Red Guitar’ is a hauntingly beautiful song - both because of David Sylvian’s unique
voice and the collaborations on the 1984 album ‘Brilliant Trees’ - for me especially
the collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Holger Czukay.

I have been amazed by this piece of music since I first heard it - but also the magical
experience of this piece of music is the music video by Anton Corbijn. This piece
came out in 1984 and back then and in the 1970s the thing was to wait each week
to read in depth about the music scene in the NME - Anton Corbijn’s photographs
were a massive part of the weekly publication- they were so gorgeous; and also
watching Top of the Pops and then in the eighties MTV. This music video was an
homage to the Welsh Surrealist photographer Angus McBean. And that really for me
is where the poignant magic and sense of loss comes in. The Surrealist movement
was borne from the tremendous losses of World War 1 and the movement’s basis in
the magical, the alchemical and the dreamlike. McBean took up these trajectories
and explored placing his sitters in fantastical ethereal scenes.

Sylvian and Anton Corbijn had a fascination for the works of Angus McBean and
they asked his permission to base the video on his 1938 work - ‘Flora Robson
Surrealised’. McBean agreed but the decision also was that he might appear in the
video. The entire film is a treatise of youth, age and the beauty of life and art. It is as
important and fresh for me as the day that I first saw it. It epitomises all of the artists
involved respect for art and creation. It was out of the ordinary in terms of music
videos at that point in time.

As an art student at the time - besotted with the Surrealists - it held my attention
beautifully and still does. It resonated with me at a very deep level. The music always
takes me back to the dreaminess and consideration of the video. ‘Red Guitar’
symbolises art in a way, and art is my means of expression. The chorus just says, “it’s
my vice and my virtue. It’s something that will pre-occupy my life and give it the
most pleasure and the most pain.”