Throughout her decades-spanning career, trailblazer Chrissie Hynde has become as inextricably linked to her Ice Blue Telecaster as her ability for laser-focused songwriting. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that when Fender approached her to craft her own signature guitar, her trusty companion would serve as the blueprint.
“I got it in the early days, somewhere in New York City, Manny’s or one of those places – I can’t even remember who I was with, maybe Jimmy (Honeyman-Scott, one of the Pretenders’ founding members), I don’t know,” she reminisces in the latest issue of Guitarist.
“The guy had two Teles and I wanted to get one. One was a blue one and one had the original finish. Because I come from a punk mentality – and I really do have it – I don’t like collectors’ items and all that.
“So the guy in the shop said, ‘Well, this one has the original finish, the white one, so it’s going to be worth more.’ I said, ‘Give me the blue one.’ So that’s where I first got my blue one.”
Fast-forward to 2021, and Hynde finally got her (long overdue) signature guitar with Fender – and while she initially tried to design a completely different guitar, she couldn’t help but gravitate towards her road-worn guitar.
“I did all these sketches and I’d be thinking, ‘I wonder if I want a black one, I wonder if I want this. Maybe I can have that,’” she explains.
“But in the end, I thought, ‘I don’t even fucking want a guitar. I like my guitar.’ So I said, ‘If you want to make me a signature guitar, just copy the one I’ve got. There you go. That’s it.’”
And it turns out that having a signature guitar you can buy off the shelf is pretty handy, especially if you’re stuck in a random city without your go-to guitar – an experience Hynde had firsthand.
“I was in Paris and I walked by a guitar shop,” she relates. “I was staying in Paris at the time. I didn’t have a guitar because I won’t carry anything. Anyway, I walked by this shop and at the back of the shop, I saw the Chrissie Hynde signature guitar.
“I thought, ‘Fucking hell, there’s my guitar. Great.’ So I walked in and I said, ‘Can I get that guitar, the one at the end there?’ The guy said, ‘Yeah,’ put it in the case and gave it to me. I went to pay for it and I gave my credit card. He looked at the name on the credit card and then he looked up at me (laughs). He said, ‘Oh, can I have a selfie with you?’”
Hydne’s tongue-in-cheek response? “‘Yeah, if you carry the guitar across the street’ (laughs) and he did.”
For more from Chrissie Hynde, plus new interviews with Andy Summers and Billy Corgan pick up issue 523 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.
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