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拍品專文
This beautiful 1954 sunburst Stratocaster was one of Jeff Beck’s most prized possessions.
Beck had first played a Stratocaster when he was a member of the Deltones in 1961. When interviewed by Tony Bacon in 2005, Beck recalled his first Strat at the age of 16: I think I got a phone call saying there's a Strat in London, and I'd get on the train, which is something I never would have dreamed of doing - I'd never even get a bus - so I found my way to Charing Cross Road, all on my own, looked at this guitar, and dreams floated off into the distance [laughs]. I actually saw it, touched it, and that was enough. I had a catalogue way before then, which I used to look at, an American from Fender when it was in Fullerton. I always remember it was on a ritzy looking paper, and I always thought these guitars have got to be about a thousand quid, and then I found out they were only £147 - and even then I thought well, I can see myself being able to get hold of the money, if I sold everything I had. In the end, I got it on HP [credit]. It was a 1960 sunburst, didn't have a vibrato arm, and I painted it pink, or lavender. I sold it back to the… I remember it was split in two, this big split appeared along the back of it. I'd whacked something with it. So on the train as I went to sell it, I touched it up with my girlfriend's nail varnish. It matched perfectly. Fantastic story, eh? And they never spotted it. All the [Gene] Vincent Blue Caps guys had matching white Strats, so I had to have one of those - I had to have a Strat. My rhythm guitarist [John Owen, in The Deltones] actually had the first Fender. He had a Telecaster, a few months before I could even afford a down payment to put on a Strat. So I would ogle this thing. I spent more time playing it than he did! He put everything in motion to try and get me to get the Strat so I wouldn't keep nicking his guitar all the time. And eventually I ended up with that Tele.’
Speaking to Art Thompson for Guitar Player in 2010, Beck recalled that he ‘discovered the Strat when I saw Buddy Holly's first album, The 'Chirping' Crickets. Buddy was proudly holding a Strat, and I thought, 'I've got to have one of those.' The Strat was the icon. Then when I saw Jimi Hendrix play, I thought, 'that's it. He's making the right noises with that.' Then I went back to the Strat and stayed with it.’
Invited to a London recording session by Humble Pie guitarist Steve Marriott in 1977, Beck had played this ’54 Strat at Marriott's suggestion, and had loved the guitar for its wonderful sound. Reportedly the session descended into a raucous night and Marriott ended up gifting the guitar to Beck. Unsure of whether it had just been the booze talking, Beck left it at the studio just in case, and when he went back the guitar was still there waiting for him. Marriott had played the ’54 Strat body with a Telecaster neck, which Beck immediately switched for a favourite maple Stratocaster neck that he had acquired as part of a composite Strat in 1968. That distinctive Stratocaster, which comprised an early 1960s body stripped to natural ash, a white pickguard with broken tip at the treble horn, and the present maple neck dating to circa 1958, had been put together for Jeff Beck by Bay Area musician Martin Battey while the Jeff Beck Group were in town to play six nights at the Fillmore West in San Francisco from 19-25 July 1968. Battey told us: I attended one of Jeff’s concerts at the Fillmore in San Francisco and wound up lending him my '60 Les Paul for one set after he broke a string on his LP. We got on well and… in the course of the conversation, he mentioned that he was interested in finding a vintage Fender Stratocaster with a natural finish and a skunk-striped maple neck. He also very kindly and unexpectedly offered to put me up at his home in England when I mentioned that I was planning to spend part of that summer in Britain... Rather than just accept his hospitality and not make any sort of gesture in return, I thought immediately I would see what I could do to find him the particular Strat he was looking for. Battey first approached an old bluesman known to play a 1950s maple-necked sunburst Strat in the house band of a local bar, who was not willing to part with his guitar. The old bluesman, however, jumped at the chance to switch the well-worn maple neck of his guitar for the unused rosewood neck of a 1963 Strat that Battey had identified at an Oakland music store, which would fit the bill for the body. 'I then had the body of the '63 stripped to natural and varnished and the maple neck from the '54 swapped over… and set it up to play the way I thought Jeff would want it to,' continued Battey. 'It was an honour to have been able to furnish him with a guitar that went on to play such an important part in his career.'
The stripped Strat would be used to record tracks on several studio albums including Beck-Ola (1969), Rough & Ready (1971) and Jeff Beck Group (the Orange album, 1972), and was toured with both line-ups of The Jeff Beck Group as well as Beck, Bogert & Applice. It was also likely present in the studio in 1974 for recording sessions for Blow By Blow. At some point in 1975 the maple neck was removed from the stripped Strat and replaced with a large-headstock CBS-era Strat neck, which Jeff nicknamed ‘Wing Reborn’, inscribed with the date 1975 (see lot 12).
