St. Vincent: a gift changed her tone

The singer and guitarist St. Vincent was a guest on the Broken Records podcast and revealed that Mike McCreadyguitarist of Pearl Jamgave her one of his guitars.

“Mike McCready, who is a friend and a lovely human being, gave me one of his signature Strats,” he said during the chat, referring to a Fender Stratocaster, and admitted he had never played with that model before. . “I’ve never played a Strat before, not because I don’t like them, they’re fantastic. I’ve never played one because every time I pick one up, I play Jimi Hendrix badly.”

“That guitar – he continued Anne Erin Clark – has so much history that I don’t know how to approach it. But Mike gave me one and it was great. And I understood why people love Stratocasters. So I played it in ‘All Born Screaming‘. Even in ‘Broken Man‘, there is one,” he added.

In another interview with the technical magazine Guitar talking about his album “All Born Screaming”, his seventh studio work released last April, St. Vincent he had already explained the reasons for his decision to use that model for the sound of the record. “I would never have done it if Mike hadn’t given me the guitar,” he admitted during the chat.

The rocker also said she had always avoided Leo Fender’s most famous electric guitar because playing it carried the “cultural baggage” linked to artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

“They are some of the greatest guitarists of all time, of course, but Stratocasters have their own history,” he said. “And a lot of people try to sound like Jimi Hendrix and they suck,” he added.