The Best Idea Yet - 🎸 Fender Stratocaster: The Guitar That Invented Rock & Roll | 15

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

This one guitar didn’t just change music — it permanently cranked it up to 11. From Buddy Holly’s crisp riffs to Jimi Hendrix’s flaming solos (literally, he lit one on fire), the Fender Stratocaster is the most iconic electric guitar of all time. It inspired the Beatles AND Eric Clapton, became the axe of choice for everything from punk rock to reggae, and cemented itself as the foundation of America's $2 billion guitar industry. But the Strat’s journey begins in a ramshackle workshop of an unlikely guitar hero, Leo Fender (the guy couldn’t even strum Wonderwall). This unassuming electronics nerd overcame near-bankruptcy, chronic stress, and even a termite infestation to create the perfect electric guitar…Find out why great entrepreneurial teams are like the best bands, how Fleetwood Mac holds the key to innovation, and why the Fender Stratocaster is the best idea yet. Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterFollow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting www.wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the best idea yet early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Do you remember when I bit off way more than I could chew with that New Year's resolution? During the pandemic, I bought a brand new keyboard. Top of the line, wire cutter recommended. Determined to learn how to play the piano during the pandemic. How many lessons are you into now? I took it out of the box once, I plugged it in once.

It sounded amazing. And then I never found a teacher. I think you told me there was like a name for the band you were gonna create too. I grew out my hair long. I was that confident I was gonna be a musical professional. You're not even a hot cross buns yet, are you? Didn't you play saxophone or something?

I actually did alto sax era and a tenor sax era. The best part about playing an instrument as a kid is that your voice changes after the kids get so confident. Like you finish that solo in front of all the fifth graders and you're like, yeah, yeah, I'll be playing all night. Well, I did play the clarinet in elementary school. I only played for one year, but I was quite the star. Ode to Joy, I stood up in front of that recital

and nailed my solo. Everyone was told they nailed the solo, Jack. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of solos, I wish I would have picked the guitar instead of the clarinet, but it's so hard to get the notes right with your little kid fingers when you're just starting out. True Jack, but for guitarists it's

not just the notes that are important, it's the guitar itself. Because each guitar has its own unique personality. Some are smooth, some are mellow, others are loud, others are rebellious, and a few are moody but brilliant. You need to connect with the guitar just as much as the guitar has to connect with you. It's not just the wood and the strings, it is a partner in sound, a voice that completes the guitarist's musical soul. But there's one guitar in particular that hits all the right notes for millions of guitarists and music fans, and it's got more groupies than Mick Jagger.

Eddie Van Halen was more obsessed with this guitar than he was with Panama. Hendrix set fire to his. Cobain smashed his to smithereens. Oh, and Mike Myers had the hots for one in Wayne's world. It will be mine. Oh, yes. It will be mine. That guitar that Wayne is fawning over, it set the standard for electric guitars,

and it remained basically unchanged across its entire 70 year history. Today we're exploring the most iconic guitar of all time, the Fender Stratocaster. ["Fender Stratocaster"] From Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix, it's highly likely that your favorite guitar solo of all time was played on a Fender Stratocaster. For every superstar rocking a strat on stage, there's thousands of wannabe musicians lusting after one.

And that's why it's the best selling electric guitar of all time and still a sizable part of the guitar sales today, which in the United States hit $2 billion in 2023. And check, the guitar market is five times bigger than the market for pianos and 40 times bigger than the market for drums. We'll reveal how the Fender Stratocaster inspired a whole generation of iconic musicians to pick up their guitars and play loud.

We'll meet its inventor Leo Fender, an unhip electronics nerd who couldn't play a single chord and his far hipper friend Les Paul, a guitar virtuoso who lent his name to the Fender's biggest rival, Gibson. If it wasn't for the subject of this episode, half the music you listen to would be half as loud and you'd be dancing with half as much joy. Along the way, we're gonna see the largest cash transaction in music history. We're gonna see a termite evasion

and we're gonna hear a whole lot of guitar solos. We'll tell you how to iterate your way to success and how Fleetwood Mac holds the secret to innovation and why the best entrepreneurial teams are like the best bands. Jack let's get in party time. Excellent on my beat Nick you ready? I'm ready. Five six seven eight. I think we're a little flat or maybe you're a little sharp. This is why the Fender Stratocaster is the best idea yet. From Wonder and T-Boy, I'm Nick Martell. And I'm Jack Kravichy Kramer,

and this is the best idea yet. The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk takers who brought them to life. I got that feeling again Something familiar but new We got it coming to you I got that feeling again They changed the game in one move Here's how they for all the savory favorites now made fresh to order at Booster Juice. Thurbing up the yum with wraps, sandwiches, and fininis. Come and get cozy.

