March 25, 2012
The Zappa / Hendrix Stratocaster
There is no proof Jimi Hendrix ever burned a guitar at the 1968 Miami Pop festival. What’s been established is that Frank Zappa was given a burned strat by Hendrix’s roadie during the Miami concert. Zappa kept the torched guitar as a wall decoration for years before having it restored. He used it in 1976 on “Zoot Allures”, but as he recalls: “I haven’t played it all that often, because unless you’re in the right environment and you’re standing in exactly the right relationship to the amplifier, it likes to feed back all the time.”
The Zappa/Hendrix strat disappeared for a time during the eighties. Dweezil Zappa, Frank’s son, eventually found it in pieces under the staircase at home and decided to put it back together. After two failed attempts to be sold at auction (the iconic guitar never reached the astronomical asking price of $1 Million), Dweezil kept updating the axe. Hear him talk about the restoration in more details.
