Named by Fender sales executive Don Randall, the Stratocaster debuted at the National Music Merchants Association trade show in January 1954 and hit store shelves in April of the same year. It wasn't an immediate success. Despite the popularity of rock'n'roll, sales were poor. As Tom Wheeler wrote in his 2004 book Stratocaster Chronicles, the instrument appeared to be “as far removed from a traditional guitar as, say, a baritone ukulele or banjo.” “Many professional musicians considered the new Fenders not worth serious consideration; just a tool, a gimmicky device, even a joke.”
Things were even worse in Britain, where it was impossible to even get hold of it. Due to the British embargo, the Strat did not officially arrive until her early 1960s, but the first model somehow arrived in 1959. This was the Fiesta Red model given by Cliff Richard to Hank Marvin, guitarist for his band The Shadows. Marvin quickly became Britain's first guitar hero and attracted the attention of many future stars.
“My first guitar had to be red because of Hank Marvin,” says Dire Straits co-founder Mark Knopfler, who often passed by the guitar shop on his way home from school. . He remembered pressing his nose against the window to get a better look at the red Strat. He eventually owned the song and became famous for performing it on Dire Straits' 1978 hit “Sultans of Swing.”
The Strat's popularity grew throughout the 1960s. The turning point came when Hendrix, perhaps the most influential guitarist of all time and rarely seen playing anything other than a Strat, arrived. “One of the interesting nuances about Jimi is that his guitar wasn't just an instrument to him, it was an extension of him and part of his personality,” said his sister Janie. says.
When the Stone Roses were recording their eponymous debut album in 1988, producer John Leckie was unimpressed by the thin sound of John Squire's Gretsch Country Gentleman. I rented him a Strat. “I ended up buying it,” Squire says. “It was a beat-up pink guitar, but it was a great guitar.”
Squire says he's not a collector, but he has four Strats around him while speaking to me on the phone from his home. His favorite is the candy apple red seen in the video for his recent single 'Just Another Rainbow', a collaboration with Liam Gallagher. This reissue of his 2012 Masterbilt 57 is an “all-inclusive” version of their new album. Squire says if this were to last, it would be the only guitar he would play. “They're like a Swiss Army knife,” he says. “They can do anything. There's a sound in there that reminds me of Hendrix's less ferocious moments. I think of them like brogues, something that doesn't need any more refinement.” is.”
Biffy Clyro's Simon Neil was given his first Strat by his bandmate's father. “I recorded my first three records on that Stratocaster,” he says. “This is the most expressive guitar I've ever played. There's a reason I still play it today. If I didn't have the Stratocaster, I wouldn't be able to write music the way I do now. I don’t think I could.”
Mac DeMarco, on the other hand, said he was initially intimidated by the Strat's association with artists such as Hendrix, Clapton and Jeff Beck. “That guitar god!” he says. “I felt like I had to make my own way. Jeff Beck was the boss of this guitar. I couldn't compete. But at a certain point, I tried other things and it just wasn't working. After that, I gave up and bought a 1970's Strat. It's easily the greatest instrument I've ever owned. And so many people play it that it's actually a blank slate. It's like Toyota – they're so reliable. That's all you need.”
Leo Fender sold his company to media giant CBS in 1965. While collectors coveted pre-acquisition instruments due to declining quality by CBS, the company captured the electric market, increasing sales by 30% in the first year and 45% the following year. Take your guitar to dizzying new heights. However, after sales steadily declined throughout the 1970s and 1980s, CBS sold the company in 1985 to a group of investors that included its employees. Fender is now largely owned by Servco Pacific. As a private company, the company doesn't release sales numbers, but when I suggested there could be millions, perhaps tens of millions of Strats in existence, Nobel nodded. It was also reported that Fender's sales were the highest in history during the years of the pandemic, suggesting there's still plenty of demand for this 70-year-old classic.
And all of this is from the mind of Leo Fender, who apparently can't even tune a guitar and who said that if he had $100 to make something, he'd spend $99 to make it work and This is the man who used to say, “Spend a dollar to make yourself beautiful.'' .
Mission complete.