Special Guest Blogger: Leo Fender

Of all the members of a band, the lead guitarist is the one everyone wants to be. It is very rare that anyone stands in front of the mirror with a tennis racquet pretending to play bass or bop their parents upturned pots and pans with a wooden spoon aspiring to fill Ringo Starr's shoes.
It is either the singer or lead guitarist the vast majority of people dream of being, the charismatic ones at the front of the stage fingering their fret board, grabbing their whammy bar and twanging their G-string, so to speak.
My influence on rock music is second only to hard drugs but if my name doesn't ring any bells with you then how about Ritchie Blackmore, Eric Clapton, Kurt Cobain, Buddy Holly, David Gilmour, Jimi Hendrix, Mark Knopfler or Nile Rodgers who all used my guitar to make their hits.      
I didn't invent the electric guitar but i used my background in electronics to perfect it and it all began after i built a PA system for a band which led to other bands coming to me and asking for other things such as a way to increase the sound of their amplified acoustic guitars which were beginning to show up on the big band and jazz music scene.
In the 1950's big bands fell out of vogue to be replaced by small combos playing boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues, country and western and honky-tonk and they prefered the electric guitar as they were loud, cheaper and durable. My real love was country music and it was with this music in mind that i set about creating my first electric guitars, wanting to provide better instruments for the cowboy songs about dead dogs and pick-up trucks that i loved so much.
Despite the fact that my new venture revolved around manufacturing guitars, i never actually got around to learning how to play them, relying on actual musicians to help him with the design of the guitars and we came up with the Fender Esquire that looked cool and was easy to hold, tune and play, then the Broadcaster and then Telecaster and then hit pay-dirt with the Stratocaster after musicians requested a guitar which made it easier to reach the upper registers.
It was just as Rock N Roll was taking off that i contracted a sinus infection that impaired my health and forced me to sell my company although i did form another company in the 1970s making guitars but we couldn't improve on my previous versions so we just tinkered with the original designs until i developed Parkinson's which got so bad that i had to while away my last days at home listening to other people playing my instruments on the radio.  
My success was down to knowing nothing about the thing i was creating and designing it purely based on what other people who did know were telling me to do which worked out well not only for me but also fans of long haired, shirtless men smoking a whole cigarette without removing it from their mouth while playing 10 minute guitar solo's on my Guitar and you won't see Rickenbacker playing Peter Buck of REM do that.