FEATURE:
The Digital Mixtape
PHOTO CREDIT: alexey/Pexels
Seventy Years of the Fender Stratocaster
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I am going to end this feature…
PHOTO CREDIT: Leo Fender
with a playlist of songs from artists who have used the iconic Fender Stratocaster. The legendary guitar line is seventy. It was designed between 1952 and 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. Even though it is a hugely popular and renowned guitar brand, Fender sold fewer than 750 units between late 1954 and the end of 1955. Now, fifty years after its introduction, it is clear that it has revolutionised music. Responsible for some of the finest riffs and guitar lines ever recorded. A very distinct and trusted sound. I am going to come to an article from The Guardian, which celebrated seventy years of the Fender Stratocaster. They spoke with a few artists about a guitar that changed everything. First, from Fender, here is a bit of background and history regarding the world-famous guitar:
“The Fender Stratocaster is the quintessential electric guitar—a worldwide archetype; the basic form that leaps to mind at the very mention of the phrase electric guitar even among those who don’t play. Maybe that’s because it was so well designed to start with that it has existed largely unchanged for 60 years now, allowing it to become an ingrained form in the minds of successive generations.
Ubiquitous and essential, the Stratocaster has transcended its original intended purpose as a tool (a stylish one, at that) to become such an archetype. It has risen above its everyday function to become a cultural symbol for creativity, individuality, artistry and more than a little exuberant rebelliousness. Been that way for quite a while now.
But it wasn’t always like that. The Stratocaster had to earn its place, and it happened neither easily nor overnight. It took quite a while, in fact, because if it’s true that the guitar was so well designed from the start that it has basically remained the same for six decades, it’s also true that it was so well designed that it was ahead of its time by at least a decade. Indeed, for about its first 10 years or so, the Stratocaster patiently bided its time while the world caught up with it.
Let’s go back to that original era and have a look at the early years of what would one day be the world’s greatest electric guitar.
Fender had made promising inroads into the stodgy old U.S. musical instrument industry by 1953. A scrappy little post-war West Coast upstart that was only seven years old and led by a taciturn self-taught electronics tinkerer, Fender had already introduced two revolutionary instruments—the Telecaster and Precision Bass guitars—plus a full line of well-regarded steel guitars and a small handful of loud, rugged and stylish amps that were the best available.
Fender was small in the early 1950s, but clearly going places, and it’s possible that Leo Fender turned his attention in earnest to a new electric guitar model to succeed the Telecaster and compete with more upscale competitors as early as 1951. Work on elements such as new pickups and a new bridge was certainly well under way by late 1952. Long-held conventions of design and method meant little if anything to Leo, which likely goes a long way in explaining the genesis of an instrument as extraordinary as the Stratocaster. Perhaps author Tom Wheeler put it best when, in his indispensable history The Stratocaster Chronicles, he asked:
"How was such an ultimately dominant product created by a newcomer to the business who seemed to have several strikes against him? Leo Fender wasn’t a serious musician, had little background (or interest) in the traditional crafts or lore of instrument building, and was even less interested in associating with the old-boy network of acquaintances who ran the major guitar companies and might have helped him get on his feet."
It’s not like Leo Fender was trying to be radical and revolutionary. A practical person, he just wanted to build a better guitar. He and his closest staff spent long hours developing and perfecting the new model, which quickly shaped up to be its own instrument rather than an improved version of the Telecaster.
Guitarist Rex Gallion, seen here in Leo Fender’s lab in early 1954 with a very early Stratocaster model, is often credited with suggesting the guitar’s comfortable contours.
The new guitar certainly owed several design elements to its predecessor, though, and as late as early 1953 its body shape closely resembled that of the Telecaster. In spring of that year, however, new arrival Freddy Tavares sketched out a new body shape that sleekly adapted Leo’s balanced two-horned shape for the Precision Bass. The new guitar thus combined features of Fender’s first two instruments of the 1950s, and in another important development in early 1953, Fender sales chief Don Randall came up with a name for it: the Stratocaster.
To compete with more high-end instruments from other manufacturers—particularly Gibson’s Les Paul, introduced in 1952 in response to what Randall once called the “plain Jane” Telecaster—the Stratocaster was a marked step up in design and innovation for Fender. It had not one or two but three pickups, with switching and controls that created great tonal versatility (although, curiously, the switching configuration allowed only three of several possible pickup combinations).
A triple-pickup configuration wasn’t the Stratocaster’s only first. The Telecaster sounded great but wasn’t especially comfortable to play because its squared-off body dug into the player’s body and picking-hand forearm. Guitarist Rex Gallion is often credited with suggesting that a solid-body guitar didn’t need squared-off edges since it didn’t have an internal sound chamber, and with asking Leo himself, “Why not get away from a body that is always digging into your ribs?” The Stratocaster was consequently given rounded edges and deep body and forearm contours that made it remarkably comfortable and added to its sleekness.
