Virtually rockin'

Red-hot 'Guitar Hero II' game gets a new generation playing along

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, February 27, 2007

"Mommy's all right/ Daddy's all right/ They just seem a little weird . . . "

My 12-year-old son is an avid gamer who picks up most of his music from video games, so when he started singing the chorus of "Surrender" by Cheap Trick one morning on the way to school, the '70s power pop classic came out of nowhere. "How do you know that song?" I asked him.

"I played it on 'Guitar Hero II' at my friend's house," he said, "and now I can't get it out of my head." Just like the first time I heard "Surrender." Later he went into bits of "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath and "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie. I had to find out about this "Guitar Hero II" game.

A few days later, I knew everything about "GH II" I needed to know. We were at Target and I left Jack with the crane-necked gamers while I went off in search of the latest $49 appliance I'll use only once. When I returned, my son had a guitar-shaped PlayStation 2 controller around his neck, playing the solo of "Sweet Child O' Mine" and wiggling the whammy bar during long-held notes. The crowd cheered as he made it through the serpentine solo, even as he occasionally hit clinks instead of the proper notes.

"Guitar Hero," which is like a dance-mat game for the fingers, takes the air out of air guitar, with the player making an actual contribution to the band's sound. "You rock!" the game graphics proclaimed at the end of "Sweet Child."

"We'll take one of these!" I said to the kid in the red vest, but they were all sold out. It was a week before Christmas, so I had to hit eight or nine Targets, Best Buys and Circuit Citys before I finally found "Guitar Hero II." It was a bargain at $79 plus tax, which is about 1/20th of what I spent on those blasted Yu-Gi-Oh cards that I'm always finding between the seat cushions. I spent a glorious Christmas Day watching my son play along to music from bands like the Pretenders, KISS, Megadeth and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Jack followed a scrolling field of multicolored icons and pressed the corresponding buttons on the fretboard, while thumbing the strum bar in rhythm to the music. Vaulting from the "easy" to "medium" levels in a matter of hours, he went on tour, made some money and spent it all on a cool guitar from the virtual music store — just like a real guitarist would.

A week later we bought a second, wireless guitar, so Jack could play with a friend, with one taking guitar and the other covered the bass lines. Even with this musical interaction, my son refers to his instrument as a controller, not a guitar; it's still just a video game to him. But to me it's a plastic ax that just might steer him to the real thing.

Not a guitar daddy

When I became a parent in 1994, I was pretty pink and helpless except I was absolutely sure of two things: 1) I would be a better father than I was a breathing coach and 2) my son would learn to play the guitar. After a lifetime of watching guitarists get the girls, star at parties and live a pampered and pumped-up fantasy existence, I was determined to get a guitar in my son's hands at a young age. This time I was absolutely sure I knew what was best for him.

But first I had to get him into bands and rock 'n' roll, which proved to be more difficult than I imagined. I was raised on Top 40 radio, but my son is of the Gameboy generation. Not wanting to be pushy, I offered subtle musical suggestions on occasion, and my kid developed an almost allergic reaction to Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Elvis Costello.

I bought Jack a child-sized guitar when he was 7 and every once in a while I'd hear some plinking from his room, but it would last only about as long as it took for the next PlayStation game to load.

Some children are born just so their parents will have someone who is required to hang out with them for 18 years. Other little bundles arrive to give Mom and Dad a do-over. But it's really not fair to expect your children to do what you weren't able to do. In the aftermath of Beatlemania, I bought a guitar and tried to play it; even started a band called the Conquistadors (pronounced as it's spelled). Our stage costume was blue turtlenecks, jeans and white sailor hats, but we never took the stage because we couldn't play a lick. I remember the time we almost made it halfway through "Louie Louie." My fingertips hurt, and it took me about 15 seconds to change chords. Being in a band was a lot of fun, until that learning how to play thing broke up the party.

But how I've regretted not toughing it out. Looking back, the only thing missing in my life was a guitar and everything that comes with playing it well. My kid would not make the mistake that I made.

But, by allowing players to skip the hard part, you have to wonder if "Guitar Hero II" is more likely a gateway to playing a real guitar or to "Guitar Hero III" and "IV"? "There's been some discussion about that," said "Guitar Hero's" music supervisor Randy Eckhardt. A university in Canada has even released a study that shows that "Guitar Hero" players are less inclined to graduate to real guitars. Many don't feel the need, no doubt. They can star at the "Guitar Hero" parties that have replaced karaoke on college campuses or crank it up on the big screen at Austin hard-rock haven Redrum every Tuesday and walk away with the prettiest girls. Who needs band practice?

But Eckhardt thinks GH could lead to a spurt of new guitar players. Video games are made to grow out of. Where will all these 12-year-olds of the blistering fretwork turn to when they're 17-year-olds who want to bash out their frustrations?

"You've gotta have timing, good rhythm to be good at 'Guitar Hero,' " offered Eckhardt, a University of Texas graduate (1989) now based in the Bay Area. "A lot of the same things (with guitar playing) apply to the game. Your brain has to work your hands." Rather than having to build up callouses all summer to see if you have the natural ability to play guitar, you can find out in a couple days with "Guitar Hero," which will debut in the Xbox 360 format next month.

I asked Charlie Sexton, who was touring with Joe Ely when he was my son's age, if he thinks his path might've been different if "Guitar Hero" had been around when he was a youngster. "I might've picked it up and messed around with it, but I was crazy for the blues," he said. "Do they have any Jimmy Reed songs on there?"

Nope, but "Guitar Hero I" does have "Texas Flood" by Stevie Ray Vaughan. "GHII," meanwhile, features a pair of local acts gone national — the Butthole Surfers and the Sword. Actually, those Austinites are represented by note-for-note cover versions of their songs. Because the lead guitar has to be isolated for the game to work, multitrack master recordings have to be used. For RedOctane, the game's publisher, it's easier — not to mention cheaper — to reproduce the classics rather than license the masters from the labels, so they called on the Wave Group, a collective of around 25 studio musicians who ape the classics, brilliantly. Two acts — Primus and Jane's Addiction — did supply RedOctane with their masters to "John the Fisherman" and "Stop!", respectively, but the rest of the featured numbers in "GHII" are covers.

"Not a single act has come back to us and complained about how their song was done," said Eckhardt, who's having an easier time lining up the songs for "Guitar Hero III," which could be out in time for Christmas.

"We couldn't get Led Zeppelin or AC/DC," says Eckhardt, "but most of the classic hard rock bands love being a part of it. Their music is being exposed to a whole new audience." "Guitar Hero II" sold more than 800,000 units in December alone. The title, created by Harmonix, now belongs to Activision, which bought publisher RedOctane in June for $99.9 million. Harmonix, meanwhile, will develop new guitar games for MTV, which bought the Boston-based company for $175 million last year.

People are banking on a healthy virtual music world for years to come. "When you strap on a guitar, even a plastic one, it just does something to people," Eckhardt said.

I'm just glad that Jack is learning that there's more to the music world than the skatepunk he hears on Tony Hawk videos or those Weird Al Yankovic parodies that just keep on coming.

I see him rip through "Search and Destroy" with an Iggy-soundalike on vocals and watch him nail the weird time signatures on "John the Fisherman" and I realize he's already gone further as a guitarist than I ever did.

I'm the most uncoordinated "Guitar Hero" player ever. I can barely make it through a single song without the crowd booing and my bandmates stomping around in anger (it's in the game). Thankfully, I can finally rest assured, 35 years after the Conquistadors split over creative deficiency, that guitar playing was never in the cards for me.