Quentin Tarantino Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

in Film, Music | September 3rd, 2014

To some direc­tors, the music heard in their films seems as (or more) impor­tant than the images seen or the dia­logue spo­ken. Maybe you’d make that case about Jim Jar­musch after read­ing — or, more to the point, hear­ing — our post on the music in his movies. And sure­ly many Quentin Taran­ti­no fans would regard a Reser­voir Dogs with­out “Stuck in the Mid­dle with You” or a Pulp Fic­tion with­out “Misir­lou” as not Reser­voir Dogs or Pulp Fic­tion at all. In the book­let that comes with The Taran­ti­no Con­nec­tion, a col­lec­tion of sound­track songs from Taran­ti­no’s movies, Taran­ti­no describes his per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly musi­cal­ly-inspired method of film con­cep­tion as fol­lows: “One of the things I do when I am start­ing a movie, when I’m writ­ing a movie or when I have an idea for a film is, I go through my record col­lec­tion and just start play­ing songs, try­ing to find the per­son­al­i­ty of the movie, find the spir­it of the movie. Then, ‘boom,’ even­tu­al­ly I’ll hit one, two or three songs, or one song in par­tic­u­lar, ‘Oh, this will be a great open­ing cred­it song.’ ” Hence his use of Dick Dale, the “King of Surf Gui­tar,” for the open­ing cred­its of Pulp Fic­tion.

“Hav­ing ‘Misir­lou’ as your open­ing cred­its is just so intense,” writes Taran­ti­no. “It just says, ‘You are watch­ing an epic, you are watch­ing this big old movie just sit back.’ It’s so loud and blear­ing at you, a gaunt­let is thrown down that the movie has to live up to.’ ” He goes on to describe the tak­ing of songs and arrang­ing them in a cer­tain sequence in a movie as “just about as cin­e­mat­ic a thing as you can do. You are real­ly doing what movies do bet­ter than any oth­er art form; it real­ly works in this vis­cer­al, emo­tion­al, cin­e­mat­ic way that’s just real­ly spe­cial.” And did he already know, as he set Reser­voir Dogs’ un-unsee­able ear-slic­ing scene to that mel­low, then twen­ty-year-old hit from Steal­ers Wheel, that “when you do it right and you hit it right then the effect is you can nev­er real­ly hear this song again with­out think­ing about that image from the movie”? Cer­tain­ly his use of Bob­by Wom­ack­’s “Across 110th Street” has fused the song with Jack­ie Brown and not the epony­mous 1972 pic­ture for which Wom­ack orig­i­nal­ly wrote it. And who has Kill Bill and does­n’t asso­ciate it with Nan­cy Sina­tra’s ver­sion of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”? “I don’t know if Ger­ry Raf­fer­ty [a mem­ber of Steal­ers Wheel] nec­es­sar­i­ly appre­ci­at­ed the con­no­ta­tions that I brought to ‘Stuck in the Mid­dle with You,’ ” Taran­ti­no adds. “There is a good chance he did­n’t.” But when it comes to under­stand­ing a song’s cin­e­mat­ic poten­tial, Taran­ti­no has long since proven he knows what he’s doing.

Across 110th Street

Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Records: Bob Dylan, Fre­da Payne, Phil Ochs and More

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

The Best of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Cel­e­brat­ing the Director’s 50th Birth­day with our Favorite Videos

