Keiji Haino
Land of the Rising Sound: the Terror and Glory of Japanese Noise Guitar
Excerpt reprinted from Guitar Player, July 1997
By Mike Rowell and Alan Cummings.
Someone once said that what Keiji Haino does to his ax is more like manipulating a weather system than playing a guitar. Keiji (pronounced “cagey”) has been an inescapable presence in the Japanese music underground since the early ’70s. From his early free-jazz combo, Lost Aaraaff, to his long-running rock power trio Fushitsusha, Haino’s music has been immediately identifiable by its refusal to follow convention. An intimidating presence with his trademark dark glasses, waist-length black hair, all-black clothing and intensely physical showmanship, Haino sings in an unearthly falsetto and plays percussion, hurdy-gurdy and over 30 other instruments, both Western and Eastern. He refuses to see himself as a guitarist, insisting that he is at heart a vocalist who uses guitar for accompaniment.
Influenced by players from Blind Lemon Jefferson to John Fahey to Chuck Berry to Indian vina masters, Haino centers his approach around surprising himself. He never knows what he’s going to play before stepping onstage, has no preset positions for his effects, and devotes much of his time to discovering new physical techniques. “If I’m surprising myself, then I’m bound to surprise the audience even more,” he says. “Reproducing a sound I’ve made before isn’t something to be proud of.”
Haino is a hurricane in performance, but those leaps, falls and muscle-clenched poses aren’t mere theatricality; they enable him to conjure sounds unproduceable by more conventional techniques. “Guitar ultimately comes down to the fingers and hands, so I’ve put a lot of thought into what I do with them.” Inspired by blues musicians, Haino exploits the technique of accumulating energy and building tension, holding back on certain notes in order to explode with greater energy on the next.
At the heart of Haino’s massive sound are two Yamaha RA-100 digital reverbs, a Boss bass equalizer, a Guyatone fuzz, a Boss octaver/pitch shifter and a volume pedal. His amps include a hot-rodded 1971 Marshall 100-watt head and a ’70s Fender Twin Reverb. Haino’s guitar collection includes two 1971 Gibson SG Deluxes, a ‘54 Les Paul Jr., a Fender 12-string and a late-’50s Les Paul TV. He currently favors a black Telecaster Custom, partly for its durability, since the energy Haino puts into his playing has resulted in more than one snapped guitar neck.
Haino has collaborated with Fred Frith, Loren Mazzacane Connors, John Zorn and many others. Among his upcoming releases are two Fushitsusha discs, one solo album and a guitar duel with English free-improv master Derek Bailey, all to be released this year on Tokuma. Haino describes them as the “wildest and heaviest” recordings he’s made yet — which is really saying something — and warns against listening to them on headphones. For more about Haino, including an extensive discography, visit the unofficial Keiji Haino web site at http://www.poisonpie.com/sounds/haino/.
Blixa Bargeld (Einsturzende Neubauten, the Bad Seeds)
“I didn’t get into Rock ‘n Roll to play Rock ‘n Roll”—Blixa’s exit line upon quitting the Bad Seeds.
Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson: Narrative journeys
Excerpt from Innerviews © 2010 Anil Prasad. The whole interview can be found here:
By Anil Prasad.
How would you describe the journey it [the recently released four-CD box set, Walking On A Wire: Richard Thompson (1968-2009)] reveals in terms of your evolution as a musician?
Wow. Easy questions first! A journey from incompetence to competence? [laughs] I suppose the older you get, you probably acquire what’s referred to as “maturity as a musician.” What I think that means is you make better choices. You might have better technique, but because your musical sense improves, you also get more tasteful or your phrasing gets better. So that’s my impression of it, assuming I was to sit down and listen to the whole thing, which I actually haven’t done.
Really?
Really. [laughs] I’d have to be dragged screaming to hear that many hours of my own music. That would be terrible. I can listen to short bursts, but to listen to the whole lot would be too painful. Box sets are supposed to be a summary of your career, but when I think about them, thoughts like “Is that all there is?” and “Is that the best I can do?” come to mind. Also, I say to myself “Surely there must be something else worthy in the future.” So, I usually find these releases kind of sobering and they drive me to work a bit harder.
