Originally posted by
Aragorn
They also played and produced most of the hits of Sister Sledge, they produced one of Diana Ross' albums ─ from which the song below is only one excerpt that made it into the charts ─ as well as that they've also worked with other musicians and in a couple of French and Italian projects over the years.
When I was a teenager ─ which is when most of those songs came out ─ I so wanted a transparent Stratocaster. I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. :)
It was only still fairly recently that I discovered that the acrylic Strat Nile Rodgers plays in those videos isn't actually a Fender but a Music Man. He still owns that guitar, by the way, but it was not the guitar he used in the studio. Most of the Chic stuff was played on a pre-owned late 1960s Fender Stratocaster, and he uses a couple more recent Strats for touring.
Music Man was the company Leo Fender started after he sold the Fender Guitar Company to CBS (in 1964). The reason why Leo sold the company to CBS was that he thought he was dying, but then later, a doctor managed to heal him from the dangerous infection he had, and now fresh out of his own company, he started Music Man with a few ex-Fender associates. However, they ran into financial difficulties, and Music Man was then sold to the renowned string-making company Ernie Ball. Soon, some interpersonal conflicts started surfacing within Ernie Ball Music Man, and Leo started moonlighting by making guitars with his friend George Fullerton under the brand G&L, where he would eventually stay on until he passed away in the early 1990s.
Both Ernie Ball Music Man and G&L are still making and selling guitars to this very day. Ernie Ball Music Man ─ currently run by Sterling Ball, one of Ernie's sons ─ has some very notable artists endorsing them, among whom Steve Lukather, Steve Morse and Albert Lee. G&L guitars on the other hand are touted by many professionals as the very finest of all of Leo Fender's creations.