The most successful individual instruments in music
“If something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” – Nile Rodgers
When the musician Tom Waits was starring in the Martin McDonagh film Seven Psychopaths, he witnessed the prop department present Colin Farrell with an array of pens to choose from for his character. At that moment, Waits peered over his shoulder and said, “Be careful. Each one of those pens, it’s already got a story in it. Each pen, some of them are short stories, some of them are novels, some of them are poems. Be careful.”
While Farrell’s appraisal that it turns the mundane into magic may be true when it comes to instruments, the ink well is a little larger, and some of them have a huge array of hits. For instance, a single guitar and a piano have both individually been responsible for a huge swathe of pop.
Firstly, the single piano has had a seismic impact on music. In fact, it is perhaps the most hallowed instrument in pop. It is a handmade Bechstein concert piano that is now over 100 years old, and it sits in a sepia tones corner of Trident Studio in London’s famous Soho district. A heavy door hushes the buzzing streets outside, and a different boom unfurls therein.
This very same Bechstein was used when The Beatles recorded ‘Hey Jude’, when Queen recorded ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Killer Queen’, and when Elton John played ‘Your Song’. It’s also been used for songwriting by everyone from Carly Simon to David Bowie. Despite this, when the old beauty, which has resulted in millions of sales, went up for auction itself in 2001, it failed to flog. Perhaps it just has a few more hits still left in it.
Secondly, the guitar: Nile Rodgers is a giant of music, and he has achieved much of that on one very particular 1960 custom model, the Fender Stratocaster. The ‘Hitmaker’ is perhaps the most significant single guitar in the history of pop, and you may well have had no idea that you’d heard it before.
The list of tracks that the Hitmaker has blessed is simply stupendous. Rodgers and his trusty white disco axe have mystically concocted hits for David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Michael Jackson and more. In fact, it is believed that the Hitmaker has played out a musical value of around $2billion. Not bad for a beat-up old secondhand guitar! Perhaps there really is something to this Excalibur hoodoo of man and beast entwined in a six-string marriage woven by some mystic figures of musical fate.
You can check out the full list of hits that the aptly named hitmaker has played on below.
The Hitmaker’s greatest hits:
- ‘We Are Family’ by Sister Sledge
- ‘Like a Virgin’ by Madonna
- ‘Get Lucky’ by Daft Punk
- ‘Le Freak’ by Chic
- ‘Let’s Dance’ by David Bowie
- ‘I’m Coming Out’ by Diana Ross
- ‘Notorious’ by Duran Duran
A collection of the albums:
- Chic and C’est Chic by Chic
- We Are Family by Sister Sledge
- Diana by Diana Ross
- KooKoo by Debbie Harry
- Original Sin by INXS
- Let’s Dance by David Bowie
- The Reflex, The Wild Boys and Notorious by Duran Duran
- Like a Virgin by Madonna
- The Honeydrippers: Volume One by Robert Plant
- Flash by Jeff Beck
- Here’s to Future Days by Thompson Twins
- She’s the Boss by Mick Jagger
- L is for Lover by Al Jarreau
- Back in the High Life by Steve Winwood
- Cosmic Thing by B-52’s
- Family Style by The Vaughan Brothers
- Money by Michael Jackson