When you listened back to the short bursts of material on the box set, were there any revelations about your early guitar work that surprised you?
There’s nothing I’d be appalled by. [laughs] When I was younger, I played fine. Certainly there are technical things I’d change about the notes I played, but technically there’s nothing embarrassing. There’s nothing I responded overwhelmingly positively to, either. I’m not that far away from the stuff that’s even 40 years old. I manage to hear my older stuff periodically one way or another, so I don’t think there’s anything in the set I haven’t listened to for a long time.
Are there any songs in the set you’d point to as representing an ideal balance of song and guitar craft?
Gosh, more tough questions! The performances I like most are the ones where the guitar is really playing around the structure of a song. For me, guitar playing is always about the song. I like to bring whatever skills I have—guitar playing or singing—into the song framework. My favorite songs are those in which the guitar is sitting right there in the framework. If a solo is played, my preference is that it’s not shouting out at you or about showing off. Rather, it’s just part of the fabric of the song.
Let’s take a song like “Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?” from Shoot Out The Lights. That’s a good example of the guitar being a part of the furniture, but in a way I really like. Every song I release has an arrangement and that arrangement can be very, very loose, in which the singer sings a verse and the guitar solos for a verse, but it’s nice when the elements of the arrangement are more integrated than that. Ideally, when the singer is singing, the guitar is answering or playing something that fits the rest of the arrangement, along with the bass and drums. I like the guitar to provide some interesting musical development from verse to verse. I like to harmonically tease things along so I’m almost developing the narrative along with the singer. You’re telling an instrumental story against the vocal story. And when it comes to a solo, you’re stepping out a little bit, but not that far, so you’re still in narrative, storytelling mode. You’re not jumping too far away from the rest of the rhythm section. You’re just kind of sliding along and developing things harmonically, thematically and melodically to the point where the vocal can take over again and continue with the narrative in word form.
You believe successfully creating a solo with any complexity requires players to do some homework. Elaborate on that idea.
The homework is you have to work out the components of what you’re going to play. When you create a solo, you’re usually playing bits and pieces of things you already know and the challenge is to reassemble them into something new. You have these clichés that you play and they might be your clichés or based on someone else’s clichés. They might also be a general part of the guitar playing vocabulary. The other side is when you start to flow as a soloist, sometimes your imagination will rearrange these little pieces into a new structure and build something unpredictable on top of that. In the best case, when your imagination is really taking flight, it’s as if the solo is playing you and you’re being taken on a journey. For me, the best feeling in music is when you’re truly improvising and don’t know where you’re going, but you know you’re going to arrive at an interesting place. It’s really exciting. At the end of it, you think “Wow, that’s amazing. How did I play that?”
Your ‘59 Sunburst Stratocaster, with a Maple ‘55 neck, and a custom Strat-style Ferrington are your favorite electric guitars. Why do you find the Strat universe so appealing?
My ’59 Strat doesn’t play live these days very much because it’s in need of serious work, so I use the Ferrington, which has an extra-wide maple neck, as my main onstage electric instrument. The reason I first got into Strats is because guitar players I admire were playing them when I was younger. I was a big Buddy Holly fan, who was a major Strat player. I was also into James Burton. Although he was playing a Telecaster, he put me into that Fender frame of mind. Hank Marvin of The Shadows was another glorious Strat player who inspired me to pick up the instrument. Another reason I like them is because Strats and Strat-like guitars use a single-coil pickup, which provides a sound closest to the one I hear in my head. I think it really imitates a human voice well with its slightly edgier and toppier sound. It’s a more expressive instrument. It also offers a kind of weight to each note. Somehow, Strats make the notes count more. You can point to musicians like Charlie Christian and Louis Armstrong and say with certainty that every note they played was absolutely essential. I think the Strat’s single-coil pickup helps me make each note important.
The Ferrington includes three pickups, each with a separate selector and volume control. What flexibility does that give you?