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New Albums by Robert Plant, Ryan Adams & Justin Townes Earle Streaming Online for a Limited Time

in Music | September 2nd, 2014

Robert-Plant-lullaby-and-The-Ceaseless-Roar_638

Quick note: If you’re not famil­iar with it, NPR’s First Lis­ten site lets you stream new albums by major artists. And this week’s line­up deserves a spe­cial men­tion. First Lis­ten is fea­tur­ing Robert Plan­t’s new release Lul­la­by And… The Cease­less Roar. The album, writes NPR, is “an expres­sion of many kinds of rich, autum­nal love: of the Eng­lish coun­try­side to which Plant recent­ly returned after sev­er­al years liv­ing and work­ing in Nashville and Texas; of the musi­cal dias­po­ra he’s been explor­ing since Led Zep­pelin first con­nect­ed its Amer­i­can-inspired blues to North Africa in ‘Kash­mir’; of the Celtic and Roman­tic lit­er­ary lines he’s always favored; and of a woman, whom the songs’ nar­ra­tor trea­sures but, for rea­sons upon which at least half of the album dwells, leaves behind.” You can stream it here for a lim­it­ed time.

While at NPR, you might also want to hear Ryan Adams by, yes, Ryan Adams. It’s his 14th album, and, says The New York Dai­ly News, it “goes all in for neo-clas­sic rock. It draws on the kind of ser­rat­ed riffs Kei­th Richards likes to hone — but weight­ed with the heavy bot­tom and burn­ing organ of Tom Pet­ty and the Heart­break­ers.”

Last but not least, NPR is serv­ing up Justin Townes Ear­le’s fifth album, Sin­gle Moth­ers. Many of the songs offer a take on “the mer­cu­r­ial nature of infat­u­a­tion.”

Stream away, but don’t delay. The albums usu­al­ly remain online for a week at most.

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Three Outlandish Tracks from Van Morrison’s 1968 “Revenge Album”: “Ring Worm,” “Want a Danish?” & “The Big Royalty Check”

in Music | September 2nd, 2014

In 1968, Van Mor­ri­son cut tracks for what’s been called his “revenge” or “con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion album.” The back­sto­ry, pro­vid­ed by Top Tenz, goes like this:

After a pret­ty unhap­py cou­ple of years with his label Bang Records in the mid-60s, Van Mor­ri­son want­ed out. They demand­ed he deliv­er some more short and pop­py stuff like Brown Eyed Girl, while he want­ed to release 11-minute ren­di­tions of lion imper­son­ations (which he did on the album Saint Dominic’s Pre­view.) The singer became so dis­traught with his label sit­u­a­tion, that he slipped into finan­cial trou­ble and had prob­lems find­ing gigs.

Just when it seemed Mor­ri­son might nev­er deliv­er on his musi­cal poten­tial, Warn­er Music stepped in and bought out his deal with Bang Records. There was still one small con­trac­tu­al detail though. Mor­ri­son was oblig­ed to record exact­ly 36 songs for his old label, who would also con­tin­ue to earn roy­al­ties off any­thing he released for the first year after leav­ing Bang. Not a patient man at the best of times, Van did the only thing he could think of: he record­ed more than 30 songs in a sin­gle record­ing ses­sion, on an out-of-tune gui­tar, about sub­jects as diverse as ring­worm, blow­ing your nose, a dumb guy named George, and whether he want­ed to eat a dan­ish or a sand­wich.

You can hear “Ring Worm” above, and both “Want a Dan­ish?” and “The Big Roy­al­ty Check” below.

Deemed unwor­thy, the songs Mor­ri­son banged out (cheap pun, I know!) weren’t released in the 1960s. They even­tu­al­ly saw the light of day, how­ev­er, on the 1994 album Payin Dues, which hap­pens to be avail­able on Spo­ti­fy for free. Accord­ing to rock crit­ic Richie Unter­berg­er, the album ranks as “the least com­mer­cial music ever record­ed by a major rock artist, and the nas­ti­est spit in the eye of com­mer­cial expec­ta­tions and con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions.” But, there’s cer­tain­ly an enter­tain­ment fac­tor to the col­lec­tion, and it should be not­ed that Payin Dues also includes some worth­while tracks, includ­ing all of Van Mor­rison’s stu­dio mas­ters from the Bang years, plus the demo of “The Smile You Smile” and an alter­nate take of “Brown Eyed Girl”.

