Dave had only been learning how to play guitar “four months” before his epic solo with a flamethrowing guitar at the BRITs.
The guitar tech behind the pyro instrument, Richard ‘Churd’ Prat, has revealed the Grime star’s team insisted on the star being able to play the instrument and not mime the performance, which the pyro company had said was impossible.
However, they managed to work around the “challenge” and make it playable.
Speaking to Guitar.com, Richard – who is a guitar tech for Biffy Clyro – said: “We’ve had lot’s of pyro at lots of shows, but I’d never done flaming guitars before now. I was booked to do the BRITs with Dave anyway, just looking after the band. And then down the grapevine it transpired that Dave had been learning the guitar – he’d only been playing for four months, but he’d been with his guitar teacher every single day, just learning that solo, basically, along with all the tricks of the trade.
“So the show designer, his name is Bronski [from the production duo Tawbox], who came up with the idea of the flamethrower guitars, it was all his concept.
“But the pyro company I was working with told us you can either have the pyro or you can have the solo. They basically told us we’d have to mime it, they said: ‘there’s no way this will be playable.’ But then the people from Dave’s side were saying: ‘it absolutely has to be playable.’ So that was the challenge.”
The 23-year-old rapper closed out the BRIT Awards with the spectacular rendition of ‘In the Fire’ and stunned the crowd and viewers at home with his face-melting solo.