The guitar lets me combine the pickups—a P-90 in the neck, an Alnico Strat in the middle, and an old Broadcaster in the bridge—any way I want, which is great. I can roll-off volume on any pickup to create an infinite number of unique tone variants. It allows me to generate really good tones that blend in well with other instruments. They’re less spiky or in-your-face than full-on volume tone. That means rhythm guitar tones can be made more subtle. Setting the guitar up this way was an experiment. We went through a bunch of pickups until we came up with something that sounded really good. The pickups are all glued on, not screwed on, which gives them more sustain too. Also, the guitar has less circuitry in it than most, which makes the tone a little purer than other instruments.
What setup do you typically run your Strat and Ferrington through?
For amps, I use a Divided By 13 FTR 37 Head and a Divided By 13 2x12 Speaker Cabinet. As for my pedal board, it’s pretty standard stuff. It includes a Divided By 13 Switch Hazel; a Sweet Sound Electronics Mojo Vibe set to vibe mode; a Fulltone Supa-Trem Tremolo Guitar Effects Pedal; a Carl Martin Red Repeat Delay pedal; a Barber LTD Overdrive Pedal; and an Ernie Ball Volume Pedal. I also like using the Fulltone Deja’Vibe in my electric rig. It provides a real fullness and expands the lows and highs of what is really a mid-range instrument. It’s also nice to have a bit of wobble. I’ve always liked a bit of wobble on everything I do.
You’re a fan of alternate tunings, particularly C,G,D,G,B,E; D,A,D,G,B,E and D,A,D,G,A,D. What draws you to those three?
They give you more notes ringing over your playing, which creates the impression of a fuller sound that makes the guitar more orchestral. Modal tunings like C,G,D,G,B,E also really extend the possibilities of the guitar by giving you a richer bass sound that to me, is almost like having three keys available at once with just a very slight adjustment of your fingers. Any modal tuning offers a slightly elusive quality that blurs the edges of the key you’re playing in. They really add a haunting quality to British traditional music, which is often performed unaccompanied. When you first investigate a traditional song, it’s not always clear what tuning you should use. Your mind might conjure up a harmony that fits around a naked tune, but it’s unclear what the key should be. A modal tuning makes it possible to keep that elusive nature and retain an almost pleasing ambiguity. There’s nothing worse than a folk song that sounds floaty and ethereal because it’s locked down into a very European musical tradition focusing on A, D and E, with all of the harmony filled out. That stifles the song. I like to use open tunings keep the modal quality and mystery alive.
These days, onstage, I try not to play in too many tunings. I use three or four max, because it’s such a pain retuning throughout a set, unless you have hordes of guitars or techs backstage tuning everything. It’s also a pain to keep switching guitars.
You’ve been highly critical of the last round of remasters of the Island-era Fairport Convention and Richard and Linda Thompson albums. What do you dislike about them?
The main thing is I really don’t like bonus tracks. There are reasons you don’t put outtakes or extra tracks on an album and that’s because they don’t belong there. They’re not good enough. I want to keep a certain unity when I make an album. It should start and finish with a purpose. I come up with track orders designed to tell a story. When they repackage or reissue things and add tracks, it really messes up the whole thing. I know why they do it, but I don’t like it. And sometimes the remastering isn’t what it should be, sonically speaking. Sometimes the original just sounds much better than the remaster. That’s not supposed to be true, but it often is. So, those are my reservations, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Those records are owned by the companies involved and the artist has no rights. They can do whatever they like, but they continue to disappoint me.
What was it like for you to work with Nick Drake as an accompanist on his music?
Even people like me who knew Nick, didn’t really know him. It was okay to be very, very, very quiet in the ‘60s. Nick wasn’t even the quietest person I knew back then. It was socially okay to just sit in the corner of the room and give a little smile occasionally. That was considered fine. It was a social norm in those days. But it meant that you didn’t communicate a lot with those people. I was very shy in the ‘60s as well, so any conversation Nick and I would have could probably be written down in two words. Musically-speaking, Nick was really interesting. His records are beautiful and exquisite. Some of it’s down to him and some of it’s down to really excellent arrangers and producers. The whole is just wonderful. Very few people knew about his music when it came out. He might have sold 5,000 records in his lifetime.