via UBUweb/WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

The Won­drous Night When Glen Hansard Met Van Mor­ri­son

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,’ 1998

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A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haruki Murakami’s Novels: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

in Books, Literature, Music | August 29th, 2014

murakami-playlist

Last month we fea­tured the par­tic­u­lars of nov­el­ist Haru­ki Murakami’s pas­sion for jazz, includ­ing a big Youtube playlist of songs select­ed from Por­trait in Jazz, his book of essays on the music. But we also allud­ed to Murakami’s admis­sion of run­ning to a sound­track pro­vid­ed by The Lovin’ Spoon­ful, which sug­gests lis­ten­ing habits not enslaved to purism. His books — one of the very best known of which takes its name straight from a Bea­t­les song (“Nor­we­gian Wood”) — tend to come pre-loaded with ref­er­ences to sev­er­al vari­eties of music, almost always West­ern and usu­al­ly Amer­i­can.  “The Fierce Imag­i­na­tion of Haru­ki Muraka­mi,” Sam Ander­son­’s pro­file of the writer on the occa­sion of the release of his pre­vi­ous nov­el 1Q84, name-checks not just Stan Getz but Janáček’s Sin­foni­et­ta, The Rolling Stones’ Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il, Eric Clap­ton’s Rep­tile, Bruce Spring­steen’s ver­sion of “Old Dan Tuck­er,” and The Many Sides of Gene Pit­ney. The title of Murakami’s new Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age, writes The Week’s Scott Mes­low, ref­er­ences Franz Liszt’s ‘Years of Pil­grim­age’ suite, “which plays a cen­tral role in the nov­el­’s nar­ra­tive. The point­ed ref­er­ence isn’t exact­ly a major detour from Muraka­mi.”

Giv­en the writer’s increas­ing reliance on music and the notion of “songs that lit­er­al­ly have the pow­er to change the world,” to say noth­ing of his “abil­i­ty to sin­gle-hand­ed­ly dri­ve musi­cal trends,” it can prove an illu­mi­nat­ing exer­cise to assem­ble Muraka­mi playlists. Select­ing 96 tracks, Mes­low has cre­at­ed his own playlist (above) that empha­sizes the breadth of genre in the music incor­po­rat­ed into Murakami’s fic­tion: from Ray Charles to Bren­da Lee, Duke Elling­ton to Bob­by Darin, Glenn Gould to the Beach Boys. Each song appears in one of Murakami’s nov­els, and Mes­low even includes cita­tions for each track: “I had some cof­fee while lis­ten­ing to May­nard Fer­guson’s ‘Star Wars.’ ” “Her milk was on the house if she would play the Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ said the girl.” “Imag­ine The Great­est Hits of Bob­by Darin minus ‘Mack the Knife.’ That’s what my life would be like with­out you.” “The room begins to dark­en. In the deep­en­ing dark­ness, ‘I Can’t Go For That’ con­tin­ues to play.” It all coheres in some­thing to lis­ten to while explor­ing Murakami’s world: in your imag­i­na­tion, in real life, or in his trade­mark realms between. 

To lis­ten to the playlist above, you will first need to down­load Spo­ti­fy. Please note that once you mouse over the playlist, you can scroll through all 96 songs. Look for the ver­ti­cal scroll­bar along the right side of the playlist.

Pho­to above is attrib­uted to “wakari­m­a­sita of Flickr”

via The Week

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 5 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online (For a Lim­it­ed Time)

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Trans­lates The Great Gats­by, the Nov­el That Influ­enced Him Most

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Traffic & Other Bands Play Huge London Festival “Christmas on Earth Continued” (1967)

in Music | August 29th, 2014

A tru­ly spec­tac­u­lar event, 1967’s “Christ­mas on Earth Continued”—a super-con­cert described in one pro­mo poster as an “All Night Christ­mas Dream Party”—gets sad­ly remem­bered as the last major show Syd Bar­ret played with Pink Floyd—ending the set dazed and motion­less onstage, his arms hang­ing limp at his sides. Barrett’s break­down wasn’t the only thing that kept this mas­sive hap­pen­ing, “the last gasp of the British under­ground scene,” from tak­ing off as it should have.

