Inspirational Guitar Movie Moments - a list.

Guitars probably look pretty much alike to the average person. Pointy bit, sticky bit, chunk you strap on and strum. But in the world of the apprentice guitar-nerd, the simple shape, colour and features of every guitar evoke stories, memories, emotions and a thirst for more knowledge. A lot like my other passion for racing bicycles.

A bunch of emotive moments from movies have been coming back to me lately, as the Lonely Planet band have been rehearsing and performing for the summer season. I've been having these "that's just like the scene in ..." deja vu feelings. All of these movies make me want to leave this keyboard this instant and pick up the Strat instead - no other instrument is as evocative for me.

Rules of the list are that it can't be a movie or show that is actually about a real band. Thought I'd get to 10, but stalled at #8. All debate duly welcomed!

1. Wayne's World (1992) - "It will be mine - oh yes - it will be mine"


An iconic moment in this much-loved movie. The best guitar playing is undoubtedly Cassandra's band, but Wayne's attainment of the white Fender Stratocaster (which he refers to as Excalibur) in his local music shop is a triumph.

I have come to realise that as a wannabe guitarist you very much need to have one good "May I help you?" riff in your fingers to have ready when you are sifting through your local guitar store and require some assistance. Stumbling over an open G just is not rock. Wayne of course is the master.

The other two required riffs (just in case you were wondering) are the "I've just turned my amp on" riff at rehearsal (call this your signature chord, ideally timid people will jump when you hit it); and the "sound check riff", a longer arrangement which is the rock equivalent of a dog urinating to mark its patch on stage. Lenny Kravitz serves me well at this time, but I will admit deep jealousy at my Slabotomy friends Vivek and Ian's sound-check virtuosity.

Since this is the internet, I'm duty bound to bootleg the video of the "May I help you" moment:




2. This is Spinal Tap (1984)


Nigel Tufnel is my hero - and in 2011 (11/11/11) it is proposed to hold the first global Nigel Tufnel day. Responsible with a simple slip of the apostrophe for the infamous 18 inch stonehenge, he explains why when I see a Gibson or Epiphone Flying V guitar, a strange voice in my head goes "yeah, I could do that..."

I should probably aspire to a more respectable V-playing hero like Albert King.

Anyway, Spinal Tap as a shocking spoof of everything bad in rock music is actually a wonderful taste of what joy you can experience on stage, with a guitar strapped on and your amp turned to 11. Well, 5 actually, or Ian gets on my case.

3. Back to the Future (1985) - "whatever you do Marty..."

Episode 1 - Marty goes up to Doc Browns laboratory, and finding him not at home proceeds to do what every teenager who has ever watched this movie wants him to do, urges him to do - plug that guitar in, and turn it up. You know exactly what is coming, and it still takes your breath away, crummy 1980s special effects and all.

The guitar is a weird one, you don't really see it much - sort of a futuristic thing you'd expect to be lying around a mad inventor's laboratory. But it's not the guitar, it's the moment - clearly it's Marty's "I am plugged in" rehearsal opening chord.

4. Back to the future (1985) - Johnny B Goode

"Alright guys, this is a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes and try to keep up." Like some kind of incantation, Marty's words haunted me for years - what did that gibberish mean? Sounded very cool though, and seemed to work for the band. A famous Chuck Berry song, Johnny B Goode was not written until 3 years after the scene in the movie was set, which adds some humour to the moment.

I'm pretty sure it is a Gibson ES335 he is playing. So that explains my deep irrational yearnings for one, either in red or BB King black.

With luck the bootlegged video is still available for you to view on Vimeo.

marty mcfly - johnny b. goode from etsw on Vimeo.

5. Crossroads (1986)

A great scene from a terribly cheesy movie about a kid (a karate kid no less ;-) who drops out from the Julliard music school and goes on the road, ultimately acting out that great old country song The Devil Went down to Georgia in a battle with Satan's own guitarist - who just happens to be Steve Vai. Who is quite probably the right guy for that role.

Ry Cooder played all the guitar for Ralph Macchio in the movie - I won't linger in the guitar pseud's corner for long (because there are plenty of weird looking guys there already) but needless to say the music easily overcomes the plot, and I am always a sucker for a bit of redemption. With a Fender Telecaster you say? With the blues? I'll have an extra helping thankyou. And if I find myself in the same situation at some stage, I'll be looking around for Travis to help me out.