Once his old maple neck had been united with the 1954 sunburst body, the guitar was toured extensively by Beck, including being taken on his 1978 tour of Japan with Stanley Clarke. Just before the start of the tour, Japanese photographer Toshi Yajima visited Beck at his Sussex home for Player magazine, with the photos reproduced shortly thereafter in Steve Rosen’s Japanese-language publication The Beck Book. Yajima's photographs show Beck with a group of guitars and amplifiers including the '54 Sunburst Strat, which Beck's former road manager Al Dutton remembers to represent ‘all the guitars Jeff owned’ at that time, with the exception of one white Strat, which was kept in the US and would be brought over by Stanley Clarke for rehearsals ahead of their joint tour.
For a prized possession, Beck still treated it as one of his tools. Al Dutton remembers an occasion in 1979, when on the US leg of the tour with Stanley Clarke, when Jeff threw the guitar into the crowd and he (Al) had to quickly retrieve it. The guitar neck had been broken and was swiftly sent to Seymour Duncan for repair. It was then that, Seymour told us, he added the Fender decal to the headstock, which had up until that point been missing. On another occasion, a set of amazing photographs shot by Bob Leafe on 7 October 1980 at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, show Jeff using the guitar turned upside down as a pogo-stick, his shoes at least a foot off the ground. The wear to the end of the Strat’s – or rather ‘pogo-stick-caster’s’ – headstock is clearly visible, as well as numerous other bumps, knocks and chips to the finish.
Clearly his favourite guitar at the time, the Strat was used to record Beck’s 1980 solo studio album There and Back. Speaking to Jas Obrecht for Guitar Player in October 1980, Beck described the guitar: ‘It's got a seasoned ash sunburst body that has cracked due to age and it weighs a ton. It looks just like the Buddy Holly Strat. It's just terrible, but it looks at me and challenges me every day, and I challenge it back. It has the vibrato, and it's difficult to play. It goes out of tune and all that, but when you use it properly, it sings to you.’
‘I don't use any special bridge or tailpiece. I like the way Fender makes them. I've got it pretty much sewn up now by putting a very light graphite on the bridge and the nut. When the strings rock backwards and forwards and slide lengthwise along the neck, you minimize the chance of a string hangup over the nut-which is the killer. This can leave you sharp or flat, according to where you've left the bar, or how you've bent the strings.’
In 1983 both the '54 Strat and a recently acquired back-up reissue Strat (see lot 30) would be employed extensively for The Ronnie Lane Appeal for ARMS - the series of charitable concerts in support of Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis - including performances in London and America, which saw the three lead guitarists from The Yardbirds - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page - perform on stage together for the first time. Initially billed as a one-off concert on 20 September 1983 in the Royal Albert Hall, the concert proved so popular with both audience and musicians that the decision was taken to extend it to a tour of nine further shows in America, which saw the former Yardbirds alongside a stellar line-up of musicians including Rolling Stones Ronnie Wood, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, Phil Collins, Andy Fairweather Low, Steve Winwood (London only), Paul Rodgers (US only), Joe Cocker (US only), Chris Stainton, percussionist Ray Cooper, Kenney Jones, James Hooker, and Fernando Saunders.
Following the ARMs tour, and now that he had the back-up, the precious 1954 Sunburst was mainly kept at home, with the exception of special appearances and studio sessions. In an interview in the early 1990s Beck commented – 'I have 44 guitars. Unfortunately, 40 of those are crap! Well, perhaps not crap but a lot of them are prototypes that didn't quite work out. I've got a few vintage instruments but nothing like Dave Gilmour's collection. I've got one prize Fender that was given to me by the late Steve Marriott - a '53 or '54 Strat that looks like it should be in the V&A.; It's got a seasoned ash sunburst body that has cracked due to age and it weighs a ton. It looks just like the Buddy Holly Strat. At some stage when I wasn't thinking too clearly mid-tour I think - I was getting a lot of feedback so someone kindly unloaded the original pickups and I don't know where they are. I've also got a '54 Tele which I love to death and never breaks strings - it sounds beautiful!'