As the blog Mar­malade Skies recalls, the con­cert, held in the “vast Lon­don Olympia,” had “hope­less­ly inad­e­quate” pub­lic­i­ty.” This, and a “par­tic­u­lar­ly severe win­ter freeze” meant sparse atten­dance and “finan­cial dis­as­ter for the orga­niz­ers.” In addi­tion, a planned film of the event failed to mate­ri­al­ize, “owing to poor pic­ture qual­i­ty of the footage.”

Christmas-On-Earth-2.fullpage-1

Despite all this, it seems, you real­ly had to have been there. The line­up alone will make lovers of 60s psych-rock sali­vate: Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence, Eric Bur­don, Pink Floyd, The Move, Soft Machine, Tomor­row… The Who didn’t make it, but the unbilled Traf­fic did. We’re lucky to have some of the footage from that win­ter night. Check out Traf­fic below (with a very young Steve Win­wood), play­ing “Dear Mr. Fan­ta­sy.”

Lib­er­al Eng­land blog­ger Jonathan Calder calls the Traf­fic clip “price­less” and quotes Mar­malade Skies’ vivid descrip­tion of the nights fes­tiv­i­ties:

Soft Machine, with Kevin Ayers resplen­dent in pre-punk black string vest, cli­maxed with the ulti­mate Dada ver­sion of ‘We did it again’ as Robert Wyatt leapt into a full bath of water, that just hap­pened to be on-stage with them! At least, we assumed it was water. 

Tomor­row pow­ered through their unique mix of heav­i­ly Bea­t­les influ­enced psy­che­delia. Dur­ing ‘Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er’ Twink (drums) and Junior (bass) per­formed a mimed fight whilst being sub­ject­ed to the most pow­er­ful strobe light effects I’ve ever wit­nessed. Steve Howe was a rev­e­la­tion, mov­ing from raga to clas­si­cal to Bar­rett — style anar­chy with an almost arro­gant ease. 

Traf­fic, still with Dave Mason, even per­formed ‘Hole in my shoe’. Steve Win­wood was into his white cheese­cloth peri­od, and their music was so unlike any­thing else around that they occu­pied a total­ly orig­i­nal space. The song, ‘Here we go round the Mul­ber­ry Bush’ was very typ­i­cal of their trip­py, watery sound at that time. 

Hen­drix — voom! All light shows were killed for his per­for­mance. Noel Red­ding was con­stant­ly nig­gling Jimi, play­ing bass behind his head as Jimi per­formed his tricks with his gui­tar. It was the first time I saw Hen­drix with his Gib­son Fly­ing Arrow, and the ten­sion on-stage pro­duced some elec­tri­fy­ing music.

At the top of the post see Hen­drix in back­stage footage, effort­less­ly coax­ing some beau­ti­ful 12-bar blues from that Gib­son fly­ing V. The film clips of him onstage—blowing an obvi­ous­ly very turned-on audience’s col­lec­tive mind—will con­vince you this was the only place on earth to be on Decem­ber 22, 1967.

And that fate­ful Floyd per­for­mance? We don’t seem to have any film, but we do have the audio, and you can hear it below, slight­ly sped up, it seems. The band were debut­ing their new 3D light­show, which—as much as Barrett’s sad loss of his faculties—left quite an impres­sion on the crowd. One anony­mous com­menter on Calder’s blog, who claims to have seen been in atten­dance at the ten­der age of 18, writes, “I was so impressed with the Soft Machine and Pink Floyd light­shows that I bought an old movie pro­jec­tor from a thrift shop and me and my flat­mate spent hours putting col­or slides into the pro­jec­tor grate and watched them melt psy­che­del­i­cal­ly on the wall.” No doubt impres­sion­able young­sters all over the UK indulged in sim­i­lar kinds of good clean fun, with Piper at the Gates of Dawn on the hi-fi. If like me, you were born too late to expe­ri­ence the zenith of the psy­che­del­ic 60s, then flip off the lights, let your trip­pi­est screen saver take over, and lis­ten to Pink Floyd decon­struct them­selves below.

