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Wednesday May 16 07:37 PM EDT - Wall Of Sound
Thank you Jordan for finding this again!
Myles Kennedy Recaptures Youth for Movie Cameo
By Linda Laban
Before Mayfield Four singer and guitarist Myles Kennedy and his
bandmates - drummer Zia Uddin and bassist Marty Meisner - flew to New
York last summer to begin recording their second album, Second Skin,
Kennedy had a little Hollywood business to take care of: a three-day
trip to Los Angeles to film his first acting role, playing a star-struck
fan in the upcoming Mark Wahlberg flick, Rock Star.
Loosely based on the real story of veteran U.K. heavy metal act Judas
Priest, Rock Star was originally to be titled - perhaps more
appropriately - Metal God. The film is slated for a fall release.
Kennedy first gained an audition due to his fabulous vocal range. "That
was actually a very strange
thing," Kennedy told Wall of Sound as he and his band drove to West
Virginia during a recent string of opening dates on Everclear's tour. "I
got a call from my manager saying, 'We're looking for someone who can
sing this really high stuff.'"
Though Mayfield Four's songs don't actually incorporate such '80s-style,
hair-metal wailing, Kennedy passed the audition. "My scene is with Mark
Wahlberg; I get up onstage and sing along with him for a song. Basically
he passes the mic over to me and . I won't give too much away, it's
towards the end and it's rather a pivotal part of the movie."
Besides gaining a great respect for actors and their craft - "I had no
idea it was so time-consuming, not to mention they get up at the crack
of dawn, which as a musician is a new thing for me" - Kennedy got the
chance to play with two metal luminaries: Ozzy Osbourne guitarist and
Black Label Society frontman Zakk Wylde and Jason Bonham, the son of the
drummer of one of Kennedy's all-time favorite bands, Led Zeppelin.
"I remember sitting down and telling him, 'Your father's music pretty
much inspired me to do this," says Kennedy of a between-takes
conversation with Bonham. "He was really nice about it. He's very proud
of his dad's legacy, and he should be."
As for the actual mechanics of playing a besotted fan at a rock concert,
Kennedy says that came very easy to him. "When he gets to get up onstage
and actually sing with them in front of thousands of people, it's like a
dream come true for him. How many of us have gone to rock shows when we
were a kid and thought those very same thoughts? All I had to do was
put myself back in a place where I was when I was 15 years old," says
Kennedy.
"It wasn't really like acting, it was like transferring yourself back to
that period in time and remembering who you were."
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