By Max Grieve

As last semester ended, and I felt like a tranquilized elephant stomping carelessly through the last vestiges of any outstanding coursework and revision, I thought I would reward myself with something I had been longing for for years: a Fender Stratocaster. Although I had now obliterated any savings earnt over the summer – much to the detriment of my penchant for a pint at Aikman’s – I was now in possession of one of the most iconic guitars in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, and the feeling of satisfaction, of pent-up excitement in anticipation of what God-awful sounds I was going to make with this thing over the Christmas holidays, was a blessed relief from academic anxiety.

Why, you might ask, did I jeopardise my trips to the pub for something quite so specialised? Well, I love music, and most music lovers will, at some point, successfully or otherwise (unfortunately I fall into the camp of the latter) attempt to imitate those whom they admire so much. My genre of choice is rock ‘n’ roll (particularly that derived from blues music) from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and guitar playing is often the focal point of many of such songs. Unlike the rock which was to emerge post-punk in the late 1990s and early 2000s, where guitar-playing often took the backseat as a tool for riffs and rhythm, guitar-playing in the ‘60s and ‘70s was an art unto itself, and many of the era’s most prominent and talented musicians made their names through the groundbreaking ways in which they wielded the axe.

The Fender Stratocaster was often the weapon of choice because of, I think, its versatility – the sheer variety of tones you can ooze out of the instrument is quite astonishing. I’d like to address this through a series of my personal top five players who changed the course of popular music with the Stratocaster, all from the blues-rock school of playing

1. Jimi Hendrix

The Rolling Stone Magazine’s #1 guitarist, the king of psychedelia and master of the Stratocaster was certainly one of the first to bring the model into the limelight, with songs like ‘Voodoo Chile”, “Purple Haze” and the Bob Dylan-penned tune, “All Along the Watchtower.” Some players I’ve spoken to hold that the Strat was merely a country guitar before those like Jimi took it to extraterrestrial extremes; indeed, with that bridge pick-up sounding like a slightly warmer Telecaster, it’s hard to disagree. But Jimi, who was lefthanded, took the guitar and restrung it so that the pick-up and string-gauge relationship was reversed, thus creating a new, snappier bass tone and a more rounded treble. Then he plugged in his two most famous pedals: a fuzz, which does what is says on the can, and a Vox Wah-Wah, a British-made effect which allows the player to remove and restore treble rapidly and drastically with a flick of the ankle, generating a haunting wailing-noise. The sound of the instrument had been totally transformed, yet it was still the Stratocaster under all those layers of tone, and this is perhaps the ultimate testament to its versatility. In addition to contributing to the sound, the ergonomics of the guitar also undoubtedly affected Jimi’s playing: the combination of a rounded neck, .8-gauge strings and his enormous hands allowed him to execute huge bends, the kind that we amateurs only dream of pulling off.

2. Eric Clapton

Britain’s premier guitar-player, who made his name shredding blues in the London club scene and then forming the Cream, did so not on a Strat, but on a variety of Gibson guitars: a Les Paul, an SG and ES-335. By the time Clapton had grown sick of drug-driven psychedelia and moved into his stripped-down, Band- inspired 1970s-sound, he had constructed his two most famous guitars from pawnshop finds across America, ‘Blackie’ and ‘Brownie’, two imaginatively named Frankenstein-Strats. Used on the album Layla and Other Assorted Love-Songs, Clapton has never really returned to Gibson, and even played a Stratocaster at a series of Cream reunion gigs at the Albert Hall in 2005, much to the horror of many fans. However, it worked well, and many hail those performances as some of Clapton’s finest. My favourite Strat-centered albums of Clapton’s are Journeyman and From the Cradle, both of which are saturated with Delta blues, and witness him using a lot of crunchy overdrive, something which I like to do myself, especially given the Stratocaster’s receptiveness to incremental increases in gain.

3. Robbie Robertson

It turns out that one of North America’s finest songwriters is a mean guitar-player too, and although (like Clapton) Robertson made his name on a different guitar, the Telecaster, by the time his band, The Band, were really hitting the stadium scene on enormous tours, he had switched to a candy-red Stratocaster purchased from the still-extant Norman’s Rare Guitars of Los Angeles. This guitar, however, really reached the status of icon after “The Last Waltz” rockumentary, a concert filmed by Martin Scorsese on Thanksgiving 1976. To commemorate this hugely historical event, after which the Band in its original form ceased to exist, Robertson dipped his Strat in bronze before the concert. The result was a more piercing, echoing sound, augmenting further the unique tone of his unorthodox pick-up arrangement.

4. Mark Knopfler

The front man of Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler remains revered by guitar-players today for his virtuosic solos and intricate picking-style. Knopfler’s most famous song, “Sultans of Swing”, showcases this extraordinary intricacy on a Stratocaster, a track completely naked of any effect-pedals which could have hidden any technical sloppiness. The purity of the middle-position twang is reminiscent (to me) of a traditional Spanish gut-string guitar; indeed, the verses’ chord progression has a strongly Flamenco-feel to it (Dmin – C – Bb – A – A7). A vast contrast from the fuzzy dirt of Jimi Hendrix, Knopfler is another composer who illustrates the Stratocaster's versatility.

5. Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan – or SRV, as his devotees call him – revived blues in such an energetic fashion as to sell one million copies of his first album, Texas Flood, in 1983, and impressed David Bowie so much so that the latter employed him to play the guitar solo on Let’s Dance. SRV declined Bowie’s offer to join his touring band and went on to have a successful career with his own group, Double Trouble, playing his signature, beaten-up Strat until his untimely death in 1990. SRV has inspired legions of guitar players, and his tone is considered a quintessential staple of low-down, Texas blues, using a tube-screamer, a Wah-Wah on occasion, a slightly overdriven amp, and .13-gauge strings. Any guitar player will tell you, however, that his tone was not generated from this simple set-up; rather, it was his hands. Like Hendrix, SRV had enormous, muscular digits, and if you watch clips of him playing smooth, liquid licks on the neck pick-up, his hands dance on the strings without a whisp of effort (.13s are impenetrable for most of us).

There are many more players, of course, who have used the Stratocaster in their music – David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and Nile Rodgers of Daft Punk to name but two. The guitar has been used for more than straight rock ‘n’ roll and blues, featuring in albums from the funk, pop and country genres, but I bought my Strat to emulate the music of those discussed above - or to try to, anyway. For these players are the musicians who defined the Stratocaster, but also allowed it to define them (Knopfler in particular has talked about how influential the guitar was in guiding his own songwriting and improvisational style). I know that many guitarists are increasingly rejecting the Strat on the basis of its popularity – and instead, for God only knows why, turning to the Telecaster – but I look forward to seeing what current and future players will do with the instrument, and to what degree they will pay homage to their Stratocaster-playing predecessors from the last century.

ST. ART Magazine does not own the rights to any photos used in this article.