If you have the patience, the final duel scene can be viewed here:

6. The Blues Brothers (1980) - Ray's Music Exchange

I've written about this before, and of course, I own that very guitar in the picture. There is so much great guitar and bass playing in the movie, and yet it is in the background to the two main characters Jake and Elwood. I like the way Mad Guitar Murphy, Steve Cropper and Donald Duck Dunn are away from the limelight but drive this movie all the way home.

Doubtless a trained psychologist would observe that standing in the background being super-competent is akin to my own approach to life, which occasionally I have learned to overcome, ironically recently with the Lonely Planet band.

7. Oh Brother Where art Thou? (2000)

Hmm - the blues again. Guitars again. Wikipedia does a good summary of the circumstances in which a fictional character is crafted from the real bluesman and the legend of Robert Johnson cutting a deal with the devil (seeing a pattern yet anyone?):

"In the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? there is a character named Tommy Johnson (played by Chris Thomas King) who sold his soul to the devil to play guitar. He plays accompaniment for the Soggy Bottom Boys (a band consisting of the film's three main protagonists plus Johnson) on "Man of Constant Sorrow".

The character of Tommy Johnson in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is reminiscent of the real Tommy Johnson, who used to talk about how "he sold his soul to the devil" at a crossroads in return for making up songs and playing the guitar. The character plays a number of songs by blues musician Skip James. The character was not based on the better-known bluesman Robert Johnson, as some have speculated."

99% of the music in the movie is bluegrass or country, but a couple of soulful moments are captured when Tommy gets to play his guitar. A solid reminder that the beauty is in the simplicity of life - so few notes, so few words, so much meaning. Another thing for me to aspire to I suspect, as a master of too many words and too many things.

8. School of Rock (2003)


This movie ticks all the boxes - humour, music and good old redemption again. How exactly Jack Black manages to make all those instruments work without alerting the entire school district with the noise is a practical detail I am prepared to ignore.

My favourite scene is where the kids start to jam for the first time - Zach on the Flying V guitar, and Lawrence on keys. I recall the joy of the first time I played an electric guitar, fresh from 18 months ago when Rich Durnall handed over his vintage Strat and said "try this". I have observed the same wondrous look in many people's eyes since - the capacity to make so much noise from just a little strum!

To see Noah actually play in a real-life school of rock right here in Melbourne through 555 Music is a weird bit of life imitating art. And long may life imitate art, I say.

Blues Brothers - 30 Year Anniversary in 2010

I've written about Breaking Away as an important movie in my life, inspiring a fascination with racing bicycles, Italy and la dolce vita.

That was 1979. Here comes 1980. Last year of high school, and The Blues Brothers hits our NZ screens.

A year ago I rented the original 1980 movie to watch with Noah (with handy ear covers ready for the obvious bits), and was pretty disappointed. Sound was so-so, the picture was grimy, and the story hinged on the high points of musical performance, plunging into dull periods of conversation and inaction.

I recall yawning and reminding myself that memories can play tricks on you.

We rented it again tonight.

And discovered to our joy that John Landis has managed to pull together an extended edition with remastered sound, new scenes and extended dialogue in various places. It's back to being a classic!

What a tragedy that the original cut, tested in a movie theatre in Los Angeles and declared by studio executives as "only going to attract a black audience", has been lost forever. They forced Landis to shorten the movie so it required no intermission.

With its 30th anniversary next year, it's time to celebrate what the Blues Brothers did to create an interest in the blues for people like me as far from Chicago as it is about possible to get on this planet. This must be the greatest B-movie ever made, with more superstar cameos than the V&A museum cameo collection.

And to file under 'subliminal influence', Ray's Music Exchange (with the subsequent 'Shake Your Tailfeather' dance spectacular) has always been my favourite scene - check out which guitar the kid is trying to steal when Ray shoots 2 well-placed warning shots into the wall from the other end of the shop!








That's pretty much how I would have looked if I hadn't been able to take my black stratocaster that fateful day in April! And why going into music shops can be such fun when there are people browsing the shelves around you who, despite not being Ray Charles, Steve Cropper or Donald Duck Dunn, could highly likely still light the place up in an instant.

“It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.”

“Hit it.”

A - G - D - E : learning to play in a band

Well, joining a band didn't prove to be quite as impossible as I'd imagined. Helps that it's the Lonely Planet Band, and that they must be the most welcoming bunch of talented musicians on the planet.

