Modest Proposals

“Can’t someone just make them stop?” beseeches Courtney Taylor-Taylor from the stage. “This is Detroit—isn’t it legal to just shoot them?”

The Dandy Warhols are under attack . . . from Mahogany Rush. This is Detroit. Somehow these things happen. The present is always challenged by the spirit of 1976. The Portland psych-pop combo is playing the Shelter, a downtown basement residing beneath Saint Andrew’s Hall, a larger venue that tonight hosts Mahogany Rush. You may remember the hard-rockin’ trio from such classics as “Dragonfly,” “Hey, Little Lover,” and “Requiem For A Sinner.” (No? Me neither.) In the Me Decade they were eternally third on the bill at seemingly any given stadium-rock show. Tonight they’re finally playing above another band—literally—and their amplified kick-drum is thumping through the floor between pauses in the Warhols’ set.

“Wait. They’re hippies, right?” Taylor-Taylor thinks he’s found a solution. “Why doesn’t someone go up there and give ‘em some acid? Then they’ll just sit on the floor and talk about themselves. There can’t be more than 14 of them onstage. It wouldn’t cost that much . . . ”

The capacity crowd laughs and applauds. The soundman shoves up the faders on the Shelter’s PA. Taylor-Taylor leads the band—keyboardist Zia McCabe, guitarist Pete Holmstrom, and drummer Brent DeBoer—into the Ennio Morricone-tinged “Get Off,” from their new album, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. It’s no “Dragonfly,” but the audience loves it all the same. A victory, yes, but the celebration will have to wait. For some bands, slaying ’70s dinosaurs is hell; for The Dandy Warhols, it’s practice. If they want to be heard above the din of hard rock’s currently reigning bands, they’ll have to turn it up a whole lot louder.

Backstage, before the show, Taylor-Taylor runs a hand through his black thatched hairdo and yawns. He’s only a week into the band’s U.S. tour, and he’s already enervated. And who wouldn’t be? This isn’t just touring, according to the singer—this is revolution. (Albeit revolution with some great smoke at the after-show party.) The Dandy Warhols have perpetually been the odd band out, but they took three years to promote and then follow-up their second album, . . . The Dandy Warhols Come Down, with its quasi-hit, “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth.” Now they’ve reemerged into a world in which a band seemingly needs either a choreographer or a missing Y chromosome to get a shot at the charts. According to Taylor-Taylor (the hyphenated-name thing, incidentally, is an inside joke that went way too far), the industry’s eyes are upon radio’s response to his group’s Stones-y new single, “Bohemian Like You.” Listener reaction will determine whether the time is right for a coup of the Testosterock Citadel.

“We run around the world, and we preach revolution,” starts the singer, becoming increasingly animated. “And someday we’re gonna be the ones in power, and they’re gonna be the ones against the wall with blindfolds. And all the loudmouth, jerk-off, date-raping, fuckin’ dickheads are gonna have to pretend they’re elegant and cool and get good haircuts—or they¹re not gonna have any fuckin’ friends. That’s our fuckin’ revolution.”

He stops to laugh at his modest proposal before addressing the reality of the situation. “The problem is having 12-year-olds with financial clout. They’re a market with major buying power, and we’re basically selling records to people who pick up the $2 used copy of Dostoevsky. So, who knows if it’s gonna happen, but . . .”

He shrugs. And how does Taylor-Taylor contrast The Dandy Warhols’ enlightened fans with the show-us-your-tits crowd?
“All the guys in our scene have to get raped in order to get laid, because all of us would feel really vulgar being sexually forward with a woman. No matter how much she smiles at you and talks nice to you and looks you in the eye and laughs at your jokes—to make even a forward suggestion, you’d feel totally fucking disgusting.

“You can feel as it’s about to come out of your mouth that your whole ideology is about to be reevaluated and utterly reduced to ground zero by this woman. And it probably should be. I think it’d be a much better world if the women did all the deciding as far as who they want. I mean, they pretty much do, anyway. Don’t they?”

And in an ideal world, according to Taylor-Taylor, women would want unique, rather than beautiful, people. “Well, I look at [ex-Verve frontman] Richard Ashcroft, for instance, and I go, ‘Man, that guy is cool-looking.’ He’s just odd-looking. I only get to be a scumbag weirdo because if I have any semblance of a normal haircut, I look like I model for a living, and then no one takes you seriously at all. No one thinks you feel anything; no one think’s you think anything. You just get written off.”

Shallowness is a perception the Warhols have battled before. With a look so rocktastic they’re ripe for a Saturday morning TV show (they’ve already been drawn into an episode of Mike Allred’s Red Rocket 7 comic) and an early penchant for clothing-optional gigs, the Warhols have occasionally found their music overshadowed by their image. Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia should change that. With their most consistent album to date, the group finally strikes the perfect balance between image and substance. (They’ve even gotten the nod of approval from their idol, David Bowie, whom Taylor-Taylor has affectionately taken to calling “my stalker,” since the Starman recently caught a few gigs.)

Recorded in a former gay men’s gym in Portland over the span of a year and a half, the album came together between and during parties. “Whoever was there was more than welcome to play, if they brought an instrument,” according to Taylor-Taylor. And that vibe translates on disc, from the libidinous groove of “Horse Pills” to the come-down drone of “Nietzsche.” The lyrics, too, are all slice-of-life, as if Taylor-Taylor were commenting on the action at each party. It’s a huge affirmation that, despite America’s creeping homogenization of, well, everything, urban bohemia still thrives.

“From East Berlin to Sydney to St. Louis to Albuquerque, that’s about all we see and all we wanna see,” says Taylor-Taylor. “It’s the people we meet. We all understand each other’s reference points, whether it’s film or rock. Yet if you were to ask anybody who owns a Britney Spears record, they would not know who the fuck [director] Ken Russell is. It wouldn’t matter to them. They might not even know who Spock is.”

Does that concern him at all?

