“I don’t like the way they look or sound. I have no fondness for them at all”: Jake E. Lee hates Telecasters… but there was one which changed his mind
Buyer’s remorse is a familiar tale for many guitarists, but Jake E Lee knows the opposite: the regret of passing on a guitar that just felt right. The former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist recently shared the story of a Telecaster he once let slip – and how he still thinks about it decades on.
In a new interview with Guitarist, Lee recounts his strongest case of buyer’s remorse: “About 20 years ago, I was in a local guitar shop, looking to see what they had, and there was nothing new but this ‘67 Telecaster. And I don’t like Telecasters. I don’t like the way they sound. I don’t like the way they look. I have no fondness for Telecasters at all. But I picked this one up anyway and it felt really good, so I plugged it in. It sounded really good and I had a connection with it.”
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Despite the instant spark, Lee hesitated.
“But I put it back down and said, ‘I don’t really like Teles… I don’t even know why I picked it up,’” he says. “Two days later, I went back in there because I couldn’t quit thinking about it and it just felt right, but they’d sold it already. So that’s a different kind of buyer’s remorse, right? Maybe we’d call that no-buyer’s remorse [laughs]. I still think about that Tele every once in a while… there was just a connection there. I really wish I’d bought it.”
Lee’s regrets aren’t limited to Telecasters. Over the years, there’s been a long list of guitars he wishes he’d held on to.
“How long have you got?! I had a ’56 Les Paul Junior and a ’67 ES-335 that I wish I’d held on to. I wish I still had my original SG that I sold in the 90s, too. The list is too long and too sad,” he says.
Elsewhere, Lee also shares some sage advice for guitarists searching for that elusive “ultimate” instrument. His tip is simple, but it comes from decades of trial, error, and hard-earned lessons.
“Play it, don’t just hope for the best,” Lee says. “With older guitars, there are some that are really special and some that are just okay – you have to play those first. But I’ve bought new guitars online, like an Eastwood Messenger like [the Musicraft model] Mark Farner used to play with Grand Funk Railroad. If it’s a new guitar, the quality is gonna be pretty standard.”
Returning to the Telecaster story, the guitarist sums up why hands-on experience matters: “Going back to that Tele I mentioned before, I never would have thought about buying that guitar – and I should have bought that guitar – if I hadn’t tried it. That’s why you need to try a guitar. Sometimes you get a connection where you just feel it, like it’s the right one. And sometimes you’ll pick up a guitar that you’re sure will be the right one and it’s not there.”
The post “I don’t like the way they look or sound. I have no fondness for them at all”: Jake E. Lee hates Telecasters… but there was one which changed his mind appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