The development of the Stratocaster also saw a notably elegant touch in Fender’s first use of a sunburst finish, which was included at Randall’s insistence to give the guitar a more high-end look. This consisted of two then-common paint colors—a brownish-black outer hue called dark Salem, which graduated to a golden inner hue called canary yellow. Sunburst finishes also conveyed the extra advantage of lessening the apparentness of mismatched wood grain in the ash bodies, which typically (but not always) consisted of two or more pieces glued together.
The Stratocaster’s greatest innovation, however, was its bridge. In response to player feedback on the Telecaster, Randall wanted the new guitar to have some kind of vibrato system, and Leo was eager to better the designs by his former business partner, Doc Kauffman, and by his contemporary, Paul Bigsby. The vibrato system had to offer solid tuning stability without compromising tone, sustain, player comfort and ease of use, and Leo immersed himself in the task with his customary focus.
And yet the initial design for the Stratocaster’s vibrato bridge was a pronounced failure. Author Richard Smith notes in Fender: The Sound Heard ’Round the World that Leo uncharacteristically “tooled up his factory to produce the system before fully testing it.” The system—curiously referred to by Fender using the misnomer tremolo—used a bridge with rollers for each string and a separate tailpiece. In this design, the strings actually moved over the bridge on the rollers. Leo and guitarist/advisor Bill Carson apparently thought prototype units sounded fine at the factory, but Leo’s right-hand man in the factory, George Fullerton, said they “sounded terrible.”
Even Carson subsequently noted that when he tried the instrument with the original vibrato system out at a gig, as noted in Smith’s book, it “sounded like an amplified banjo with no sustain.”
The first early ’50s Stratocaster prototype model with Leo Fender’s second—and vastly improved—vibrato bridge design.
Leo invested a great deal of time and money into trying to perfect the system well into 1953 before scrapping the entire design and starting over. In fact, the Stratocaster probably would’ve debuted that year had its original vibrato system not proved so problematic. Randall and his salesmen were chomping at the bit to get the new guitar out, and there was considerable pressure on Leo himself to devise a new Stratocaster vibrato system”.
I will round off with a playlist containing songs that feature the iconic Strat. The Guardian commemorated an important anniversary by speaking with musicians such as Nile Rodgers - who shared what this world-changing guitar means to them. I think that a whole new generation of artists are picking up and discovering the brilliance and importance of the Strat:
‘I found the cheapest Strat in all the shops,” says Nile Rodgers, speaking to me from Miami Beach, the very place he went trawling for what would later be regarded as the world’s greatest electric guitar. “I traded in my Gibson Barney Kessel. The guy behind the counter gave me the Strat – and $300 back. It was the real runt of the litter.”
In a nod to the model played by his hero Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock in 1969, Rodgers stripped the guitar and painted it Olympic white. He then locked himself in his bathroom for three days – “woodshedding” he calls it – until he’d mastered “chucking”, a dazzling new technique that blended offbeat strumming with the muting of fretted notes. It’s a style made for the Strat’s rich percussive qualities and slick feel.
Armed with this new instrument, a 1960 model with a 1959 neck, Rodgers set about reinventing music. His unique sound became the gyrating backbone of disco – he knocked out hits for Diana Ross, Sister Sledge and his own band, Chic. Other acts soon came calling, from David Bowie to Grace Jones, Madonna, Duran Duran and Daft Punk. Rodgers’ Strat can be heard on records that have sold hundreds of millions of copies, earning the “runt of the litter” not one but two nicknames: the “hitmaker” and the “$2bn guitar”.
“It’s what people ask for when they ask for me,” he says. “And I swear, I always go in to a recording session thinking, ‘That’s not what they want.’ Then I see them looking disappointed. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask. ‘This is cool – these chords are great!’ They say, ‘Can you play the Nile Rodgers Stratocaster thing?’ So I get my Strat and do my thing. And they always look so happy. That guitar changed my life 1,000%.”
Celebrating its 70th birthday this spring, the Strat – or Fender Stratocaster – may now be the most recognisable musical instrument of all time. It is almost certainly the bestselling guitar, loved by legions of riffing stars. “The Strat is as sturdy and strong as a mule,” Keith Richards once said, “yet it has the elegance of a racehorse. It’s got everything you need, and that’s rare to find in anything.”
Bonnie Raitt got her first one in 1969, buying it on the street at 3am after a gig. She has played it at every one of her shows since, and it was pivotal to her 13 Grammy wins. “There’s just a tone that doesn’t happen with other guitars,” she says. “It’s all about that middle pickup – you just can’t beat it.”
Radio repair man turned inventor Leo Fender could not possibly have known what he was starting when he began designing the Strat in the early 1950s. Perhaps because he wasn’t a guitarist, he approached the design differently, with an eye on not just manufacture but also repairability. Hence the bolt-on, rather than glued-in, neck. He had hit the mark a few years earlier with the Broadcaster, later renamed the Telecaster due to a legal wrangle with rival manufacturer Gretsch. He also designed the Fender Precision bass. Both were instant successes, popular with western swing bands, but the Telecaster was and remains a slab-like, utilitarian workhorse – two pickups, no nonsense. And as much as musicians loved its sound, they often complained that its square edges dug into their ribs and banged their hip bones.
