When Brad Paisley partnered with Fender last year to resurrect one of the company’s most notorious Telecaster finishes, the project was about more than a clever play on his surname. It represented the culmination of a decades-long fascination with one of Fender’s strangest and most short-lived creations.
The Paisley Red Telecaster debuted in 1968, when Fender — then under CBS ownership — attempted to capitalize on the psychedelic spirit of the era. Alongside the equally flamboyant Blue Flower finish, the guitar featured colorful Cling-Foil wallpaper applied directly to the body and covered with a translucent burst finish. It was Fender’s attempt to pay tribute to the Summer of Love.
The look was unforgettable. The execution was not.
The thick decorative paper, inexpensive adhesives and heavy polyester clear coats proved to be a disastrous combination. The finishes cracked, chipped and peeled prematurely, becoming victims of the same cost-cutting measures that defined much of Fender’s CBS era. By 1969, the experiment was over. Production ceased, and many owners stripped or refinished their electric guitars altogether.
That should have been the end of the story.
Instead, decades later, the forgotten finish found an unlikely champion in Paisley.
“It’s unreal that my own name is one of the coolest finishes I think Fender has ever done,” he said when Fender unveiled his signature Limited Edition Brad Paisley 1967 “Lost Paisley” Telecaster in 2024. “This is an attempt to show what this lost color could have been. It’s the best guitar I’ve ever had.”
Long before Fender enlisted him to help revive the design, Paisley had been on a mission to track down surviving examples of original Paisley Telecasters and restore them whenever possible. That was easier said than done. With relatively few produced — estimates generally place the number between 300 and 400 — most had long since been refinished, their psychedelic origins buried beneath later paint jobs.
Still, the hunt fascinated him.
“There’s nothing more beautiful to me than a ’50s Blackguard Tele, a ’54 Strat, or an original Paisley Tele — any of those things that frequently got stripped and mutilated,” he told Rick Beato. “Some of those refins are the best guitars I’ve ever had. It’s therapy to be able to take something and restore it.”
They said, ‘Yeah, we have a black one, but it’s not a good paint job.’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’”
— Brad Paisley
The obsession eventually led him to master builder Bill Crook. Together, they began trying to reverse-engineer the original Paisley finish, assuming that uncovering an authentic example hidden beneath a refinish would be nearly impossible.
Then fate intervened.
“Let me find the right guitar first,” Paisley told Crook.
That search led him to Chicago Music Exchange, where he asked if they had a refinished 1968 Telecaster for sale.
“They said, ‘Yeah, we have a black one, but it’s not a good paint job,’” Paisley recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t care.’
“I pick it up, it’s a good guitar, and I said, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna turn this into a Paisley.’”
Crook agreed to take on the project. But once the guitar arrived, something caught his eye.
I had accidentally bought a Paisley Tele, thinking I would turn it into a Paisley Tele!”
—Brad Paisley
“He gets it, throws the thing on a guitar stand, and is looking at it hanging on the wall,” Paisley explained. “He looks at the way that the black finish is cracking, and he goes, ‘No.’”
Crook removed the neck and neck plate for a closer inspection. Beneath the black paint was exactly what Paisley had spent years searching for.
“There’s a paisley staring at him,” Paisley said. “He took the finish off with thinner, and that’s 100 percent original paper.
“I had accidentally bought a Paisley Tele, thinking I would turn it into a Paisley Tele!”
The story became even more remarkable when Paisley tracked down the guitar’s original owner. According to Paisley, the owner had purchased the instrument at a discount because the Paisley models weren't selling and later sprayed it black in his backyard.
What had spent decades disguised beneath an amateur refin was suddenly revealed as one of Fender’s rarest late-'60s guitars.
Paisley named the instrument La Brea, comparing it to a fossil preserved in the famous Los Angeles tar pits.
“I called it La Brea because it’s like a fossil in a tar pit,” he said.
Today, the guitar could command tens of thousands of dollars on the vintage market. But for Paisley, its value has little to do with money. After years spent chasing lost Paisley Telecasters, he had finally stumbled across the real thing by complete accident.
