So you want to be a rock star? - Experience Music Project, museum - Brief Article

Sunset, Sept, 2000 by Jim Gullo

At Seattle's new Experience Music Project, learn the roots and rhythms of rock and roll--and play star for a day

To be perfectly honest, I've always pictured myself jamming with Bruce Springsteen or howling the rock anthem "Wild Thing" in front of a screaming audience. Certain career decisions, however, combined with a profound inability to carry a tune, have stalled those dreams.

Until now, that is. At the opening of the new Experience Music Project museum in Seattle, billionaire Paul Allen's $100-million shrine to rock and roll, I was able to do all of those things and more. Besides being a huge repository of rock-and-roll memorabilia--and possibly the most controversial architectural novelty in town--EMP just might be the single most interactive museum ever built. As such, it is the perfect fit for technology-crazy; software-happy Seattle.

The experience (so to speak) begins even before you enter the curvy multihued building, which commands a 140,000-square-foot patch of prime real estate just below the Space Needle. Pritzker prize-winning architect Frank O. Gehry known for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, among many other major projects, was allegedly instructed by Allen to make the museum look "swoopy"--and in that he succeeded. (Some say it looks like broken guitars.)

As soon as you enter the silver north end of this impressionistic edifice, you'll be handed a personal Museum Exhibit Guide, or "MEG." This CD player-size device provides, via earphones, a running commentary on exhibits and each of the 1,200 rock artifacts on display at any one time (the collection totals 80,000 gems, from Bo Diddley's box-shaped guitar to Elvis's motorcycle jacket).

Sky Church, the first public space beyond the check-in lobby, has an enormous 65-foot-tall video wall that runs a constant stream of dreamy, abstract videos specially created for EMP Two other theater-style galleries are outfitted with wall-to-wall speakers and monitors for nonstop viewing of rockumentaries.

History and nostalgia buffs immerse themselves in the galleries, beginning with the tribute to Jimi Hendrix that sprang from Allen's personal collection of Hendrix paraphernalia. Here you'll see the great singer-guitarist's stage outfits, his personal diary (opened to a page where, in a neat hand, he describes meeting Joni Mitchell), handwritten lyrics, and the guitar he played at Woodstock.

But guitar lovers head straight to the Guitar Gallery, where instruments ranging from an 1834 Martin to original Dobros and Fender Stratocasters are displayed (their sounds are available on your MEG). One gallery is devoted to the Northwest's influence on music, another shows a time line of important turning points in rock and roll, with artifacts such as Janis Joplin's feather boa and a Bob Dylan harmonica.

For would-be musicians, On Stage is a hyped-up karaoke room, where with the help of computer-controlled instruments, you and your friends can howl and play "Wild Thing" in front of a projected audience. For would-be fans, Artist's Journey is a simulated-motion ride that takes you straight into a George Clinton concert and a James Brown street party.

Rock-and-roll dreams become reality in the Sound Lab, where interactive keyboards, guitar, and drum stations attached to computer terminals walk you through basic songs and riffs, allowing you to play along with recordings by the likes of Springsteen and Mick Jagger. It is here that you'll find me, jamming to "Born in the U.S.A." or "Jumpin' Jack Flash," taking my rightful place in rock history.