Download the Booster Rewards app today. Thousands of young hippies are slowly coming to their senses. They've just experienced a blissed out psychedelic light show, soundtracks by a heavy jam from the Grateful Dead. It's the final night of the Monterey International Pop Festival and the beginning of 1967's Summer of Love. A flamboyantly dressed figure struts out onto the stage, red pants, bright yellow frilled

collar shirt with a guitar that seems more like an extension of his own soul than a musical instrument. The band, they start counting off, and then for the next 40 minutes, their virtuoso frontman makes his guitar sing and screech and wail in ways that no one has heard before. And at the climax of the final song, Wild Thing, the guitarist does something never before seen on a musical stage in modern history. He touses his guitar in lighter fluid,

drops a lit match on it, and it bursts into flames. Ladies, gentlemen, and flower people, give it up for Jimi Hendrix burst into flames. Ladies, gentlemen, and flower people, give it up for Jimi Hendrix and his flame-grilled fender Stratocaster. He treated his guitar like a Burger King Whopper. That was Hendrix's first big gig in the United States. Hardly anyone in America knew who he was at the time.

All of that changed following that Monterey gig. And that's when James Marshall Hendrix became Jimi Hendrix. But the real star of the show was the Fender Stratocaster. More specifically, a 1965 Fiesta Red Strat that Hendrix decorated with swirl patterns and flowers using nail polish. This is one of the most iconic moments in rock and roll history and to fully appreciate it, we're going to tell you the story of the guitar at its core. A few decades before Jimmy, in the 1930s burgeoning jazz age, you didn't have the electric guitars

we think of today. What you had was your standard acoustic guitar outfitted with something called a pickup. It is like a mini microphone for a guitar. They use magnets to pick up vibrations in the guitar strings and then send those vibrations into an amplifier or an amp, which means more volume. The goal was to get the bright notes of a guitar to ring out over the booming backdrop of drums, bass, and horns. But at the end of the day, the pickups the booming backdrop of drums bass and horns. But at the end of the day the pickups couldn't make acoustic guitars that much louder.

That's because of the hollow body of a guitar. If you tried to crank the volume up to Hendrix's levels back then the vibrations would echo around inside the guitar and overload that little pickup Nick just told you about. I think I know what's coming Jack. Cue a whole bunch of screeching feedback and a rowdy, unhappy crowd wondering, why did I buy a ticket to this thing? We were talking like nails on a chalkboard level of harsh, like truly room clearing. And if you're a gigging guitarist playing on the growing dance hall scene,

whose livelihood depends on being heard clearly and whipping up the crowd into a frenzy, then that feedback sound… it's not good. The guitar, the front man of instruments, it's the weakest link in the chain, volume-wise. The band, they can pretty much only play as loudly as the guitar naturally plays on its own. And this reality is completely at odds with the future of rock and roll. This technical limitation is holding back popular music from evolving.

There can be no rock until technical instrument progress starts to roll. But there was one guitarist who thought he had a solution. And you've seen his name written in script. I can picture it now, Jack. Les Paul. Now Jack, in the 1940s, Les Paul was a budding jazz guitarist. He had slicked back hair and an even slicker playing style.

Behind that cool exterior, his mind was as busy as his fingers. He wasn't just working on melodies. He was working on the technology of sound itself. And that's because Les wasn't just a talented guitar player, he was also a self-taught engineer and inventor. And he had an idea, a pretty radical idea, if you think about it. Because going back all the way to 15th century Spain,

all guitar shared a common feature, a hollow body, to make that sound resonate so people could hear it. And the bigger the guitar, the boomier the sound. So like for 500 years, man, gearheads were basically trying to make guitars louder. And those gearheads included less in the 1940s. By this time, he had tried all sorts of things, like strapping guitar strings to a piece of railroad rail, jamming a phonograph

needle into his guitar, worth a shot, or filling his guitar with plaster to make it more solid. You know, worst case, he sells it as a piece of art. But after all that tinkering, it's led to Les's secret weapon, a one-of-a-kind guitar he called The Log. The Log! I mean, first of all, great name. Second, this is basically a four by four plank of solid pinewood with guitar strings. Like I'm looking at this right now. There are no holes, so there are no vibrations.

