TV REVIEWS : ‘Curves, Contours’: Stratocaster Story

Do you believe Leo Fender did more for rock ‘n’ roll than Elvis Presley? Does the Strat vs. Tele debate mean more to you than the budget crisis? If so, “Curves, Contours and Body Horns,” the story of the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, is the documentary for you.

To many acolytes, the Strat is rock ‘n’ roll: Arguably, the music didn’t exist until Fender’s Fullerton plant churned out the first ones in the early ‘50s. Since then, numerous quintessential rock riffs have sprung to life on the elegantly simple yet versatile instrument: “Peggy Sue,” “Purple Haze,” “Layla,” among many more.

Those facts are all here in this British television production. The spirit of the music, though, is too often missing. The closest it gets is in interview clips with such pillars as Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, George Harrison and Bonnie Raitt struggling to express their love for the Strat in words. Sometimes it seems they care more about their guitars than about their spouses or children.

But even the words are superfluous next to the too-few moments of music, especially those with guitarists simply doodling around--Richards caressing his Strat on Chuck Berry and blues licks, Harrison delicately reprising the solo from “Nowhere Man.”

In between you have to sit through the dry narration and statically told history, generally accompanied by heavy-handed visuals that have little to do with the subject. (How many guitars-on-fire images do we need?) Even the interviews were shot in such pointlessly incongruous settings as Clapton going up and down in a freight elevator.

To understand why Richards says here that he’d rather kill a person than harm a Strat, you probably have to play one yourself. This show certainly won’t tell you.

* “Curves, Contours and Body Horns” airs at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.