There are few guitars that carry as much allure as the Robbie Robertson Last Waltz Fender Stratocaster. Interest in the guitar picked up again around the 40th anniversary of The Band’s final concert in November 2016, when Fender’s Custom Shop released an exact replica of the bronzed Stratocaster Robertson played during the historic Last Waltz concert.
The Last Waltz Stratocaster offers a rare glimpse into the history of guitar modifications, especially the kind commonly made in the seventies. At the time there was no such thing as a valuable vintage guitar, only old guitars that served as a raw platform for experimentation and modification. Pickup swapping, wiring changes, hardware replacement: nothing was sacred, and everything got tried.
Fender built only 40 of the replicas, with Master Builder Todd Krause reproducing the guitar down to details like the airbrushed headplug covering an original manufacturing flaw and the wear beneath the wear left behind by an earlier refinish. At a list price of $14,500, it was never going to be an impulse buy, and the run has long since sold out; any that change hands now show up on the secondary market rather than through Fender directly.
Robertson’s original guitar was a red 1954 Stratocaster he had dipped in bronze ahead of The Band’s farewell concert at San Francisco’s Winterland on November 25, 1976, the show Martin Scorsese later turned into the concert film The Last Waltz. Robertson also released an autobiography, Testimony, in 2016, tracing his career from his early days with the Hawks through that final show.
Robbie Robertson died on August 9, 2023, at age 80, after a long illness. He continued working through his final years, releasing his sixth solo album, Sinematic, in 2019, and scoring several of Martin Scorsese’s films, including Killers of the Flower Moon, released just months after his death.
