1909: Clarence “Leo” Fender is born.

The designer, engineer and inventor would found the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, the banner under which he created and produced the first wave of commercially successful electric guitars, basses and amplifiers. Fender’s panache for instrument design reached its pinnacle with his work on the Telecaster guitar, the Fender Precision Bass and, most famously, the Stratocaster, the musical instrument that was the central force in defining rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s and ’60s, and whose influence continues to dominate every genre of popular music.

Leo Fender didn’t invent the electric guitar. Six-string slingers had been experimenting with rudimentary amplification systems since the early decades of the 20th century. Always itching for more volume, guitarists were eager to be heard above the drums and other loud instruments in the dance bands of the time.

The first real innovations toward electric axes, however, came with the awarding of two patents for magnetic pickups. The first went to Gibson’s Guy Hart for his company’s Hawaiian guitar design on July 13, 1937, and the second went to Rickenbacker’s George Beauchamp for his horseshoe magnet pickup design featured on his company’s lap steel “frying pan” guitars, on Aug. 10, 1937 — coincidentally, Fender’s 28th birthday.

The earliest electric guitars were either of the lap steel or hollow body archtop varieties. It wasn’t until guitarist Les Paul constructed his own prototype solid body electric, nicknamed “The Log,” in 1946 that the stage would be set for the revolution that would define popular music in the second half of the century.

And that’s where Leo Fender comes in.

Fender was working alongside the earliest electric guitar designers throughout the 1930s and 1940s, even applying for his own patent on his 1944 Hawaiian guitar design. Fender’s earliest commercial successes were in amplifiers, but his first hit was the Fender Precision Bass. The “P-Bass,” introduced in 1951, was meant for players in jazz and dance bands who needed more volume than they could get out of their acoustic upright models. Fender’s bass was a huge success, and its design became his signature. Its visual cues were ones he would return to as he moved on to creating electric guitars.

The Broadcaster and the Telecaster, designed with his business partner George Fullerton, came first, in 1951. The Telecaster, a light-weight solid body with an adjustable neck that was easy to play, is still in production today. But nothing endured, influenced or captured the imagination like Fender’s next major design.

The Fender Stratocaster is more than just an electric guitar. It is one of the great hallmarks of modern art. As an object, it has made a profound impact, becoming synonymous with the men and women who play it and the art it has been used to create.

Put on a Jimi Hendrix song, shut your eyes and let your mind draw you a picture. There’s the head tipped back, the messy afro half-tamed by a headband, the face a mask of lidded-eyed sexual ecstasy, mouth agape. In his flailing hands is a white Fender Stratocaster. And what’s most the most enduring visual image of Hendrix? His stunt at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival when he lit his Strat on fire and knelt behind it, coaxing the flames to grow higher like a possessed Voodoo priest.

It’s the same with Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, David Gilmour, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, Buddy Holly, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Dick Dale — every popular musician who has chosen a Fender as his primary axe has assumed the guitar’s iconic curves as part of their own image. Only Stravinsky’s piano approaches such visual power.

Fender’s crowning achievement is indeed a tremendously influential piece of industrial design, and one of the most evocative relics of America’s post-war culture. The Stratocaster’s slopes and swooshes perfectly connect the empty spaces between the dawning space age, the sleek Modernism of Calder’s floating sculptures, the flamboyance and heat of a California hot rod, the raw lust of the sexual revolution and the angry rebellion of youth.

Most of the guitars on the market in the late 1950s had their share of feminine curves, but the Strat was the wood and metal equivalent of a pin-up model. It came in colors like orange sunburst, pearl white and the ever-popular candy apple red. It begged to be touched, and it practically screamed “trouble.”

It was, as the songwriter Jonathan Richman put it in “Fender Stratocaster,” his 1989 ode to the Strat, “everything your parents hated about rock ‘n roll.”

But in the end, it’s a guitar, and it’s not all about the looks.

All of Fender’s guitars were noted for their clean, bright sound. The Telecaster featured two pickups, one at the bridge and one closer to the neck that produced a thin, trebly twang. Strats were configured with a third pickup in between the neck and the bridge, supplying a wider range of tones. Since the solid wood design didn’t resonate as much as hollow body guitars, you could crank one up nice and loud without it feeding back. Just ask Bob Dylan, who plugged in a Strat at Newport in 1965 and turned American pop music upside-down.

Leo Fender’s guitars weren’t just versatile, they were also durable. The carved slabs of wood with bolt-on necks were made to be abused. The neck was detachable (making it easier to service) and adjustable, so the player could set the distance between the strings and fretboard to his or her liking. The Strat’s spring-loaded tremolo system, which could alter the pitch of all six strings at once, may have caused the to guitar to go out of tune a little, but you rarely saw one break.

All of Fender’s guitar designs have endured, and they are prized by both players and collectors. The visual boldness draws you in, but it’s the playability, the way the guitar feels balanced on your shoulders, the curvature of the neck and the way its carved body hugs your own that hooks you.

Fender didn’t stop after the Strat. He also designed the Jazzmaster, the Jaguar, the Duo-Sonic and the Mustang. He followed up the massively popular P-Bass with its slimmer and lighter cousin, the Jazz Bass. He also had a hand in designing the company’s famous amplifiers like the Twin, the Champ and the Bassman.

Leo Fender sold the company that bore his name to CBS in 1965. He founded two more companies, Music Man and G&L Guitars, that sold his newer instrument and amp designs.

He suffered from strokes and Parkinson’s disease late in life, and died in 1991. He never learned how to play the guitar.

Source: Various
Top photo: Matt York/AP
Middle photo: Corbis

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