When you think of movie directors, you probably think of a bullhorn-wielding figure, script in one hand, camera in the other. Now, add a guitar slung casually across their shoulder, and you’ve got Robert Rodriguez. The Texas-born filmmaker is the director behind cult classics like From Dusk Till Dawn and Planet Terror, as well as box-office smash hits like Sin City and the family-friendly Spy Kids franchise – and he’s just as passionate about guitars as he is about making movies.
While many film fans know him for his flicks, fewer may know him as a keen guitar player – although guitars are featured heavily in his works. Take his Mexico Trilogy – El Mariachi, Desperado, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico – where a wandering, guitar case-carrying musician named El Mariachi takes on the bad guys.
We dial in with the director, and it seems he’s more than happy to get a chance to talk about his passion for the six-string.
“I was super-excited to get that call,” he says from his home in Texas. “I’m a huge fan of the magazine, obviously, since I was a kid. I was thinking, ‘Am I the first director to be on Guitar World?’” he quipped, and well, he very well may be the first we’ve featured.
Rodriguez grew up in a musical family, so it was inevitable he’d pick up an instrument, he tells us.
“There was always music in the family. My mom used to take Spanish guitar lessons. She would have us all sing. As the family grew, she would learn guitar and sing Spanish songs – and she would have us sing for anybody who came over,” he recalls.
“I remember taking my first guitar lessons around 12 with my older brother. He was always a better guitar player. Around that age, a family friend was teaching us, just kind of simple chords,” says Rodriguez. “But there was a real romanticism towards the guitar in the family. I think probably because it was just so portable, too. We could all kind of go learn piano, but this one you could just pass around the house. I just found that I loved the iconography of it. I loved how it felt.”
I realize it’s instant meditation. So it really triggers a lot of ideas if you’re creative, and kind of helps bring a lot of focus
The guitar has become one of Rodriguez’s secret weapons, helping him unlock his creativity in other areas of his life, like filmmaking.
“I realize it’s instant meditation. So it really triggers a lot of ideas if you’re creative and kind of helps bring a lot of focus,” he says. “That’s why you’ll always see pictures of me with a guitar on a movie set. I’m probably the only director who always has a guitar on his set.
“As soon as you’re done filming the shot, you put the camera aside, and you’re waiting for the next setup. Instead of pacing around or looking at my phone, I would pick up a guitar, and it would instantly keep me in creative mode. I’m not thinking about the guitar. I’m thinking about what the next shot is going to be, and inevitably, I would end up writing something.”
These snippets of ideas would often lead to full-blown tracks that would go on to underpin iconic moments in his films, as Rodriguez explains.
“I remember I was on the set of Spy Kids 2, and my still photographer came over, and he goes, ‘What’s that thing you’ve been playing for the past few days?’ I went, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Do you like it?’ He goes, ‘You should record that.’ ‘I’ll go record it tonight. Maybe it’s the theme for this movie!’
“It wasn’t the theme for Spy Kids 2,” he says. “It was the theme for the next movie I was doing, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, that I had already shot – it turned into the song. I recorded it that night, and Salma [Hayek] ended up singing it. It’s the end title song, and that theme is the theme of that movie.”
I’m a better filmmaker by playing guitar. I’m a better storyteller by playing guitar
Rodriguez’s approach is a little left-field when compared to his peers, but it could be argued that his attitude to filmmaking, composing, and, of course, the guitar, is what makes his films unique. “I’m a better filmmaker by playing guitar. I’m a better storyteller by playing guitar,” he says with confidence.
And, as he tells us, music is just as important as the lines the characters are saying. “You have a soundtrack of dialogue to tell people about your movie. Well, the music’s like a soundtrack that tells them about your character.”
Rodriguez has amassed a pretty broad collection of guitars over the years. Some models he bought for movie projects, some were elaborate gifts from studios, and others are the tools he uses to perform live with his band, Robert Rodriguez’s Chingon Band, a music collective the director put together to perform popular songs from across his filmography with their signature Latin rock style.
“It’s kind of cinematic Latin rock, but for people who don’t even like Latin rock – it’s got its own, very cinematic quality to it,” he says.