via Lib­er­al Eng­land

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix at Wood­stock: The Com­plete Per­for­mance in Video & Audio (1969)

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Bea­t­les: “Sgt. Pepper’s,” “Day Trip­per,” and “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows”

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Gets Adapted Into an Avant-Garde Comic Opera

in Music, Opera, Philosophy | August 28th, 2014

Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, enfant ter­ri­ble or idiot savant? A stu­dent of the great Bertrand Rus­sell and pro­tégé of renowned math­e­mati­cian and logi­cian Got­t­lob Frege, the angry young upstart’s Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus put both elder thinkers on notice: The days of their com­fort­able assump­tions were num­bered, in a series of aus­tere, cryp­tic apho­risms and sym­bol­ic propo­si­tions that make very lit­tle sense to those of us who lack the prodi­gious intel­lects of Rus­sell and Frege. While Wittgen­stein is often dis­missed, writes Paul Hor­wich at New York Times’ phi­los­o­phy blog “The Stone,” as “self indul­gent­ly obscure,” per­haps the real rea­son many aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­phers reject his work is that it ren­ders them super­flu­ous. Phi­los­o­phy, Wittgen­stein oblique­ly claimed in his half-mys­ti­cal, hyper-log­i­cal trea­tise, “can’t give us the kind of knowl­edge gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as its rai­son d’être.”

Giv­en the Trac­ta­tus’s fire­bomb­ing of an entire area of human endeav­or, it’s no sur­prise it hasn’t fared well in many tra­di­tion­al depart­ments, but that hasn’t stopped Wittgenstein’s work from find­ing pur­chase else­where, influ­enc­ing mod­ern artists like Jasper Johns, the Coen Broth­ers, and, not least sure­ly, Finnish avant garde com­pos­er and musi­cian M.A. Num­mi­nen.

This odd char­ac­ter, who caused a stir in the 60s by set­ting sex guides to music, took it upon him­self to do the same for many of the Trac­ta­tus’s propo­si­tions, and the results are, well…. Lis­ten for your­self. At the top of the post, we have video of Num­mi­nen per­form­ing the fifth and final move­ment of his Trac­ta­tus suite—the famous final propo­si­tion of that strange lit­tle book: “Where­of one can­not speak, there­of one must be silent” (“Woven man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”). Num­mi­nen sings this in Ger­man, in his high-pitched, creak­ing voice. The rest of the suite he sings in Eng­lish. Just above, hear the first move­ment, “The World Is…,” and below, hear move­ments 2–4, “In Order To Tell…,” “A Thought Is…,” and “The Gen­er­al Form Of A Truth Func­tion.” He even sings the sym­bols, in breath­less tran­scrip­tion. You can stream and down­load the full suite at Ubuweb and fol­low along at the Trac­ta­tus hyper­text here.

 

 

Should Numminen’s tin­pan alley-like com­po­si­tions strike you as a par­tic­u­lar­ly ridicu­lous set­ting for Wittgenstein’s genius, fear not; the Motet below (“Excero­ta Trac­tati Logi­co-Philo­sophi­ci”), by com­pos­er Elis­a­beth Lutyens, treats the eccen­tric German’s work with a great deal more rev­er­ence.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

Bertrand Rus­sell on His Stu­dent Lud­wig Wittgen­stein: Man of Genius or Mere­ly an Eccen­tric?