LEO FENDER
Like so many creation stories, the one about the invention of the solid-body electric guitar is peppered with a multitude of characters. Adolph Rickenbacker, Paul Bigsby, Merle Travis, Les Paul and the lesser-known Paul Tutmarc were all instrumental in the early development of solid-body electrics. Yet it is Leo Fender’s name that is synonymous with the electric guitar. By drawing inspiration from the ideas and innovations of all those who preceded him, he achieved what the others had aimed for: a purely electric guitar that could fulfil the needs of the professional musician and would be economically viable.
It was always Fender’s idea that in order to successfully produce and market an electric guitar it should be easy to construct and affordable without sacrificing quality. It must be both dependable and easy to service. He wanted to supply a tool for the guitarist that they could rely on. Though he was never predisposed to a solid-body construction, the natural progression of his early prototypes led him in that direction. Fender decided to design his guitars so that the neck and body could be completed separately in their entirety. It would entail the mounting of all the hardware and electronics as well as having the finish applied to each. This made it possible for the mass production of two fully completed components that could be easily assembled at the end of a production line.
In the beginning, Fender would not incorporate a separate fingerboard made of rosewood or ebony as a traditional maker would. Instead, he carved his necks of hard American rock maple, finished the playing surface and inlaid the frets directly into the finished neck. This eliminated the added labour a separate fingerboard would entail. He fitted this neck into a pre-routed neck pocket in the body, using a neck plate and four screws. This was an idea he derived from the many Rickenbacker guitars he had seen. The peghead design, synonymous with all Fender instruments, was a return to an 1820 Viennese design reminiscent of Johann Stauffer and Christian Frederick Martin. With all six tuners mounted on the bass side, they were easily accessible to the player. The resulting shape was once again contemporary after 130 years.
Understanding the need for players to access the whole range of the fingerboard, Fender, with the help of George Fullerton, designed a body shape that incorporated a full cutaway on the treble side and added a less extreme cut on the bass side. The resulting shape was uncannily modern for 1949 and would be modified visually with each successive model.
Even more than the design, it was the sound of Fender instruments that guitarists and audiences immediately appreciated. Fender first used one simple single-coil pickup. He later expanded this to include two pickups and added a third on the Stratocaster model introduced in 1954. Fender applied his years of experience in electronics to design and produce these pickups. They would prove to produce a balanced, clear and bell-like tone that was easily controllable across a full spectrum of tones even when pushed to their decibel limit. It was this sound and power that guitarists and audiences craved, and which gave the voice to rock-a-billy, rhythm and blues and ultimately rock and roll.
Beck had first played a Stratocaster when he was a member of the Deltones in 1961. When interviewed by Tony Bacon in 2005, Beck recalled his first Strat at the age of 16: I think I got a phone call saying there's a Strat in London, and I'd get on the train, which is something I never would have dreamed of doing - I'd never even get a bus - so I found my way to Charing Cross Road, all on my own, looked at this guitar, and dreams floated off into the distance [laughs]. I actually saw it, touched it, and that was enough. I had a catalogue way before then, which I used to look at, an American from Fender when it was in Fullerton. I always remember it was on a ritzy looking paper, and I always thought these guitars have got to be about a thousand quid, and then I found out they were only £147 - and even then I thought well, I can see myself being able to get hold of the money, if I sold everything I had. In the end, I got it on HP [credit]. It was a 1960 sunburst, didn't have a vibrato arm, and I painted it pink, or lavender. I sold it back to the… I remember it was split in two, this big split appeared along the back of it. I'd whacked something with it. So on the train as I went to sell it, I touched it up with my girlfriend's nail varnish. It matched perfectly. Fantastic story, eh? And they never spotted it. All the [Gene] Vincent Blue Caps guys had matching white Strats, so I had to have one of those - I had to have a Strat. My rhythm guitarist [John Owen, in The Deltones] actually had the first Fender. He had a Telecaster, a few months before I could even afford a down payment to put on a Strat. So I would ogle this thing. I spent more time playing it than he did! He put everything in motion to try and get me to get the Strat so I wouldn't keep nicking his guitar all the time. And eventually I ended up with that Tele.’
Speaking to Art Thompson for Guitar Player in 2010, Beck recalled that he ‘discovered the Strat when I saw Buddy Holly's first album, The 'Chirping' Crickets. Buddy was proudly holding a Strat, and I thought, 'I've got to have one of those.' The Strat was the icon. Then when I saw Jimi Hendrix play, I thought, 'that's it. He's making the right noises with that.' Then I went back to the Strat and stayed with it.’
