The Stratocaster Chronicles: Celebrating 50 Years of the Fender Strat

By Tom Wheeler
March 2004: Hal Leonard
ISBN: 634056786

Those who have taken Tom Wheeler’s magazine classes might already know of his love for music (or at least seen him playing his own Stratocaster in the Deb Cleveland Band). As the guitar celebrates its fiftieth birthday, it will be marked by a collectible, The Stratocaster Chronicles: Celebrating 50 Years of the Fender Strat. Wheeler’s first book, The Guitar Book, is already a favorite of guitarists; this one will be a favorite of musicians and cultural scholars alike. It’s not uncommon for students to procrastinate by figuring out the minor chords. Wheeler himself became a writer this way: “It was certainly never my lifelong dream to be a writer” he says. “I was in law school, eking out a meager income by giving guitar lessons.” Handouts written for guitar students evolved into his first book, which ultimately led to a writing gig for Guitar Player, where he was editor for over a decade. And the rest is history.

Why did you write this book?

I’m trying to show that there’s a family of people who are bound together by this wonderful and very quirky guitar. People came to this guitar and did things that the inventor, Leo Fender wouldn’t have imagined, or even really understood. The book includes the structural details for ‘gearheads,’ but it’s really about the other stories—nowhere in the book do I have an essay on the “quirky guitar.” Instead I have the story of the how the Isely Brothers bought Jimi Hendrix his first good guitar—a Strat. I want to get the point across that music breaches these once formidable obstacles, such as race and class and gender. I’m trying to get a sense of this cross-cultural excitement. So the book includes people like bonnie Raitt talking about Lowell George; Robin Trower talks about how he shops for a Strat; Ted Nugent talks about Stevie Ray Vaughan. It has a CD, and the CD has excerpts of interviews with Leo Fender, seven or eight brief tracks of Leo talking about the design. It also contains “50 sounds of the Fender Stratocaster” as performed by Greg Koch, truly an incredible guitarist. He basically walks you through the sonic history of the Strat.

What was your amazing discovery?

Well, this is interesting—in 50 years it hasn’t really changed a bit. Leo Fender’s mantra, “function first,” worked. The similarities today are far more striking than the differences…and it’s 50 years later and we’re still playing it. It would be very difficult to improve. This may be the sexiest, sleekest piece of musical equipment ever made, but the guy who built it was just the plainest, most soft-spoken guy, an engineer. He knew nothing about marketing.

How did you get into this?

Well, I played as a hobbyist. And in law school, I started writing a guitar book mostly to get it out of my system—I had no idea what I was doing. It had also never occurred to me to be a professional writer; I did not grow up with some burning desire to be one. I was teaching guitar to eek out a meager income, and I was writing these handouts for my students. Then I started interviewing people, learning more about the history, and it grew and grew and grew by a most inefficient process. I contacted publishers; got 80 some rejections, but Hal Leonard published it. It was favorably reviewed by Rolling Stone, and then Guitar Player asked me to come and work for them. Writing about music was and is a real gift—I get to interview people I care about and ask them questions that I really want to know the answers to.