“I don’t give a fuck about them. Those people have always existed. I mean, [back in the '60s] you’d be interviewing [The Doors'] Ray Manzarek, and you’d be saying, if they had [such and such] record, they’d have no idea what The Firesign Theatre was, or whatever . . .”

Still, Taylor-Taylor hasn’t given up on the idea of a crossover, a revolution: “I’m under the assumption that if I feel something strongly enough that I have to write a song to make myself get over it, then it’s probably a fairly universal set of emotions,” he offers. And if the music doesn’t do it, there’s always the image. Whether the world will ever see jocks with thatched haircuts acting elegantly cool—well, it’s a funny thought, at least. For now, it’s enough that The Dandy Warhols are in a different city every night, challenging the status quo.

“You know, Kid Rock is not sexy,” he offers before excusing himself to take a catnap prior to doing battle with Mahogany Rush in Bob Ritchie’s hometown. “He gets his cock sucked all the time, but he is not sexy. We are the last truly sexy rock band.”

Background note: Favorite band of the ’90s. First ever cover story. A little lengthy, but I think it still holds up (does any music mag run 5000-word features these days?). Classic cover photo and interior shots by the incomparable Ms. Heidie Lee Locke. Still love this group.

“For me to sit here and analyze my whole fuckin’ life is just… I made a great record; I don’t need a lot of fuckin’ shrinks with tape recorders. Do you know what I mean?”

He’s not here to have his head examined, but under different circumstances, the man at the window might seem paranoid. He speaks of clearing up “misinformation.” He describes himself as a voyeur who’s become the spectacle. He senses people projecting their unfulfilled desires onto him. He also exhibits an unsettling intensity when describing these lucid insights.

But you’re in England, and the man scanning the street below this bare dressing room is Richard Ashcroft, currently the singer of the biggest rock group in this compact country. Millions do watch and listen to him quite closely these days.

Imagine selling 1.5 million albums in a country the size of Florida. One in 30 people own your album, and many more than that have seen the video in which you aggressively push down a sidewalk looking undernourished and possibly possessed. As you perceive it, many people for whom TV is more real than reality feel as if they’re part of some ongoing video clip when they encounter you on the street. You venture out for an Italian dinner with your wife, and 25 Portuguese students sing your hits back at you. To top it off, journalists in your native country think nothing of sifting the garbage of royalty. Imagine what they can find on a man who’s lived a life informed by rock’s greats.

You’ve caught Ashcroft at an interesting juncture in his career. After nearly eight years of successful music making, the singer has achieved fame and now has to deal with the consequences. On the upside, he’s staged the comeback of the decade. After pulling the plug on his critically acclaimed but average-selling band, in 1995, he relaunched the Verve, in 1997, with the chart-topping Urban Hymns and its majestic single, “Bitter Sweet Symphony.”

The British music industry has recognized the Verve’s achievement by nominating the band for four Brit Awards. The Grammy-like celebration will be held tomorrow night, but Ashcroft and his bandmates—guitarist Nick McCabe, bassist Simon Jones, drummer Pete Salisbury and keyboardist Simon Tong— plan to celebrate the event by performing a benefit for the homeless at Brixton Academy. As a grudging nod to the ceremonies, the band will beam out a performance of their latest single, “Lucky Man,” and focus attention on a charity to “bring a sense of worth into a situation that is completely plastic,” according to Ashcroft.

There are, of course, worse aspects of fame than superficial awards shows. This morning, for instance, Ashcroft awoke to discover that a former girlfriend had sold her story to a tabloid (“Why I Dumped Rock’s Hottest Property!” teased the headline). She’s not alone on stirring up this apparently sluggish news year in England. Former schoolmates have also come out of the woodwork and spoken with the press (Ashcroft went by the nickname “Jesus,” according to one such authority). The press also prey’s on Ashcroft’s wife, Spiritualized keyboardist Kate Radley.

Until recently, journalists were content to create a soap opera out of Ashcroft and Radley’s relationship, and Radley’s former involvement with Spiritualized leader Jason Pierce. When they discovered only recently that Ashcroft and Radley have actually been married since 1995, they turned speculation to Radley’s alleged “mystery illness,” which they claim has kept her from touring with Spiritualized.

This background explains Ashcroft’s agitated state and guarded demeanor, but it’s not the reason he’s granted an interview. While not nearly the phenomenon it is in England, Urban Hymns has caught on in the States. Recently certified gold, the album is nesting higher than even Barbra Streisand’s Higher Ground on the Billboard album charts.

Though amused by the statistic, Ashcroft is more concerned with America’s perception of his band. Through an odd series of events somehow typical of the Verve’s history, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” currently scores a U.S. Nike TV ad. It nags the singer that Americans may not be aware of his band’s uncompromising dedication to The Music.

When Ashcroft tries to place his band’s success in historical context, he asks you to imagine what would have happened if the Velvet Underground, Can or Big Star had achieved commercial acceptance during their career spans. He doesn’t mind that his music can now be heard over fast-food-restaurant sound systems throughout America. “So much of my favorite music was never heard or enjoyed at the time the [musicians] were alive, and it would have done them good,” he notes. “It would have done people good having that music filling those [public] spaces.”

Seemingly oblivious to our ugly blue surroundings, Ashcroft takes a seat in one of the three chairs that serve as the dressing room’s only furnishings. For the next two hours, with few moments of relief, he will stare at either his interviewer or the cassette recorder while clearing up misconceptions about the Verve and articulating the ways in which he will sidestep the pitfalls of the music biz.

He wrote a song called “The Drugs Don’t Work,” but he’s making a habit of just saying no to “the periphery,” as he calls it, of music making. “Any of the sensitive fuckers who were making great music through the ages have been burnt out,” he says. “And I’ve seen it over the last few months and witnessed what it can be like when something escalates.”

Ashcroft draws a Marlboro Light from the pocket of his black nylon windbreaker. During the interview, he smokes on only two occasions—when he’s inhaling and when he’s exhaling. It’s an impressive feat that underscores his intensity, as when he gets on a roll explaining his objective approach to fame.

