If ‘80s favourite Back To The Future is full of beloved and iconic scenes, its most grin-inducing moment comes in a hail shredding guitar, Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly accidentally inventing rock’n’roll in a bootstrap paradox by covering Chuck Berry’s legendary ‘Johnny B. Goode’. When Empire spoke to Fox himself recently in a brand new interview for the Heroes Issue – on sale Thurs 11 June – the actor looked back fondly on the shooting of Marty’s coolest moment, channelling all of the actor’s own rock star heroes.
“When I did the ‘Johnny B. Goode’ scene, I had a great guitar teacher who taught me how to play,” he recalls. “I said to Bob [Zemeckis], ‘When I do this scene, I play guitar, so you can finger sync me. Feel free to cut to my hands any time you want.’ Having said that, it put pressure on me to get it fucking right. So I had this guy named Paul Hanson, who was my guitar teacher.”
But pulling the scene off didn’t just mean playing the song – it meant moving like a rock god while doing it. ”For about four weeks we worked this piece and at the same time I was working with this choreographer for Madonna,” Fox remembers. “I said, ‘I dance like a duck. I can’t dance. But what I’d like to do is incorporate all the characteristics and mannerisms and quirks of my favourite guitarists, so a Pete Townshend windmill, and Jimi Hendrix behind the back, and a Chuck Berry duck walk.’ And we worked all that in, and he made it flow. It was moments like that when you don’t think, I’m tired or I feel pressure to do this. You just do it and have a blast.”
Read Empire’s full Michael J. Fox interview, talking the legacy of Marty McFly, in the Heroes Issue – on newsstands from Thursday 11 June, and available to order online with free UK delivery here.