I played on two songs of Nick’s and my contributions were provided as overdubs. I was never in the studio at the same time, even though a lot of the things he did were live. One of my favorite cuts is “River Man,” which has a string orchestra accompanied by Nick playing guitar and singing along with them, live. Just absolutely fantastic. When it came to stuff with rhythm sections though, he didn’t like to put that stuff down simultaneously. It was added later. I don’t think I was ever given a brief. They just rolled tape and I just responded to the music. Nick was never there. He didn’t want to be there. I think he trusted the producer to find stuff and then he’d hear that stuff later and say if he liked it or not. At some point, I passed muster. I think my playing on his records is fine. I like what I played and loved the songs. They are so beautiful. If I had to do it again, I know I could do a better job. [laughs] I say that about most things.
Lou Reed
Lou Reed’s gear during Velvet Underground years:
Guitars:
Velvet Underground & Nico and While Light/White Heat: 1964 Gretsch Country Gentleman double cutaway body—later customized with Fender Stratocaster pickups (taken off from Sterling’s Stratocaster) + preamp + speed controller + tremolo controller, and stereo electronics.
Velvet Underground (3rd) onwards: Gibson ES-335TD , Gibson ES-345TD, Gibson ES-335-12 12-string, Fender Electric XII 12-string solid body.
Live at Max’s Kansas City era: Epiphone Riviera with mini-humbucking pickups and Bigsby vibrato.
Amps:
Velvet Underground & Nico and While Light/White Heat: Vox AC100 “The Super Beatle Amp” customized with mid-range booster.
Other amps: Fender Deluxe Amp , Silvertone 1484 Amp w/ 2x12” speaker cabinet, Acoustic amp (since 1969), Sunn amp (since 1970).
Pedals:
Vox Tone Bender Fuzz.
Mark Hollis (Talk Talk)
“Before you play two notes learn how to play one note - and don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it.” - Mark Hollis (1998)
Although known predominately as a singer and songwriter, Mark Hollis is also an under appreciated guitarist who played most of the guitar parts on the last two excellent Talk Talk records as well as some of the acoustic guitars on his solo record.
“Mark [Hollis] played most of the guitar on the later two albums, which would be his Gretsch Country Gentleman through either a Boogie, an AC30, a Fender Vibrolux, or a Champ, although he played the riff on “Desire” on my Vox teardrop 12-string. The opening guitar riff on Spirit of Eden, thieved very comprehensively from Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher”, I played on a cheap Vox guitar through an AC30, miked with a C12A a few feet away.”
The above excerpt is from a nice interview with Talk Talk member and producer Tim Friese-Greene, the rest of which can be found here.
Here’s one other brief but interesting interview with Phill Brown who engineered the last two Talk Talk records and Mark’s solo record, all three of which are just amazingly recorded. See here.
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett and the Madcap Laughs telecaster.
Neil Young
In The Eye Of The Hurricane
Reprinted from Guitar Player, March 1992
By Jas Obrecht.
JO: Could you have recorded ‘Weld’ with ’60s era equipment?
NY: Not without the Whizzer, because that’s how I get the guitar sounds to change subtly. The Deluxe goes up to 12—-not 11—-and with everything floored, if you back it down to 10-1/2 from 12, all of a sudden it’s chunky sounding on the attack. If you have it up on 12, then it just saturates completely and opens up after the attack. But if you back it down, it’ll catch the attack. So I’ve got one button just to change that one thing that much.
On a Fender Deluxe, there’s tone and two volumes. The volume on the channel you’re not using will affect the volume of the channel you are using, even when you’re not plugged into it, because of the drain on the power amp. Having the ability to bring up the channel I’m not even using—-so the overload thing comes on—-or to change the treble here and there—-those are the things I couldn’t have done without this technology. Technology hasn’t affected the sound, only the control of the sound.
JO: What’s the source of your feedback? Amp gain, devices?
NY: Volume. There is no amp gain. We don’t use a distorted effect at all. Just the Fender Deluxe.
JO: Do you take that amp on the road?
