Now Playing | Gyro Zeppeli: 7 songs the ‘Steel Ball Run’ cowboy would have on repeat

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Now Playing | Gyro Zeppeli: 7 songs the ‘Steel Ball Run’ cowboy would have on repeat | Photo Credit: Netflix, The Hindu

Everyone has a soundtrack to their life. Our favourite fictional characters have one too. Now Playing is our attempt to guess what’s on it, picking a handful of songs ranging from more obvious anthems to the slightly left-field choices that require a little more imagination, and making the case for each one.

One of two protagonists in the 7th Part of David Production’s adaptation of Hirohiko Araki’s seminal JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure manga series, Gyro Zeppeli is introduced in Steel Ball Run as an Italian executioner travelling under the guise of an outlaw. In 1890, the Steel Ball Run offers a staggering $50 million prize for a roughly 4,000-mile horse race across North America, and Gyro enters riding his horse Valkyrie, with a pair of those titular steel balls holstered at his belt and a pathological commitment to looking absolutely spectacular. His steel balls are conduits for the Spin, a technique built around a mysterious rotational force that he has inherited and refined through the Zeppeli family tradition. At the same time, his formidable horsemanship makes him one of the race’s most capable competitors. His new race partner and fellow Steel Ball Run protagonist, Johnny Joestar, is a former jockey paralysed after a shooting who becomes fascinated with Gyro after witnessing the Spin briefly restore movement to his legs. This chance encounter between the two jockeys soon blossoms into the partnership that drives the story forward.

Gyro in a still from ‘Steel Ball Run: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’ | Photo Credit: Netflix

Gyro is a strange custodian of the Zeppeli name. He has the family’s training, its knowledge of the Spin and the bearing of someone who takes both very seriously. But he also has this nonsensical ability to ruin his own solemnity. A flamboyant pose, a needless insult, an elaborate explanation of something that did not need explaining, and before you know it, the aristocratic executioner is singing the manga’s immortal ‘Cheese Song’ (I, for one, am a sucker for the “‘rella, ‘rella, ‘rella” part myself). This collision of uncanny discipline and sheer silliness makes Gyro a fitting steward to Araki’s storied legacy of absurdities.

‘Ramble On’ feels well suited for someone who voluntarily signed up to cross an entire continent on horseback. Released on Led Zeppelin II in 1969, the song marries folk-rock with heavier guitar work, while Robert Plant’s lyrics draw on The Lord of the Rings’ call to adventure. Its roaming grandeur suits Gyro’s own appetite for the open road, and better yet, his tendency to treat every stretch of it as yet another stage to show-off his considerable talents.

Shuggie Otis’ ‘Sweet Thang’, from his 1971 album Freedom Flight , adds a little velvet to a playlist otherwise calibrated to Gyro’s more boisterous frequencies. Otis’ supple guitar lines glide are cushioned by a teasing organ, giving the song a bluesy soulfulness.