Air heads/ Celebrate Jimi Hendrix's birthday by living every guy's

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Nov 26, 2002 by RACHEL SAUER

Let us pause now to honor Jimi Hendrix, who would have turned 60 on Wednesday. Let us be filled with a purple haze and watch the sunrise from the bottom of the sea.

Let us remember him in a way that befits a guitar god, namely: na- na-NA-naaaaa NA-na-na-naaaaa.

This is the sound we will make as we stand in our living rooms with the first cut from Hendrix's 1967 album "Are You Experienced?" blasting.

We will plug in our air guitars, fall to our knees and play with passion, and then we will set them on fire.

We will honor Jimi Hendrix on our air guitars.

Hendrix, who died Sept. 18, 1970, did more to inspire the modern phenomenon of music appreciation known as air guitar than probably any other rock star.

Now anybody with fingers and a will to rock can participate in music in a way unheard of before the birth of rock 'n' roll.

So the question is, what's the deal with air guitar? What inspires people to contort their faces into rock 'n' roll euphoria, pretend they're holding electric guitars and move their fingers in fantastically implausible ways, mimicking what they're hearing?

"I think that's somebody's way of saying, 'Hey, I hear the guitar and I really like what the guitar is playing there,'" said Jeremy Laukhuf, a jazz bass guitar instructor at Colorado College. "Unless they tell you verbally, you wouldn't necessarily know.

"It's a physical expression of appreciating music."

Playing air guitar is a way of channeling the volatile mix of feelings, ideas and images that rock 'n' roll can foment inside a person. It's generally beyond explanation, a way of doing something when the music starts rearranging our DNA.

Chris Forsythe, lead singer for the local band Gripped, remembers first being driven nuts by music in the fourth grade, with the album "Synchronicity" by the Police. Everyone in his group of friends loved it.

"On recess we'd all go out on the playground and do air guitar stuff," he said.

"I was Stuart Copeland, so I played air drums. I'd get sticks and play on this huge tractor tire. That was my kit."

Later, he and his friends placed second in a seventh-grade talent show by playing air instruments to a Whitesnake song.

They even borrowed wigs from J.C. Penney for the performance. "All I know is, air guitar led me to do music," Forsythe said.

Laukhuf said playing air guitar is a way of appreciating songs in which guitar riffs are as important as lyrics, songs such as "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin or "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith. Because people can't really sing along to riffs, they play them.

Plus, air guitar liberates the rock star lurking inside most guys. And it really is a guy thing.

"No offense to women, but I've never seen a woman do it well," Forsythe said. "It tends to look funky. But women can play air piano better than we can."

Air guitar is the domain of the 15-year-old inside every guy, the one who wants to get chicks and trash hotel rooms. It is aspiring for coolness, because few things look cooler than a guitar god in the throes of rock 'n' roll ecstasy.

On air guitar, people can jump like Eddie Van Halen, windmill like Pete Townshend and flick their tongues like Gene Simmons.

"I think you have to be creative with it," Forsythe said. "You have to play with your teeth, you have to pretend like you're playing behind your head, and any time you can drop to your knees, that is good air guitar."

The best places for air guitar, Forsythe said, are any Scorpions concert, free-wheeling karaoke bars or your basement at 3 in the morning with your friends.

The best music is anything that rocks - serious '80s metal like Slayer and Metallica, "the stuff with really fast rhythm that you had to bang your head to," he said.

"Though classic rock is not bad, either. With classic riffs you can fake like you know what you're doing. Like 'Smoke on the Water.' It's pretty easy to fake that one."

The phenomenon of air guitar has even expanded to a world championship held for the last seven summers in Oulu, Finland.

In August, 32-year-old British architect Zac Munro won for the second year in a row, this time by playing air guitar to "Fell in Love with a Girl" by The White Stripes.

Organizers of the event told CNN that, "The air guitar philosophy is that all the bad things in the world will vanish if everybody in the world plays the air guitar."

Which, it seems, is the point. Playing air guitar is about loving the music. It's a way to rock, to jump into the speakers and feel carried away.

And being carried away seems like the most appropriate way to celebrate Jimi Hendrix's birthday.

Let's set this air guitar on fire.

CONTACT US: (719) 636-0374 or rsauer@gazette.com

THE TOP 10 AIR GUITAR SONGS OF ALL TIME

Here they are, Dude!

This list is not about great guitarists. It's about monster riffs, macho lyrics and wild stage antics that lend themselves perfectly to emulation.

Don't be shy. Crank that air guitar up to 11, and do your part to eradicate evil from the world.

10. "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC - What's a school dance without it? Nothin'. (Bonus points if you sprint through the prom like Angus.)