“It’s an experiment in humanity and how people are toward you, and how prepared you are to be a monkey. And how prepared you are to be treated like a lottery winner. That’s the other syndrome that comes down—you’re a fucking lottery winner. Success.” He spits out the word with a bemused look on his face. “So you’re a dancing monkey and a lottery winner—you’ve got to keep that smile on your face ‘cause you’re successful. 
Everyone’s concept of success is completely distorted, as well. Everyone’s concept of success is [the number of zeros] on sales [figures]. And that’s not where we come from, either.

“Success was the moment we did it, as far as the music’s concerned, or if we got anywhere near where we were planning to be. That’s success. Success is being able to make a record. He reclines in the chair, stretches his legs and—seemingly more relaxed—dovetails the concept to include the simple things in life. “Success is a cup of tea or… a cigarette.” He pulls on his cigarette and lingers on the moment to illustrate. “Or a great song.”

Ashcroft doesn’t miss the irony, then, that he was relieved of compensation for writing perhaps his greatest song yet. But that doesn’t mean he’s at peace with the situation. The singer first became aware that he didn’t own the publishing to and wouldn’t receive writing credit for “Bitter Sweet Symphony” shortly before he was, as he describes, “throwing things around the room, screaming at people.”

At a second-hand shop in Manchester, Ashcroft had picked up an orchestral album of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards tunes arranged by the Rolling Stones’ original manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Ashcroft sampled and looped a string section from Oldham’s version of “The Last Time” and used it as a foundation for “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” Shortly before the single’s release, he learned the song’s copyright belonged to ABKCO, a company owned by the Stones’ second manager, Allen Klein.

Rock history books remember Klein for his dubious business practices involving the acquisition of copyrights to the Stones’ early catalog, as well as the Beatles’. A classic photo pictures the rotund man brandishing not a double- but a quadruple-barreled shotgun. 
According to a no-longer-relaxed Ashcroft, ABKCO is “dealing with a band they shouldn’t be fuckin’ messing with because they will suffer the consequences.”

Whatever the karmic retribution, the legal wrangle has led to the song’s inclusion in Nike’s “I Can” ad campaign. “Once you get the advertising world and the music industry working together, that’s a whole lot of fucking dirt in one place,” says Ashcroft, who’s donated the band’s earnings from the ad to charity. “The only problem for me is the fact that we don’t have power over the track, and that it can be bastardized and used all over the world for anything. But you’ve got to move on, and you’ve got to see it as a product of our times, that no one has any respect for anything anyone makes or does.”

The song’s lyrical content only contributes to the irony. “Within the song it talks about greed,” says Ashcroft. “It talks about whether we are genetically capable of escaping our little traits that we’ve picked up from our generations.”

According to Bob Wood, Nike’s VP of U.S. Marketing, the “I Can” slogan “reflects… feeling good about participating and setting personal goals.” It doesn’t take a marketing degree, however, to explain why the Nike ad splices the track before the lyric, “You’re a slave to money, then you die.”

The commercial’s use of the song deeply concerns Ashcroft because he doesn’t want the Verve perceived as sellouts. “It demeans our name in America because you will never find another piece of music that I’ve had anything to do with appearing in the advertising world,” he says, before concluding that you have to view the events through “Peter Sellers’ eyes” and recognize the “lunacy” of the situation. “At the end of the day, people die and people get ill; and obviously on personal terms it isn’t as bad as other things that have gone on in my life.”

Though it had nothing to do with his music, Ashcroft has previously flirted with the advertising world. Before you hear the details, consider a context the singer might endorse. After Lou Reed left the Velvet Underground and before he transformed himself into a solo act, he typed and filed for his father’s accounting firm, on Long Island. When Big Star’s Alex Chilton was drying out from his initial experiences with the music industry, he washed dishes in a Memphis restaurant. In 1996, with the Verve dissolved and Ashcroft struggling to recapture the vibe in various studios, the singer flew to New York and earned a few thousand dollars posing for a Mossimo print ad, in a sheer black shirt.

In Ashcroft’s estimation, his hour of work as a meat puppet was no less demeaning to his art than Reed’s stint as a typist or Chilton’s as a dishwasher. “I was absolutely [broke] and desperately needed some money,” he explains. “It was a case of down and out—you’ve gotta do something when you’re down and out. Everyone has sold to the fucking devil at one point in their life.”

For Ashcroft, the ad was his final sale. He no longer bends when it comes to his career. Lately, he’s referenced Led Zeppelin as an inspiration. It’s not only the power of their music he appreciates, but also the way in which Zeppelin allowed their albums to speak for themselves—no singles released; few interviews granted. The Verve have adopted a similarly uncompromising stance toward standard industry practices. They don’t do after-show meets-and-greets; they won’t tour to the point of burnout; and, in the future, they’ll grant few, if any, interviews.

It’s all part of Ashcroft’s plan to keep the muse engaged while restoring dignity to his profession. “Bands are made to feel so afraid that if they don’t hit it early they won’t have a career; they are prepared to do anything the record company tells them to do,” he says. “The power is in the wrong place, and I think that’s half the battle—trying to slap people out of this fucking coma and say the power’s back in with the people who make the music. “When we’ve been through the system and been spat out, our record company’s going to change. And once someone signs a band who’s seen how we’ve done it, hopefully that will be a blueprint for how bands should be treated as far as space and creativity are concerned.”

He can’t say he didn’t see it coming. Although Ashcroft has always advanced a vision of his band’s success, that vision became manifest when he filmed the video for “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” With a powerful new management team in Big Life, the full support of Virgin and what he terms a “seminal piece of music” as the first single, Ashcroft was well aware the clip would find an audience.

