Home Alone with Gustav Martner

Home Alone is a series of Creative Social interviews that reveal the obsessions behind some of the great progressive industry mavericks of today.

Here we go backstage with Gustav Martner, Daddy founder, now Crispin Porter Bogusky Europe.

Gustav, apart from wearing very skinny jeans and t-shirts made for adolescents you manage to knock out some pretty credible work and play the saw. Tell us about this saw business.

I play the saw. Yes, a saw.That sharp thing that you normally would use to build a fence or steal a Christmas tree with. With the gentle stroke of a bow, the saw will make a beautiful sound – a high pitched vocal sound, with a lot of body.

I have always loved stuff that many others neglect – unusual instruments, moustache wax, banners. I guess I try to compensate for the fact that I was born an average middle class guy.

The saw I have, was a gift from my wife’s grandfather – Lars. he was too old to play it then, cause you need a fair amount of strength in your right hand to bend it. But he felt confident I would learn fast, since I already played the guitar. Before good ol’ Lars passed away I had the privilege to play Happy Birthday for him on the saw. I don’t think it sounded too bad.

A year later, my family and I were in San Francisco. By coincidence I met a woman who got to know that I played the saw, and therefore introduced me to her friend Bob Pritkin a retired ad man and saw musician. In the 80′s he wrote a pretty cool book called Christ was an ad man. He lives in a huge house in central San Francisco with a garden filled with concrete animals and burning trees in copper (for real!). Good ol Bob is an extremely eccentric man with a temper that would scare the shit out of anyone. While we had our little spontaneous saw session, he went from slowly caressing his instrument in sweet harmony, to throwing the saw across the room in anger at the guy playing the piano. Kind of refreshing for a average Swede like me.