He put a pickup beneath the strings and then just for looks, he chopped a regular acoustic guitar in half and sandwiched the plank of wood between them. Jack, what kind of vibes you get when you look at this thing? It looks like a regular guitar that Thor has driven a steak through right down the middle. Oh, it's totally Frankensteiny. Now, Nick, although this log wasn't pretty, it was solid and it did get the job done. This thing, it was huge. And since it was so solid, you had to lift with your legs not with your back. Less, he could crank up the volume to 11 on this thing to get a loud guitar sound without any of that nasty feedback. Here's how the log sounded.

I mean Jack, I like what I'm hearing. And this was 70 years ago, and that crystal clear sound. Les would invite his guitarist friends over to hang and they were craving something like that, which meant that the market for this log could be huge. Les thought this instrument could even change the future of popular music. It was funny looking, funky feeling, but Les loved it. And in fact, the music is so good and so loud on this electric guitar, Les lands a meeting with Gibson, one of the country's biggest guitar makers.

And here's his mission. He wants to get Gibson to make a mass market version of the log. You see, Les told the execs that this instrument he's bringing in, it would change music forever. So the suits, oh, they got some high expectations. Picture Les. He's looking sharp. He's walked into this corporate room. He's a little nervous. He's fidgeting and he's schvitzing a little bit.

But when those suits walk into the room and see Les Paul sitting there cradling his log, it looks less like an instrument and more like a medieval weapon. They actually laugh him out of the room and say, what is that thing you're holding in your arms? I mean, in hindsight, this looks like a book publisher saying no to Harry Potter because they think brooms are for sweeping, not for flying.

But Les is undeterred. Even though these guys don't like his instrument, he knows somebody will. So he puts it over his shoulder and he buys a ticket to Los Angeles to make it on his own in the music business. If you don't understand me, I'm going to LA and I'm doing it my way. Les Paul is hugely talented. Not just an inventor, he's also a a performer and when he's not shaping wood in his basement He's writing notes and chords and is soon topping his charts with hit singles. I mean he's taking off right now, right Jack? Hey tours he makes some money and he marries his singing partner Mary Ford He buys the little house in Hollywood and builds a recording studio in his garage to lay down tracks and invent all kinds of newfangled

builds a recording studio in his garage to lay down tracks and invent all kinds of newfangled recording gear. Now, Yeti's Jack and I are kind of cool, but we're not nearly as cool as what we're about to describe because all of this made Les's Hollywood Garage the place to be for up-and-coming musicians to meet up and share stories and record songs together. On any given Saturday night, musicians didn't head to the jazz club. They showed up to this dude's garage, grabbed a chair, cracked open a case of beers, and jammed out. So Les created the coolest hangout for musicians west of the Mississippi, but his ugly guitar

creation the log hadn't caught on yet. His prized invention was stalled out. That is Jack until the least hit man in music history shows up at one of Les's fun garage parties, and that man's name is Leo Fender. Like Les Paul, Leo Fender is a technical whiz. He spent his childhood tearing apart radios and then building them back better. And then he started a business selling amplifiers and instruments. But Leo is very different from Les. Les Paul is as loud and outgoing as one of his guitar cellos.

But this Leo Fender, he's a soft spoken introvert. And he can't even play the guitar. And Les, he wears snappy suits. Leo is dressed in dusty overalls. But one thing Leo Fender shares with Les Paul is a dream, to make an electric guitar that can play loud without tons of feedback. The two share a passion for tinkering.

And Leo Fender, he's been making electric lap steel instruments for about two years now, when he meets Les in 1947. Now besties, you will know the lap steel sound when you hear it. ["Twang"] Twang is the perfect word to describe that, isn't it? It is a twang, Jack, heavy on the twang.

It's a slidey sound that you can hear all over surf rock, country, and Hawaiian music. It is designed for playing on your lap. It's got the solid body design, but you just can't pick it up and play Wonderwall, if you know what I mean. And you can't jump around on a stage with it either. No, you can't. This is not the holy grail that will make rock and roll possible.

But it is a jumping off point for the electric guitar that Leo has been envisioning. Using his lap steel blueprint, Leo Fender has created his own ugly but functional prototype of a solid body guitar. And we'll call it Woody. I feel like we're dealing with lumberjacks here, because this is a block of wood, and it's roughly carved into the shape of a guitar and painted black with six strings and that critical pickup. Just like Les Paul's log, Leo Fender's Woody, it is crude, it is ugly, but the guitarists

that try this thing out, they dig it because they can do that one all-important thing that they've all wanted to do. Play loud without any nasty feedback. In fact, guitarists love Woody so much that they keep renting it out from Leo so they can play their gigs on those Saturday nights. Woody meet Log. Log meet Woody. You've got a friend in me. Yes, you do, Jack. Now, Leo and Les, they're enjoying nerding out over the electric guitar problem. However, neither one of them is really in a position to take their prototypes further. It's not their full-time hustle to develop this electric guitar.