The set-list, with the objective of a charity gig at the Espy on June 18th is a yet-to-be finalised range of rock to blues-rock to some more poppy-jazzy numbers to ensure the Ministry of Fenders gets a break at some stage in the evening.

What have I learned in 3 weeks of Band Pressure Cooker?

• Led Zeppelin were geniuses of the simple arrangement that makes 1+1=4, and that it is fun to play loud.
  
• You can easily turn down your guitar when you just can't quickly locate C#m (and your fingers just won't stretch to it yet). God help learner drummers.
• That learning = failing, then repeating. Which is why the natural thing to do is to give up learning in life as soon as you can, because failure sucks. I'd forgotten that.
  
• That the 'failing' part of learning is more than balanced out by the joy of mastering something - even as simple as strumming the A G D E combination.
• That you don't have to play all the notes in a complex chord to get a result (bit of Eoin philosophy there) - wonder how that can be applied in life?
  
• That listening makes contributing a helluva lot more logical (where is that beat again - listen for Tad!).
• That a lesson or 2 from someone who has the mojo and the patience goes a long way to accelerating learning (thanks Rich). There was no 'how' or 'why' when I learned classical guitar as a boy - yet I've relied on those curiosities to get me through life (especially work).
  
• That I wish I could sing.
• And finally that maybe you can have too many guitars playing at once.
  

Then again, that last point isn't proven beyond all doubt just yet.

The Best Things in Life - Shopping for an Electric Guitar

25 Good Summers to Master the Campagnolo Super Record of Guitars

Every so often people will ask if I will go shopping for a bike with them. Crazy thing to do, because I am a race-bike anorak of Olympic standard, so when it comes to that moment where you ask "what would you do?" I have to lie.

I will tell you "sure take the $899 Giant with 9 speed, it will do fine" or "105's really just a couple of seasons ago's Dura Ace" hoping like hell you never get to be really passionate about cycling as you will realise that what I meant to say was "sell everything you have to buy the Colnago with the Record groupset".

It's not that I'm a bad person, I just can't bear to explain to you the insanity of how only 0.0005% of the population are going to get what it means to have Record over Chorus - and how it gets to the very essence of road cycling. Just a fleeting glimpse of Bianchi's celeste paintwork gives me the torrent of emotions that is Fausto Coppi's life story, the 20th century history of Europe, life, death, honour and betrayal. Not logic, emotion.

This week, after a moment of 'why die wondering?' madness, I turned out for the Lonely Planet Band's first Winter rehearsal of 2009 and amazingly was not sent home or made to put my guitar down and stand in the corner. A bunch of real musicians let me strum along on my Seagull acoustic as loud as I possibly could, showing me chords and filling a hole in my heart that has been empty forever.

To be fair, un-miked, they could not even tell how craptapulous I was. An acoustic guitar falling in behind 3 Fenders, a Gibson and a whopping bass, maketh no sound in the forest. I did learn to strum my guitar louder and harder than I ever thought possible!

So when I quizzed the LP Guitar Jedi Council on what to do (having brought a knife to a gunfight in guitar terms), I was super-sensitive to any diplomatic "get a cheap guitar and amp and see how you go" responses. There were none. These are my kind of passionate people, and Ian even offered to give up his Saturday morning (and risk being late for his beloved Bombers playing the Anzac Day game with Collingwood) to check out the wares of Anthony at The Guitar Colonel in South Melbourne.

We met at 10:30, and the next 3 hours were spent in some weird space-time warp trying 10 or so vintage guitars from Fender Tele's and a Strat to Gibson Firebirds and and S5. Ian's eye had already fallen on a 1996 Fender Blues Junior 15 watt valve amp, which was not negotiable if a guitar was to be had.

By noon it was obvious, even to a 5 chord duffer like me that the Strat was it. Way beyond initial budget, this was just the right thing to do. And nor did Ian bullshit me like I'm going to bullshit you if you take me along on a bike-buying mission. He just turned the amp to 11, let a few licks of Stairway loose and we were not for one moment 'denied' the thrill of gold-class living. That's the moment in the photo above.

Sadly, the white one was sold, but the black 1994 Strat 57 Reissue will be mine.

That legendary Wayne's World Moment

And just to remind you what it is all about...



Why 25 Good Summers?

At 45, I figure that by 70 I had better have this thing sorted. That's 25 summer's worth of practice on the rooftop to go.