Invited to a London recording session by Humble Pie guitarist Steve Marriott in 1977, Beck had played this ’54 Strat at Marriott's suggestion, and had loved the guitar for its wonderful sound. Reportedly the session descended into a raucous night and Marriott ended up gifting the guitar to Beck. Unsure of whether it had just been the booze talking, Beck left it at the studio just in case, and when he went back the guitar was still there waiting for him. Marriott had played the ’54 Strat body with a Telecaster neck, which Beck immediately switched for a favourite maple Stratocaster neck that he had acquired as part of a composite Strat in 1968. That distinctive Stratocaster, which comprised an early 1960s body stripped to natural ash, a white pickguard with broken tip at the treble horn, and the present maple neck dating to circa 1958, had been put together for Jeff Beck by Bay Area musician Martin Battey while the Jeff Beck Group were in town to play six nights at the Fillmore West in San Francisco from 19-25 July 1968. Battey told us: I attended one of Jeff’s concerts at the Fillmore in San Francisco and wound up lending him my '60 Les Paul for one set after he broke a string on his LP. We got on well and… in the course of the conversation, he mentioned that he was interested in finding a vintage Fender Stratocaster with a natural finish and a skunk-striped maple neck. He also very kindly and unexpectedly offered to put me up at his home in England when I mentioned that I was planning to spend part of that summer in Britain... Rather than just accept his hospitality and not make any sort of gesture in return, I thought immediately I would see what I could do to find him the particular Strat he was looking for. Battey first approached an old bluesman known to play a 1950s maple-necked sunburst Strat in the house band of a local bar, who was not willing to part with his guitar. The old bluesman, however, jumped at the chance to switch the well-worn maple neck of his guitar for the unused rosewood neck of a 1963 Strat that Battey had identified at an Oakland music store, which would fit the bill for the body. 'I then had the body of the '63 stripped to natural and varnished and the maple neck from the '54 swapped over… and set it up to play the way I thought Jeff would want it to,' continued Battey. 'It was an honour to have been able to furnish him with a guitar that went on to play such an important part in his career.'
The stripped Strat would be used to record tracks on several studio albums including Beck-Ola (1969), Rough & Ready (1971) and Jeff Beck Group (the Orange album, 1972), and was toured with both line-ups of The Jeff Beck Group as well as Beck, Bogert & Applice. It was also likely present in the studio in 1974 for recording sessions for Blow By Blow. At some point in 1975 the maple neck was removed from the stripped Strat and replaced with a large-headstock CBS-era Strat neck, which Jeff nicknamed ‘Wing Reborn’, inscribed with the date 1975 (see lot 12).
Once his old maple neck had been united with the 1954 sunburst body, the guitar was toured extensively by Beck, including being taken on his 1978 tour of Japan with Stanley Clarke. Just before the start of the tour, Japanese photographer Toshi Yajima visited Beck at his Sussex home for Player magazine, with the photos reproduced shortly thereafter in Steve Rosen’s Japanese-language publication The Beck Book. Yajima's photographs show Beck with a group of guitars and amplifiers including the '54 Sunburst Strat, which Beck's former road manager Al Dutton remembers to represent ‘all the guitars Jeff owned’ at that time, with the exception of one white Strat, which was kept in the US and would be brought over by Stanley Clarke for rehearsals ahead of their joint tour.
For a prized possession, Beck still treated it as one of his tools. Al Dutton remembers an occasion in 1979, when on the US leg of the tour with Stanley Clarke, when Jeff threw the guitar into the crowd and he (Al) had to quickly retrieve it. The guitar neck had been broken and was swiftly sent to Seymour Duncan for repair. It was then that, Seymour told us, he added the Fender decal to the headstock, which had up until that point been missing. On another occasion, a set of amazing photographs shot by Bob Leafe on 7 October 1980 at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, show Jeff using the guitar turned upside down as a pogo-stick, his shoes at least a foot off the ground. The wear to the end of the Strat’s – or rather ‘pogo-stick-caster’s’ – headstock is clearly visible, as well as numerous other bumps, knocks and chips to the finish.
Clearly his favourite guitar at the time, the Strat was used to record Beck’s 1980 solo studio album There and Back. Speaking to Jas Obrecht for Guitar Player in October 1980, Beck described the guitar: ‘It's got a seasoned ash sunburst body that has cracked due to age and it weighs a ton. It looks just like the Buddy Holly Strat. It's just terrible, but it looks at me and challenges me every day, and I challenge it back. It has the vibrato, and it's difficult to play. It goes out of tune and all that, but when you use it properly, it sings to you.’