Between making chart-topping music and touring the world, Les Paul is a rising star with no time to tinker. Meanwhile, Leo Fender is tied up with business troubles. He's stressed. His workshop is struggling to meet a big order for 5,000 lap steel guitars. He's got health problems and cash is very tight. Oh, and that's not even the worst, Jack. Worst of all is something we have never seen before in all the viral products we've covered. His customers are returning their instruments because they're finding termites in them. Jack, there's nothing worse than nailing a chord on stage when a colony of woodchomping bugs jumps out

all over your fingertips. So what these guys need is a kick in the rear end to get them back on track. And that's exactly what they're about to get. All right, Jack, you got a jacket on? You're gonna need a tie because we're heading over to the American Legion dance hall. It's a Saturday afternoon and we're just outside Fullerton, California. Leo Fender, he's setting up the PA system for that night's show.

There's some black and white photos on the wall and the floor's a little sticky because you know someone spilled some punch. In walks a musician. His name it's Merle Travis and he's carrying a guitar that makes the woody and the log look even more like tools from the stone age. You may not know his name but Merle is a huge country music star. The 1948 Luke Combs. He's been cranking out hits like Divorce Me COD and Who Could Forget So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed. Great titles. And Leo Fender, he can't stop staring at this man. Not because he's starstruck, he knows Merle

pretty well. But Leo can't take his eyes off something else, Merle's guitar. It is the electric guitar of his dreams, but he has to hear it to believe it. So he asks Merle to plug it in and play a few bars. The notes ring out loud and clear. I mean, Jack, it's loud, it's electric, oh, and no feedback. We got the trifecta of electric dreams. This is the holy grail of guitars. Leo's jaw hits the floor. Merle's guitar has a solid body like the log in the woody, but unlike those hacked together prototypes,

Merle's guitar is a delicately crafted thing of beauty. It's got a body that is flowing with an hourglass shape made from a single piece of bird's-eye maple. It is the same height and the same width as your standard acoustic guitar, and yet it's so much thinner. It's less than two inches from the front to the back. It looks like a modern electric guitar, but it wasn't built by Les Paul or Leo Fender. It was built by their friend, Paul Bigsby. So Bigsby, this guy is obsessed with craftsmanship.

Bigsby painstakingly built Murl's guitar from scratch. And Bigsby built the guitar to Murl's exact specifications. Murl wanted an electric guitar that didn't look like it was made from the offcuts pile at Home Depot. Today, this is known as the Bigsby Travis guitar, and it probably should be hanging in the Louvre. It's the granddaddy of every modern electric guitar you've ever heard. So why isn't this episode all about the Bigsby Travis guitar?

Great question, Jack. Bigsby was only interested in making custom, one-of-a-kind instruments. In fact, he may have made as few as six of these guitars in total. Seeing that Bigsby guitar, it lights a fire under Leo Fender. So he goes up to Merle who's just finished playing his set and he says hey can I borrow this thing maybe you know take it home for a closer look. Now yetis we already know that Leo Fender can't play the guitar right so there's only one reason he would want to take it home with him. He wants to study the guitar reverse engineer the guitar he wants to make something that is solid

something dependable but still beautiful in its own right but something that is solid, something dependable, but still beautiful in its own right, but something that can also be mass produced. After all, the Bigsby, the Log, and the Woody, these really were just prototypes. So Leo's got a new mission. Create his own version of the Merle Bigsby electric guitar, but build it at scale. Leo Fender is all fired up to get to work on this new guitar idea, but his lap steel business is still taking up most of his time. So he tinkers with this passion project on nights and weekends, kind of squeezing it in here and there. This is so relatable. He's got a job that pays the bills, but doesn't get him excited. His passion is with this

night project. His dream is to quit the lap steel business and go all in on solid wood electric guitars. He wants to make his side hustle his full hustle. And to get that going, it's finally time for him to do some on the ground market research. All right, so let's head over to the honky tonks. That's where Leo starts hanging. He's talking to musicians,

