Van Zandt recalls how, back in the day, most guitarists only had one guitar, which contributed heavily to the player's core identity.
Stevie Van Zandt knows a thing or two about the music industry – from being the guitar slinger in the E Street Band, side by side with Bruce Springsteen, to his Grammy-nominated HBO film, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, which came out last year. (GuitaWorld). And while he's now the owner of many a formidable guitar, Van Zandt’s penchant for Strats – most famously, the well-worn 1957 Stratocaster featured in the 1980 No Nukes concert film – harks back to a time when players typically owned just one guitar.
Yet his relationship with Fenders started with the Telecaster. “I started to notice that the guitar superstars at the time were playing Telecasters. Mike Bloomfield. Jeff Beck. Even Eric Clapton played one for a while,” he tells Premier Guitar.
“I went down to Jack’s Music Shop in Red Bank, New Jersey, because he had the first Telecaster in our area and couldn’t sell it; it was just sitting there. I bought it for 90 bucks.”
As Van Zandt explains, at that time, the guitar you chose also acted as a strong identifier and a key part of your persona. “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity,” he describes. “At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster.
The story of the guitar – an endlessly-modded six-string with a Telecaster body and Esquire neck – is like a Springsteen song itself.
"This guitar has been in every club, theater, arena and stadium across America"
Springsteen brought out the (very) heavily-used Fender "mutt" out for a round of show and tell during a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
