The founder of Fender didn’t know how to play guitar.

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Fender Stratocaster

Just because Leo Fender founded one of the most famous guitar companies in the world doesn’t mean he could play the instrument himself. His own musical ability didn’t extend beyond a few piano lessons and a little bit of saxophone; according to some, he couldn’t even tune a guitar. His prowess for creating instruments was rooted in a passion for electronics, and he opened a radio repair store in 1938 when he was 29 years old. Eight years later, Fender Manufacturing (later the Fender Electric Instrument Co.) was born, though it seems that building guitars never inspired the founder to pick one up and play the first few notes of “Stairway to Heaven.”

Described as “a strange man in a way” by business partner Dan Randall, Fender had “a fetish for machinery,” as Randall put it. It was clearly successful: The Stratocaster, introduced in 1954, has sold millions of units and been played by such legendary guitarists as Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, Eddie Van Halen, George Harrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Kurt Cobain, just to name a few. It remains practically synonymous with the electric guitar — even though its namesake couldn’t play.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

The guitar solo in “Stairway to Heaven” was improvised.

Jimmy Page’s 50-second display of pure virtuosity during Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” has been voted the best guitar solo of all time, a bravura composition courtesy of his 1959 Fender Telecaster — only it was hardly composed at all. “The solo sounds constructed — and it is, sort of, but purely of the moment,” Page told Rolling Stone in 2008. “For me, a solo is something where you just fly, but within the context of the song.” He recorded three takes of the solo, all three of which were different from one another, and chose the one he liked the most for the album.