Fender recently spoke with Eric Johnson about his latest album Up Close. There’s not a whole lot of new content, but he does give this tidbit about how he first got interested in the guitar:
“I remember going out to dinner with my folks when I was 10 years old, and there was this band in the corner of a restaurant and the guy was playing a white Fender Jaguar, and I just freaked out because that was just so rare to see,” Johnson shared. “I was totally coming unglued. This was, like, 1966, and he’s got this groovy Fender Jaguar. Nowadays, nobody would turn their head because everybody has seen a guitar. It’s in almost every home in the world. But at the time there was such a mystique and romance to the electric guitar. Clapton came out and then the Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and then Jimi Hendrix, and there was an endless display of unique guitar sounds. And then to see this cool-looking guitar as a kid, it was just really dramatic and so that really inspired me to want to be a guitarist and do it for my life.”