Prague celebrates the Art of Hard Rock

Hard Rock Café is celebrating its 40th birthday this year with a travelling exhibition of memorabilia relating to the greats of the music world who frequented its many outlets the world over. Entitled The Art of Hard Rock the exhibition, which opens to the Prague public on January 12th at the Dvorak sec contemporary art gallery in Dlouha street, is a collection of musical instruments, paintings and drawings donated by the likes of Jim Morrison, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Frank Zappa, Pete Towshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, Paul Stanley, Ringo Starr, Lou Reed and Billy Idol.

Photo: CTK

Oliver McGillick, of Hard Rock Cafe explained how the idea of a travelling exhibition came about.

“As you know the Hard Rock Cafe chain has a huge collection of memorabilia around the world. We have over 70,000 unique pieces, artworks, guitars, clothing and various accessories that once belonged to the rock stars. Not all of them are exhibited. Most of them are in the Orlando warehouse for memorabilia. And the idea was let’s take all the artworks from our collection and choose the most valuable ones for an exhibition. We knew our 40th anniversary was coming up and said let’s do this. Many of these things have never been shown to the public before and we though why not bring them to the light on this occasion. So we started this travelling exhibition, which first opened in Venice and then went on to Rome and is now in Prague. And it is a tribute to this city – because this is a trio of very cultural cities. Prague also has the biggest Hard Rock Cafe in Europe so that was another reason.”

So were all the artworks and memorabilia donated by the artists themselves or were some of them acquired in auctions?

“Yes some were donated and some were bought in charity auctions. Hard Rock is very much into charity and supports it in very many ways.”

Painting by Paul Stanley

What are some of the best pieces here?

“The most valuable piece we have is Paul Stanley’s oil on canvass. It is untitled so we are not sure what it is meant to be, but the value of this painting is in the hundreds of thousands of crowns. So that is our most valuable piece and as you can see it has a wall all to itself. But if you look at all the stuff we have here not all of it is by rock stars, lots of it is by people, artists who devoted their lives to portraying rock stars or music celebrities. For example -David Oxtoby or Robert Crossman.”

So who are some of the big stars who turned their hand to painting and art-work?

“We have John Entwistle and Pete Towshend from The Who. John Entwistle was a precision painter. It was a big, big hobby. On tour he used to have all his art materials with him and would constantly be drawing –most often his band mates. As you see we have his self-portrait here and also one of Pete Towshend. He would drive around in his tour bus sketching and painting all the time. He was one of those who could turn around and stop doing music and start doing art and they would be really good.

Pete Towshend himself wasn’t much of a painter, he just made this little crayon drawing of a clown and his daughter. Not terribly good. But the thing about these musicians is that they were artists by nature. Visual art is a form of art as well and mostl of them inclined to it in their free time because it is a form of expression, a form of release.”

Drawing by John Entwistle

So some of the stuff here reflects their inner- world?

“Yes, exactly. For example Billy Idol’s self-portrait over there was terribly scribbled and it is hard to know what it is –but that’s just him. He was a neurotic and if you look at the portrait it is all there.”

It is more like doodling...

“Yes, it is abstract and doesn’t reveal much which is quite true about Billy Idol. He wasn’t very transparent.”

There are several self-portraits I see.

“Yes, we have John Entwistle’s self-portrait, Micheal Jackson’s self-portrait which is very interesting because he portrayed himself without his face, just with his little sparkling glove and his hat and even though you can’t see his face you can tell it is the king of pop because he has got his glove and that just shows what an icon he is.”

I understand you had a psychological study done on some of the works?

“Yes, it is actually quite amazing, we sent maybe five pictures and what we got was a 20-page psychological review –very interesting stuff. These musicians –a lot of them were dark minds and we all know that music comes from the hardest times or the best times of a person’s life and most of the songs were created in a state of depression or a high –there was nothing in-between usually. So in a lot of paintings you can see this. There is something about them, something dark or else something very bright. I still have to go through the study in detail, but from what I saw so far the paintings are very revealing and people who come in will get to know a lot about the inner-mind of these artists –there is a lot to explore in there.“

Drawing by Pete Townshend

Hard Rock Cafe, which is now established in 52 countries, takes pride in not just offering great food and service but a friendly, laid-back atmosphere that attracted and continues to attract the greats of the music world. Rita Gilligan, now a cultural attache for Hard Rock recalls the days when she was hired as the very first waitress in London’s Hard Rock Cafe.

“I got the job in the Hard Rock and it was fascinating! What used to fascinate me most was the atmosphere. My husband was a suit-and-tie man and I’d come in to work and they’d have long hair, loads of chains, big platform shoes, velvet jackets and they were smoking dope. They were high-fiving each other and drinking out of the bottle. It was such a change from where I came from. The Beatles would come in, Freddy Mercury came in, Eric Clapton. The first guitar to go up on the wall was from Eric Clapton. He came in one day and Isaac (Tigrett) who was one of the founders was behind the bar and he said give Isaac the case and Isaac opened it and said “I don’t play the Goddamn guitar” and then they looked at it and said let’s hang it on the wall. About a month later, Pete Towshend heard about it and he too sent a guitar with a note reading “mine’s as good as his”. That’s how it started and today we have a collection of 87 thousand pieces, we are in 52 countries and have 179 Hard Rocks and we rotate the memorabilia every five years. The most expensive piece we’ve got is Jimmy Hendrix’ Flying V. That was the last guitar he played in the Isle of Wight before he passed away, God bless him. We have it in London, it is worth over a million and I sometimes have the pleasure of holding it. It is very, very iconic.

Micheal Jackson’s self-portrait

And what was also very amazing for me was stars drinking out of the neck of the bottle. I was used to serving people drinking out of cut glass, you know. And there they were eating the burgers with their hands. We had to teach people that, you know, because going back 40 years the only people who ate out were barristers, lawyers and such and they didn’t want to pick up the hamburger, they were used to silver cutlery. And we changed all that. We said “Come on John, or Mr. So-and-So just grab the bottle there.” And today it is just a given isn’t it. Everyone does it today and we are proud to say we started all that.”

Is the atmosphere still there or has it changed?

“Oh, the atmosphere is still there. It is still there. It is the unique spirit of the Hard Rock Cafe. We care. It’s value for money. We care about the people who come in. I always say I don’t care whether you are having a cup of coffee for a pound and he’s having a 500-pound bottle of champagne. I treat you both the same, because I want you to come back.”

The Art of Hard Rock exhibition in Prague is accompanied by a number of side events such as a “live painting” session by a number of well-known Czech artists, a bloggers’ conference on the future of the Czech music industry and screenings of legendary rock concerts.