Over two days of filming with director Walter Stern, in the east end of London, the singer had ample time to ponder the transition he was about to make. What else is there to do while you’re walking down the street all day? 
”Some days I find it hard walking through the streets, anyway,” he says. “So what was going to happen when [the video] was beamed around the world and everyone who was within eyeshot was taking part in a video if they’d seen it? Do you know what I mean?” he says, laughing. “Everyone I look to as I’m coming across in their heads [now] is part of some video they’ve seen.”

Among the flash-cut videos on MTV, the simplicity of the “Bitter Sweet Symphony” clip was a concept that anyone, in any country, could relate to: a man walking down the street singing—and shoving grandmothers and baby strollers aside. Without exception, the video provokes a response. Some viewers despise it because it reminds them of the rude bastards on crowded streets. Others feel empowered. Almost everyone who’s seen the video, however, comments on Ashcroft’s twiggy frame, the suitcases beneath the eyes, and wonders… “Is he on smack or something?” completes Ashcroft, rolling his eyes.

He’s heard the question before, and though he’s no stranger to drugs, he finds the assumption that he’s a junkie ridiculous. “[People’s perceptions are] beyond my control,” he says, before offering his interpretation of the video performance. “To me, it’s a very one-dimensional image. Everyone wants to be [Taxi Driver anti-hero] Travis Bickle for one day of their life, and I probably just got two days to be Travis Bickle. Which was quite an intense, enjoyable experience.”

Ashcroft is aware that many people can’t separate TV from reality. It provides yet another reason the Verve are pulling back from the spotlight. As with fame, he chooses to observe people’s reactions to his image as an almost Jungian psychological experiment. “A lot of the time the musician or artist builds an image, and they’re very afraid of what they’ve built,” he notes. “You can build monsters.

“That’s why the ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ video was almost like creating a monster. You get so many uninvited guests into your life—these brief moments where some guy might have been outside the venue every single time you’ve played a gig, and you can’t quite work out what the fuck he’s looking for. These brief flashes of people—they’re things that can stay in your head for the rest of your life. 
Seeing the way people can project an image onto you or make something out of you that they cannot fulfill themselves is a thing people have used and abused in pop music for fuckin’ years. It’s very good to get away from that.”

The Verve’s hometown is a place “neither her nor there,” according to Ashcroft. If you ever have occasion to make it up to Wigan, three hours north of London by train, he suggests you sample a meat-and-potato pie, go for a pint and—if you follow his lead—leave the first chance you get. 
Wigan had a “massive influence” on the Verve, he claims, but it was the town’s limited opportunities that truly inspired the young band. “If I hadn’t made the decision to be in a band, looking back on what was on offer in that town, it’s a quite frightening prospect.”

In fact, cleaning toilets at a local community center was the singer’s first—and last—real job before he had an epiphany on Ash’s Beacon, a bluff overlooking Wigan. “Stood on the top of the hill over my town; I was found,” Ashcroft sang on A Northern Soul’s “This Is Music.” In 1993, he described the moment in more detail: “I thought to myself that out of those millions of lights [in the town below], not one of them know me, and we’re just fucking rotting away on [unemployment] doing nothing. That was the first spark. After that, all Simon [Jones] and I had to do was place a couple of phone calls to our old school friends [Salisbury and McCabe] and set up a few crap jam sessions, and we had a band.”

Those jam sessions were the litmus test for the space-rock chemistry that organically combined the bands’ influences with an otherworldly energy. Drummer Salisbury provided Can-influenced grooves; bassist Jones brought in the dark dubby bass lines; and guitarist McCabe tastefully delivered Hendrix-like atmospherics and Stooges savagery. Ashcroft initially sang in a soft, reverb-soaked alto, but his passion and charisma easily compensated for any early deficiency in the vocal department.

Dubbing themselves Verve (as they were called before the litigious U.S. jazz label Verve requested the band change their name to avoid confusion), the four teens played a sparsely attended gig in London, and were soon signed to Hut. The Verve were the label’s first signing, and according to label president Dave Boyd, he and the band always knew it would require three albums before the group achieved mass acceptance, because their sound was so “against the grain,” in his words.

“You almost had to have the records in your collection that they took their influence from to understand it,” says Boyd. “These guys were listening to the records that I didn’t get until I was 30, and they already had them in their collections when they were 18.”

The Verve recorded the neo-psychedelic classic A Storm In Heaven, in 1993, with the aid of John Leckie. The producer, who’d worked with John Lennon, Stone Roses and XTC, has claimed that the Verve were the only band he’d ever approached to produce. “They were incredible,” he said. “They had sensitivity, power, everything.” Though Ashcroft took a few interesting lyrical turns on the album, such as “I was the crease in the shirt that this world wears,” on “Blue,” he had much more to offer on the band’s second full-length.

“There’s nothing like a few lessons in life to make whatever you do in art that much more substantial,” Ashcroft said, in 1995, after recording A Northern Soul. The lessons during that time involved broken bones and broken hearts. Gigs and sessions were cancelled when Salisbury broke his foot in a bizarre kitchen accident and when a bouncer broke McCabe’s hand, in Paris. 
When Ashcroft split with his long-term girlfriend (the one who’d later tell her story, claiming she left him because she was a lonely tour widow), the result was some of the most beatifically bleak music this side of Big Star’s Sister Lovers.

Dying alone was a recurring theme on tracks such as the title song and “On Your Own.” Though a collection of b-sides released between the first and second albums was titled No Come Down, the lessons seemed to bring reality into the bands midst. That’s not to say the Verve were necessarily sobered. 
Before A Northern Soul was recorded, the band took a fateful jaunt around the U.S., on a leg of Lollapalooza, in 1994. Performing midday on the Second Stage, the Verve finally had the opportunity to share their version of soul music with a large American audience.

Midwestern alternakids stood transfixed as McCabe doused the sun in wah and reverb, and Ashcroft, barefoot and feral-eyed, testified on the mic. With the band going through some “weird shit, all at the same time,” according to Boyd, what were initially methods of escape turned destructive. In Kansas City, the rock lifestyle caught up with Ashcroft and sent him to the hospital for treatment for dehydration after he collapsed onstage.

