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Marcus Henderson talks about the early days of Guitar Hero
Marcus Henderson did a lot of the guitar playing for the tracks in Guitar Hero. Nowadays, companies go after as many master tracks as they can. Marcus Henderson sat down with Game Informer to talk about the good, old days.
Game Informer: You’ve obviously been super busy these days, with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and trading-card stuff. Are you working on music games at all anymore?
Marcus Henderson: Yeah, absolutely. The funny thing about how the Guitar Hero thing shook out is that with the addition of master tracks and everything, on one hand you can say, “Well, there’s less work for me to do.” On the other hand, you can say, “Whoo hoo! There’s less work for me to do!” You know what I mean? So I’m fine with it. I have come to a really good spot within myself; with what Guitar Hero has done for me, for what Guitar Hero’s done for the world, and conversely, what I’ve done for Guitar Hero and how we shaped all of this together.
At the beginning of it, I never expected to be singled out for my work at all. Remember, I’m still part of a large group of people who are just so insanely talented that it’s hard to single one of us out. I think the reason why people started gravitating toward my angle is that RedOctane just started putting me out in front of people. That’s kind of how it all started. I never sought out fame and a signature guitar or any of that stuff. I just wanted to play and not suck. When I got home at night, I would grade myself thinking, “All right, I ____ nailed that today, and I feel good about myself and I can hold my head up going to that studio tomorrow and do another one.” Or, there would be days when I would come home going, “Dude, I can’t believe I sucked.” Literally, there were days that I felt I played so poorly on Guitar Hero that I would send e-mails and I would call my engineer at night going, “Dude, I know you stayed a little bit later. Please tell me that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.” Then we’d come back in the next day and hear it again and say, “Dude, we were tripping ass! I can’t believe it sounds amazing! What are we doing, we’re idiots.” I think what happens is you just become so wound up in doing what you do, which is just being so completely anal and crazy about making this absolutely perfect—for my own well-being and then everybody else’s—that it becomes one of those goals that you reach out for but never really grab onto, because the second you think you’ve grabbed onto it something else comes along and replaces it.
There’s no solid methodology for doing it. There was no premeditated, “I’m going to do these songs, and then I’m going to be a rock star, and then I’m going to do this and I’m going to have a baseball card!” You can’t plan any of that stuff. It just happens, and it happens because people, on a whole, decide that they like the cut of your gib. My gib is no different than any of the other geniuses who worked on Guitar Hero. I’d feel amiss if I didn’t mention Nick and Lance and Scott Dugdale and DC and Doug and everybody, because these guys busted their ass as hard as I did. I can’t tell you why people embraced me. I think it might have just been with me being myself.