If the picture we are talking about had been posted at the time it was shot, maybe Fender Stratocaster would have become famous several years before the great fame due to the phenomenon Jimi Hendrix. And the Fullerton Company, bought by CBS few months earlier, would have known greater fortune. Indeed, because in December 1965 Beatlemania was still at top levels and anything touched by the Beatles turned into gold!
 

The picture

The picture below was shot on December 11, 1965 during the soundcheck for a concert scheduled for that evening at Astoria Finsbury Park, a theatre where the Fab Four used to play every year. In 1965 the show took place in their last English tour that it included a total of eight concerts, from December 3 to 12.

The photo has been published in 2009 in the book The Beatles on Camera (Pavillion Books), written by Mark Hayward, a famous 60’s rock bands pictures collector.

Along the years, Hayward bought several unknown Beatles shots and he decided to publish them in this volume.

At this point a clarification is due: in the book, the picture we are talking about is referred to 1963 Astoria concert. But this is a mistake and there are three evidences to proof this.

• Lennon’s Stratocaster was bought in February 1965, together with George’s

• John’s and Paul’s look and clothes are typical of 1965 fashion

• In some other pictures of the same photo session it’s possible to see George playing his Gretsch Tenessean, a guitar he began to use live in the middle of 1964

This being so, we can believe that if John Lennon played this guitar for the soundcheck and concert rehearsals, he likely played his Stratocaster for that evening gig too.
Then the Beatles used Fender Stratocaster on live shows too!
 

Some conjectures

Of course we cannot be sure that John really played his Strat for the show too, as we can’t be certain that Lennon used this guitar for all the 1965 English tour or part of it. I tried to find something about this on the web, but it’s impossible to find video clips or audio recordings of those shows. Only a pic showing John playing his Rickenbacker 325 and George using a Gibson 345 (Sheffield, December 8, 1965).

Indeed we have to trust this only photo and believe that what happened is really what I’m going to write in the following lines. In which way Lennon made his choice? John was used to worn his guitars out, and when they were useless he got rid of them instead of having them repaired and refretted.

For example, when his Casino became useless in the early 70’s, John bought a Les Paul junior (with a Charlie Christian pick up in the neck position) as his main guitar (about this, watch the How do you sleep sessions videos on youtube).

At the end of 1965, after two years and a half of hard work, Rickenbacker 325 Miami guitar was done (during the 1964 Christmass show the neck cracked and the headstock received a poor repair). A new guitar was needed for the English tour’s final part.

That’s why John decided to try and play live the Fender Stratocaster he had bought some months earlier, a guitar he used for some track of Help! and Rubber soul LPs.

We ignore whether he played it for only one show or more ,but I believe he didn’t like very much the Strat’s long scale: during the 1966 Asian and American tour he and George played their new Epiphone Casinos, guitars they bought in the Spring of that same year and they used for Revolver’s recordings.

The Beatles Stratocasters

A day between February 15 and 17, 1965, during Help! album recording sessions, George and John asked their friend and roadie Mal Evans to go out to “get a couple of Strats”. Purchase date is deduced considering the pictures you are watching in this article were shot the day the song Yes it is was taped, on February 17, while Help! album session begun on February 15.

Brian Epstein offered to pay personally for the guitars if they were identical. Mal came back with two Sonic Blue Fender Stratocasters, and he paid £ 180.00 each (about $ 500.00 at that time).

Both had been built between 1961 and 1962. We don’t know too much about John’s Stratocaster, and nowadays we ignore what happened of it.

George’s, renamed Rocky after being painted with psychedelic colors on the body’s top and in the headstock in June 1967, is still owned by her widow Olivia and the serial number 83840 is still visible: it corresponds to the begin of 1962.

The neck is made out of flamed maple with a rosewood fingerboard and it’s dated “December 1961”.

We can suppose that Lennon’s Stratocaster was made in the same period too, and anyway not later than 1962. In fact this guitar had “spaghetti” logo – therefore dating earlier the middle of ’64 – and the fingerboard is slab-board as it happened in pre 1963 Strats.

John played this guitar in Ticket to ride and in other Help! LP’s songs, then he played it on Nowhere Man and in other tracks – even if we don’t know exactly which of them - of Rubber Souls and Sgt. Pepper albums.

The misteriuous Stratocaster

There's a pic on the web, it was taken in Sheffield (December 8, 1965) and it shows all the Beatles guitars before that show. It's easy to recognize the Rickenbacker 325, Paul's '63 and the '61 Hofner (used as spare) basses, the acoustic Gibson J160E, the Gibson ES-345TD, the '65 Rickenbacker 360/12.

A custom color (Candy Apple Red?) Stratocaster with a matching coloured peghead stands in the center of the pic. What about this guitar? Does anyone know anything about this guitar? No one never wrote a line about it. And, of course, this is the only one picture ever seen. Did John play this guitar too? 

 Final comments

The guitars used by the Beatles have always been a great advertising tool. They had an endorsement contract with VOX JMI concerning the amplifiers used in the live shows (while in studio they could use whatever they wanted), but they were completely free to choose their guitars.

We perfectly know that in the 60’s Rickenbacker, Gretsch and Hofner made their fortune thanks to the Beatles advertising. If pictures, videos or audio tapes of 1965 English had been published at that time, maybe Fender and Stratocaster too would have had a good advertising, two years before the Hendrix explosion!

In my opinion, in the beginning Hendrix was appreciated and understood only by expert people, much less by young boys who approached the electric guitar anxious to emulate their idols, mainly Beatles and Rolling Stones. So I think the masses missed the chance, but not Fender.

The American company, in the following years, didn’t hesitate to supply the Beatles with several new instruments as guitars, amplifiers, keyboards and PA systems played by the English band in their last three albums sessions.

But this is a different story!

Most of the informations about Beatles guitars are taken from the book Beatles Gear by Andy Babiuk, Backbeat Books, San Francisco, 2001. Web site: www.beatlesfabgear.com

David