John McLaughlin has opened up on his guitar-collecting habits, and remembered the time he gifted Jeff Beck a vintage Fender Stratocaster that would end up starring on one of the late guitar great’s seminal records.
“I gave a 1967 white [Fender] Strat to Jeff Beck after a tour we did together in 1974, or ’75,” McLaughlin says in a new MusicRadar interview. “And when we lost Jeff, his wife wrote to me and said, ‘I’m going to sell the guitars. They’re all around me, and they keep reminding me of him.’
The guitar itself was especially cherished by Beck, who not only used it on tour in 1975, but took it into the studio to record the Wired album. It also ended up on the record’s cover art.
Intriguingly, the tale surrounding the Wired Strat is a little hazy. Last year, over 130 of Jeff Beck’s electric guitars, tube amps, and other ‘tools of the trade’ went under the hammer, with the entire collection eventually selling at auction for an astounding $10.7 million.
There were a number of Fender Stratocasters in the mix, and McLaughlin insists he saw the one that he gifted Beck in amongst them.
However, according to Christie’s research team, that particular Wired Strat was stolen in the 1970s and was replaced with another white Stratocaster, which actually did end up in the auction catalog.
However, a video clip from a Jeff Beck documentary filmed at a much later date shows Beck with what he reveals to be the Wired Strat, telling the story of how he was first gifted it by McLaughlin.
Speaking of the gift in the archive clip, Beck once said, “Bless his [McLaughlin’s] heart, he just kept coming up to me on tour with a new acquisition and he'd say, ‘Try this, try that.’ After six weeks of this, he brought in this Stratocaster and I said, ‘Piss off, I don’t want to try any more of your guitars.’
“He said, ‘Do you like it?’ I said, ‘Of course I like it.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s yours.’ It’s one of my prized possessions, right here, this Stratocaster. Ironically, I don’t play it because I don’t want it to get nicked. That was on Wired album.”
Regardless, McLaughlin says he saw the Strat he gifted to Beck during the 1975 tour, when he went to visit the auction lot and attend the sale.
“I went to the sale in London,” he remembers. “They had all these instruments, along with amps, pre-amps, and pedalboards. But there were two white Strats! I don’t know which of them I gave him, but anyway, I saw it there!”
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In yet another twist, McLaughlin’s official website seemingly confirms that a 1960s vintage Strat that he had given to Beck had indeed been stolen. Of course, Beck owned plenty of white Strats in his time and there were a fair few in the wider lot, so a simple case of misidentification could be at play here. Still, it all makes for a rather interesting story.
Not only that, these early experiences Beck had with white Stratocasters would come full circle when he ended up working with Fender on a signature model, as well as plenty of Custom Shop examples over the years.
Whatever the case, McLaughlin didn’t end up buying back either of the white Stratocasters he saw – with the vintage Strat purporting to be the Wired replacement selling for a cool $441,000.
“I’m not a collector,” McLaughlin says of his guitar-collecting habits. “I get guitars, but I give them away. “Guitars are like human beings – if you don’t play them, they get sick. They really need to be played.
“Instruments are like a marriage between heaven and hell. They’re made on Earth, but the stuff that comes out of them is made in heaven. They’re wonderful in that way.”
Jeff Beck had some intriguing guitars in his collection over the years, perhaps none more so than the prototype Ibanez signature that resurfaced a few years ago.
