For the past decade, guitars have been a glut on the market, seen as boomer relics of rock music’s bygone ages. COVID home confinement has changed that:
“A half-year into a pandemic that has threatened to sink entire industries, people are turning to the guitar as a quarantine companion and psychological salve, spurring a surge in sales for some of the most storied companies (Fender, Gibson, Martin, Taylor) that has shocked even industry veterans.
‘I would never have predicted that we would be looking at having a record year,’ said Andy Mooney, the chief executive of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, the Los Angeles-based guitar giant that has equipped Rock & Roll Hall of Famers since Buddy Holly strapped on a 1954 sunburst Fender Stratocaster back in the tail-fin 1950s.”
— “Guitars Are Back, Baby!” Alex Williams, New York Times
Image (“The Electric Guitar Lesson, after Renoir”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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“The Fender Stratocaster turned 60 last year. When it came out of the factory in 1954, it didn’t sound — or look — like any other guitar. Leo Fender’s small company was looking to improve the Telecaster, its groundbreaking solid-body electric, first introduced three years earlier. But far more than a tweak here or there, Fender created an entirely new instrument that’s become almost synonymous with the phrase ‘electric guitar.'”
“Weapon Of Choice: Why The Stratocaster Survives,” Robert Goldstein, NPR News
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Image (“Stratocastrian Man, after Leonardo da Vinci and Leonardo Fender”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht,NotionsCapital.com
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The Fender company makes electric guitars that have become American icons. The firm is “being buffeted by powerful forces on Wall Street,” writes Janet Morrissey:
“A private investment firm, Weston Presidio, controls nearly half of the company and has been looking for an exit. It pushed to take Fender public in March, to howls in the guitar-o-sphere that Fender was selling out. But, to Fender’s embarrassment, investors balked. They were worried about the lofty price and, even more, about how Fender can keep growing.
Gibson Guitars agreed to pay penalties totaling over $$600,000 for smuggling exotic endangered wood into the United States in violation of the century-old Lacey Act. The Act was amended in 2008 to ban importation of illegally harvested hardwoods like Madagascar ebony. Gibson builds many well-known guitar models including the ES-355 (B.B. King and Chuck Berry play it) and the Les Paul, and many of these guitars have ebony fretboards. Madagascar has forbidden logging of its slow-growing ebony since 2006, meaning US importation from that date forward was illegal.
In order to avoid criminal prosecution, Gibson acknowledged that it imported exotic wood in violation of environmental laws, paid the Justice Department $300,000 in penalties, forfeited claims to over $250,000 worth of wood seized by the Feds, and contributed $50,000 to a foundation to promote the conservation of protected tree species.
At least Gibson didn’t get caught smuggling illegal weapons into the country. Blackwater did that.
26-year-old Aline Westphal from Hildesheim in Lower Saxony has won the 2011 Air Guitar World Championship in the annual competition in Oulu, Finland. The young German, also known as die Nichte des Teufels (“The Devil’s Niece”), is not just another pretty face. A university drama student, she’s writing a dissertation on “Air Guitar.”
Ms. Westphal is the first woman to win the world air guitar title in the global competition’s 16 year history. Rock on, Aline.
Guitar Hero, the music-themed video game with the plastic guitar-shaped controller first introduced in 2005, was recently discontinued. Sales had been in the billions but fell to under $300 million last year. Now the Activision corporation says there might be a reprise:
“‘Guitar Hero’ Not Dead, Says Game Maker Activision,” Scott Steinberg, Rolling Stone
Image (“Portrait with Video Game, after Paul Bril”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Fender’s classic Telecaster guitar just turned 60 years old. The solid-body guitar that changed County, Rock, and Blues music sounds just as good as ever. Take it from James Burton, Jeff Beck, Merle Haggard, Elliot Easton, Keith Urban, and a few of their pals.
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