Guitar 'war' amplified

By | Friday, April 25, 2008

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Chuck Klosterman, the omnivorous pop-culture essayist, once asserted with a more or less straight face that the 1980s rivalry between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics "represents absolutely everything."

"There is no relationship that isn't a Celtics-Lakers relationship," he wrote. "It emerges from nothingness to design nature. "

Call it an overstrained metaphor — it is — but Mr. Klosterman was right about the oppositional order of things: matter and antimatter; Beatles and Stones; Coke and Pepsi; PCs and Macs; Hillary and Obama.

With his fascinating documentary "Solidbodies: The 50 Year Guitar War," debut writer-director Guy Hornbuckle has added the competition between guitar manufacturers Gibson and Fender to the ledger of great binary rivalries.

In fact, says Mr. Hornbuckle, a Tupelo, Miss., broadcast journalist, he had in the back of his mind a U.S.-Soviet Union metaphor and nearly titled the film "Guitar Cold War."

"It just so happens that the dates are pretty close to the other Cold War," he says. "This one just hasn't been resolved yet."

"Solidbodies," just out on DVD, recounts the history of two critically important electric guitars — the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul — that shaped the sound of early rock 'n' roll music and indirectly helped transform the face of American popular culture.

"We could pull adjectives out of the air for hours," says Mr. Hornbuckle, 54.

The sound of the Fender Strat is twangy and percussive. The Les Paul is beefy and warm.

While it's elegant in its way, the Strat — a marvel of mass-market manufacturing — was designed primarily for use-and-abuse functionality. The heavier, more ornate Les Paul commanded tender-loving respect. (Jimi Hendrix did not burn or bite a Les Paul, notes a "Solidbodies" talking head.)

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