“I don’t want a guitar that, the moment I play it, sounds like the blues. Sometimes I want a guitar to sound truly horrendous!” For IDLES’ Lee Kiernan, modding guitars is a gateway to sonic chaos – and Fenders make the perfect platforms

Lee Kiernan poses with a Fender Player II Mod Stratocaster.

Lee Kiernan is a real nice guy, but you should think twice before lending him your electric guitar. Chaos is a guiding principle when he’s on stage with IDLES. Plus, he admits he’s occasionally dabbled in misadventures with a soldering iron. It’s amaing his pink Mustang is still standing.

“I broke it, fixed it, broke it, fixed it so many times; changed things so many times,” he says. “I created my own weird wiring inside and it broke again. I took it to our tech Gavin Maxwell and he had to reinstall wires I’d put in for no reason to make it work again – we still don’t know why!”