When Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly picked up a Gibson ES-345 to perform “Johnny B. Goode” in Back to the Future, he did more than provide a key scene in the 1985 science fiction film. He inspired at least two of popular music’s most famous guitarists to pick up the instrument.
In a new interview with Parade, Fox says he’s personally heard from John Mayer and Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who told him they began playing guitar all because of his performance in the movie’s Enchantment Under the Sea dance.
“It’s all about the expression of joy in music,” the actor says, explaining why that scene connected with Mayer, Martin and so many others. “I love music and I love that scene.”
The one person he never heard from? The man whose song is at the heart of the film: “Johnny B. Goode” songwriter and guitarist Chuck Berry.
“I never heard from Chuck Berry,” Fox admits.
Perhaps Chuck was bothered that the Gibson ES-345 guitar Fox plays wasn’t actually around in 1955, the year in which the dance is set. It came out in 1959. In 1955, Berry was still playing the Gibson ES-350T he used to record his breakout hit, “Maybellene,” which was recorded and released that year.
The electric guitar Fox played was rented from Norman Harris, of Norman’s Rare Guitars fame. Although Harris advised the film team that the guitar was not period correct, they chose it for its looks, as Fox reveals in his new memoir, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum.
Despite the anachronistic placement of the guitar, “the film’s art department simply picked the ES-345,” he writes, “because it evoked the iconic wine-red axe that Chuck Berry famously duckwalked across stages all over the world.”
In fact, Berry played not only the ES-345 but also the similar-looking ES-335 and ES-355 models. He loved his 355 so much that his family placed one with him in his casket, where it remains to this day.
As for that 345 used in the film? The semihollow guitar went missing after the scene was shot and is the focus of a global search led by Gibson, which has hired the investigative journalists who helped find Paul McCartney's lost Höfner violin bass to aid the hunt.
Fox recently shared his theory about what happened to the Back to the Future ES-345 and says he has an idea about why the guitar is still in hiding.
The actor also spoke with Parade about filming the scene, in which he mimes to a pre-recorded track, featuring singer Mark Campbell. He notes that, as a guitarist, he could play the instrument as required.
“The music was prerecorded before I got there,” he explains. “They played me the track and said, ‘Can you do this?’ and I said ‘Yeah, I can play it.”
Unfortunately, his singing skills weren’t up to snuff.
“I can’t sing a lick! I’m a terrible singer!” he admits. Besides, he says Campbell’s voice is a good match for his own.
“I love that this guy’s voice was in my timbre and in my range,” the actor says. “He could round off the notes and musicality that I could never do.”
