Article headed “Dude, where’s my guitar?”
Originally published in The Guardian, Aug 4th 2001.

The Metal Avenger rips the chains from his body and delivers his battle speech. He wears a denim jacket, a headband and has an axe hanging from his belt. A roadie hands him an invisible guitar, which he then pretends to play to a Jive Bunny medley of hard rock. In the world of air guitar, this man is a living god. In two hours time he will be receiving simulated (air) fellatio on the same stage.

The night of the 5th annual UK Air Guitar Championships marked a return to rock values. The brain damaged children of the 80s ran screaming from Jon Bon Jovi’s perm into the welcoming arms of clubland dealers “Please,” we begged “please remove these Iron Maiden patches from my jacket- there has been some kind of terrible mistake.” But now we have returned to poke a stick at the spandex corpse, despite warnings about never returning to a firework once lit, we want to mix metaphors like we once mixed lager with cider. Only this time there will be no blackcurrant.

It came as a shock to find that the Championship was real. I had always thought that it was just a myth, a story musicians tell to their children to give them nightmares. But after my close encounter of the second kind in the 1999 audience, I decided I would have to join in. I recruited a few friends, including my mate Nige, with the intention of forming a revolutionary air band complete with air girlfriend on tambourine. The coveted first prize trophy was a guitar with no strings. The poster said “Enter and Win”. Yes, I thought. Yes, I said to an increasingly unsure Nige, Yes. We will enter and win.

The contest is organised by promoter DJ Death. There is something reassuringly disturbing about him. It might be the autopsy scars he has tattooed across his neck. It might be his unpredictable wardrobe. He’s normally your average dark angel of rock but I have seen him stalking through Brighton dressed as a prohibition-era mobster. He deliberately holds the event in a venue five times too small in order to create an exclusive aura. This is why nobody believes it exists.

After everybody else had bottled out, Nige and I set about perfecting our double-act. The name was the easy part. It had to include a reference to the rockingest of all hair don’ts- the Bolton, the Cro-Magnon, the made-for-TV “Jason and the Argonauts”- the glory that is the mullet. It had to signal our aesthetic sophistication. It had to look good in silver metal-script. The REDNEK MULLETZ were born.

My costume involved a blonde wig cut to desired style (fancy dress shop, £8), jeans, boots, mirror shades (i2i London, £25), chains (model’s own), cowboy moustache (joke shop, 99p) and a leather waistcoat over a denim jacket (hired through an inexplicably complex arrangement with a local second hand store). Nige played the 80’s corporate rock monster with unsettling conviction- pony tailed mullet, slimline goatee, truly objectionable Skid Row t-shirt and a thin beige suit jacket with the sleeves rolled up. He bought it from the Suit You man. It had a shiny white lining. It would eventually be stolen. Nobody will ever know why.

We arrived at the venue in full costume only to be set upon by the entourage of rival guitarist Evel Ed. The doorway was blocked and we had no option but to face him down. “Did you tune up yet?” he hissed whilst being physically restrained “Did you fucking tune up yet?” It was all going too far too quickly. I realised that the competition was going to be fought to the death up there. We had travelled back in time like the Terminator, naked without our irony.

As Arnie discovered in ‘The Running Man’, last year’s winners (“Last year’s losers”) are really just decomposing in the arena basement. We were to have no such luck. The Metal Avenger, reigning champion for two years, opened the evening. He tore his way through the cannon of classic rifts- AC/DC, Aerosmith, Spinal Tap. His fingers were a blur on the imaginary fretboard as he worked through the cannon of classic facial expressions- the kneed-in-the-nuts, the rock-war grimace, the dog’s arse, and the careless electrician. This was a man with roadies. This was a hard man to follow.

Many have shared my puzzlement at Obi-Wan’s pseudo-Zen platitude “Who is the more foolish- the fool or the fool who follows him?” The fool who followed the Metal Avenger mimed along to the acoustic guitar theme from the Deer Hunter. An argument broke out in the audience about the music from The Gallery on Take Hart. Next up was Evel Ed. He took to the stage on an air Harley, dressed in a white jump suit and cape, and licked “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. He was good but I was confident “We’re going to enter and win,” I said to Nige. I turned around. “Nige?”

Once we got Nige out of the toilet it was our turn to go on. DJ Death pushed our special CD into the machine. We weren’t going to just do any old number- we had something special planned. As we strutted onto the stage I regretted overdubbing the noise of a stadium crowd cheering over the first notes. The cheers farted out of the cheap speakers like a thousand drowning daleks. Luckily a friend started a fight with a guy in the crowd and they had to be ejected. I could hear something shouted about the music from The Gallery. There was heavy metal tension in the air.

Nige stood in a Buffalo Stance while I plucked out the first bar of “Duelling Banjos”, a charming song somewhat tainted by images of inbred hillbilly sodomy from hick-flick Deliverance. They were terrified. A mortal transgression had occurred in that banjos are not technically guitars. This was a break in the ritual frame like the moment when the Heel cheats in a wrestling match. There has to be redress- the Baby Face has to come back. We sped up, fighting each other for stage space, we added distortion and started thrashing. As music gave way into Metallica you could hear the cheering.

By this point my wig had head-banged itself over my eyes, my vision already impaired by the steaming in my mirror-shades. I threw myself (fell, to be honest) offstage as the rhythm melted into Billy Idol howling, electronically pitch shifted and slowed down, “Come ohn itza narce dayyy ffooorrrrraaaaa wwwhhhiiiiitttteee wwwwwwweeedddddiinnnnnnnnnggggggggggg.”

There were people throwing themselves onto the stage. “They think it’s all over.” We hit them with the climax- air saxophone to Jerry Rafferty’s Baker Street, back to back with synchronised pelvic thrusts. The crowd know it. They love it. They still think Bob Holness played it. “It is now.”

Things are a bit hazy after that point. The booze had taken its toll and the crowd had become completely unstable. The stringless guitar trophy was presented and smashed into pieces on the stage. Some girls were performing topless air guitar to “I Wanna be your Dog”. The Metal Avenger was punching the air whilst receiving his conciliatory air blowjob. Nige’s flecked jacket was ripped from his body and stolen. I can say this with authority as we spent ages looking for it afterwards. The reasons behind this arbitrary and senseless crime remain unsolved.

As joint champions, we have won the right to represent the UK in the international championship in Finland this August. You can’t help but notice the lack of government interest in funding the trip. I bumped into DJ Death trying to photocopy his head in a local newsagent recently and he made diabolical references to a “Magic Bus” that would take us to Helsinki via Amsterdam. I’m not convinced that any of us would make it out of Holland alive. With the awkward scheduling of the 2001 UK championships on the same day as the international, it now looks like we may have to make the journey on foot.

In the meantime I have to talk Nige into buying a new jacket. I’m not sure if he shares my snarling rock hunger for glory. I let him talk me into turning down an appearance on Top Of The Pops 2 on the basis that we refused to ever mime. The lady at the BBC didn’t even get the joke. But I’ve been talking him round about the international heat- Christ knows the country needs it after the Eurovision disaster. “Relax,” I told him “we’re gonna put the Hell into Helsinki.”