The 50th Anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster is more than just a tribute to longevity.  In fact, the word “longevity” implies the ability to just stay in existence.  But what do you call something that not only has a long history, but continues to create the future while, at the same time, defining and reflecting the present?  The Stratocaster was never meant to have a 50th Anniversary.  The Fender Stratocaster was intended to be one in a line of many models of guitar that Leo Fender envisioned from his company.  Even the source of the name, born of the word “Stratosphere” in the forward looking momentum of the 1950’s, is, by itself, archaic.  But Stratocaster… to this day, that name still implies state of the art.  In fact, state of the next and future art.  It is still the high water mark in an ever rising tidal wave.  There is nothing archaic about this guitar.

And yet, with all that, why do we care?

To answer that, we have to first admit that this documentary is a bit misnamed.  Yes, it is the 50th Anniversary of the Stratocaster, but it is not just another chronology of its history.  This is the story of the one musical instrument that has had an iconic impact in the history of the United States.  There is not a person in the industrial world who does not recognize the form of the Strat, even if they don’t know its name.  From the symbol of the Hard Rock café to pictorial definitions in dictionaries, it has become the generic for guitars in particular and the youth culture in general.

But why?  Why has it endured?  Why is it the iconic symbol and not, say, the Gibson “Les Paul”?  Why is it that the Strat has not only been a part of music history, but is the symbol for it?  Why is it that the 1950’s saw the Strat as a symbol of Youthful Optimism and the 1960’s saw it as a symbol of Youthful Protest?  How did an instrument designed to compete with acoustic guitars manage to survive the techno-rock of the 1980’s?  Not just survive, but excel?  As the rest of the world flexed its economic and industrial strength in competition with American products, how did the Fender Stratocaster survive and retain its status as the most popular guitar?  And what about this guitar makes new artists such as John Mayer declare that it is “virtually the same and always new?”

The Fender Stratocaster has been a reflective canvas for the American experience, the good, the bad, the admired and the despised.  As a result, it has made its impact on the international stage.  All this will be explored in our “documentary.”  Through archival footage, visual representations and, most importantly, first hand interviews with the most popular artists of the present and future, this is less history lesson of the last fifty years than it is a celebration and understanding of the Stratocaster’s next fifty years.