“I’d been drinking for the last three weeks on the road,” he explained. “There were bands on the Main Stage who didn’t touch the [backstage] rider, so I’d be infiltrating their tents and drinking it for them… I went to the bar the night before [I collapsed], got in at 7 in the morning—totally dehydrated. We played the next day, and I felt like I had huge pieces of lead in my feet. I was stomping around that stage like a dead weight. 
It’s good for Mother Nature to give you a slap in the face sometimes before you go too far,” he concluded. “I got a big slap in the face.”

The experience might have slowed the singer to some extent, but the Verve’s press agent at the time described the recording of A Northern Soul as “a bit of an exorcism for all of them.” Ashcroft himself has compared the experience to Lord of the Flies, and the sessions were capped when producer Owen Morris hurled a chair through a window. “He was just happy, you know?” explained Ashcroft.

Promoting the album, the singer said, “The moment we’re not getting turned on by our own music, then that’s the day this band’s over with.” Few people knew how close that day was. After a brief but trying American tour, the Verve played the T In The Park festival in Glasgow, on Aug. 6, 1995. It was their last performance. Ashcroft folded the group, claiming, “It no longer felt right.” His next move caused speculation as to why the group actually broke up.

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the history of rock, a solution teenagers have arrived at instinctively since garage bands first formed. One member not cutting it musically? Not fitting in socially? Hey, let’s tell him the band’s breaking up and reform under a new name! While it’s true that Ashcroft, Salisbury, Jones and their childhood friend Simon Tong reconvened with producer Leckie at Real World Studios only weeks after Ashcroft pulled the plug on the Verve, Hut’s Boyd insists it’s far too obvious to claim they did so to eliminate McCabe.

While the band had reached a musical maturity, the individuals involved were still in the process of balancing careers and domestic situations, according to Boyd. They had signed to the label in their teens; life had crept up on them; they’d hit the breaks. “It was no one incident; no one individual,” says Boyd. “It was just events and change in life and growing up.”

Ashcroft himself, however, had admitted before the break-up that he and McCabe didn’t always communicate. “Me and Nick are as crazy as each other in two totally different ways,” he said. “The time when we connect is when we have the headphones on and we’re playing music.”

According to Boyd, Ashcroft returned to the studio to cut demos that were more song-based. The recordings were never supposed to be finished masters, and at the time, it was merely easier to recruit Jones and Salisbury than advertise for new players. Guitarist/keyboardist Simon Tong, who’d actually taught Ashcroft his first guitar chords, was brought in to contribute because he was an available friend. 
The line-up eventually entered Olympic Studios, in mid 1996, with producer Youth and engineer Chris Potter, and the sessions produced nearly finished versions of 15 songs, some of which wound up on Urban Hymns.

Before they mixed the tracks, however, everyone involved realized the music was missing one crucial element: Nick McCabe. 
McCabe, in the meantime, had been recording ambient music and spending time with his daughter, in Wigan. Over the Christmas break, Ashcroft swallowed his pride, called the guitarist and asked him to rejoin. McCabe accepted and within a week had contributed guitar tracks to existing material such as “Weeping Willow” and “Neon Wilderness” to offset the ballads.

Though today he has no regrets about splitting the band, Ashcroft agrees that many people hold grudges for far too long and lose valuable friends in the process. “It’s one of our most destructive things,” he says. “If I’d let it carry on for X amount of years… It almost seems like such a wrong decision to make that I can’t even process what it would have been like or what would have happened [if I hadn’t called Nick]. But, yeah, people do make mistakes. People’s egos get involved too much. What [Nick and I] can actually do together is bigger than our little disagreements on certain things.”

On the day of the benefit, the Verve arrive for a cover shoot at a Brixton photo studio. Ashcroft is in a lighter mood, joking with his bandmates and planning the evening’s set, but he also seems keyed up about the show. He has reason to be nervous. Not only will the band’s performance of “Lucky Man” reach millions viewing the Brit Awards, but manager Jazz Summers has arranged, at Ashcroft’s request, for soccer maverick George Best to accept the group’s awards. He’ll do so while standing in front of a banner promoting NCH Action For Children’s “House Our Youth 2000” campaign.

Best—before Patti Smith, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali and Robert DeNiro—was Ashcroft’s childhood hero. In the ‘60s, Best was a natural from Northern Ireland who played for Manchester United. Many consider him the best soccer player ever. His long hair earned him the nickname “El Beatle” in Spain, and his good looks didn’t hurt in his sideline as a notorious womanizer. Tragically, Best had drowned his athletic career in a tidal wave of booze by the early ‘70s. Though he has no true analogue in U.S. sports history, imagine Muhammad Ali accepting a Grammy for Pearl Jam and you’ll get the general significance of the gesture.

While individual portraits are taken, someone speculates whether Best invested well. Ashcroft has the answer: “He once claimed that he spent 80 percent of his money on booze, 10 percent on women, and the other 10 percent he wasted.” His bandmates laugh, and then Salisbury reveals that Best has requested a mere three bottles of mineral water on his backstage rider.

Ashcroft facetiously suggests they get him back on the bottle and grill him for anecdotes. And what’s the first question the singer will ask his hero? How did Best score with Miss World back in the day? The peripheries of soccer are somewhat different than those surrounding rock, but human fascination doesn’t vary much. Ashcroft obviously understands why fans want to know the specifics of his life, but as a public figure, he takes press-shy actors like Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brando as role models over Best. So when it comes down to his home life, sex and drugs are definitely off the list of topics, but rock and roll always has place in conversation.

The singer laughs when he’s asked whether he and Radley would ever record an album along the lines of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Virgins. A nude album cover is out of the question, but he “wouldn’t rule out anything as a possibility for making music.” He and Radley literally make beautiful music together when they have time at home, but Ashcroft admits it’s good to shut off “the mental jukebox” when he leaves the studio or rehearsal space.