NY: Oh, yeah. I couldn’t go without it. There is no spare. I’ve got 10 spares, but none of them sound like it. All Fender amps are different, made with different amounts of metal and windings, all these things. The transformers are all different powered. Everything used to be loose, y’know, so every combination of specs was different. I got mine for $50 at Saul Bettman’s Music on Larchmont in L.A. in 1967. Took it home, plugged in this Gretsch guitar, and immediately the entire room started to vibrate.
The guitar started vibrating, and I went, “Holy shit!” I turned it halfway down before it stopped feeding back. But I do a lot of things to make the sound more distorted, like by introducing an octave divider in conjunction with an analog delay, which is before the octave divider. The routing of these things is really important—-what hits first and then gets hit by something else. I have a line of six effects, and I can bypass them completely or dip in and grab one without going through the one in front of it. Or I can use all six of ‘em or any combination that I want. I set them up in any order so that they affect each other in a certain way, and that’s how I get my sound.
JO: Does anyone ever trigger effects offstage?
NY: Oh, no. It’s all done by my footswitch, this big red box. I can’t imagine anyone operating it for me offstage. No, they’d be dead.
JO: Have you been affected by digital multi-effects?
NY: I have a digital echo that I use because it has a particular gated-echo sound. When I tried it out at the Guitar Center in Hollywood, the salesmen were demo-ing all these sounds like on a Phil Collins record or the background of a Cyndi Lauper record. I said, “Let me try it for a minute,” turned everything all the way up except for the mix, and then I started playing the guitar really staccato. I turned the mix up and got whop, whop, whop, whop, like this giant popcorn machine exploding kind of a sound. I like that sound, so I use it as an effect. When I’ve gone just about as far as I can go, I stick that on it and just hit harmonics and choke them. It splats out all this ridiculous noise all over everything. But I don’t use it in a real sense to get a sound that it was meant to get.
JO: What effects do you use the most?
NY: An original tube Echoplex, an MXR analog delay, a Boss flanger, and an old white Fender reverb unit with new springs that are separate. The springs are on a microphone stand that goes on the cement floor of the building. It extends up to the bottom of the stage, and the spring stands on top of the microphone stand and the wire comes through a hole in the stage completely separate. I can’t use it if I don’t do that, because if I jump onstage, the spring rattles. It has to be isolated from the surface of anything that’s vibrating.
JO: What if you can’t drill a hole in the stage?
NY: No, we do it. We just put a hole in the stage. There’s always a way. It can’t be very far away, because with a long wire, you lose the fidelity, the high end where the reverb lives, so the magic is gone. You’ve got to keep it close and really short.
JO: What do you look for in a guitar?
NY: I buy guitars mainly to remember something by. If I’m enjoying a place, I will try to find an old guitar in that area, and that will always remind me of when I was there. The way it sounds is the way I sounded when I was there. I’ve written a lot of songs on a Martin D-18 that I really like, and I stole that out of [manager]Elliot Roberts’ office. I always think of Elliot’s office whenever I play it. And there are other reasons to buy guitars. You can buy them because they’re classics. I collect ‘em, so I’ll buy an Explorer or a Flying V or a Black Falcon or a White Falcon just because that’s what it is. But I got those now, so I don’t need those anymore. Material things are becoming less and less relevant to me, so I’m not contingent to buy guitars.
JO: Is any guitar so rare that you don’t play it?
NY: No, nothing like that. I’ve got a Hank Williams’ guitar, but I play it all the time. It’s an old Martin D-28. I bought it from Tut Taylor. It’s always great when someone understands what this is that they’re holding, who understands the effect Hank Williams had on all of us. They are sort of awestruck by being in the presence of anything that he touched—-to the point that to actually play his instrument elevates them to another level. It’s a wonderful thing to have a guitar for that reason. A lot of people who should have played it, have played it. I’m careful about it, but I use it all the time. It’s not on a wall in a museum.
JO: Do you still have your Buffalo Springfield guitars?
NY: Yeah, I still have every guitar I ever played, except for the one I traded to Stills for something else. I also have a Gretsch that Jim Messina had that’s like the one I played in Buffalo Springfield.
JO: Are you a fan of Fenders?
