Music writer Andrew McMillen on his acoustic guitar

How Andrew McMillen re-discovered his first love after years of playing the field.

Andrew McMillen, The Australian's national music writer, at home in Brisbane with the acoustic guitar he received for his 16th birthday. Picture: Rachael McMillen

4 min read

12:00AMDecember 26, 2022.

Updated 6:59AMDecember 27, 2022

My first love is a puzzle that has occupied me for more than half of my life. It contains all of the greatest pop songs so far written, and those yet undiscovered. All that’s required is for me to find the right notes and play them in the right order.

I got my first guitar for my 16th birthday; a gift from my parents bought from a music store in Bundaberg. It was accompanied by one-on-one lessons with a teacher in my hometown, and while the lessons didn’t stick, the instrument did. Eighteen years later, it sits within arm’s reach as I write this in my home office.

Other than my family and my best friend, it is my longest and strongest companion in life. It has travelled with me from my hometown to the Queensland capital, where it has occupied a multitude of share house situations. It’s been heard at many camping trips, strummed by myself and others into the small hours in firelit circles. Its wood and metal followed me through the pandemic and out the other side.

There’s nothing particularly special about it, but it’s special to me. The brand is one you’ve probably never heard of: J & D Luthiers, about which little information is available online other than that the company has been “crafting high-quality instruments since 1974”. Based on the durability of this acoustic guitar and the way it stays in tune across the years, I concur.

Soon after I got it in 2004, though, I bought an electric guitar and amplifier with money earned from my first job, washing dishes at Sizzler. The new, blue one quickly became my focus: the amp made it go louder, the strings hurt my fingers less while fretting, and I could use it to make noise that sounded much closer to the heavy metal music that obsessed me at that time – particularly the band Tool, another first love that endures.

The author at age 16, with his acoustic guitar. Picture: Paul McMillen

In recent years, though, the electric blue has stayed locked in a storage case that’s rarely opened. The loud, distorted tones I sought as a teenager are less welcome in my life today, particularly since becoming a father in 2019. Babies don’t care much for palm-muted, detuned riffs played at bone-shaking volume; come to think of it, nor do wives or neighbours.

During this time, the acoustic guitar has quietly re-entered my life and re-established its presence. As a music writer for this newspaper for the past five years, it’s my great joy to talk to musicians regularly, and I’ve found that my first love has become something of a tool of the trade to assist with my understanding of how music works. Here’s an example.

While thinking about writing this article, I heard an episode of the Broken Record podcast where Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante unpacked a few of the classic songs he’d written with the US rock band. With an acoustic guitar in hand and his producer-friend Rick Rubin asking questions, Frusciante began talking about Otherside.

It’s a single from the band’s mega-selling 1999 album Californication, and with more than 700 million streams on Spotify alone, there’s a good chance you’ve heard it; perhaps its opening instrumental figure and melody began curling through your mind as soon as you read the song name. “How long, how long will I slide? / Well, separate my side …”

To Rubin, Frusciante described its origin, and how he first brought a chord progression to Flea, the Chili Peppers’ bassist. Within minutes, the pair began an intuitive process whereby the guitarist removed notes from what he was playing while Flea added embellishments and improvisations on the original.

“To be able to do that on a guitar and a bass, it’s good to have an ‘invisible chord’ that you both know what it is, for that particular style,” he said to Rubin. “It makes you be able to sound connected, even though there’s no apparent reason to the listener why you should be connected, because you seem to be both doing different things – but you’re both thinking ‘A minor, F…’, or whatever it is.”

I love Otherside. It is my favourite RHCP song by a wide margin. As well as the powerful, dark beauty of its musical arrangement and Anthony Keidis’s evocative lyrics, Frusciante’s harmony vocals – interwoven in the final couple of choruses – are among the most pure and moving I’ve heard.

It is a perfect song, and I’ve long thought as much, but I had never been moved to try learning it on guitar – until I heard the songwriter play its chords solo, without his bandmates.

When I got home, I reached for my first love, found a credible online guitar tab, and was soon strumming along with Frusciante’s timeless chords, goosebumps tingling as I felt a new connection to the men who created this masterwork.

Those notes had been in the instrument all along; I just had to find them to solve the puzzle. Now that I’ve got them under my fingers, I’ll carry them with me, and perhaps that new glimmer of musical understanding will help me in my future writing work, about the Chili Peppers – who begin an Australian stadium tour on January 29 – or otherwise.

Or perhaps not; maybe it’ll be just for me, just as my guitar playing has been all along, for 18 years and counting.

Speaking with singer-songwriter Colin Hay in 2020 about the notion of mastering the instrument, he told me he was taking lessons from truefire.com.

“I just want to learn how to play the f..king guitar properly, and learn about turnarounds, and 2-5-1 [chord progressions], and sequences that I’ve always been intrigued by,” he said.

Then and now, I found his persistent desire to better himself inspiring. Having watched Hay perform live in Brisbane in November, I can confirm he’s a fiercely powerful player at 69, while he continues the lifelong quest for knowledge.

There’s something else Hay said that continues to ring in my ears like an invisible, endless chord: “Your guitar’s very patient,” he told me. “Whenever you’re ready to pick it up, it’ll be there for you.”

Andrew McMillen is national music writer at The Australian.

Andrew McMillenMusic Writer

Andrew McMillen is an award-winning journalist and author based in Brisbane. Since January 2018, he has worked as national music writer at The Australian. Previously, his feature writing has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone and GQ. He won the feature writing category at the Queensland Clarion Awards in 2017 for a story published in The Weekend Australian Magazine, and won the freelance journalism category at the Queensland Clarion Awards from 2015–2017. In 2014, UQP published his book Talking Smack: Honest Conversations About Drugs, a collection of stories that featured 14 prominent Australian musicians.

@Andrew_McMillen

Andrew McMillen

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Music writer Andrew McMillen on his acoustic guitar

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