“You come home and someone needs to give you a slap because you’re talking about what you’ve just been doing all day,” he says. “It’s like you need to shake out sometimes; you need to have a life to write about a life. That’s another big thing that [musicians] get so messed up—they get in a bubble and they have no experience other than their institutionalization by the music business. It dries up any part of their spirit or soul they have.”

Happily married, he no longer feels that he’ll die alone in bed, as he felt when he was 23. The great thing now, according to Ashcroft, is that he’s with “someone who enjoys music, because obviously if both minds are somewhere different it’d be a very difficult relationship.” 
The English press makes it difficult enough. Ashcroft’s voice takes on an ineffably sad tone when he discusses the intrusion on his marriage. “It pisses me off, really, because you’re in the midst of living your life, and that’s what everyone forgets,” he says. “You did get up that morning. The same way I got up this morning and an old girlfriend had sold her story. It is funny that we are involved in that kind of shit. It’s disturbing, as well. It puts excess pressure on a situation that’s pressurized anyway.

“They love doing that ‘cause they want me to crack,” he says, enunciating the final consonant of the word for effect. “When you crack, it’s juicy story. So you have to get some inner strength from somewhere. At the end of the day we know we love each other, and we have to hang on.”

Like peers Radiohead and Spiritualized, the Verve have easily adapted their intimate sound to arenas. Tonight, however, there seems to be some conflict between presenting the band as a band, and a caution on the part of the soundman to make sure Ashcroft’s vocals are elevated well above the instruments to offer maximum sing-along opportunities. The Brixton Academy audience doesn’t allow such an opportunity to escape. 
In England, once a group have reached pop-hit status, their concerts turn into karaoke nights with students wrapping their arms around one another and singing into one another’s eyes with wistful smiles on their faces.

At a Verve concert, the practice seems perverse, especially when the lyrics are “You come in on your own and you leave on your own.” 
Ironically, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is the band’s weakest performance in an otherwise passionate set. the sequenced string hook fades up, and for four minutes the rhythm section’s natural grace is hobbled by a rigid click track. The crowd response turns more Pavlovian than rock-and-roll-like.

But then a transformation occurs. The string track ends, and the song begins to breathe. The band kick into an uptempo groove, and suddenly the stately, resigned march is released into the ether. “I can change, I can change, I can change,” howls Ashcroft, eyes shut, head swaying in profile as his bare feet scan the Verve logo and UPC code woven into his custom-made stage carpet.

Then he holds up his right hand. He holds up his hand to testify like his heroine Patti Smith. But he’s not just testifying, he’s also pointing to something, something better and less finite than himself. 
Some audience members look beyond the light to where Ashcroft directs above; some stare at the singer beautifully lost in the groove; and still others turn to their drinks.

By evening’s end, the Verve will have won three Brit Awards, including “Best Band.” In May, they will return to their hometown to perform a homecoming show to 33,000 proud Wiganites. And in July, they will launch what their manager promises to be the biggest U.S. tour of the summer. But these peripheral matters aren’t what’s on Ashcroft’s mind. It’s The Music, as usual.

“The other day, I was driving past this cheap furniture store, and I was questioning why, why is the furniture so shit?” he says, temporarily forgetting his cigarette as his fever grows. “You can design something of beauty with cheap materials. It’s almost like people giving in—it’s like, ‘Oh, they don’t have any money—fuck ‘em! Just give ‘em that shit-designed thing there. That’ll do for ‘em, ’cause they can’t buy anything else.’

“And that whole philosophy has crept into everything we do now. Music’s the last thing where people can pay the same amount for a piece of shit or a diamond. And that’s why we’ve got to care about it.”

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1. An epic cover story on The Verve, circa Urban Hymns

2. A merely huge cover story on the state of metal, circa 2003, featuring Tony Iommi, Dimebag Darrell, the dudes from Slayer, and System of a Down’s Daron Malakian

3. A feature on Dandy Warhols, circa Thirteen Tales

4. A cover story on Zakk Wylde, circa Shot to Hell

Weird mix, I know, but such was my writing career.

The riotous interview that followed featured many anecdotes that simply didn’t fit the context of the larger piece (on the then state of heavy metal), but reading back through them, I think they’re just too entertaining not to share. So here, published for the first time, in unexpurgated form, is the wisdom of Dimebag.

Raise a glass and read along (for heightened effect, imagine his words spoken by Yosemite Sam)—but follow his lifestyle lead at your own risk. Although a little too much was always enough for Dimebag (after all, it was a depraved fan’s bullet that ultimately brought him down, not the Crown Royal), most of us lack a guitar hero’s constitution and flexible hours.

RIP THE WORLD A BRAND NEW ASS

What are you drinking today?

Fuck. You know I’m drinking Crown Royal, as much as I can fuckin’ handle. As
big as the barrels they can roll in. Let’s get it on. It’s time to rip the
goddamn world a brand new ass.

KEEP THE DEMONS ROLLING

Booze dehydrates you; you have to have something to rehydrate you. I saw
this Pedialyte commercial on TV and I thought, “Fuck, you know, Gatorade—it
don’t quite get the job done.” And I went out and bought some of that shit
and chugged it and I felt a noticeable difference.

It’s kind of rough to get down sometimes ’cause it’s not as tasty as Gatorade, but, dude, it actually does help out. Dude, when you gotta get up and roll, you ain’t got no time
to fuckin’ sit around with a fuckin’ hangover. I mean, you gotta jump back into the main bottle—keep the demons rolling—but you gotta fuckin’ put something in there to rehydrate your ass.

You try to get some in you before you go to bed, so it can start working its
magic while you’re crashed out. And then when you wake up, you gotta get
some water down you. That was something I didn’t even know back in the early
days. I didn’t even know about none of that shit. And you grow up a little
and it’s like, Goddamn. Wait a minute—you gotta flush that shit out and
then put some more back in. It’s like changing the oil on a car.

