Guitar Unbound
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Guitar Unbounddesign: Rick Vermeulen - Inizio group =Hard Werken=

Guitar Unbound
"...'at the end of the day it's all rock and roll'..."

A guitar man: that is Gary Lucas, but not in the traditional way. To him the guitar is an instrument made from flesh and blood with a will of its own, remaining adolescent forever. Gary Lucas likes to play the guitar through the whole musical spectrum.

There is something about the guitar and the physicality of bending the strings that really appeals to me. It's like an aggression. You feel a life force when you're squeezing this thing. May be similar to when I had a gun when I was in summer camp, growing up. They discovered I had a very good eye and could shoot very well in target practice. It's the same kind of feeling, squeezing that trigger is like squeezing the strings on the guitar. With the guitar it is better, because you get this noise you like to control, you can shape and sculpt it the way you want. A gun just goes 'bang'.

In the eighties Gary Lucas (Syracuse, New York, 1952) played with Captain Beefhearts & His Magic Band. "I had to study his records first to hear what was happening. To learn Beefhaerts music required a complete rearrangement of my technique. The notes playing with your left hand while picking in the right, weren't orthodox in any mode of blues or rock and roll scale, folk scale. They were more outside, he liked to step outside".

After the years with Beefheart, Don van Vliet, Gary Lucas made a series of solo performances, all over the world, using various guitars and electronic equipment. He wrote a number of new compositions and variations of existing pieces inspired by a broad range of music traditions, folk, blues, modern classical, popular music from the fifties and sixties and of course rock and roll. He now combines his solo work with his band Gods and Monsters.

Based upon an interview following a performance in De Binnenpret, Amsterdam June 1993, Guitar Unbound paints a portrait of the guitar artist Gary Lucas. Much of the historical footage is from his personal archive.