Philoso­pher Por­traits: Famous Philoso­phers Paint­ed in the Style of Influ­en­tial Artists

Pho­tog­ra­phy of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein Dis­played by Archives at Cam­bridge

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” Played With Bagpipes: The Artistry of Rufus Harley

in Jazz, Music | August 28th, 2014

I sub­mit to you the propo­si­tion that a suf­fi­cient­ly mas­ter­ful com­po­si­tion can sur­vive in not just any key, but any con­text, any time, any sen­si­bil­i­ty, or any instru­men­ta­tion. To allow you to eval­u­ate this propo­si­tion, I sub­mit to you John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” The sax­o­phon­ist’s half-hour suite, an artis­tic free­dom-embrac­ing hymn to the high­er pow­er Coltrane saw as hav­ing imbued him with not just life but a for­mi­da­ble skill on his instru­ment, came as an epony­mous album from Impulse! Records in 1965. (Lis­ten here.) Hav­ing won innu­mer­able acco­lades in the near-half-cen­tu­ry since, it now seems to have a per­ma­nent place on every­one’s list of the great­est jazz record­ings of all time. About such a pil­lar of a work, only one ques­tion can remain: how would it sound on the bag­pipes?

Here to sati­ate your curios­i­ty comes Rufus Harley, the first jazz musi­cian ever to take up the Scot­tish great High­land bag­pipe as his main, er, horn. At the top of the post, you can hear him play a bit of “A Love Supreme” live on that sig­na­ture instru­ment. He would also work oth­er well-known pieces into his act, such as “Amaz­ing Grace,” a song most com­mon­ly played in funer­als. And indeed, it took a funer­al to turn Harley on to the bag­pipe’s untapped poten­tial.

“Moved by the pipes of the Black Watch Scot­tish March­ing Band who were play­ing for the funer­al of slain Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy in Novem­ber, 1963,” says his bio at Hip Wax, he lined up “a $120 set of pipes from a pawn shop and help from musi­cian-teacher Den­nis San­dole,” and “the world’s only jazz bag­pip­ist was on his way” — to places like the CBS game show I’ve Got a Secret, three years lat­er, an appear­ance you can watch just above. You can learn more about Harley’s remark­able life and sur­pris­ing­ly funky career on Jazz City TV’s The Orig­i­nal Rufus Harley Sto­ry below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

John Coltrane Per­forms A Love Supreme and Oth­er Clas­sics in Antibes (July 1965)

Watch John Coltrane and His Great Quin­tet Play ‘My Favorite Things’ (1961)

The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane: His Life & Music Revealed in Heart­felt 1990 Doc­u­men­tary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Brian May’s Homemade Guitar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motorcycle Parts & More

in Music | August 27th, 2014

It’s called “The Red Spe­cial.” Or some­times “The Fire­place.” That’s the gui­tar that Bri­an May (gui­tarist of Queen and physics researcher) began build­ing with his father cir­ca 1963, when Bri­an was about 16 years old. Lack­ing mon­ey but not inge­nu­ity, the father-son team built the gui­tar using mate­ri­als found around the home. The neck of the gui­tar was fash­ioned from an 18th-cen­tu­ry fire­place man­tel, the inlays on the neck from a moth­er-of-pearl but­ton. For the body, they used wood from an old oak table. Then the bricoleurs com­bined a bike sad­dle­bag hold­er, a plas­tic knit­ting nee­dle tip, and motor­bike valve springs to cre­ate a tremo­lo arm. It’s a kind of mag­ic! But here’s per­haps the most amaz­ing part of the sto­ry. The result­ing gui­tar was­n’t a rick­ety nov­el­ty. May used The Red Spe­cial dur­ing Queen’s record­ing ses­sions and live per­for­mances, and he still appar­ent­ly plays a restored ver­sion today. If you find your­self inspired by this DIY sto­ry, you can head over to Bri­an­May­Gui­tars and buy your own Red Spe­cial repli­ca.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

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