but he's not interacting with the stars like Les Paul and Merle Travis. He's talking to grizzled roadhounds. We've played show after show, night after night. Picture like the band in Roadhouse, seasoned veterans who can dodge a thrown bar stool or flying beer bottle without missing a note. And speaking to these guitarists,

hammers home a key point for Leo. The musicians they need to sell to are not rich. So Leo needs to come up with a guitar that's got the sound of the Bigsby, the look of the Bigsby, but that's rugged, more affordable, and can be built at scale. All right, so it needs to work perfectly, look perfect, and be extremely cheap. Yeah,

sounds like no big deal, Jack. By 1950, Leo and his assistant, George Fullerton, they've tweaked and they thinkered with prototypes and they've landed on something that they think musicians are really going to like. So they issue a limited run of this new solid body electric guitar and they call it the Fender Esquire. Jack, fun fact, one of these original run Esquires is worth 80 grand today. But back then, they went for $149.95. If the Bixby Travis guitar is a curvy sports car with elegant sweeping lines, then the Esquire is a hot rod.

It is simple, direct, and built for raw power. The Esquire proved that a solid body electric guitar could be mass produced. This is a quantum leap over the hollow body electric guitars that came before. This is the future. In fact, Gibson is so impressed by the Esquire that they even start working on their own solid body guitar. These Gibson guys, they've changed their tunes since they cracked up at the site of Les Paul's log a few years ago. Oh, and this also means, Jack, that the clock is ticking on Fender because they've got to

keep up their first mover advantage. They need to start cranking out more solid body electrics before the much larger company Gibson jumps into their industry. There is just one person though who's standing in the way of Leo Fender's innovative electric guitar. It's Leo Fender himself. Because Leo is a perfectionist. Remember, he'd been burned in the past by those termite-infested lap steels, so he's

not willing to release anything new until he knows it's absolutely perfect. But his team? They're tearing their hair out. They're just sitting there waiting. They're like, you need to make a decision so we can get producing. Jack, if Gibson beats Fender to the punch, that could mean the end of Leo's dream, the end of his company, and it'll mean the pioneers of rock and roll will be slinging different axes.

So Leo's team, they just want to launch this thing into the wider world. They're keeping up the pressure on Leo because this first version, the Esquire, it's pretty darn good guitar, right Jack? This is a great MVP, a minimum viable product. An MVP is an early version of your product that does the basics. Putting an MVP out there gets you to market early. It also gets you valuable feedback so that you can iterate newer, better versions of your product more quickly. But it's not so easy with a physical product, especially a big ticket item like a cell phone, a car, or a guitar. People aren't going to be thrilled if they hand over their money and wind up with something

half-baked. That's why most of your MVP testing needs to be done before you mass release. Well, Jack, that is exactly what our buddy Leo Fender has done here, and he did it with that limited run of the Esquire. He has proven that you can mass produce a solid body electric guitar. But a limited release? It is nothing compared to what Gibson could do with its huge financial and operational advantages. Finally, Leo Fender's team wears him down. He's made several improvements to the Esquires

and his tinkering has to end. He's already put on a more stable neck that won't warp and he's thrown on a second pickup for a more versatile sound. So in the spring of 1951, Fender finally releases version 2.0 and they come up with a new name to market this thing. Now the timing of this could not have been better because the 1950s were just beginning. You got the post-war economy, it's booming,

the future's looking bright. And they want a name that reflects that optimism, reflects that innovation, that progress in America at the moment. So they call this new guitar the Telecaster. It's a breakthrough and it's a massive hit. The Telecaster, it's become a legendary guitar in its own right.

I mean, Jack, fans include Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, George Harrison. It's more Grammys than you and I have, Jack. This guitar is incredible still today. It has a twangy bright attack that cuts through, making it ideal for punchy chops, twangy rhythms, and searing lead lines. Yet is this Telecaster?

