Marc Bolan was a major influence on why and how I play guitar. To me, the guitar riff in ‘20th Century Boy’ was one, if not THE greatest rock n’ roll riff of all time. When I answered ‘YES” to Michael Rozon’s words of …’why don’t you do your own record’; the reality of actually doing it sank in. Wanting to jump on this, I reached back to my youth and thought about doing this song. Since I had put the ‘no synth’ rule on us, I thought this song could be a cool showcase of some of the cool sonics I hoped to extract from the electric guitar.

Rewind to Lollapoluza 1992; which my now wife and I’s first ‘overnight date’. We got to see MINISTRY, which was an amazing sonic assault … sort of like standing near a engine of a 747. The show is actually on YouTube. Fast forward 26 years later, and I have Al Jourgensen in our studio singing ‘20th Century Boy’ ! One of the first of many of those surreal BIC moments. Turns out Al is a T. Rex fan and was into doing the song. Hell, he even came back a few days later to blow some mean harp on it! During this recording, Michael Rozon and AL hit it off great … talking Timiothy Leary and the Chicago scene … which led to MR working on the last two Ministry records! Tish and I’s daughters also did the hand-claps on the recording!! #BIC FAMILY!

.So on to the video. This would be the 3rd video from ‘finding beauty in chaos’. Vicente, who we worked with on the first two videos, was also a big Ministry fan so he was excited to do this. We were able to get Skinny's Nite Club in North Hollywood to let us use their club during the day. We also put out a call for about 30 extras, as V was confident he could make it look and feel like a packed venue with that. I brought in some TV screens to put on our amps to run T. Rex on ‘Top Of The Pops’ as we played. You can catch it in a few of the shots. Al was simply on fire and delivered exactly what we had hoped! Still surreal that Tish and I are on ‘stage’ with Al so many years after that first date in ‘92. Life is funny that way! Our captive audience had a blast and made this video so fun to do. At one point, I threw my guitar up in the air, but due to the low ceiling over the stage it it bounced back quickly … smashing me in the head! I saw stars for a few.. but the show must go on. I should see if Vicente has that footage :)

Check out the video below and some behind the scenes pics!

MC X

BIC FLASHBACK #3 - '20th CENTURY BOY' ft. AL JOURGENSEN