“Seymour Duncan went to work. He dragged it through the grass. Put motor oil on it. Chipped it. Frank Zappa said, ‘If you wanted to ruin your guitar, Adrian, why didn’t you loan it to a friend?’” Adrian Belew’s number one Stratocaster has lived a life

A B/W image of Adrian Belew with his number one Strat, circa 1981.

As the Fender Stratocaster celebrates its 70th anniversary as one of, or surely the world’s most successful electric guitar design of all time, Guitar World has been leafing through the cover archive, in which, unsurprisingly, there are a lot of iconic Strats and their owners.

We thought we would give those owners a call to see what those Strats are up to now, and to find out more about what made this guitars special.