It costs $179.50 and that's a bargain for the quality you got. Sales for the Telecaster were strong in California and the Southwest thanks to word of mouth among all those guitarists, but Leo, he wanted the guitar to be a hit across the whole country and he wanted an endorsement from one big artist to make that happen. One name sprang to his mind and that name was Les Paul. Now by this point, Les Paul is rich and Les Paul is famous. Oh, if you want to talk to Les Paul, you gotta talk to Les Paul's agent first. He's had a string of hits with his wife and

musical partner Mary Ford. Lovely. He's got his own radio program and has even just cut a deal for his own TV show. Les, at this point, is more. Yeah, he is. He doesn't tinker around with guitars anymore. He's counting his cash. So Leo Fender gives Les a telecaster for two specific reasons. First, he wants Les to fall in love with it

and endorse this thing. And second, he wants to brag because this is Leo Fender showing Les Paul that he got there first with a mass market solid body electric guitar. Okay, so Jack, Les, he's trying out this new guitar and first reaction, what does he think? He says he hates it. Oh, that's awkward. Les thinks the Telecaster is too down market

for his refined tastes. But seeing it rekindles Less's desire to make a solid body electric guitar of his own. So he puts in a call to his old friends over at Gibson. Now here's the funny thing, Yetis. Gibson, they've actually been secretly working on their own design for the past year. By now now they're

actually ready to unveil their invention. And it turns out all they need is one big-name guitarist to endorse it. The same thing that Leo just came to Les for. So it's a bit of a betrayal here from Les. I mean it's somewhere between Shakespearean and soap opera. Either way, Les's call is perfect timing. Gibson even offers to name their new electric guitar after Les Paul and give him a cut of each sale. This sounds similar to the deal that Michael Jordan cut with Nike in our Air Jordan episode. Just like MJ, Les Paul got his name on the product and a cut of revenue. In 1952, Gibson releases their Les Paul guitar.

If the Telecaster is a no-frills road warrior, then the Gibson Les Paul is rolling down the window and asking for great poopon. It's got a carved mahogany body with a rich sound and the price, oh, it matches all of that. Even though they're very different guitars, Leo Fender sees the new Gibson Les Paul as an existential threat. Fender's been living the entrepreneurial life, hacking away in the pursuit of perfection, and then out of nowhere, a rock god and a big corporation come together to launch a rival guitar.

And Jack, that's not just Leo Fender being paranoid. Because the Telecaster, it has some issues we should talk about, man. Like some buyers, they just aren't happy. It doesn't stay in tune, it's got blocky corners that like dig into the player's chest. Some people are even butchering their Telecasters with hacksaws just to smooth out the hard edges. Leo needs to iterate fast before Gibson steals his limelight, so he gets to work on a new design, one that will keep the futuristic shape

and solid ruggedness of the telecaster, but make it more reliable and more comfortable to play. So our buddy Leo is back to tinkering. But meanwhile, a new kind of music is bubbling under the mainstream. It's being pioneered by black artists like Sister Rosetta Tharp, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry. And they even have a name for this new sound, Rock and Roll.

So we're leaving the grungy clubs outside Los Angeles and we're heading over to a theater in London, so I'm going to need you to spruce up a bit. I'm going to need a pressed velvet suit. Is that what you're saying? That's exactly what I'm saying, Jack. Because over in London, we're hanging out at a theater where a gangly Texan in a bow tie and horned rimmed glasses is about to change the course of music history. Slung across his small frame is a guitar that no one on this side of the Atlantic has ever

seen. It's a Fender Stratocaster. This guy's name? It's Buddy Holland, and he's being broadcast live across Britain. The music sears out of television sets across the British nation, like a spark about the set the stuffy English country set on fire. And watching from living rooms all over England are some of the next generation's icons. Over in Liverpool, two school friends by the names of John Lennon and Paul McCartney sit

transfixed. Down in Surrey, a 12-year-old Eric Clapton is also glued to the black and white tube. It's 1958, and for the first time, millions of Brits are hearing rock and roll music. A year earlier, Buddy did the same thing for Americans on the Ed Sullivan show, but it wasn't just records that people rushed out to buy as a result. Demand for Stratocasters, Buddy's guitar of choice exploded. Because just as Leo Fender hoped, the Strat, it fixed all of the Telecaster's issues. It had a new sleek body that wouldn't dig into your chest like the Telecaster did, and

it stayed in tune. Oh, and then get this jack. It had not one, not two, but three hiccups for epic sonic possibilities. And then, coolest of all, this Stratocaster had a whammy bar. It's basically a metal handle that you pull and then you get this sound. The first strat also had the classic brown to golden yellow sunburst pattern, although they soon added a bunch more color options. Plus, the shape of the guitar kind of makes it look like it has devil horns.

I was getting that vibe. This guitar makes you look badass. I do feel tougher just by looking at it. And let's not forget the sound. The Stratocaster was more refined than its predecessors. Leo Fender's tinkering? It worked! This device produces peak sonic butteriness.

