[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CAMERA CLICKING]
ANDY SUMMERS (VOICEOVER): I saw a lot of these amazing auteur
films when I was young.
In particular, I remember seeing Bergman's Seventh
Seal, which was so impressive to me, the whole thing.
And when I came out of the cinema,
I knew that's what I want to do.
I was such an avid guitar player, so
wrapped up in the guitar, but it gave me
a kind of a lust for this black and white imagery,
the power of the film, and especially film
visuals combined with music.
There was a very powerful thing there.
And I felt it in myself.
But at the same time, you know, I was a kid.
And I was playing the guitar.
And I wanted to be in a band, so those concerns pretty much
overrode everything else.
This is a completely mental journey
that you go on your whole life.
I don't think I've ever had a day,
basically, without a guitar solo running through my head.
It's just the way it is.
But that interior landscape, that mental landscape
of the guitar, never leaves the head.
There's always something churning away in there.
One of the things you're certainly
told to do when you're young--
at least in my time-- was that you had to get your own voice.
What are you trying to say?
Am I any good?
You know, you're supposed to have an original voice.
So this was a big thing.
I came up with the idea that maybe I
could put my own photographs on a guitar.
I had never seen that done by anyone.
I approached Fender.
The idea sort of caught fire.
After all these years of being obsessed
with photography and the guitar, I now
have the two things together.
This was the first time I've been to the custom shop.
And of course, it was amazing to walk around and see
all this stuff and these historical instruments
and everything.
And then it became this sort of interrogation about,
what did I really want with the guitar?
I thought I knew a lot about guitars,
but, man, those guys went into so much detail
about the shape of the neck, the wood, the inlays, the bridge,
pickups.
I must have tried six or seven different pickup combinations
before we came to this special ceramic pickups.
The five way switch, the Leica camera
knobs instead of the normal Fender controls, the body
shape.
You know, I wanted this '54 Strat.
And I wanted this particular curve on it.
And of course, the really incredible thing
that they had to pull off was how
to get this collage on a guitar.
I still don't know how they did it.
As you can see, it's all the way around.
It's got three springs on the back.
And I took all those photographs,
so apart from being an art piece,
it's a great Stratocaster.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC - "MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE"]
Well, a lot of photographs on here,
those are very personal ones.
There's a couple of pictures of Sting and Stewart,
just to keep it in the family.
In a way, this is autobiographical
because these pictures span many years.
I was fairly well rounded as a musician.
I played a lot of classical guitar.
I played jazz for years.
You know, I mean, I was a pretty good guitar player.
The irony was that I sort of threw it
all out of the window to play punk, which was an odd move.
But everything went to a different level.
And I think Sting, in particular, saw the potential
and that his songwriting was going to be
unleashed with someone like me.
The choices I would make on the guitar behind the vocals
started to reshape the band.
And Sting, with his brilliant ear and his unique voice
and his great, deep musical talent, was able to go with it.
And I think Stewart found his kind of mid tempo,
hi-hat groove with it.
And suddenly, you know, this sort of magical thing
started to happen.
It sort of was an amazing combination
of personal-interpersonal chemistry.
Three different styles of playing
coming together in a very urgent moment in the UK.
And you know, I feel very grateful to it
because it had huge energy, and it gave us
a framework to be together and also, ultimately,
to escape from.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I think, in my cinematic viewing at that time,
being in black and white just seemed
to lend an air of seriousness, authenticity,
reality that color didn't give at that point.
It's very natural for me, you know, to love it, actually.
And I still do.
I say photography is black and white.
You know, I've been a very lucky guy.
I've managed to do all these various things.
But I worked hard at it.
And I've got to the point where Leica have actually
made me my own camera.
It's thrilling for me to get, you
know, a guitar designed for me and a camera.
It's kind of amazing.
This is an inspiring guitar.
I love playing it.
And I love this camera.
I love shooting with this Monocrom II camera.
So for me, they're great tools that I hope inspire creativity.
The famous quote, "All art aspires
to the condition of music--" I think it's absolutely true.
There's a profound truth to it because visual art,
for instance-- it becomes music.
Poetry becomes music.
Anything beautiful becomes music.
Why is that?
Because music is certainly the most abstract and probably
the greatest art, the greatest expression of humanity,
that we have.
I think, ultimately, I'm looking for the same thing,
like some sort of condition of music, whether it's stark,
angular, melodic, lyrical, emotional, austere.
All these things that can be everything.
Music can be all those things.
And ultimately, everything turns into music.