To pull off this unique blend of “Mexican Spaghetti Western,” Rodriguez tells us that 24 frets are an absolute must, and that’s why, for a long time, he relied on a PRS Custom 24. However, his head has recently been turned by a striking custom build from Castedosa Guitars that got some serious action during a special Chingon performance in Los Angeles at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures to celebrate the anniversary of From Dusk Till Dawn and Spy Kids earlier this year.
I was a fan of his art and wanted playable fine art, something I could hang on my wall yet also pull down and play
“When I met the Del Castillo brothers that are now in my band, they were playing these Yamaha or Takamine 24-fret acoustics,” he says. “They would do these harmonized runs all the way up to the 24th fret. So when they joined my band, I thought, I like that sound, but I want to do it with electric. Not a lot of electric guitars are 24 frets, so I had to go with a PRS. So that’s why that became my main guitar,” he elaborates.
“I’ve always had painters paint my guitars,” he tells us. “The famous Latin painter, George Yepes, painted this one. He’s the one who did the cover of our Mexican Spaghetti Western album and the famous Los Lobos album La Pistola y Corazón. I was a fan of his art and wanted playable fine art, something I could hang on my wall yet also pull down and play.”
Castedosa Maravilla specs
In terms of specs, the Maravilla features a quirky offset alder body, a bolt-on quartersawn roasted maple neck, a rosewood fingerboard, a pair of Castedosa TS humbuckers, and a Jazzmaster-esque Belrok bridge and Descendant tremolo.
As much as Rodriguez loves his personalized PRS, it is now playing second fiddle to his new Castedosa Maravilla.
“I heard about Carlos Lopez starting his own company, [Castedosa Guitars], and I bought one of his baritones, which is an awesome freaking guitar. This baritone is so killer, but I had limited use for it in the band,” he says.
“I told him three years ago, ‘If you ever do a 24-fret guitar, that would be my main guitar.’ Then I saw that he started making them, and I told him about the LA show. So he made that guitar and had Sergio Robleto do a painting on the back because he wanted to showcase Latin art on the back of some of his guitars,” says Rodriguez.
“I didn’t know he was going to throw that in. And I also thought he was just going to make me a guitar for that one show. But as soon as I played it, I was so blown away that I knew it would be my main guitar going forward!”
“The PRS is great, but this is a custom,” he continues. “You can just tell these are magically hand-built guitars that sound great. So for my live stuff, that’s definitely my main guitar now.”
We shift focus to one of the director’s early guitars, and it just so happens to coincide with one of his early films, Road Racers. He tells us how he acquired an old Silvertone to use in the movie, and it could be argued that Rodriguez had more than a little hand in repopularizing the guitar stylings of Link Wray.
Gretsch Viking
“The Gretsch Viking is one I’ve used on several soundtracks; I know for sure I used it on Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Planet Terror, and the most recent Spy Kids movie, Spy Kids Armageddon. It’s got a cool vintage sound and seems to jump into your hands, wanting to be played.
“I bought the guitar at Black Market Music store in San Francisco, where I was getting ready to mix either the movie The Faculty in 1998 or Spy Kids in 2000 at Skywalker Ranch near San Francisco. It was on one of those trips. It just jumped out at me.”
“I actually got Link Wray to sign it for me, because the whole reason his music came back is that I made this movie called Road Racers just before Pulp Fiction. It’s like a love letter to [Wray]. It was a movie after El Mariachi,” he explains. “I got this guitar to use in that movie, and a friend that co-wrote it with me owned a bunch of old Link Wray records. We’re like, ‘Let’s put all this music in.’ There are five or six Link Wray songs in Road Racers,” he elaborates.
“I was able to license the originals really inexpensively. So when Quentin [Tarantino] heard that I got the licensing for an actual Link Wray song for so little, he put two of the songs in Pulp Fiction – and that got Link Wray’s resurgence.
“So when I met Link, he’d come to Austin in ’97. I got him to sign the guitar and told him that I put his music in Road Racers, and that’s why it’s in Pulp Fiction – he was like, ‘Oh, you’re the reason I got back!’ He was so grateful.”
