David DiDonato performs his live score for “Nosferatu” tonight at the Firehouse.
If David DiDonato has one claim to fame, it’s that he holds the record for the world’s longest guitar solo. At a club in Austin in 2012, DiDonato played for an astonishing 24 hours and 55 minutes.
Slash, the former guitarist for Guns ‘N’ Roses, however, was unimpressed with DiDonato’s feat, saying he thought the record would be at least three times longer. “God bless him for hanging in there,” he conceded.
“I think he wasn’t very pleased with my technique, but I was 17 or 18 hours in at that point [when Slash watched], so I was pretty tired,” says DiDonato, who lives in Austin. “If I had known that Slash was watching, I think I would have tried to drink some more Red Bull, or whatever people were drinking back then.”
Tonight, DiDonato comes to the Firehouse Theatre to perform a very different achievement: his original live score to “Nosferatu,” the 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film based on the story of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Directed by F.W. Murnau, “Nosferatu” tells the story of the mysterious Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife of his real estate agent.
After Stoker’s heirs sued over the adaptation, a court order ruled that all copies of the film had to be destroyed. Luckily, some prints survived, and “Nosferatu” is hailed today as a highly influential masterpiece of the silent age.
DiDonato first encountered the practice of modern musicians performing their own soundtracks to silent films in 1996 during another screening of “Nosferatu.” He wasn’t satisfied with their interpretation.
“It was kind of wacky, and it was supposed to be scary. There was almost a ‘Mystery Science Theater’ vibe to it,” recalls DiDonato, who grew up in Williamsburg and lived in Richmond from 1992 to 2001, playing in bands like Jolly Mortals, HRM and Ultimate Dragons.
During a break from performing in 2005, DiDonato illegally downloaded “Nosferatu” on his computer and created a loose soundtrack to it. He burned a couple of copies for friends; that was the end of his film scoring career until 2012 when he saw a new version of Fritz Lang’s 1927 German expressionist classic “Metropolis” with a classical score.
Desiring a more modern sound for the film, DiDonato began creating his own score for the film a couple years later. This time, he mapped out every edit in the film on graph paper so he could get the exact timing down. He completed the score in 2018, and realized while recording it that he could perform the score live if he muted one of the guitar tracks. He’s since composed a score for 1920’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and reworked his “Nosferatu” orchestration.
DiDonato is meticulous in creating his compositions, comparing them to finishing a big book of Sudoku.
“I have it all mapped out to about a hundredth of a second. When there’s an edit on the screen, the music changes,” he says. “I feel that anything less than that is a distraction. It would take you out of the cinematic experience.”
DiDonato tours the country performing his scores live at movie theaters. When the pandemic hit, he played drive-in theaters. That experience wasn’t the best: “You’re getting rained on and the wind is blowing your sheet music everywhere, so it wasn’t ideal, but I wanted to keep busy.”
Of his reworked “Nosferatu” score, DiDonato says he wants the music to capture the creepiness of the film.
“I wanted it to be kind of quiet and folksy and pastoral for the quieter parts, and for the scarier parts, I wanted it to be more extreme metal,” DiDonato says. “I just wanted something heavier and darker than any of the versions that I’ve seen.”
As for DiDonato’s big claim to fame, he says his 2012 soloing feat was featured in Time magazine, on the viral video clip show “Tosh.0” and was the answer on the back of a Snapple cap, which he parlayed into vouchers for free Snapple from the company.
Back in Austin, DiDonato has played with bands include J Church, Modok and The Sword before the latter toured with Metallica, Lamb of God and Clutch. The decision to perform the longest guitar solo came out of a desire to distance himself from association with The Sword.
“I was the guy who wasn’t in The Sword [when they made it big], and that wasn’t what I wanted my legacy to be,” he says.
Now, DiDonato is working on a score for “Häxan,” a Swedish documentary about witchcraft from 1921.
“I’m trying to make that a math metal sort of thing. I’m showing my Richmond roots,” he says before namechecking Richmond bands Breadwinner, Sliang Laos and Ladyfinger from the late ’80s and early ’90s. “I steal from them shamelessly whenever I have the opportunity.”
“Nosferatu” screens tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Firehouse Theatre. For more information, visit firehousetheatre.org or call (804) 355-2001.