Member-only story

That Time a TV Company Bought a Guitar Company and Things Didn’t End Well

Jon Clemence
3 min readApr 29, 2022

--

For guitar aficionados, 1965 is an important year.

Specifically, January 5, 1965, marks the fateful day when Leo Fender sold his guitar company to, of all people…CBS?

A pre-CBS Fender headstock.
A pre-CBS Fender headstock (Photo by irish10567 from Little Falls, NJ, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Yep, the Columbia Broadcasting System. The same people who brought us such hits as Survivor and NCIS bought a guitar company because…well, why would a TV company want to make musical instruments, anyway?

Leo Fender thought he was dying

Leo Fender was a sick man. At least that’s what he told himself. In the 1950s, he went to the doctor due to ongoing health concerns and was diagnosed with a streptococcal sinus infection. The effects of his illness lingered on for years and were so bad, it seems, that by 1964 Leo thought the end was near.* He decided to get his affairs in order, which meant selling Fender.

He first went to his business partner, Donald Randall, and offered him a deal to buy the company for a cool $1.5 million. Randall didn’t have that kind of money, but he told Leo that he would attempt to find a buyer.

Randall eventually found CBS and they became interested in buying the company. Leo agreed to sell Fender for $13 million (that’s $118 million in 2022 dollars), and the contract was signed just…

--

--

Jon Clemence
Jon Clemence

Written by Jon Clemence

Medium needs more guitar-related content. I. Am. That. Hero!

No responses yet