Bruce Springsteen's Fender Esquire

Yesterday, the L.A. Times published a tongue-in-cheek Bruce Springsteen Tele?letter that Bruce Springsteen had sent to the newspaper about ten years ago. The letter was typed in response to their request to interview him for a feature celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster.Surprisingly, the guitar?brucespringsteentele.com? he plays remains something of a mystery. Immortalized on the cover of the Born To Run album, the question persists: Is the guitar a true Fender Esquire, or something else altogether? Experts have analyzed the instrument as if it were the Shroud of Turin. “I would like to be a part of your story on the Bruce Springsteen Tele sale?Fender Stratocaster,” he wrote in a letter dated June 2, 2004. “But, alas, I cannot.” While noting that “The Stratocaster is a great an iconic instrument,” he points out that, for the most part, “There are two kinds of people in this world, those that play Stratocasters and those that play Telecasters.”“And the twain rarely meet.”