Fender Stratocaster (Olympic White)

Photo: Jill Furmanovsky
Model: Fender Stratocaster
Color: Olympic White
Year: 1963

For informational and non-commercial use only. Please do NOT publish this content elsewhere.
If you share or use this information, please provide proper credit and link to the website.
I appreciate your respect for the years of dedicated, freely available research! Thanks.

Used in...

- 1998-2012?

- used during the recording sessions of the album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants

- probably used during various recording sessions until the early High Flying Birds era
Details

The first mention of this white Strat surfaced in 2000, when Noel spoke about recording tracks for Standing on the Shoulder of Giants:1

"Paul used an Ibanez Flying V for his solo on Roll It Over, and it worked better for that song than my '63 Strat or any of my expensive vintage guitars. That track just needed something a bit horrible."

In another 2000 interview with Guitar Player, he again mentioned using a "Fender Strat" during the recordings.2

Until July 2025, no photo of Noel actually playing the guitar had ever surfaced. A preview from Jill Furmanovsky's upcoming Oasis book finally revealed the mysterious white Strat in all its glory: it is an unpublished shot from the May 1999 sessions at Chateau de La Colle Noire in southern France.3

Noel loved this guitar, but he never played it live, as he revealed in a 2009 interview:4

"Yeah, I've got a really nice white 1963 Strat, which is fucking amazing. It sounds like the end of the world, that guitar. Live, I don't know. I put them on and they don’t feel comfortable. [...] I don’t know. I put one on and I don't feel as manly!"
Photo credit: unknown
The only other known photo of the 1963 white Strat dates from the early 2000s, showing it in the rack at Wheeler End Studios (seen above)

Unfortunately, sometime around 2012, the guitar was stolen. Noel himself confirmed it in a 2015 interview:5

"I had a very expensive 1963 off-white Strat stolen from me about three years ago. It was the best Strat I'd ever played. And I thought, I'm not fucking spending that much money to replace it, so I bought a Nash copy of it."

He actually bought at least two white Nashguitars S63 models: the first identifiable by its Adidas Spezial sticker, and the second by a "Lone Star" sticker.

DISCLAIMER
This is a fansite. It is not affiliated with Noel Gallagher, his management or his record label.
For informational and non-commercial use only. Please do NOT publish this content elsewhere.
If you share or use this information, please provide proper credit and link to the website.
I appreciate your respect for the years of dedicated, freely available research!
Visit the “Info & About” page for contact details and more.

go back to the main guitars
GO BACK TO THE COMPLETE lIST
  1. This extract comes from an unknown article that was rediscovered and shared by davidjay on the Live4Ever forum back in 2015. Check out Oasis Recording Info. ↩︎
  2. GuitarPlayer.com, 2000 ↩︎
  3. https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/oasis-trying-to-find-a-way-out-of-nowhere-hardcover ↩︎
  4. https://www.guitarworld.com/features/oasis-rubber-soul ↩︎
  5. https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/dear-guitar-hero-noel-gallagher-discusses-chasing-yesterday-state-rock-and-possibility-oasis-reunion ↩︎

Leave a comment