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Learn to play guitar with Macca at the O2 music hall of fame
Louise Jury4 Mar 2009
A celebration of more than 60 years of British rock and pop will open next week in a new £9.5 million exhibition at The O2.
Stars from Led Zeppelin and Oasis to the Spice Girls have lent memorabilia for the British Music Experience.
The show also incorporates interactive technology so visitors can see classic moments of music history from Beatlemania to Live Aid.
They can try their hand at guitars, keyboard or drums in a studio sponsored by Gibson guitars with expert video tuition from the likes of K T Tunstall and Sir Paul McCartney. Visitors can also learn different styles of dance with demonstrations by one of the Mamma Mia! cast.
Music promoter and BME chairman Harvey Goldsmith said: "We have created such a wealth of music talent in the UK over the last 50 or 60 years. I just felt we needed to reflect that.
"In America, there's a Rock'*'Roll Hall of Fame and a Country Music Hall of Fame and we didn't have anything in the UK, even though we have so many artists of global importance."
All styles of music are represented from skiffle - complete with a washboard - to reggae, punk and blues.
The history of the different forms is told in more than 100 hours of interviews with musicians including jazz star Humphrey Lyttelton, which was recorded not long before his death last year at the age of 86.
Curators Paul Lilley and Sarah Clarke said very few in the industry contacted had declined to help. David Bowie, for instance, has his own archivist and lent an entire case of items including a Ziggy Stardust costume, a zoot suit from his Young Americans era and original lyrics and set lists.
There is a Jimmy Page costume and the Spice Girls have each lent an outfit, including Geri Halliwell's Union Jack dress.
More material is pouring in than can be displayed in the opening show. But it will be updated and could even be extended to a second floor if the attraction proves popular.
A spokesman said: "For the first time, a grandad can take his grandchild and the child can tell him about Eminem and the grandad can talk about skiffle."
The British Music Experience will be administered as a charitable foundation. Dome owner AEG has funded the set-up costs and will recoup its investment. After that, profits will be ploughed back into the foundation and its educational work.
The exhibition, which is intended to be permanent, opens on Monday. Tickets are £15, £12 concessions and £5 for school parties.
Reader views (3)
oh wonderful, yet another node added to the framework of our culture's directed obsession with talentless lowgrade celebrity "pop stars". arn't our kids brainwashed enough with this trash on television and numedia websites already? And to top it all off, they have the nerve to register the exhibition as a "charitable organization", no doubt under the guise of "education". This show has nothing to do with music and everything to do with X-Factor pop-star idolization, and one or two people are going to make a shed load of cash feeding off of it all.
- Richard, london, 18/03/2009 21:47
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I would love to go and see this but I'm not willing to give money to the o2 which is just a facade for the NuLab's failed Millennium Dome.
- Kimberley, London, 04/03/2009 15:15
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Will someone teach Macca to play the guitar first (also how to write decent songs too)
- Billy, Knutsford, UK, 04/03/2009 13:00
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