“I walked in and said, ‘Can I get that guitar, the one at the end there?’ He looked at the name on the credit card and then looked up at me”: Chrissie Hynde on that one time she bought her own signature guitar off the shelf

Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders performs onstage at the 2023 Ohana Festival held at Doheny State Beach on October 1, 2023 in Dana Point, California.

Throughout her decades-spanning career, trailblazer Chrissie Hynde has become as inextricably linked to her Ice Blue Telecaster as her ability for laser-focused songwriting. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that when Fender approached her to craft her own signature guitar, her trusty companion would serve as the blueprint.

“I got it in the early days, somewhere in New York City, Manny’s or one of those places – I can’t even remember who I was with, maybe Jimmy [Honeyman-Scott, one of the Pretenders' founding members], I don’t know,” she reminisces in the latest issue of Guitarist.