“My dad played guitar, and when I was a kid, he used to sing my little brother and I to sleep every night” says Stu Mackenzie, bandleader of Australian garage-psych innovators King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard. “He was a young dad, and he was learning, so it was this beautiful experience of falling asleep listening to him work out the song. It was far from performance; I think it was his meditation as well.” Through these humble beginnings, the instrument would remain a background instrument for the young Mackenzie, until he was presented with an alternate take on guitar music. “Becoming a teenager, guitar was always something that my dad did, and therefore it wasn’t ‘cool’ [laughs]. I guess, as a classic Australian, it was seeing videos of AC/DC playing live that made me think, ‘No, actually, guitar is cool!’ The music my dad liked, I like now, but it wasn’t electric guitars with loud, primal energy. It was Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Paul Kelly. So seeing AC/DC on TV made me say, ‘Please, Dad, can I have a guitar?!’”
“My dad was left-handed, so initially I learnt to play upsidedown. Because of that, I can still have a fiddle on an upside-down guitar – it’s still ingrained in my brain a little bit. After a few months, my dad very kindly said, ‘Okay, I think Stu’s ready now’. I was 15 at the time, and a lot of my friends sang or played piano or drums, and I felt like I had to catch up. So a lot of my adolescence and high school years were about trying to catch up to my friends who were more accomplished or had learnt more than me. I always felt like it was never about the skill, just about being good enough to join in on the jam and the hangout. That was the drive.”
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