I prefer a Strat sound to a Les Paul one - so there, I said it! If you listen to Blackmore's tone on In Rock (largely his beloved ES 335) and on Machine Head a few years later (pure Strat), the Strat tone is at the same time uncluttered, soaring, authoritative - it sounds more like a
lead guitar.
I wasn't around either, but I have read many times that in the UK at least the Strat had a "Cliff Richard/Hank Marvin & The Shadows" goody-goody image in the early 60ies
which is why even The Beatles - originally a noisy cellar band from a harbour town - didn't play Strats. Or the Rolling Stones. Then Hendrix came along and the tall
black man looked great with his
white Strat (that match certainly no coincidence). And Clapton moved to Fender. So did Jeff Beck. David Gilmour. Robin Trower (a Hendrix fan, yes). Rory Gallagher. Blackmore (him again!), who said that he never loved a guitar more than his cherry ES 335,
but that he came to the realisation that even a hand-me-down Strat from Clapton with a warped neck was the better tool for his style (though he never became attached to a single Strat like he did to his ES).
He looked better with the Strat too, at least to my youthful innocent eyes!
I wouldn't discount the image thing with younger players. At the end of the day, the reason why I never took to Fender basses was simply that any dance and Top 40 band in my neck of the woods had a bass player with either a P or a J. I didn't want my bass to look like that (though my first bass was a Korean J Ho because it was the cheapest thing available, I was distraught about the look from day one though and it never went away). I began playing bass in 1977 - it was the time when Jaco became famous too so everybody started pulling frets and playing Jazz Basses. But I didn't want to sound or look like some "jazz musician" either, I wanted to look like Roger Glover, Jim Lea, Martin Turner or Gene Simmons - players that never or hardly ever played Fender basses.