The Telecaster

"It was like the trees were fucking." -Leo Fender, The Luthier's Magazine 1964

The Telecaster is an electric guitar which was first designed and built by the famous lumberjack Leo Fender in 1940. He recalled in an interview that he was out walking through the forest next to his cottage one day when he saw "two of the biggest, most horny-looking trees I had ever seen - one was maple, the other was mahogany and they appeared to be twisted around one another in some kind of sexual embrace." Amazed, awe-struck, and very moved by what he saw, Fender decided to name the trees The Carnal Trees before cutting them down. He used the wood to make the very first series of Fender Telecasters. The story became legendary over time and the original Telecaster models have been reissued by the Fender Corporation. However, Leo Fender would maintain throughout his life that, "without the wood from the Carnal Trees," reissues will always lack the appel de sexe of the originals."

"I could see, in the corner of my eye, Bruce going absolutely berserk...I tried my best, but just couldn't keep up...two things were going through my head at that point: Not only would I have to eat the soggy Sao, but I was going home empty handed as well." -Keith Richards, Rolling Stone interview 1991

There are many notable guitarists who have favored the Telecaster. Jeff Beck played one during his stint in the Yardbirds in the mid-1960s, and thirty years later in the mid-90s when he changed his name to Jeff Buckley, and blew people's minds all over again.

Although it was never confirmed, Bob Dylan has been widely thought to have written the song Summer Of '69 on a Fender Telecaster. "It was a crap song," Dylan admitted to Hit Parader's Andy Secher. "Plus, I wrote it in 1966...and Columbia were nervous about the lyrics...John(Hammond) said 'well, at least change that stupid me-and-my-baby-in-a-69 bit at the end of the song' but I didn't budge. So it was never released until 1984 when I gave it to Bryan Adams to do. Wow, huh?"

In the early 80s, it was announced by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation that the last remaining "Carnal Tree" Telecasters would be released from the vaults. When asked if they would be expensive, Leo Fender simply replied with "Yes," and then added, "fucking expensive." The richest surviving musicians from the 60s and 70s went crazy trying to nab them all. In the sequence of events that made the Number One spot in Rolling Stone's 100 Weirdest Moments In Rock, the last-ever original-series Telecaster came down to two freewheeling bidders: Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen. After an endless bidding war, Keith finally said, "Alright, Bruce. You can have the Telecaster...provided that you can beat me fair-and-square in a wanking contest." Being a heavy smoker, drug-ingester and drinker, the imprudent Richards "never stood a fucking chance" in his own proposition against the virile Springsteen. "No wonder they call him The Boss," he recalled years later.

The Stratocaster

The Stratocaster is a type of electric guitar. It was designed by Leo Fender in...oh, let's say in 1943 right before the Second World War started.

The Stratocaster(from the Latin strata meaning "music conducted by electricity and stretched steel strings") has many uses. Before deciding to plug one into a Marshall amplifier one historical day, Jimi Hendrix only ever used Stratocasters to clean the gutters of his house. The Stratocaster has an older brother, the Telecaster which has always maintained that it is way cooler than the Stratocaster.

The Accidental Birth of The Stratocaster

On June 5 1943, Leo Fender was doing what he always did while alone in his workshop and when he wasn't doing that, he was building guitars. Known by the world's finest luthiers as "The Modernizer of Modern Guitar Making," Leo Fender built his guitars from scratch, one by one. Fender usually drank while he worked, but one day, in an incident he later recalled as his "moment of Pollock" he began to frantically hurl pieces of wood, guitar parts, power tools, screws, pieces of metal, adhesives and sandpaper around the workshop until he collapsed in a huffing, sweating mess and a perfectly made, stylistically bodied electric guitar stood upright by itself. It has been said that Leo Fender was pleased with what he saw. He called it The Stratocaster.

Notable Stratocaster players

Jimi Hendrix didn't take the Stratocaster seriously when it was first released. In a 1985 interview with Spin, he recalled, "I hated the Strat so much, man. I'd get so pissed off with it on stage that I would bite it, slap it, throw it around. Sometimes, I would hold it under water just long enough to make it think I was serious. The Strat was my bitch. And you don't play the Ace of Hearts with your bitch. You always play the Ace of Spades." During his legendary Monterey performance, Jimi Hendrix literally defecated on his Stratocaster and set fire to it which caused some crazy feedback that blew every single Monterey attendee's mind and bowels. It was quite spectacular.

Billy Corgan has been well known to have performed most Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan shows with his fly undone and his penis wired to the back of his custom Stratocaster. This is to ensure that whenever his guitar playing is particularly awesome, his Strat will respond by pleasuring him. Toto's Steve Lukather famously said of Corgan, "I don't know why guys like him are making the covers of guitar magazines...he's a better screamer than he is a guitar player and that owes completely to wiring his guitar to his johnny the way he always does...we didn't do shit like that in the eighties, it was about the music back then...Corgan only thinks about his dick," to which Corgan later responded in a series of articles he wrote for Guitar Pleasure specifically to bitch about Lukather, "What an arsehole. I can't believe he said that. I looked up to Toto in the eighties. Everybody looked up to Toto in the eighties. Lukather is a lying, jealous dildo. There's no way that I would ever get that far up my own ass."

Eric Clapton is another well known champion of the Strat. It is widely known that fellow Cream members Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker nicknamed him The Clap behind his back.

Some of the most underrated Strat players in history include the 70s London punk rock band Stiff Dicks ex-guitarist, Eddie Feelgood. In a 1997 interview with Australian Triple J Radio, Feelgood said, "Most punk bands at the time clicked on to the three-chord thing...I headed way into the ether...that was when I tapped into the no-chord thing. The Strat showed me that I could reach greater heights of expression by not actually playing the guitar at all but just stand there on stage holding the Strat and scowling at the audience." The remaining Stiff Dicks fired Feelgood on the grounds of "artistic differences."

To this day, the Stratocaster remains one of the most popular guitars and it sells shitloads. You should buy one. I would if I had the money. But I don't work. Plus, I'm made of fabric. You should see me type, let alone play the guitar.