EMBRACE THE MAGIC THAT HAPPENS WHEN ROCK ‘N’ ROLL FRIENDS GET TOGETHER

I just knew that whenever I hooked up with Zakk Wylde it was going to be an
explosion. And it was. I just know that Zakk’s a wild man and I’m a wild
man, and you put two of us together and something’s gonna happen.

Zakk was down here for a photo shoot, and we started tanking up all day long
and just had a fucking blast cutting up and telling stories. And he came
down and played on our new fuckin’ record and missed his flight as usual.
And instead of jumping on the next flight, this turned into a three-day
excursion. He came back from the airport, and we hung out and we’re still
fuckin’ slamming booze. We’re out playing games at this game place—air
hockey and shit—just fuckin’ rippin’ it up. And we ended up back at my
house listening to fuckin’ music in front of the jukebox on fuckin’ 20 and
slammin’ booze.

And I called my limo guy to come get him. This was at six in the morning. I
called him, woke him up, and he’s like, “Dude, I can’t get a limo, but I can
bring my wife’s Excursion over and drive the guy to the airport.” And I’m
like, “Well, just get here. He’s gotta get on a plane. He’s gotta get home
and do Christmas with his family.” And the dude showed up and he left his
car running, and me and Zakk jumped in it and went for the true blessed hell
ride. And, man, it was not fuckin’ pretty. We fuckin’ seriously mangled some
shit and got in a lot of trouble over it. But we got it all straightened
out. We know not to be playing with those kinds of toys. It was brutal.

And did he make his plane?

Fuck no! He missed that flight and then the dude took him anyway. They had
to call to get another car—that’s how bad the car was fucked up. We had to
buy the dude a brand new 2003 Ford Excursion and give him Zakk Wylde and
Dimebag guitars. And we had to replace some broken shit around the
neighborhood—some stop signs and shit. So Zakk goes to the airport and goes
to the fuckin’ bar, even though he’s supposed to be on the plane. So he
missed that flight and just ended up getting a fucking hotel and crashed for
another day. It wasn’t pretty. That’s the magic that happens when rock ‘n’
roll friends get together.

LOVE IT LOUD

I know I’m missing some hearing in the 3K area where the cut of the guitar
is. I can’t wear earplugs, it’s like wearing a fuckin’ rubber—it just ain’t
cool, you know? I’m used to hearing it and feeling it. It’s definitely taken
some fuckin’ beating over the years. My ears never fuckin’ stop ringin’,
dude. If it’s quiet in my fuckin’ house that’s all I fuckin’
hear—Brrrrrrrrrr! So that’s why it’s never quiet here. I just keep
something rockin’. I don’t know–when you love it loud, you love it loud,
and that’s the only way you can enjoy it. You gotta feel those little hairs
in there just freakin’ out.

Dude, my bud David Allan Coe, who’s been doing it longer than all of us put
together, even though it’s country, he’s still got his shit cranked on ten.
And he’s got two hearing aids, and he uses ‘em when he really wants to hear
something. And when he doesn’t, he just seems peaceful-like—he just tunes out
the world. I guess that’s just part of the fuckin’ occupational hazard.
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What Can A Poor Boy Do?

Background note: BRMC were notorious for monosyllabic responses to interview questions, but once we established some common ground, they gradually warmed to my queries. The ice breaker? Chiefly Nicolas Roeg’s film Performance. The band originally considered calling themselves the Turner Purple Orchestra, after the fictional band fronted by Mick Jagger’s character, Turner, in the movie. Bassist Robert Been was performing under the pseudonym “Robert Turner” at the time of this interview, in 2003, and I called him on it. Still love this group. I feel like I’m transforming into a werewolf the second I hear one of Been’s bass lines. Hopefully they’re working on something awesome as I type.

They brought it upon themselves.

Call yourself a rebel and the question is bound to arise: What are you rebelling against? The members of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club know it well. The question has come up repeatedly in interviews since the San Francisco-based trio released its 2001 self-titled debut and captured imaginations with feedback-wreathed drone-pop gems like “Whatever Happened To My Rock ‘N’ Roll (Punk Song).”

B.R.M.C.’s recent follow-up, Take Them On, On Your Own (Virgin), has only fueled the queries. The title itself is a challenge. The artwork features a menacing shot of the band silhouetted in a dark tunnel. And the group seemingly recorded propulsive songs like “Six Barrel Shotgun,” “U.S. Government” and “Generation” while balancing an immense chip on its collective shoulder.

So what are they rebelling against? The band took its name from Marlon Brando’s gang in the 1953 biker flick The Wild One, but unlike Brando’s character, Johnny Strabler, the trio’s response is a little more involved than “Whattaya got?” That is, of course, when they care to respond at all.

The scruffy, black-clad musicians–bassist-vocalist Robert Levon Been, guitarist-vocalist Peter Hayes and drummer Nick Jago–are famously insular and notoriously tightlipped in interviews. Jago once accepted an honor for the band at a British awards show by standing stock still and mute at the podium for an uncomfortable duration.

But under the right conditions–when they suspect they won’t be misinterpreted–they gradually open up. And so it is we find ourselves turning once again to early 20-something rock musicians for answers to big questions about war, generational apathy and exactly what did happen to our rock ‘n’ roll, in this case the post-punk variety.

“We’re not saying our rock is better than anyone else’s,” clarifies Hayes. “It’s just–what happened to an attitude and a way of living and thinking that’s a bit different? The industry has turned every kind of art into straightforward entertainment. We’re fighting against that, and trying to see if there’s anyone out there who’s thinking the same thing.”

On “Generation,” though, you sing, “I’ve been feeling alone in this generation.” That suggests you have your doubts about finding solidarity.

“We believe in this generation and this time,” says Been. “We’re more optimistic and hopeful than anyone thinks we are. We sing a song like that because we’re hoping someone out there feels the same way and connects with it. It doesn’t do anyone any good if you’re just saying it all sucks and no one cares.”

