“I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat. I had no idea if I’d ever see him again”: Rammstein’s Richard ZK recalls the high-stakes coffee shop handoff that got him his first Fender
Rammstein’s Richard Kruspe — aka Richard ZK — has looked back on the high-stakes coffee shop exchange that landed him his first Fender guitar.
Growing up in East Germany during the Cold War, access to instruments made in the more affluent West Germany was extremely limited. And with the Berlin Wall dividing the country’s capital, Kruspe had to get creative in order to get his hands on a Fender Stratocaster.
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“There obviously was a shortage of good guitars,” Kruspe says in a new interview with Guitar World. “I had one crappy thing made by Diamant. My wish at that time, because I was listening to a lot of [Jimi] Hendrix, was to own a Fender Stratocaster. In my heart, that’s the one I felt I needed to have. But we couldn’t get them in East Germany.”
The guitarist, who was selling jewelry in the markets at the time, eventually found someone that could help him make the purchase.
“[I] ended up exchanging 12,000 East Marks into 1,200 West Marks,” Kruspe recalls. “I met a guy in a coffee shop who traveled between the East and West. I didn’t know him or trust him. But I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat next time he was over. I had no idea if I would ever see him again.”
Weeks passed, then months.
“Three months went by and there was nothing,” Kruspe remembers. “I was thinking I’d been really stupid, of course, he was going to take the money for himself. Then just before Christmas, there was a guitar bag in front of my door with a black Stratocaster inside.”
Unfortunately, while the axe fulfilled a long-held dream, it didn’t quite live up to his musical expectations.
“My expectations of the Fender were so high because it was a serious guitar with proper pickups,” says Kruspe. “I thought it would help me play all the things I wanted to play… which led to frustration. I was used to playing humbuckers on that crappy Diamant guitar. The single-coils didn’t sound right, I was wondering what the fuck they were. I learned from that lesson and later sold the guitar.”
Earlier this year, Richard ZK unveiled his new ESP signature guitar, the RZK-III, featuring the guitarist’s very own signature Fishman Fluence humbuckers designed to capture his iconic Rammstein tones.
The post “I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat. I had no idea if I’d ever see him again”: Rammstein’s Richard ZK recalls the high-stakes coffee shop handoff that got him his first Fender appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