The Strat, with its neatly nipped navel and two-horned cutaways, is probably what first comes to mind when anyone hears the words “electric guitar”. Millions of players have learned on a Strat – whether made by Fender, its budget Squier imprint, or one of the numerous companies producing copies. Many others dream of owning a top-of-the-range model from the Fender custom shop, costing a five-figure sum. Then there are the secondhand Strats with one previous famous owner. The black 1969 model that Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour played on The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall went under the hammer for almost $4m, in aid of a climate change charity.
So what does a Strat sound like? Anything you want. You can get a taste of its range on all these tracks: 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 Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.
Blues maestro Joe Bonamassa has one of the world’s largest guitar collections, including many museum-grade vintage Strats as well as the Howard Reed, the first black Strat. “Talk about Leo Fender getting it right the first time!” he says of the man whose small California company changed the world. “Very little has changed between 1954 and now,” he adds. “It’s essentially been the same guitar for 70 years.”
Indeed, there have been only a handful of alterations. In 1956, alder replaced ash for the body, while rosewood fretboards arrived in 1959. Tone knobs have changed shape, lacquer has been improved, wiring has been tinkered with and necks have morphed. But a Strat has always been a Strat.
IN THIS PHOTO: Jimi Hendrix playing the Fender Stratocaster/PHOTO CREDIT: David Redfern/Redferns
“Fender are in a weird business,” says Bonamassa, whose favourite is his 1955 “Sunburst” Strat, nicknamed Bonnie. “Imagine being the CEO of Ford and your core business is making a car that looks the same as the one you made in the 1950s. And your customers don’t want improvements like satnav or electric engines. Guitar companies are selling nostalgia – but also something that’s timeless so it stays relevant. If you have some creativity, ingenuity and a little chutzpah, you can rule the world with a Strat.”
Justin Norvell has given these strange requirements a great deal of thought during his 28 years at Fender. As executive vice-president of products, he has the job of keeping the Strat relevant. “We have to encapsulate the past, present and future,” he says. “It’s who we are, from Hank Marvin to Mark Bowen from Idles. We have to work out how an instrument that’s oddly unchanged since 1954 moves forward.
“My favourite term for this is ‘colouring inside the lines’. The Strat exists – and there are things you can tinker with inside that. It’s what Leo Fender did and it’s what we continue to do. What’s fascinating is that it has never become a relic. That’s down to new bands coming along and blowing up the music scene with a 70-year-old design. The Strat is reinvented with each generation.”
For all its instant recognisability today, the Strat that Fender first designed was basically a glorified Telecaster. But the arrival of designer and engineer Freddie Tavares changed that. He took inspiration from the two-horned Precision bass while adding innovative touches including the gamechanging tremolo bridge – incorrectly named since the pitch-shifting effect the short metal arm creates is actually vibrato. Three pickups and advanced switching offered greater tonal variation than almost any other guitar on the market, while curves, contours and chamfers were added in all the right places, meaning the Strat sits on the hip and clings to the body more like an item of clothing than a musical instrument.
The Stratocaster – named by Fender sales chief Don Randall – debuted at the National Association of Music Merchants trade show in January 1954 and appeared in shops that April. It was not an immediate success. Sales weren’t good, despite rock’n’roll taking off. As Tom Wheeler writes in his 2004 book The Stratocaster Chronicles, the instrument appeared to be “as far removed from conventional guitars as, say, a baritone ukulele or even a banjo”. He added: “Plenty of professional musicians saw the new Fender as unworthy of serious consideration. Merely a tool, a gimmicky contraption – even a joke.”
Things were worse in the UK, where it wasn’t even possible to get one. Due to a British embargo, Strats didn’t officially arrive until the early 1960s – although the first model somehow arrived in 1959. This was a fiesta-red model that Cliff Richard gave to Hank Marvin, the guitarist of his band the Shadows. Marvin instantly became Britain’s first guitar hero – and a lot of future stars were watching.
“My first guitar had to be red because of Hank Marvin,” says Dire Straits co-founder Mark Knopfler, who used to pass a guitar shop on his way home from school. He recalls pressing his nose to the window to get a closer look at a red Strat. He would eventually own one, famously playing it on Dire Straits’ 1978 breakout hit Sultans of Swing.
The Strat’s popularity grew throughout the 1960s. The tipping point came when Hendrix arrived, possibly the most influential guitarist of all time and rarely seen playing anything but a Strat. “One of the fascinating nuances about Jimi,” says his sister Janie, “was that his guitars weren’t just instruments to him, but extensions of him, part of his persona.”
When the Stone Roses were recording their eponymous debut album in 1988, the producer John Leckie was unimpressed with the thin sound coming from John Squire’s Gretsch Country Gentleman, so rented him a Strat. “I ended up buying it,” says Squire. “It was a battered pink one – and it was a great guitar”.
Let’s end with some songs featuring the Fender Stratocaster. You will recognise many of them, though there will be a few that may be new to you. Seventy years after it was introduced, it has changed the face of music. Starting on quite modest foundations – when it came to sales and its reputation –, it has become almost synonymous and a go-to. We will be talking about and celebrating the Fender Strat…
FOR decades more.