NY: I’ve got a Broadcaster and a Telecaster and a couple of Stratocasters, but I don’t play them that much.
JO: It’s been reported that a main ingredient in your sound is one particular pickup.
NY: Well, there’s a lively Firebird pickup on the treble side of my Les Paul, but when I did ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere’, it didn’t have that pickup, which had got a bad hum in it. I took it to a music store to see if they could do anything with it. I went back to get it, and the store was closed and everything was gone. I never got the pickup back, so now there have been two or three pickups in place of the original. I guess I used the Firebird pickup on all the things I played on my black guitar since 1973.
JO: In this age of high-tech whammies, what’s the advantage of having a Bigsby?
NY: It works; it’s expressive. The wang bars they have now are not expressive; they’re too tight. You can go way down and come way back up and do these metal licks and still stay in tune. Big deal—-stay in tune, great. You already were in tune. I go out of tune in every song, because the thing just doesn’t stay in tune. But when you keep moving, you never know when you’re in tune. It’s like hand-controlled flanging. And if you have a tape repeat on, an Echoplex, and you just ever so slightly use the Bigsby, then your sound is going up and down, but the echo is always following behind it. So it’s like you really have two guitars that are not only on two different attacks, but one’s in a different pitch. It’s a huge sound. I’ve got the Bigsby worn into my hand. I can’t do anything else. It has to be a Bigsby.
JO: The British music paper NME recently named you “the grizzled godfather of gargantuan feedback.”
NY [Laughs] I don’t know what to say.
JO: One of the ‘Ragged Glory’ videos shows you shoving your headstock into a toilet bowl to create feedback.
NY: Oh. it’s just Hollywood shit. None of that’s real. A cinematic trick, but it was a nice toilet. The toilet was a good visual expression of my sound. I want people to know that that’s where I get my sound.
JO: Everybody’s heard stories of Jimmy Page recording guitars in a bathroom while miking 12 feet away. Do you experiment like that?
NY: Yeah, I’ll try anything. That sounds like a good idea. If it’s the right bathroom and the right kind of tile. He must have just liked the sound in there; it was very live, obviously, so he got a big sound doing that, for sure.
JO: What are your views on people going to college to learn guitar?
NY: Paints a pretty doomed picture of the future, doesn’t it?[Laughs.] First of all, it doesn’t matter if you can play a scale. It doesn’t matter if your technique is good. If you have feelings that you want to get out through music, that’s what matters. If you have the ability to express yourself and you feel good when you do it, then that’s why you do it. The technical side of it is a completely boring drag, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, I can’t play fast. I don’t even know the scales. A lot of the notes that I go for are notes that I know aren’t there. They’re just not there, so you can hit any note. I’m just on another level as far as all that goes. I appreciate these guys who play great. I’m impressed by these metal bands with their scale guys. Like I go, “Gee, that’s really something.” I mean, Satriani and Eddie Van Halen are genious guitar players. They’re unbelievable musicians of the highest caliber. But I can’t relate to it. One note is enough.
JO: ‘Cinnamon Girl.’ The one note solo.
NY: Oh yeah—-two strings, though. The same note on two strings. The wang bar made every one sound different. When people say “one note solo,” I listen to it and every one sounds different to me. It sounds like it’s all different in that one place. As you’re going in farther, you’re hearing all the differences, but if you get back, it’s all one.
JO: The ‘Weld’ version is remarkably true to the original.
NY: Yeah, it is. We tried to do our best—-put a little of ‘Norwegian Wood’ on the end of it that one night. That was the only night we did that.
JO: What do you look for in a solo?
NY: Elevation. You can feel it. That’s all I’m looking for. You can tell I don’t care about bad notes. I listen for the whole band on my solos. You can call it a solo because that’s a good way to describe it, but really it’s an instrumental. It’s the whole band that’s playing. Billy Talbot is a massive bass player who only plays two or three notes. People are still trying to figure out whether it’s because he only knows two or three notes or whether those are the only notes he wants to play.[Laughs.] But when he hits a note, that note speaks for itself. It’s a big motherfuckin’ note. Even the soft one is big.