Now, the crown jewel in his collection once belonged to another guitar hero of his, none other than Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“Some of my best guitars were given to me,” he says. “I’ve got Stevie Ray Vaughan’s 12-string. The guitar is from Stevie’s Live Alive tour. He gave it to his friend Larry Warren back in June of 1989. Larry eventually put it up for auction in 1997,” he explains.
“I did a big favor for a friend of mine at a movie studio by helping them out with some extra filming on one of their movies and not charging them an arm and a leg. They were in a bind; in fact, I probably did it for free, and they were so grateful that they bought me that guitar at an auction. I was stunned! You know, that’s one of the best guitars in my collection.”
Being a proud Texan himself, Rodriguez is quick to point out how much love he had for Stevie from a very young age, getting into music in 1979. “I mean, talk about a blowout year. I was 10. We had Dire Straits’ first album – Mark Knopfler’s stuff blew our minds. Van Halen’s stuff blew our minds, and Andy Summers, what he was doing in The Police. That was all in one year,” he continues.
“So we were all about the guitar and trying to figure out, ‘How do you play that?’ Then Stevie Ray Vaughan came out, and there was no going back.”
Billy Gibbons Fender Esquire
Fans of Rodriguez’s films will know that ZZ Top contributed to the soundtrack of From Dusk Till Dawn with the track She’s Just Killing Me. A full decade later, Gibbons would send over a customized Fender Esquire that he had hand-painted with his signature hot-rod detailing. The ZZ Top frontman also signed the back and added the name of Rodriguez’s film studio, Troublemaker, under the Fender logo.
Now, that isn’t the only guitar he has with an SRV connection. Rodriguez was also lucky enough to snag the famous “Family Guitar,” which Stevie would play alongside his brother.
“The Rockin Robin double neck is one that Jimmie Vaughan had donated to a big charity auction, and I didn’t think it should leave Texas, so I bought it. It’s a real piece of Texas history,” he says. “And having four brothers myself, I loved that he and Stevie used to play that guitar at the same time for the song Pipeline during shows like the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.”
The director has been gifted many instruments over the years, from the financiers of a movie presenting him with a 1964 Fender Stratocaster, to being handed a striking cherry Gibson Les Paul on the set of Grindhouse. He was even gifted a model from Metallica’s shredder-in-chief, Kirk Hammett.
“Kirk Hammett gave me his LTD Nosferatu,” he says. “He had come over to look at some paintings that I had from [Frank] Frazetta, and he was so grateful he gave me a guitar.”
TEYE Azteca
“This guitar is gorgeous,” says Rodriguez of this hand-crafted Teye Azteca. “When I did Once Upon a Time in Mexico, I had a local guitar player, Teye Wijnterp, do the intro guitar flourish that Antonio [Banderas] does,” he says. “Then he started making stunning dremeled metal-finish elaborate guitars.
The conversation shifts to nylon acoustic models, and a road-worn, battle-scared Cordoba catches our eye.
“My favorite one that I bought back then when we started the band was this old Cordoba FCE, which I’ve had for about 24 years. I love the thin body of it,” explains Rodriguez.
“I’ve always had this on a set. That’s why it’s all beat to hell. It’s something I bought specifically for recording the Once Upon a Time in Mexico score back in 2002. It’s used throughout that score and just about any other score later that has acoustic nylon in it, which is most of them. I also played it at our live Chingon concerts. It was not used on screen in any movies, but certainly looks like it should be!”
Rounding out our chat with the director, we ask what advice Rodriguez has for aspiring musicians and filmmakers.
“Learn it all,” he says confidently. “Never stop learning. Always be a student and try to live a creative life and actively apply creativity to everything you do. If you actively say, I’m being creative, you’ll see everything change. I found I was happiest, most successful, most prolific, and most fulfilled when I was being creative.
“If somebody asks you, ‘Why do you keep playing that guitar?’ You tell them, ‘It’s just part of my creative process. I’m actually unlocking the secrets to the universe while I’m playing it.’ And you wouldn’t be lying! It’s very much like meditation in that it’s all in the practice of it.”
