I Knew It Wasn't Just Us
Guess what's in the Wall Street Journal this morning?Guitar Hero.
That's right--Steve Davey sent me an article from the WSJ (subscription required) about Guitar Hero, and here's another surprise--it's good.
Here are some excerpts:
On tour with his multiplatinum hard-rock band Korn last summer, Jonathan Davis regularly whipped crowds into a frenzy with classic-rock staples such as "Iron Man," "Smoke on the Water" and "More Than a Feeling." And that was before he even got off the tour bus.
Mr. Davis, Korn's lead singer, is part of an unlikely but growing fraternity: Rock stars who are also avid players of Guitar Hero, an electronic game that lets gamers pretend to be, well, rock stars.
From superstars like Korn to up-and-comers, Guitar Hero has quickly become a fixture on tour buses and in recording studios. Intended for air guitarists who might not be able to play the real instrument, the $70 PlayStation title has also won a following in the music world. Its devotees range from alternative-rocker Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails to country stars Rascal Flatts, whose tour manager, Chris Alderman, says he frequently has trouble tearing the musicians away to conduct preconcert sound checks.
...Many professional rockers, however, say the game lets them act out a fantasy that their real lives don't quite match. Sometimes, pretending to be a rock star for a few minutes can be more fun than being one.
Bob Bryar, drummer for the young alternative-rock band My Chemical Romance, whose album "The Black Parade" just made its debut at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album-sales chart, tends to be fairly retiring in his real-life role as a musician. "I feel better being in my own area" at the back of the stage, he says. Yet playing Guitar Hero in the privacy of his high-rise Chicago apartment, Mr. Bryar says he feels free to act like a flashy frontman.
"I've done some pretty embarrassing s-," the 26-year-old musician says. "Jumping off tables. Standing with my legs really far apart, in that goofy rock-star stance." He adds: "I got huge complaints at my apartment building because I put it through my Bose and shred Guitar Hero all night."
...Indeed, a subject of hot debate among musicians is whether playing guitar actually makes one a better Guitar Hero player. Pressing little plastic buttons very quickly is, after all, quite different from playing actual notes and chords.
Michael Einziger, the 30-year-old guitarist for the hard-rock band Incubus, says he was "shocked at how hard it was" to play the videogame's version of his song "Stellar." He admits he was handily beaten by his then-14-year-old sister, Ruby Aldridge, when the two of them squared off earlier this year. "It doesn't have anything to do with playing guitar," Mr. Einziger says. "It's all rhythmic."
When the four members of the punk-pop band the Donnas got together to play Guitar Hero last week, guitarist Allison Robertson took some good-natured ribbing from her bandmates, says drummer Torry Castellano. That's because Ms. Robertson had a hard time playing along with the band's own song "Take It Off." "Expectations for her are pretty high because she's the guitar player and because she's so good at videogames in general," says Ms. Castellano.
The game has even been known to suck up time in actual recording studios. While making their second album earlier this year, members of the Montreal pop-rock band Three Days Grace frequently sneaked off to play rather than attend to the business at hand. "I'd be in the vocal booth singing, and the rest of the guys would be downstairs rocking out on the game," recalls frontman Adam Gontier. Three Days Grace learned about the game from Tool, a superstar act that was recording at the same Los Angeles area studio. "We'd hear them screaming and freaking out," Mr. Gontier recalls.
Heh. Everybody loves this game.
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