‘I don't use any special bridge or tailpiece. I like the way Fender makes them. I've got it pretty much sewn up now by putting a very light graphite on the bridge and the nut. When the strings rock backwards and forwards and slide lengthwise along the neck, you minimize the chance of a string hangup over the nut-which is the killer. This can leave you sharp or flat, according to where you've left the bar, or how you've bent the strings.’
In 1983 both the '54 Strat and a recently acquired back-up reissue Strat (see lot 30) would be employed extensively for The Ronnie Lane Appeal for ARMS - the series of charitable concerts in support of Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis - including performances in London and America, which saw the three lead guitarists from The Yardbirds - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page - perform on stage together for the first time. Initially billed as a one-off concert on 20 September 1983 in the Royal Albert Hall, the concert proved so popular with both audience and musicians that the decision was taken to extend it to a tour of nine further shows in America, which saw the former Yardbirds alongside a stellar line-up of musicians including Rolling Stones Ronnie Wood, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, Phil Collins, Andy Fairweather Low, Steve Winwood (London only), Paul Rodgers (US only), Joe Cocker (US only), Chris Stainton, percussionist Ray Cooper, Kenney Jones, James Hooker, and Fernando Saunders.
Following the ARMs tour, and now that he had the back-up, the precious 1954 Sunburst was mainly kept at home, with the exception of special appearances and studio sessions. In an interview in the early 1990s Beck commented – 'I have 44 guitars. Unfortunately, 40 of those are crap! Well, perhaps not crap but a lot of them are prototypes that didn't quite work out. I've got a few vintage instruments but nothing like Dave Gilmour's collection. I've got one prize Fender that was given to me by the late Steve Marriott - a '53 or '54 Strat that looks like it should be in the V&A.; It's got a seasoned ash sunburst body that has cracked due to age and it weighs a ton. It looks just like the Buddy Holly Strat. At some stage when I wasn't thinking too clearly mid-tour I think - I was getting a lot of feedback so someone kindly unloaded the original pickups and I don't know where they are. I've also got a '54 Tele which I love to death and never breaks strings - it sounds beautiful!'
LEO FENDER
Like so many creation stories, the one about the invention of the solid-body electric guitar is peppered with a multitude of characters. Adolph Rickenbacker, Paul Bigsby, Merle Travis, Les Paul and the lesser-known Paul Tutmarc were all instrumental in the early development of solid-body electrics. Yet it is Leo Fender’s name that is synonymous with the electric guitar. By drawing inspiration from the ideas and innovations of all those who preceded him, he achieved what the others had aimed for: a purely electric guitar that could fulfil the needs of the professional musician and would be economically viable.
It was always Fender’s idea that in order to successfully produce and market an electric guitar it should be easy to construct and affordable without sacrificing quality. It must be both dependable and easy to service. He wanted to supply a tool for the guitarist that they could rely on. Though he was never predisposed to a solid-body construction, the natural progression of his early prototypes led him in that direction. Fender decided to design his guitars so that the neck and body could be completed separately in their entirety. It would entail the mounting of all the hardware and electronics as well as having the finish applied to each. This made it possible for the mass production of two fully completed components that could be easily assembled at the end of a production line.
In the beginning, Fender would not incorporate a separate fingerboard made of rosewood or ebony as a traditional maker would. Instead, he carved his necks of hard American rock maple, finished the playing surface and inlaid the frets directly into the finished neck. This eliminated the added labour a separate fingerboard would entail. He fitted this neck into a pre-routed neck pocket in the body, using a neck plate and four screws. This was an idea he derived from the many Rickenbacker guitars he had seen. The peghead design, synonymous with all Fender instruments, was a return to an 1820 Viennese design reminiscent of Johann Stauffer and Christian Frederick Martin. With all six tuners mounted on the bass side, they were easily accessible to the player. The resulting shape was once again contemporary after 130 years.
Understanding the need for players to access the whole range of the fingerboard, Fender, with the help of George Fullerton, designed a body shape that incorporated a full cutaway on the treble side and added a less extreme cut on the bass side. The resulting shape was uncannily modern for 1949 and would be modified visually with each successive model.
Even more than the design, it was the sound of Fender instruments that guitarists and audiences immediately appreciated. Fender first used one simple single-coil pickup. He later expanded this to include two pickups and added a third on the Stratocaster model introduced in 1954. Fender applied his years of experience in electronics to design and produce these pickups. They would prove to produce a balanced, clear and bell-like tone that was easily controllable across a full spectrum of tones even when pushed to their decibel limit. It was this sound and power that guitarists and audiences craved, and which gave the voice to rock-a-billy, rhythm and blues and ultimately rock and roll.