Actor Elijah Wood has been playing music "for fun" for around 15 years. The lOTR star was in Delhi, with his crew, to get the crowd grooving to his beats and also on a hunt for some butter chicken. By Rupinder Kaur
Who knew Mr Frodo Baggins, who was previously on a mission to destroy the One Ring in Mount Doom’s wild fires, could spin some records. The man, Elijah Wood, has also managed to raise the roof at many of his gigs worldwide with his DJ group Wooden Wisdom’s partner Zach Cowie.
It’s almost time for the actor/DJ to get the crowd roaring with his funky symphonies at lAP in Hotel Samrat but here he is, in his military shirt looking like a man on a mission. The mission right now, according to him, was to go get some grub especially butter chicken and some more vinyl records for his collection.
“We just play records from the 70s and 80s,” he tells us as Cowie adds, “We go digging for records all around the world and try not to be restricted by any genre or time period. We are just interested in finding good music and sharing it with people”.
DJ-ing is what Wood got into about 15 years ago and says he’s been taking it more seriously for the last 5-6 years. Ask him if there is a different creative thrill that he receives from playing music other than doing movie and he tilts his head to respond, “It’s not that one is over the other at all. It is just representative of a part of who I am. I’ve always loved music and it’s been a huge part of my life. The first time I met a mixer and the idea of cross-fading between two songs on a loud system was very satisfying. I started doing it for fun and have been doing it ever since”.
The 33-year-old shakes his head the moment you ask him to list his favourite music artistes or albums. “Oh I can’t do that, it’s too hard”. But is quick to add on to Cowie’s list, “Fun House by The Stooges for sure”.
The group has not altered any of their sets for performing in India. “We basically bring our records and do a poll, before we travel, that will get us through any number of scenarios. The kind of stuff we are feeling at that time which has a relatively strong range and when we come to a place like this, one of us starts playing. There’s no plan as such. It is basically reactive, reacting to the crowd and to each other. It’s like a musical conversation,” the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind star tells us.
The conversation then steers to Wood’s indie movie picks after his iconic role in the lord of the Rings Trilogy like Everything is Illuminated by actor/director liev Schreiber. The process of choosing the roles for him is “quiet organic”.
“It’s always been a gut feeling based on either reading something that I respond to in a really profound way, or a filmmaker that I really love for the unique vision that I want to help facilitate and be a part of. Those tend to be smaller films,” Wood says.
The Frodo tag will be there for the rest of his life, he shares, but the actor adds on to he is not complaining.
“I accepted it a long time ago. It will always be part of my life and its something I’m very proud of. It is representative of one of the best experiences I’ve ever had so no complaints”.
He calls The Hobbit trilogy “a gift”. “To be able to see everybody again, to go back to New Zealand and meet the new cast and old friends; it was revisiting that experience which I never thought I would have been able to," the blue-eyed actor shares.