Nine-year-old plays Ozzy

My 3-year-old son and I love watching the YouTube clip of 6-year-old guitarist Quinn Sullivan playing "Twist & Shout" on the Ellen DeGeneres show. Joel just pointed me to the above Ellen clip from this week featuring 9-year-old Yuto Miyazawa tearing up Ozzy's Crazy Train.

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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HarveyBoing

Re: “CBGB”/”CBGBC”

Excellent info…thanks to all for your insights! Based on that data, I have to agree: someone took the “CBGB” logo and reworked it into a cycling logo. Can’t wait to ask my brother if it was him (the jacket is special-made with his bike shop’s name on the front). :)
Anonymous

My wife was surprised Ozzy didn’t come on stage with his own translator. :-) Seriously, an awesome kid, a bit overly technical, but he’s only 9, he’ll get some soul soon enough.
William Joseph Dunn

Ozzy taught the kid to snort a line of ants after the show.
Anonymous

I`m Really afraid of him!!! They will make us deaf Someday!!! Really amazing!
Padraig

That was a great gift for the little kid.

It looked like they’d just taken the photo on the spot, printed it out, framed it and then given it to him within minutes. That is extraordinarily thoughtful and sweet.

I don’t see Ellen’s show much (here in Australia) but she seems rather genuine and genuinely self-deprecating in her humour.

Lovely!
hassan-i-sabbah

Made this old assasin cry.
FoetusNail

The kid is great! He is technically a very good player with good form, but please for the love of Pete take away his mic!

P.S. Bad4Good is amazing, but I hate that genre.
Anonymous

I watched Miyazawa play last week in NYC at LPR (for full disclosure, I work there). Anyhow, just before soundcheck Miyazawa’s mom brought him in slumped over her shoulder. He was dead asleep. She layed him out on the corner of the stage where he napped for a bit, then got up (rubbing his eyes) and tuned his guitar.

‘Crazy Train’ is tame compared to the stuff the kid can do. Impressive. My colleagues and I talked later about if the kid had a photographic memory or not. It seemed so considering his age. Whether or not that is a fact, we also wondered how a kid that age could conceive of what he is doing/playing. I will be interested to see what kind of musician he becomes. Hopefully, he won’t be a one trick pony of sorts.

As an aside, it was nice to meet his parents and band members. All the people around him seemed genuinely concerned that he still remained a kid (his bassist was constantly having ‘thumb-wars with him, which was pretty cool).
jafi

I also like the Korean kid Sungha Jung –
he has clips on YouTube one my favorites is him playing the Mission Impossible theme. His fingerpickin is pretty amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IXa2pNGVj8
I2OI3

Kids playing instruments well isn’t new – doesn’t anyone remember Mozart? Some say he was an alien. I don’t think so, I think we’re the aliens..
Anonymous

I think the photo is of Ozzy and Randy (R.I.P.) on stage.
Anonymous

Well that just makes me want to quit playing guitar. It will probably take the rest of my life just to be that good. :(
Lemon

@32 hassan-i-sabbah and @38 danwarning, phew I thought there was something wrong with me.
fooliosis

My new dream in life is to have a rock god tell me to keep practicing so they can give me their band one day. Seriously guys.
Ignatz

Wow. Now I have whiplash from all the headbanging.

He needs to team up with the 13-year old drummer (http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/21/rushs-yyz-with-13yea.html) and hunt up another kid who can do Les Claypool or Bootsy Collins.

It’s good to see parents raising their children with a proper appreciation of music.
Johnny Cat

Okay, I’m officially penciling in a date to get my Randy Rhoads tattoo removed.
UltraBob

Boy his Mom (I’m assuning) really let him down on the translating. She doesn’t speak English much better than the kid does. For example, when Ellen tells Yuto that she has a surprise for him, Mom tells him that Ellen was very surprised. So Ozzy walking out had no introduction at all from the kid’s point of view.
Anonymous

i loved that kid in Goonies
Anonymous

Randy Rhoads played guitar on that track. Ozzy is merely a “singer”
danwarning

@32 Me too, me too.
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

He’s another Larry Collins!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF5DvDucf7whttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF5DvDucf7w
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Sorry for the formatting error. Here is Larry Collins…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF5DvDucf7w
Anonymous

so cool
merreborn

That’s an awfully big guitar for such a small kid, making the whole thing all the more impressive.

He clearly learned the words phonetically, leading to some adorably slurred pronunciation… which makes it all the more authentic, since he’s covering Ozzy.
merreborn

By the way, check out Sungha Jung. He’s a couple of years older than Yuto, but he’s pretty amazingly talented.
Anonymous

That was great :) His singing is average but that kid’s got spirit and man, can he play. That finale really sold me.

Compare and contrast with the real thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRbPWcLode0

Quinn has a few tricks to learn, but I bet if he spends some time with a big amp and decent band he could really sing.
icky2000

Wait for the end for the best part (starts 5 mins in).
hbl

Man, what ever happened to Thommy McRocklin?
hbl

There’s loads of clips on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF0onO16gmc
Anonymous

Would like to recommend this Ytube vid for shockingly amazing kid guitar player…

Paul Gilbert, Chet Atkins and Classic played live at “Whisky A Go Go”by 12 year old Anton Oparin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A1h5YuPSzU
Anonymous

Randy Rhoads lives!
FLG

That was pretty damn awesome. I know a couple people who can 5 star expert that song on Guitar Hero who couldn’t play guitar half as good as that kid.
Marchhare

That really was wonderful.

What was the picture–from another time when he’d met Ozzy?
HarveyBoing

Awesome. Simply awesome.

Odd question: does anyone recognize the logo on the boy’s shirt? My brother sent me a cycling jersey/jacket with the same “CBGBC” logo on the back, but with slightly different text underneath. I have no idea if this is just some random fashion logo someone came up with, or if it actually refers to something real.

My jacket reads “CBGBC”, then under that “Squaw Valley”, and then finally under that in script, “Home of Underground Cycling”. The boy’s shirt obviously has something other than “Squaw Valley”, but it does appear to have something in script that starts out the same (i.e. “Home of…”).

Google has turned up nothing for me on the question of the logo.

I find it a remarkable coincidence that just the day after receiving the jacket, I see the very same logo on a random web video (for me, it’s a web video, not being a regular “Ellen” view :) ). If it turns out that this logo’s everywhere, and I only just have noticed it because of the jacket, then hopefully someone out there can explain it. :)
hbl

Also, (my 3rd comment), I dig his Rhandy Rhodes flying V. Awesome.
senorglory

Ellen is cool.
Anonymous

@Harveyboing:

The kid’s shirt says CBGB which was the most famous underground punk club in New York up until it closed last year (?). It originated as a Country, Blue Grass and Blues club I believe but was quickly taken over by the likes of The Ramones and The Talking Heads among others.
Anonymous

CBGB is a legendary underground punk club in NYC. It shut down recently.
swestcott

to #23 this is actuly a farly easy song to play the solo is a bit much but the rest is farly easy this kid is verry good however singing and playing at the same time on this sone is a bit tuogh

If you listen real close when Elen asks who his favroute Rockers are he does say Randy Rodes after Ozzy

is it just me or does the neck on his gutiar look wider to any one else and he just nails the Randy Rodes sound
elguapostrikes

@ Harvey
Your shirt seems to be a play off of CBGB, (former) home of underground rock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBGB
overunger

The look on that kid’s face when he saw Ozzy walking toward him was precious!

Yeah. Ellen’s pretty cool, I’d like to see Oprah have anyone play metal on her show.
elk

A sure fire way to get my dad to like Ozzy finally! Sweet!