FT MAGAZINE  |
| Leo Fender, far right, with Dub Williams on the Fender Telecaster |
When Leo Fender was inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, the citation correctly noted that “Rock’n’roll as we know it could not exist” without the inventor of the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar.
That guitar, which went on sale at the dawn of the 1950s, rock’n’roll’s first decade, was the Fender Broadcaster. Swiftly faced with a trademark violation claim from Gretsch, the US instrument manufacturer, which produced a drum called the Broadkaster, Fender renamed his guitar. The Fender Telecaster has dominated rock’n’roll, country, blues – and, by extension, the cultural lives of billions – ever since.
Though the Telecaster has now been in continuous production for nearly 60 years, the newest model is only immediately distinguishable from its ancestors by a lack of plectrum scars on the scratchplate – the guitar is an exemplar of something that was more or less perfectly right the first time. Guitarists revere it for its ruggedness, its simplicity, its ease of maintenance and its versatility. The Telecaster’s two pickups, the three-position switch between them, and a dull-to-sharp tone control knob give any guitarist an arsenal ranging from an acoustic-like strum to a sharp, twanging solo. It is also unfussily handsome.
Fender made other guitars, notably the Stratocaster, which became a favourite of the virtuosi – Clapton, Hendrix, Vaughan. But nothing he or any other guitar manufacturer produced inspires the same affection as the Telecaster. It has been thrashed by punk rockers: The Clash’s Joe Strummer would have looked incomplete without one. It has been caressed by the great bluesmen: the peerless Albert Collins defined himself as “the Master of the Telecaster”. And the Telecaster is, inevitably but quite rightly, the only electric guitar Bruce Springsteen is ever seen with.
Leo Fender, who died in 1991, always cheerfully admitted that he couldn’t play a note. Your chances of getting through this week without hearing something played on one of his simple, elegant guitars are negligible.
