A White Icon That Defined a Guitar Legend: How John McLaughlin’s Gift Became Jeff Beck’s Most Mythical Strat

“When we lost Jeff, his wife wrote to me and said, ‘I’m going to sell the guitars. They’re all around me, and they keep reminding me of him’”

John McLaughlin has shared a deeply personal story behind one of the most famous guitars in rock history — a white Fender Strat that he gifted to Jeff Beck in the mid-1970s. That single instrument would go on to define a crucial chapter of Beck’s career and cement its place in guitar folklore.

In a recent MusicRadar interview, McLaughlin reflected on his philosophy toward guitars and recalled the moment he handed Beck a vintage white Strat after touring together in 1974 or 1975.

“I gave Jeff a white 1967 Fender Strat after a tour we did together,” McLaughlin explains. “And when Jeff passed away, his wife wrote to me and said, ‘I’m going to sell the guitars. They’re everywhere, and they constantly remind me of him.’”

That guitar quickly became one of Beck’s most treasured instruments. He relied on it extensively during his 1975 tour and later brought it into the studio to record Wired, one of the most influential albums of his career. The guitar’s importance was sealed when it appeared on the album’s cover, visually and sonically defining that era of Beck’s sound.

However, the story surrounding the Wired Strat is far from straightforward. In 2023, more than 130 of Jeff Beck’s guitars, amplifiers, and pieces of gear went to auction, with the collection fetching an astonishing $10.7 million in total. Several Fender Stratocaster models appeared among the lots, and McLaughlin insists he saw the very guitar he had once given Beck.

Christie’s research team, however, offered a different account, stating that the original Wired Strat was stolen sometime in the 1970s and later replaced by another white Strat, which was the one officially listed in the auction catalog.

Adding another layer of mystery, archival footage from a Jeff Beck documentary filmed years later shows Beck holding a white Strat that he identifies as the Wired guitar, recounting how McLaughlin originally gave it to him.

Beck recalls the moment with humor:

“Bless his heart — John kept coming up to me on tour with a new guitar saying, ‘Try this, try that.’ After six weeks, he brought in this Strat and I said, ‘Piss off, I don’t want to try any more of your guitars.’
He said, ‘Do you like it?’ I said, ‘Of course I like it.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s yours.’ It’s one of my prized possessions. Ironically, I hardly play it because I don’t want it nicked. That was the guitar on Wired.”

Despite the conflicting accounts, McLaughlin maintains that he saw the guitar during the auction preview when he attended the sale in London.

“I went to the auction,” he says. “There were guitars, amps, preamps, pedalboards — and two white Strat guitars. I don’t know which one was mine, but I definitely saw it there.”

Interestingly, McLaughlin’s official website suggests that a vintage 1960s Strat he gave Beck was indeed stolen. Given that Beck owned several white Strat guitars over the years, misidentification is entirely possible — and perhaps inevitable. Still, it only adds to the legend.

Those early experiences with white Strat guitars eventually came full circle when Beck later collaborated with Fender on his own signature models, along with numerous Custom Shop instruments.

McLaughlin ultimately chose not to repurchase either guitar. The Strat believed to be the Wired replacement sold for a substantial $441,000.

“I’m not a collector,” McLaughlin concludes. “I get guitars, but I give them away. Guitars are like people — if you don’t play them, they get sick.
Instruments are a marriage between heaven and hell. They’re made on Earth, but what comes out of them is made in heaven.”

Jeff Beck owned many remarkable instruments throughout his career, including rare prototypes. Yet the white Fender Strat remains one of the most enigmatic and influential guitars ever to shape a player’s legacy.