Filmmaker and Musician Jim Jarmusch on Guitars, Music, & Magic

Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch—one of the creative avatars of downtown New York cool since the mid ’80s—was asked a while back what he thought were some of the key innovations of the 20th century. “My answer was the mapping of the human genome, the Hubble Space Telescope, the French bikini, and the electric guitar,” recalls the director of such arthouse wonders as Mystery Train, Dead Man, and Only Lovers Left Alive. “My favorite of those might be the electric guitar. I just love guitars and musical noise.”YouTubeJarmusch isn’t just a fan of music ranging from the Stooges and Crazy Horse to heavy drone bands like Earth and Nadja. He generates guitar noise himself, most notably with his band Sqürl and his frequent duo partner, the Dutch lutenist Jozef van Wissem. Jarmusch has been making records and performing live with both for years now; his output with a guitar in hand has even lately outpaced his productivity behind a camera. Last year, he and his prime Sqürl mate, Carter Logan (drums/electronics), released Music for Man Ray, an album of their scores to Surrealist short films made by the titular artist in the 1920s, the whorls of sound captured live at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. That disc followed a 2023 Sqürl studio album, Silver Haze, with guest stars guitarist Marc Ribot, actress/vocalist Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the singer-songwriter Anika. Jarmusch and van Wissem toured this summer to herald a new record, The Day the Angels Cried, their fifth non-soundtrack release. Jarmusch has also been working on some longform solo guitar music, asking the recording engineer to “edit out all the riffs” as he follows a dream-logic muse.“You have to be listening and use your whole body along with your instrument, your amps, your effects. But what you’re going to produce isn’t certain, and there’s tension in that.”—Jim JarmuschAlthough he had played in bands during the early ’80s, mostly on keyboards, Jarmusch took up the guitar as a passion in the early 2000s. He had planned for his pensive noir The Limits of Control (2009) to feature preexisting music rather than a purpose-written score, including viscous art-metal by Boris, Sunn O))), and Earth, the tolling psychedelic rock of the Black Angels’ “You on the Run,” and a handful of flamenco pieces to suit the Spanish setting. But when he couldn’t find the right tracks to match some elemental sounds he heard in his head for a few remaining scenes, Jarmusch decided to make that music himself, alongside Logan and engineer-organist Shane Stoneback. Credited as Bad Rabbit on the soundtrack, the name morphed into Sqürl as Jarmusch and Logan released further recordings, such as the luminous, affecting Some Music for Robby Müller (a sonic tribute to the late, great cinematographer). “I’m not a trained guitar player—never even had a real lesson,” explains Jarmusch, 72. “I play my own way. I don’t practice scales, but something I have practiced for many years is controlled feedback. If I can say anything, it’s that I’ve become pretty good at that kind of musical feedback on electric guitar, something I do a lot in the duo with Jozef. I have had some pointers in this area, particularly from Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))) and Stewart Hurwood, one of Lou Reed’s guitar techs. But the thing about feedback is that you’re not always totally in control of it. You don’t know exactly how the guitar and pickups are going to react vis-à-vis what distance you are from the amplifiers and how their levels are set. So, you have to be listening and use your whole body along with your instrument, your amps, your effects. But what you’re going to produce isn’t certain, and there’s tension in that. I’m always interested in the challenge of being a little off-balance—it inspires me. I’m not so good at repeating a formula, as I’m not mathematical in that way. When playing more rock ’n’ roll guitar with Sqürl, I can even sort of frustrate Carter at times, because he’s a precise drummer and my approach is on the loose side.Primal Sounds, Old WoodWhen it comes to his ethos of guitar, clues come from the two documentaries Jarmusch has made: the exciting, insightful Stooges history Gimme Danger (2016) and the lo-fi road document Year of the Horse, which Neil Young called “a nature film” of his 1996 tour with Crazy Horse. “I’m definitely not into shredding, even if you can admire the technical mastery of someone like Eddie Van Halen,” Jarmusch says. “I’m a Ron Asheton guy—in the more primal camp. I really like Neil’s raw style. I’m drawn to players who approach the instrument from an odd slant.” He points to Ribot, Link Wray, Robert Quine, and Rowland S. Howard of the Birthday Party as other individualists he finds inspiring, along with Earth’s Dylan Carlson for “his beautiful sound and incredible control” at glacial tempos, and Pat Place of the Contortions and Bush Tetras, “who brought such a funky vibe to the post-punk and No Wave scene in New York.”
