This is a guitar which is made in America,
it's called a
Collings, it's made in
Austin,
Texas and this guy whose
name is, I presume,
Bill
Collings?
Fred
Collings?
Bill!
Is it
Bill
Collings?
Bill
Collings had to be, didn't it?
Bill
Collings.
He's a master.
A complete master.
This is a guitar
he made himself.
It's equal, without any question,
to the guitars
Martin made back in the 20s.
It's a superb instrument.
It cost 15 ,000 fucking dollars.
because he made it with old wood it's
just a masterpiece beautiful thing and I
picked it up and that thing that I played there just fell
under my fingers
you know these guitars write this kind of stuff
themselves you can I think
what's this I don't play like
this
And just before I push these buttons
in here, because some of you that were seeing it yesterday
will have seen me pushing a few buttons,
I had this idea that I would bring a few friends
to do this show, then I thought,
as I'm underwriting this myself, I think I won't
bring a few friends.
No, I thought, you know, with these days of mechanical pianos,
this piano will not only
send
MIDI out to this box so that I can get this 12
notes at once thing, but it will also
play itself.
You've seen them in bars, I'm sure, and some
of you have probably got them at home.
know, ding, ding, ding, ding, or dah, dah, dah, dah,
dah, dah, whatever you want.
If you drag one down the aisle at your wedding, you don't even
have to hire a musician.
They're made by
Yamaha and they play
themselves and
Bosendorfer do
one as well that plays
itself but this is a pretty standard instrument,
they're not wildly expensive, they're superb
things that play these and they're not
made in
Austin,
Texas and they're not made
by somebody
called
Bill, his name is something else.
But I had this idea that I know what I'll do,
I'll play all the piano parts at home,
bring them over and then I can start to
play and then you'll see me kind of go...
A, you won't know that I'm not really
playing because in any way it was really
me wasn't it because I did it at home
before I came away so it's not like
you're being duped it's just it's like sort
of almost like a backing track a
bit
Spice
Girls -y but not... at least I'm
not using kind of auto -tune on my
voice or anything like that.
There are no computers involved.
then I would, just
as in the middle of it, I'd kind of magically move away
and pick up a guitar and play, acoustic
guitar and piano, seriously, acoustic guitar and piano together,
proper acoustic piano,
sound terrific.
Anyway, I was about halfway through last week about to set out here,
and I just realized
You know, I was going to arrive in
La
Jolla clinically insane.
A piano here, a piano there,
this one here, the guitar there, this is going to be great.
I'm going to be just insane.
Anyway, so we eliminated
one of the pianos.
We've still got this, and a guy called
Brian has helped me out with
this.
And, you know, I love this.
But basically, I've just got a keyboard here that's just
going to do that arpeggio thing,
you know,
that your toy or home organ will do and has been able
to do since 1936,
it's not great.
But, know, I use it quite a lot.
And it depends what notes you hit.
I don't know isn't it going, do the, oh,
no, it's not working,
Brian,
Brian!