JO: What’s the appeal of working with Frank Sampedro?
NY: Frank uses the biggest strings of any guitar player I’ve ever seen. Frank is probably even more of a crude player than I am, because his lead isn’t as developed as mine. But his strings are so big! .055 on the bottom, big wound third, .012 on the E string. He hits a note, and it’s a big note. I hit a note, it’s like here today, where’s it going, what’s happening? Without Crazy Horse playing so big, I sound just normal. But they supply the big so I can float around and sound huge. The big is them.
JO: Is jamming a lost art?
NY: I don’t know, I haven’t seen any jams lately.[Laughs.} You see all these concerts—-what’s happening?
JO: It’s like hearing the record.
NY: I know. It’s disgusting, isn’t it? Welcome to the ’90s.
JO: You’ve said jamming is like having an orgasm.
NY: Well, yeah! That’s why a lot of my instrumentals are too short![Laughs uproariously.]
JO: Do you often feel that your playing is reaching a new level?
NY: I thought it reached a new level on ‘Arc’ and on ‘Weld.’
JO: ‘Arc’ is a pretty daring release.
NY: I don’t think so. It’s a logical extension of rock and roll today—-if you want to go the other way, past Sonic Youth, just off. Feedback has always been there. There’s always been a temptation to go that way. It’s like jazz. It’s the jazz of rock and roll, without a beat.
JO: Coltrane with feedback.
NY: Yeah, maybe. Coltrane is a big influence on me. I love a lot of his things. ‘Equinox’ and ‘My Favorite Things’ with McCoy Tyner—-those are my favorite of his music.
JO: Which records couldn’t you live without?
NY: See, I don’t listen to anyone. I only listen to what other people put on, because I don’t want to make the decision of what to listen to. I listen to what’s going on in the world, what people like, because I hear it coming out of the car radio or the jukebox. I’ll walk up to a jukebox and play things. I like to listen to B.B. King or Ray Charles or an old country thing, but it’s mostly just for rehabilition purposes.
JO: What do you owe your audience?
NY: My life. Without my audience, who would I be playing for? What a lonely job that would be. I owe a lot to my audience. I’m not beholden to them—-I don’t have to actually send them something.[Laughs.] Maybe another record, if they like it.
JO: What’s planned?
NY: An acoustic album with the Stray Gators, the band I did ‘Harvest’ with: [drummer] Kenny Buttrey, [bassist] Tim Drummond, [pedal steeler] Ben Keith, Spooner Oldham on piano instead of Jack Nitzsche. Working with different bands is what keeps me going. It keeps stirring the pot to put myself in a different situation, I don’t ever try to tie myself into one group of people, because it stifles the music.
JO: Any words of encouragement for young players?
NY: Just start playing. Learn a few chords and play with someone who’s maybe a little better than you. Don’t learn from a book any more than you have to. Learning from other people is what music is all about. Pick up things and put them back together yourself. Use them to write new songs, to make new sounds, new chord changes, new time changes. Just create. Even if it’s all shit, just keep creating. Pretty soon it’ll be great.
The End
Andy Moor (The Ex, Dog Faced Hermans)
Squier Telecaster in the early days—Andy Moor with Dog Faced Hermans, circa early ’90s.
Telecaster, present day—Andy Moor with the Ex.
Nels Cline
Nels Cline’s battered 1959 Jazzmaster “Watt”
Ronald Jones (Flaming Lips circa 1991-1996)
Ronald Jones’ guitar rig (from various sources)
Guitars: Early 1970’s Surf Green Fender Jaguar with additional pickup added; white Telecaster.
Amps: Fender Super Twin and Roland JC-120 (signal run into both amps in stereo)
Pedals/Effects: Four Boss SE-50’s, two Eventide Ultraharmonizers, EH Microsynth, Vox and Crybaby Wah’s (Modified), Punkifier Distortion Pedal, DigiTech digital delay, Boss Super Chorus, Boss Digital Delay, Boss Super Octave, Boss Pitch Shift, MXR Phase, Telephone Amplifier, Quarter, Copper slide, and many homemade pedals.