Jarmusch lights up at memories of witnessing Television live, calling the interplay of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd “a beautiful revelation—this weaving of guitars that wasn’t necessarily blues-based. Their shows would just elevate me to the sky.” He also digs the live-wire, sui generis guitar weave of Ibrahim Ag Alhabib and his mates in the nomadic Saharan band Tinariwen, as well as the drone-metal pairing of O’Malley and Greg Anderson in Sunn O))) and the intrepid avant-rock of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo.Jim Jarmusch’s GearGuitars Fender Stratocaster modified by Rick Kelly with Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound pickups, Callaham bridge, and leather pickguard by Cindy Guitars Rick Kelly T-styleGuild Starfire I Jet 90 with three P-90 pickupsFender Ed O’Brien StratocasterEpiphone Casino Epiphone ES-335Fender JaguarBlueridge DreadnoughtGibson L-1 Guild mahogany dreadnought 12-string acoustic Gretsch Bobtail Roundneck Resonator G92201960 Silvertone Jupiter AmplifiersVox AC15Fender Pro JuniorRoland Jazz ChorusSilvertone 1482Vox Pathfinder 15REffectsEarthQuakerDevices Dispatch MasterEarthQuakerDevices Avalanche RunEarthQuakerDevices TransmisserEarthQuakerDevices Astral DestinyEarthQuakerDevices HizumitasEarthQuakerDevices SpiresEarthQuakerDevices Special CrankerEarthQuakerDevices AqueductEarthQuakerDevices Rainbow MachineEarthQuakerDevices WardenEarthQuakerDevices Acapulco GoldDeath by Audio Echo MasterGamechanger Audio Plus SustainGamechanger Audio PlasmaElectro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man (vintage)Electro-Harmonix PitchforkElectro-Harmonix 720 LooperElectro-Harmonix Voodoo Lab OverdriveBoss Super Overdrive SD-1Boss Compression Sustainer CS-3Boss Loop Station RC-3Boss Space Echo RE-20Boss Catalinbread EchorecMXR Carbon CopyChase Bliss MoodChase Bliss Generation LossKernom Moho FuzzDunlop TS-1 Stereo TremoloTrueTone CS12Death By Audio Raw PowerStringsD’Addario.010sLike some of his favorite players, Jarmusch’s go-to shop is Carmine Street Guitars in New York’s West Village, whose customers have also included Quine, Ribot, Lou Reed, Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, and Lenny Kaye. The proprietor, Rick Kelly, is a luthier whose specialty is creating guitars made out of rare, especially resonant 19th-century wood sourced from New York City buildings, including McSorley’s Ale House (established in 1854) and the roof of Jarmusch’s Bowery loft. He calls Kelly “my main guy—a real artisan and just fascinating to talk with about guitars, tonewoods, everything.” Kelly built Jarmusch a custom T-style (with a wide-range humbucker at the neck), along with modifying his longtime road guitar for Sqürl: a black Stratocaster, with Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound pickups and other touches. Jarmusch appreciates the store’s old-school, workshop vibe so much that he encouraged a documentarian friend of his, Ron Mann, to make a charmer of a film called Carmine Street Guitars, which features Jarmusch and many of the aforementioned players stopping in to talk about the shop’s instruments and try them out.“Making a film is a complex process with a lot of equal talents all pulling together, yet I’m necessarily the captain of the ship, navigating an idea from my imagination onto the screen. But when I’m making music with other people, I’m in a conversation.”Jarmusch’s other favored guitars include a Blueridge dreadnought and an Ed O’Brien signature model Stratocaster. “The Ed O’Brien Strat with that Fernandes Sustainer unit is an amazing guitar, kind of trippy,” he says. “Whenever I pull that thing out in my little studio, the instrument almost starts playing itself, like it just wants you to experiment with it.” For the squalling counterpoint he provides to van Wissem’s circular arpeggios, Jarmusch switches to a semi-hollow guitar. “I have a cool 335-style Epiphone from the 1990s that feeds back beautifully, sounding like a cello. I played it for almost all the past recordings where I used feedback a lot. But for my latest tour with Jozef, I have been using a Guild Starfire Jet that has three P-90 pickups. It’s kind of a beast, but I’m loving it, because it’s very good for controlled feedback.” Analog Spirit, Drone PowerAbout Jarmusch’s romance with guitars, van Wissem says, “I guess it was sort of an accident that the guitar and music became a bigger and bigger focus for Jim, but I always had the idea that he really wanted to be a musician, in a way. He has definitely become a good guitarist now, having developed his own sound and approach over the years. He loves his pedals and playing wild electric stuff and feedback, but he likes playing acoustic, too. We can go from darkly beautiful, even elegant things to some pretty metal sounds, especially at the climax of these recent shows when I trade the amplified lute for a 12-string guitar, my Gretsch Electromatic.”
