stalkingart

dialogues with the imagination

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All about famous guitars

I’d like my character to have owns a lot of guitars over his lifetime. He named them, he broke them, some were stolen, he finally has to hock them to eat? Or he has one that is signed by everyone he ever headlined with–keeps it in a plexi-glass case. Finally, he may donate it at the fundraiser. His “daughter” buys it and presents it back to him in the final scene?.

 

from Steve Vai:

“Although Evo is just made out of wire and wood, I’m afraid of how much emotional investment I have in her. I think when you play an instrument long enough it becomes an extension of yourself in ways that run deeper than anyone may understand but you. It moulds and shapes to your body and style or you mould and shape to it. It is the tool an artist uses to express his or her deepest emotional expressions and secrets. For me, Evo has been the voice of my heart and has seen the depth of my most depressed emotional frames of mind to my most euphoric moments of joy and divine love, and she usually gets the brunt of it all. I have cried, screamed, prayed and bled through that instrument, and like I said, although she is only wire and wood, there is an emotional investment in her. I’m afraid at how much I love her but I know that she is only on loan to me for a short time and will one day be dust. But for now, there’s still quite a bit we have to say together.”

 

Jack White speaks about his main guitar:

“I got my first one from Jack Oblivian. Jack Yarber is his name, and he’s in a band called the Oblivians, from Memphis. He was playing in Detroit, and I went backstage. He said, “Hey, look at this guitar that I got.” And he opened the case, and I was like, “Oh, man! That’s amazing! That’s……my color!” And it’s plastic. I love it so much!” And he said, “It’s for sale. I wanna get an Airline with three pickups.” I had, like, 200 bucks or something. [laughs] Can’t get ’em for 200 bucks anymore.
Playing that guitar makes me feel like I have to take something that’s broken and make it work. It’s hollow, it’s made of plastic, and it feels like it’s going to fall apart. The front pickup is broken, but the treble pickup has an amazing bite. I’ve never had it refretted or anything. It’s pretty much the way I found it, except for new tuners.”

It’s work to play it, but I like that. I had a Silvertone guitar that never stayed in tune, but when it went out of tune I would just work with it. If I wanted to play it safe I’d go out and get a brand new Stratocaster or something like that. But I don’t like to play it safe; I like it when things are get messed up. It’s like when things get messed up onstage: it forces me to figure something out now, because no one else can save me. With a guitar like the Airline, my mind is always working. I’m not just “phoning it in.”

For guitars, you just have to go to junk shops. You won’t be able to find something like the Airline at a pawn shop very often. I don’t think you should buy brand new instruments because they haven’t proven themselves. You can buy an old guitar and it’s already got soul inside of it; it’s gone through a battle. A new guitar – yeah, it stays in tune, it’s perfect and it will never crap out on you or anything. But it doesn’t have any soul to it; it’s just another piece of plastic coming out of a factory. I’ve never been able to relate to that.”

about G. Harrison’s famous guitar:

“The fabled red Les Paul was stolen from under the bed of George Harrison’s Beverly Hills home during a burglary in the early ’70s. Eventually it ended up at the Guitar Center in Hollywood, where a musician from Mexico purchased the instrument for $650. After a complex set of negotiations involving a third party and a trip to Mexico, ‘Lucy’ was eventually returned to Harrison in exchange for a ’58 sunburst Les Paul and a Precision bass.

“[‘Lucy’] got kidnapped and taken to Guadalajara,” George would later muse, “and I had to buy this Mexican guy a Les Paul to get it back.” His beloved ‘Lucy’ Les Paul would remain a prized part of George Harrison’s collection until his death in 2001.”


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Research

I’m using a lot of different methods to get to the character of my guitar player. I’ve been searching videos of the SRC and reading more about play writing. Also, I connected with Dick Wagner’s editor and ordered his book. He’s playing at the Clio Ampatheater on Tuesday this week, so I’m hoping to go see him. Maybe his book will come by then and he’ll sign it.

The reason I’m following the Dick Wagner lead is because he’s another lead guitar player, and I need to create a character who is not as successful as he is, but his more likable than Gary or Harvey. The details! The protagonist has to be flawed, however, he can’t be a big asshole either. The audience needs to like the guy, not think he’s totally pathetic. We need to see his flaws, relate to them and root for him to let go of them, outgrow his adolescent fantasy and grab one last chance at loving something else besides his guitar. BB King named his guitar “Lucille” so my character needs to do that same. The name will have to have some significance because she gets damaged in the “flood.” I need to research the different kinds of instruments, too. Perhaps Marshall can help me here.


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Making Creative Spaces

My new iPad is a new beginning for my garage band project. I’m collecting black and white photos, reading about play writing and I attended a “concert reading” in Chelsea that gave me a number of ideas. The new year is coming and work will consume me for the first few months…but I will keep going.


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Studying Character

Miller says: ” I gravitate toward people who are aspiring even wrongly to some spiritual engagement and are being held down to the earth by the situation or by part of their nature.”

My main character, Harry, finds a kind of transcendent experience in his music that he has never found in any other aspect of his life, and those fleeting moments where he is one with his music are becoming further and further apart and harder to achieve. His relationship to his music has preventing him from having any other relationships and he is terribly alone now with fewer and fewer options. Yet, he is more stubbornly committed than ever to reigniting his fading career while at the same time, closed to the possibility that his future is not rooted in his past. Ironically, meeting his daughter presents him with the opportunity to go forward with music by not going backward. Yet, to do so, he has to change–something he’s scoffed at and resisted for 40 years.


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From McLaughlin’s The Playwright’s Process

“There are two ways a central character’s dominant need is frustrated or thwarted, thereby creating the play’s conflict/dilemma. First, the character is often his or her own worst enemy, and is, in a very real sense, at war with himself. He chases after the wrong things; he thingks he has all the answers; his pride blinds him to the truth; his ambition leads him into troubles; his inferiority complex leaves him helpless, and so on. The second way to set up obstacles is through introducing other characters who, in one way or another, block your central character from fulfilling his need” (p. 25).

My central character is a gifted  guitar player who peaked in 1969–the summer of love. He’s egocentric, charming, lacking in some social graces while having a cultivated taste for the finer things. He is very opinionated about music, his and others and finds it difficult to be in any band unless he’s totally in charge both musically and artistically. He chases rainbows and doesn’t make practical decisions about how he must make a living. Instead, he seeks out those who might have enough money to send him on the never materializing “European Tour.” He’s stuck playing at retro tie dye events–forever looking backward at the halcyon days when he and his band were on top. Doing anything other than his music is selling out–and he refuses to do so–nearly becoming homeless in the process.