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Post subject: A Review of Forrest White's "Fender - The Inside Story"
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 11:19 am
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Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:14 pm
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A Review Of The Fender Inside Story

This is a rambling personal account as told by Forrest White the general manager for Fender Electric Instrument Company and Leo Fender’s right hand man from May 20th, 1954 until Monday evening January 4th, 1965, when Forrest let Leo out the side gate for the very last time. After the C.B.S. acquisition, Forrest continued to work until he resigned on December 6th, 1966.

This book has every appearance of having been dictated into a recording device, and typed up later. Forrest rambles and time travels at will. No editor is listed and boy does it need editing! One quickly finds out that Forrest is a very petty man that harbors a grudge for any perceived slight no matter how small; real, or imagined. It gets annoying as he grinds some axes. It’s interesting that the date of copyright is 1994 the very same year Forrest died aged 74. I’m not sure if this book was published just before or just after he died, and as far as I know there has only been one edition. I don’t guess it really matters very much. The book itself is of very poor quality of both paper and print.

Two things are for sure: 1) Forrest idolized Leo Fender and would do anything for him, and 2) Nobody thought more highly of Forrest White than Forrest himself. The best example is Chapter 7 “The Fender Precision Bass” starts on page 51. In the first paragraph on page 54 Forrest states “I personally think this was Leo’s greatest overall contribution to music, and I believe he, too, thought it was his greatest accomplishment.” OK enough about Leo Fender’s greatest accomplishment, Forrest takes off talking about his favorite subject – Forrest White – for the rest of the chapter or seven more pages. So three pages on Leo’s greatest invention (one of which is a patent drawing) and seven about himself. This type of thing goes on throughout the whole book.

This book does offer a lot of personal inside stories and some insight into Leo Fender the man as well as Fender the company. Only the true Fender fanatic will want this book. For an excellently written and thoroughly researched history of Fender with great photos, read Richard R. Smith’s “Fender – The Sound Heard ‘Round The World”.


Last edited by linnin on Sun Jul 05, 2015 4:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: A Review of Forrest White's "Fender - The Inside Story"
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 9:22 pm
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Joined: Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:08 pm
Posts: 1307
Thanks. Interesting review.


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