Jarmusch and van Wissem hit it off after meeting on the street in SoHo about 20 years ago. “We immediately discovered that we shared an enthusiasm for many of the same films and books, and music from Morton Feldman to Joy Division,” van Wissem recalls. “Jim is a cultural sponge—he takes everything in.” The two developed a synergistic association, performing around New York with their unique combination of instruments and making records often colored by van Wissem’s arcane, neo-gothic mythos. The lutenist, playing models made for him by Canadian luthier Michael Schreiner after Renaissance and Baroque examples, had already been recording his own minimalist, contemplative compositions solo, having eschewed a traditional route of playing the complex classical repertoire (despite a love for such Baroque lutenist-composers as Sylvius Leopold Weiss). The aim, van Wissem says, was to “dust off” the lute by putting its intimate tones in a new context, “to make it live in the now.” It was a path more in keeping with his punk-rock spirit, something the indie-minded Jarmusch could appreciate.About Jarmusch’s romance with guitars, van Wissem says, “I guess it was sort of an accident that the guitar and music became a bigger and bigger focus for Jim, but I always had the idea that he really wanted to be a musician, in a way. He has definitely become a good guitarist now, having developed his own sound and approach over the years. He loves his pedals and playing wild electric stuff and feedback, but he likes playing acoustic, too. We can go from darkly beautiful, even elegant things to some pretty metal sounds, especially at the climax of these recent shows when I trade the amplified lute for a 12-string guitar, my Gretsch Electromatic.”“David Lynch said that movies are the closest thing that humans make to dreams, and it’s true. A film is like a dream that you’re pulled into. But music is more like a kind of magic, even just listening to it. You supply your own imagination, your own feelings and associations.”Jarmusch and van Wissem hit it off after meeting on the street in SoHo about 20 years ago. “We immediately discovered that we shared an enthusiasm for many of the same films and books, and music from Morton Feldman to Joy Division,” van Wissem recalls. “Jim is a cultural sponge—he takes everything in.” The two developed a synergistic association, performing around New York with their unique combination of instruments and making records often colored by van Wissem’s arcane, neo-gothic mythos. The lutenist, playing models made for him by Canadian luthier Michael Schreiner after Renaissance and Baroque examples, had already been recording his own minimalist, contemplative compositions solo, having eschewed a traditional route of playing the complex classical repertoire (despite a love for such Baroque lutenist-composers as Sylvius Leopold Weiss). The aim, van Wissem says, was to “dust off” the lute by putting its intimate tones in a new context, “to make it live in the now.” It was a path more in keeping with his punk-rock spirit, something the indie-minded Jarmusch could appreciate.A milestone for the Jarmusch/van Wissem partnership came with the soundtrack for Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), the director’s most potent latter-day film. Although ostensibly a vampire movie, on a deeper level it’s about valuing the gifts of the past while also appreciating new possibilities ahead, despite the melancholy evanescence of this world. The score is a mosaic of Sqürl and van Wissem, with the lutenist composing the main themes—which earned him the soundtrack award at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s also the duo’s “hit,” the one crowds cheer from the first notes.
Reflecting on his various collaborations, Jarmusch says: “Making a film is a complex process with a lot of equal talents all pulling together, yet I’m necessarily the captain of the ship, navigating an idea from my imagination onto the screen. But when I’m making music with other people, I’m in a conversation. With Sqürl, I can lead things, or not. But in the duo with Jozef, he generally makes the decisions on structure, etc., which I’m then free to react to. I like that. Giving up control is good for me, and he has experience making his own records. He has always encouraged my musicality, and I trust him. Our interest in history and our sense of aesthetics align in many ways, even if our philosophies differ in some areas. I see Jozef as this Swedenborgian mystic in a way, whereas I’m a natural-phenomenological psychedelic atheist, I guess.”Jarmusch and Van Wissem certainly share an appreciation for the timeless power of the drone. The pick of their albums, American Landscapes, comprises three droning tone poems created in 2022 to reflect the embattled state of the nation, like an alarm-cum-lament, with the lute tolling as the guitar growls at the moon. But all of the duo’s music-making taps into a hypnotic essence. “I’ll be playing one chord, arpeggiated, for a long time, circling around, and that repetition can put a listener into something like a trance,” Van Wissem explains. “On the lute, I’m playing Renaissance drones, essentially, alternating the bass line on two strings and improvising a melody on top, the drone staying the same with some variation in the melody. It’s basic, but that trance effect at a show means you go more inward. You let things go in the process, your daily disturbances, and when it’s over, you’re different somehow. I have the same experience when I go to a Sunn O))) concert.”Due out this fall is Jarmusch’s first movie since 2019, Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, starring Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, and Tom Waits. Jarmusch tells a story involving Waits that helps illustrate a difference for him between directing movies and making music: “Once, I was with Tom at his house, and he’s sitting at this old piano and writes a song as I’m sitting there. It just comes and then goes into the ether, like perfume. At the time, I had been working on a film for two fucking years, with longer to go, and he conjured up this wonderful piece of art in the moment. Making films doesn’t have that immediacy. David Lynch said that movies are the closest thing that humans make to dreams, and it’s true. A film is like a dream that you’re pulled into. But music is more like a kind of magic, even just listening to it. You supply your own imagination, your own feelings and associations. Filmmaking is something that I love to do and hope to keep doing. But music is in another realm. I think it’s the most beautiful thing that humans do.”YouTube ItHere’s a flashback to Jarmusch and van Wissem earlier in their union, creating droning magic in Barcelona in 2013.