It was the ultimate canvas for guitarists to explore new ways of playing. When we're describing something this epic, we always get curious, do the numbers back it up? In 1955, sales shot to $ million dollars. Then, thanks to Buddy Holly and the surge of rock and roll, sales almost doubled, climbing to 1.7 million dollars. Because as rock and roll swept the world, so did strat envy. Every young kid with slick back hair had dreams of becoming a guitar god and wanted one of these guitars. Especially as legendary players like Chuck Berry,

Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Elvis. They were all rockin' strats. And then the tidal wave of surf music hit with the Beach Boys and Dick Dale. Remember those blistering riffs from the opening scene of Pulp Fiction? That's Dale. Fender made sure to catch this wave.

They made strats in vibrant colors to match the Hawaiian vibes. By 1963, the Beach Boys were riding high in the charts with Surfing USA, sending some good vibrations fenders way. Now, Bessie's, this is when sales go straight up stratospheric. We're talking hockey stick growth, they're going Gretzky. The Stratocaster hit $2.2 million in sales in a single quarter during the Beach Boys craze. I mean, Jack, this is that 3% rule of innovation that we discussed. Sometimes all you gotta do is change the color and that can unlock a whole bunch of sales.

We see you Stanley Mugs. Finally, Leo Fender's money worries were behind him. He and his wife bought a house, even a yacht. But even more importantly, Leo had finally realized his vision for creating a new kind of guitar, which enabled a new kind of music. Now, Yetis, if you were looking for justice in this story, you're going to find it here. Because while Fender rode the wave of this enthusiasm, Gibson, they just weren't as popular with rock and rollers or the surf kids. The heavier Les Paul guitars, they meant you could really injure yourself if you're like running across the stage and trying to pull off a pelvic thrust.

You got that much wood strout to you, Jack? Yeah, you want to stay seated. So in 1961, Gibson gave up on the original Les Paul guitar, the one we thought had all the advantages. And by 1963, Gibson had only captured 11% of the electric guitar market, less than half of Fender's epic market share. By 1963, business was booming for Fender. The Strat? It was the lead guitar for lead guitarists. But Leo is still haunted by his earlier product issues. Like, Jack, remember the termites?

Well, it felt like history might repeat itself. Because even with a new expanded factory, nine buildings covering 70,000 square feet, there was a 16-week backlog for his guitars. So Leo is suffering from insomnia. His health has gone downhill. He's getting an ulcer for his guitars. So Leo is suffering from insomnia. His health has gone downhill. He's getting an ulcer in his stomach. Every day he's going home physically beat in just to keep up with all this guitar demand.

So at 53 years old, Leo says, I'm out, I'm done with it. And he sells off his business. In 1965, Leo sells Fender to CBS for $13 million. That's about $130 million in today's money. At the time, it was the largest cash transaction in music history. It was also about $2 million more than CBS had paid to buy a controlling stake in the New York Yankees the year before.

Leo stayed on as an advisor of the company for a few years under CBS's ownership. Then he went on to keep innovating new amp and guitar designs until he passed away in 1991. But CBS, the media company owning a guitar designer? I mean, Jack, how did that duo work out exactly? Not well at all. Once CBS acquired Fender, they saw dollar signs, so they ramped up production to try to sell as many guitars as they could. But the quality took a huge nosedive.

Pretty soon, CBS made Strats. They got a reputation for being poorly made and unreliable. Pre-CBS Strats, when they become so rare and so valuable, they get a shout out in Wayne's World. Wow. 64 Fender Stratocasts in classic white with triple single-coil pickups and a whammy bar. Pre-CBS Fender corporate buyout. So electric guitars, they were officially big business. But guitars, like fashion, are cyclical. Yes they are, Jack.

As the newer Fender Strats nosedived in popularity, the old Les Paul Gibsons became cool. Though they weren't being made anymore, they surged in popularity in the late 60s and through the 70s thanks to groups like Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, and the Allman Brothers. In 1968, Gibson reissued the original Les Paul design. The guitars? They helped a whole new generation of musicians discover Les Paul and his music. He started playing regular gigs in New York, and he was even joined on stage by the likes of Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, and Slash.

