Tom Verlaine - words from the front, 1982

"I think it was financial! In the seventies, when guitars were still cheap, nobody wanted a Jazzmaster because they weren't loud and didn't stay in tune. In '73/'74 you could buy a Jazzmaster for $150 easily. So that's why I started playing it, because we didn't have a lot of money and they were cheap. And then I really got used to it, plus the vibrato arm on it is very nice. I use really heavy strings on it—like a 14 to a 58 or something similar—and that's another part of the sound, I think."