FIRST PLAY
Neville Marten on the first time Gary passed him the Red Strat – and why its neck profile remains its most stunning feature
“The first time I saw this guitar was in a hotel room in London with Gary and Graham [Lilley]”, recalls Guitar Techniques editor and
Guitarist contributor Neville Marten, who interviewed and jammed with Gary many times over the years and came to know him quite well.“One funny detail was that I turned up and Gary was wearing a denim shirt. I walked in and he said,‘Fucking hell, Neville. I put a denim shirt on especially, because you always wear denim.’ Instead, I was wearing some poncy white shirt with black spots on it, which spoiled his joke – he liked to take the piss out of me, although always in a good-humoured way. By coincidence, I got up this morning and, without thinking about it, put a denim shirt on to come here and play Gary’s Strat again, so that’s fitting in a way!
“Anyway, going back to the day I first encountered this guitar, Gary was sitting on the sofa with the Strat and he said,‘Do you want to play it?’, which of course I did and he passed it to me. I put my hand around the neck and it instantly struck me then, as it always has since, that it was the best Strat neck I have ever held in my hands. I always think about that when I imagine the perfect Strat – because it had that seemingly wide-ish nut. With some guitars you seem to have acres of room on the fretboard and with others your fingers seemed more cramped. It could be to the tune of half a millimetre or what have you, but it seems to make all the difference. People talk about the [slender] ’63-shaped neck... I think Gary’s Strat is getting towards that, but it might even be shallower, plus it’s had 40-odd years of wear and tear on it [In fact, when building the replica, the Fender Master Builder John Cruz found that the original radius had tangibly flattened off due to playing-wear – Ed]. I was also struck by the fact that Gary’s ’61 Strat had a very, very dark rosewood ’board. But they all did in those days, didn’t they?”