Les kept hosting live shows all the way up until 2009 when he was 94. There's also redemption for the strat. In 1985, investors bought Fender back from CBS and worked on improving the quality issues that had plagued the company since CBS bought it. They got a grip on the quality and turned around the brand image by making signature strats with famous guitarists. The first collab they ever did was with Eric Clapton in 1988. Today, the Fender Stratocaster and the

Gibson Les Paul are both classics of guitar design, heard on countless records and shredded by some of the most iconic guitars in history. Each one is known for its distinct sound, the Strat for its bright crisp bell-like tones, and the Les Paul for its rich warm sustain. But they both have the power to rock. Oh yeah, they do, baby. It's the Fender Stratocaster, though, that's still the best-selling electric guitar of all time. We repeat, the Fender Strat is the best seller

of any electric guitar in history. It was good enough for Buddy Holly, The Beatles, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and Wayne. Yetis, odds are, if you're enjoying a riff right now, that riff is on a Fender strap. So Nick, now that you've heard the story of the Stratocaster and the Les Paul guitar, what's your takeaway? Jack, here's my takeaway.

I'll take the stage. Building a product is like building a great rock band. In a band, each member has a specific part to play, guitar, drums, vocals, to create a singular collaborative sound to rock audiences everywhere. The team that built the electric guitar prototypes that led to the Stratocaster, each of them filled different roles as well.

Les Paul was the visionary. Bigsby was the craftsman. Leo Fender was the perfectionist who could get into the technical details and mass produce something with mass appeal. Each member has a core focus. Everyone has got an instrument to play. But Jack, what about you? What's your takeaway on the Fender Stratocaster? If you want to understand how successful product development works, look at Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac's first number one album,

it wasn't their first album, or the second, or the third, or fourth, or fifth. Which one was it, Jack? It was their 10th album, eight years after they had formed. And who knows how many bandmates had come and gone. Oh yeah, they cycled through a lot. Similarly, it was a late version of Leo Fender's guitar that finally made it big.

Yeah, because making a product with a cult following, it's just all about iteration and iteration and patience and iteration. Like sometimes it just takes eight years and ten albums before Fleetwood Mac becomes Fleetwood Mac. We gave Leo Fender a bit of a hard time for his tinkering in this episode. We did. But if you want to be great, you gotta iterate. And Leo Fender did both, like a landslide, Jack. OK, before we go, and Nick quotes Fleetwood Mac anymore, it's time for my absolute favorite part of the show, the best facts yet. That's right.

We're never going back again. All right, that's my last one, Jack. That's my last, last one. Don't stop. The best facts yet. All the best tidbits and factoids we couldn't fit into the story, but we also couldn't leave you without.

Remember when Jimi Hendrix upstaged everyone at 1967's Monterey International Pop Music Festival by setting that hand-painted strat on fire? That burned guitar? It fetched more than $380,000 at an auction back in 2012. And yes, you heard that right. A piece of charred guitar that doesn't work anymore is worth nearly half a million bucks.

Offender Stratocaster, signed by 19 artists, including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Dave Gilmore of Pink Floyd, sold for $2.7 million at auction to benefit victims of the 2005 Indian Ocean Tsunami. It's the most expensive guitar of all time. Oh, and finally, Jack, when the Rolling Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Keith Richards gave Fender a huge shout out saying this,

Thank God for Leo Fender, who makes these instruments for us to play. And that, my friends, is why the Fender Stratocaster is the best idea yet. And Jack, I just got the tuner, it was me. I've been sharp the whole episode. Coming up next on the best idea yet, it's the adrenaline pumping story of the drink that gives you wings.

That's right, we're telling the untold origin story of the energy drink with the biggest cult following, Red Bull. Follow the best idea yet on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of the best idea yet early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Well, by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. The best idea yet is a production of Wondery hosted by me, Nick Martell, and me, Jack Kraviche Kramer.

Hey, if you have a product you're obsessed with, but you wish you knew the backstory, drop us a comment. We'll look into it for you. Oh, and don't forget to rate and review the podcast. Five stars, that helps grow the show. Our senior producers are Matt Beagle and Chris Gaultier. Peter Arcuni is our additional senior producer. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan and Taylor Sniffin is our managing producer. Our associate producer and researcher is H. Conley. This episode was written and produced by Adam Skewes. We use many sources

in our research, including The Birth of Loud, Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the guitar pioneering rivalry that shaped rock and roll by Ian S. Port. Stratocaster recordings were performed by Andreas Landick at The Keep Recording. Sound design and mixing by Kelly Kramaric. Fact checking by Erika Janek. Music supervision by Scott the Lazquez and Jolina Garcia for Freesan Sync. Our theme song is Got That Feeling Again by Black Alack. Executive producers for Nick and Jack Studios are me, Nick Martel, and me, Jack Ravicci-Cramer. Executive producers for Wondry are Dave Easton, Jenny Lauer- Beckman, Aaron O'Flaherty, and Marshall Lewy.