“Solidbodies: The 50 Year Guitar War” DVD Review

By: Staff

Solidbodies: The 50 Year Guitar War is an entertaining and enlightening new DVD by Lightning Lab Productions that offers a captivating look into the history of the two most significant solidbody guitars in history: the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul. For over fifty years, Fender and Gibson guitars have dominated the electric guitar market. Despite the hundreds of other guitar builders trying to better the mousetrap, the Stratocaster and Les Paul have continued to dominate the global marketplace.

Solidbodies stretches back to the early days when Leo Fender and Ted McCarty pushed the envelope of electrified and amplified sound by building new and exciting guitars for jazz players, Gibson, and country swing guitarists, Fender. Images from the ’60s of Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix flash past while the audience is told of a time when these instruments began their reign as cultural and musical icons thanks to the brutal force of rock ‘n’ roll.

Producer Guy Hornbuckle saw a gap in his guitar video library and set out to chronicle the parallel histories of Fender Stratocasters and Gibson Les Paul guitars. Starting from the pre-solidbody era, with Leo Fender working as an accountant and Les Paul’s initial failure to gain any interest in his own solidbody prototype, Hornbuckle moves us note by note from the debut of the innovative guitars to today, when all guitars are measured by how well they measure up to these 50-year-old designs.

Solidbodies: The 50 Year Guitar War provides the audience ample guitar eye candy through copious historic and contemporary shots of Strats and Les Pauls. As well, there is an equal dose of ear candy when the guitarists on the screen crank out riff after riff filled with crunchy Les Paul grinds and that classic, glassy Strat tone. One of the films most interesting scenes displays two guitarists standing side-by-side, highlighting the distinct characteristics of each guitar’s signature sounds.

Featuring some of the hottest pickers on the planet, such as Derek Trucks, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Hoey, John Roth, Henry Garza, Wes Jeans and Steve Selvidge, Solidbodies straddles both the past and present as it covers a wide variety of players and tones throughout the film. Guitar experts, including vintage guitar guru George Gruhn, also weigh in with their opinions on the ongoing Stratocaster versus Les Paul debate.

Solidbodies: The 50 Year Guitar War is divided into several historically-sequenced chapters, including: “Fretted Frontier,” “Rock Rebellion,” “Battle for Britain,” “Southern Guitarslingers” and many more that highlight significant milestones in the history of guitar’s biggest war. Each chapters also serves as the perfect launching point for future in-depth DVDs about this battle of the guitar giants. But, for now, this new video offers great footage, a gripping soundtrack and enough information about the history of these great axes to satisfy fans and newcomers alike.