Meryl Streep is real deal in ‘Ricki’
Mastering the electric guitar was just part of the gig
She sings, learned to play electric guitar.
Meryl Streep was rocked to her core when she read the script for Ricki and the Flash.
“I couldn’t believe someone was going to make a movie about a rock ’n’ roll band in which everyone is over 65,” says the actress, 66.
And that’s, by and large, how she found herself on stage, next to Rick Springfield, playing electric guitar and belting out Tom Petty’s American Girl and Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance in front of a live audience.
Yes, that’s the three-time Oscar winner’s voice you hear in the seedy California bar, where she stands sporting a bizarre side-braid and clad in beat-up leather boots, every inch the never-was rock star who left her husband and three kids to pursue a career that never materialized.
“She didn’t want to fake it,” says screenwriter Diablo Cody. “It’s extremely rare for a movie. Typically that would be done with playback. She has 11 musical numbers. All I know is when she agreed to do the movie she didn’t play guitar. A few months later, she shows up being able to play.”
Director Jonathan Demme promised Streep that she’d perform three songs, at most.
“In college, I knew three chords. I could play Joni Mitchell in D on an acoustic guitar,” says Streep, who mastered the electric instrument, which leaves little margin for error. “And that was really daunting, I’m telling you. I like being challenged, but that was hard.
“I was stupid. I thought, ‘I could do that.’ If you go deep and hard enough, you can do it. I had the bloody fingers. I said, ‘Is that supposed to happen?’ Rick said that’s part of the deal.”
Alas, “all my calluses are gone now,” she says a bit wistfully.
Springfield, for one, was impressed. “It was very brave what she did, to tackle playing an electric guitar. ... And she’s singing along at the same time and it’s also in character. So I hope people get how difficult that is. And what an amazing actor she is to pull that off.”
Noted, says Streep, who poohpoohs any comparisons to actual rock stars.
“I don’t pretend to even come close to Lady Gaga. She has great musicality. I do an adequate karaoke. I had so much fun. To sing with Rick is insane — he’s very inventive musically. He’s the greatest gift to the movie.
“And he’s gorgeous.”