50 years of Fender recounts the legend of the world’s leading guitar maker through a long and glorious history that began in 1946 when Leo Fender (“the Henry Ford of guitars”) literally revolutionised the way of making music in all genres, from rock’n’roll to country, from jazz to R&B. With flowing graphic design rich in images the book brings together legendary guitars such as the Telecaster and Stratocaster and basses such as the Precision. The advent of the historic Stratocaster, for example, led to the birth of new bands and the beginning of an actual revolution in the field of popular music, with the classic rock formations.
The book covers five decades, from the 50’s to the 90’s, dealing year by year with all the models produced by Fender, together with the personalities who played them and the most revolutionary musical phenomena. Setting out from the curious multi-neck steel guitar of the early 50’s and the models accessible to “beginners”, the book documents the rock explosion of the 60’s: the years of the “flower children”, of Jimi Hendrix in America and the Beatles in Europe, arriving at the 80’s and 90’s by way of legendary guitarists such as Eric Clapton, the Edge and Kurt Cobain. An appendix gives a complete chronological list of every Fender produced.