Last year Ben Gordon, drummer of Australian metalcore juggernauts Parkway Drive, got to serve as as the drum teacher to a Hollywood A-lister in his fellow countryman, Chris Hemsworth. Known for his starring roles in the MCU franchise as the Marvel superhero ‘Thor‘, among various other characters, Hemsworth challenged himself with learning to play drums in a two-month window for a live performance with Ed Sheeran.
That guest appearance ultimately took place in front of 70,000 people in Bucharest, Romania. Hemsworth took on the dare for the upcoming new National Geographic docuseries ‘Limitless: Live Better Now‘, which will premiere on Disney+ on August 15th.
That series will find Hemsworth undertaking various challenges to push his limits, from challenging his dexterity, to death-defying climbs, to undergoing special forces training.
Hemsworth‘s journey in attempting to learn to play drums in such a short period of time is reold in the first episode of the series set to air, ‘Brain Power‘. Speaking with Australian breakfast TV show program Today, Gordon spoke of his time getting Hemsworth‘s chops up:
“…It was good fun, actually. I’ve been friends with Chris for about seven, eight years now. We met from a mutual friend when he moved to Byron, and we’ve been mates ever since. So when he got challenged by Ed Sheeran to learn the drums for ‘Limitless‘, I guess I was the obvious choice to call because, I guess, I’m his only friend who’s a professional drummer. So he gave me a call and asked if I would help out. And initially I was just gonna help him out behind the scenes. But as it turned out, they filmed our sessions and they wanted us to be part of the episode.”
When asked if Hemsworth showed initial promise as a drummer, Gordon bluntly responded, “no.” He went on to add:
“I’ll have to qualify that answer. When he first came to me, he was really bad… I have a lot of admiration for him, because the whole premise of the episode was him finding something that he wasn’t gifted at, which was quite hard ’cause he’s very talented in many areas, and diving into something that he finds uncomfortable.
So, no one in the world is good at everything, even Chris Hemsworth, so he found something he’s not good at, which was the drums. He was a complete novice. He had no idea about it. He had no rhythm. But that was kind of the challenge and that’s what makes the episode fun… He’s got the physique. He just lacked the coordination and the rhythm, but he got there in the end.”
[via Blabbermouth.net]
