In case you've been living under a rock, volume one of the long-awaited fourth season of Netflix's Stranger Things hit the streaming service over the weekend. The wildly popular sci-fi show takes place in the 1980s, and a big part of its appeal is its faithful re-imagining of that cultural time period, including the music that was central to its era. So naturally, the actor Joe Quinn plays Eddie Munson, a high-school metalhead who sports a hair-metal perm and a jacket with patches and pins for Dio and W.A.S.P.
He definitely looks the part of the role he's playing — a hesher scoundrel who plays in a band called Corroded Coffin, who's been forced to repeat senior year of high-school numerous times and leads their school's Dungeons and Dragons-themed society, the Hellfire Club. And as it turns out, the 29-year-old actor actually adjusted his listening habits in order to properly get into character.
"I listened to a lot of heavy metal," he told Entertainment Weekly. "That was my...God, it's impossible to not sound pretentious when you say it, but, yeah, that was my way in."
He also credits his lifelong love of guitar playing as a useful skill for helping him get into the mindset of an over-the-top metal weirdo. He fell in love with the iconic Gibson SG after seeing Jack Black wield it in the crucial piece of the millennial rock canon, School of Rock.
"I wouldn't consider myself a brilliant guitarist, but I can play it," Quinn said, mentioning that he's played since he was seven years old. "That was very lucky because those scripts came out, I think, at some point in the pandemic. I did start practicing pretty furiously."