Is the album title, then, an incitement for those people to rebel? If so, what against?

“We were trying to tell ourselves [to take them on] more than anyone else. We were searching on the first album a lot. We still are. But I guess there’s a way of hiding forever behind questions and never speaking your own mind. We were afraid of that a little. What is our truth? What do we have to say? Time’s running out nonetheless. This is it. This is all the time we have.”

In “U.S. Government” you sing, “I spit my faith on the city pavement.” And in “Generation” you sing, “I’m keeping up with you and your invasion eyes.” Did the newest Iraq war inspire the songs?

“This is our time. This is our fight. But it’s no different than [other wars]. It’s just all coming around again,” says Been. “It’s the same as writing a love song. The details are always forgotten. It’s the feeling that you carry with you for the rest of your life. The girls come and go, but, sorry, I ain’t gonna give them credit. The names and the dates and the corners of the streets… hell if I remember.”

Of course, there is something absurd about turning to rock musicians for answers. As Mick Jagger posed in “Street Fighting Man,” “What can a poor boy do, ‘cept to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band?” And Been, while grateful, doesn’t entirely understand the scrutiny surrounding B.R.M.C. But in coming up with an analogy for the sensation, he inadvertently provides the best possible description for his band and his music.

“You know those cartoons when a bunch of people get in a big fight and it’s like this big cloud of dust with arms and legs sticking out? And then one person steps out of the cloud and walks away and everyone else doesn’t know he’s left? That’s the way it feels. There’s all this chaos going on and we’re outside it all.”
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Welcome Back To The Jungle

Background note: I interviewed Slash on three separate occasions. By the third session I think he finally remembered we’d spoken before. In honor of Guns’ induction into the Rock Hall, here’s my favorite chat with the chill guitar hero, followed by an interview with Guns’ producer Mike Clink, who helped shore up Slash’s memory about the recording of Appetite For Destruction. I originally conducted the interviews for a Guitar One cover story in celebration of that album’s 15th anniversary. Ten years later the rock world still waits to see if the classic line-up that created it will share a stage again. Breath-holding is not recommended.

The Guns ‘N Roses legend is one filled with as many cautionary tales as it is rock-and-roll victories. There’s the time Duff McKagan’s pancreas exploded from prolonged over-indulgence. And the time Izzy Stradlin was arrested after relieving himself in an airplane’s galley. And the time Axl Rose incited a riot because an audience member took his photo.

But for a guitarist, there’s perhaps no story more gruesome and edifying than one recently revealed by the band’s longterm producer Mike Clink.

“When I first met the band, Slash was playing a Jackson guitar,” he recalls. “It was December, and it was cold in the rehearsal room at Hollywood’s S.I.R. Studios. And Slash hadn’t changed his strings in I don’t know how long.

“So I said, ‘You know, your strings are dead.’

“And he said, ‘Okay, I’ll change them.’

“So he goes off into a corner, and he cuts off all the strings at once–and the neck just tweaked. And from that moment on, that guitar never went into tune ever again. It was pretty horrendous.”

It’s difficult to believe that Slash was then a mere two months away from recording one of the landmark rock albums of the last fifteen years. But even incipient guitar heroes have to learn the ropes of guitar maintenance somehow–and Guns ‘N Roses always preferred to take their lessons from cold, hard experience rather than by example.

Fifteen years later, you can still hear that preference for often brutal experience ripping from the speakers whenever you spin Appetite For Destruction. It’s not the sound of a guitarist who would gingerly replace one string at a time–it’s the sound of two guitarists, actually, who would rather do what it takes to get back to playing sooner.

Coincidentally, Slash and the band’s underrated and unfortunately press-shy rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin were jamming together for the first time in years when we contacted Slash to reminisce about the making of Appetite For Destruction. Typically, he wasn’t dwelling on past successes, but his reunion with Izzy had rekindled an appreciation for, and analysis of, the rare chemistry captured on all too few albums.

In this exclusive interview, Slash jogs his memory about recording the first, and arguably best, Guns album, and details where it all went right–and then very wrong.

Congratulations on Appetite For Destruction‘s anniversary. Were you aware it had been fifteen years?

It was brought to my attention yesterday. I hadn’t been counting.

Is it safe to say that Appetite is your favorite Guns album?

I love playing, recording and touring so much that each record has its own whatever about it. I had a blast making that record, but I just didn’t realize how cool it was until way after the fact. When you make a record, it’s really of the moment. After it’s done, I never even listen to it again. I just enjoy the time that I’m in the studio. So really, the only reminder I have about any of the recordings is usually through somebody else.

But it was your debut album. Didn’t that make it special?

It was the first extended studio effort that we’d done collectively, so that in itself was a gas. At the same time, there was so much else going on–I was staying out ‘til four in the morning; getting to the studio at least by noon. And I wasn’t living anywhere, so I was a complete vagabond during the making of Appetite. There was a lot of craziness and partying going on–all of the stuff that comes with being a rock and roll band that has no idea where it’s going. We did everything we wanted to do, and got away with whatever it was we could get away with. So looking back on it now, it’s like, yeah, that was totally cool, I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it.

Were there any templates you were holding up back then, saying, “If I could make an album like this, I’d be happy”?

No. Everyone else might have a different story, but I’m only speaking on my behalf. From the time the band started, it’s always had a chemistry where everybody played what they thought needed to be incorporated into the music. The band had a very magical chemistry. I was thinking about this last night, because I was jamming with Izzy. Everybody always came up with their own ideas. Nobody really asked a lot of questions. We just had an unspoken chemistry–a natural feel for knowing where to put a part. There wasn’t a lot of sitting around and looking to the future as far as how big a hit this was going to be. We just incorporated what we each liked as individuals into the songs. And it just happened, there was no discussion.

Did the band feel unified at that point?

We were the only five guys who could have made up that band in the whole of L.A. Especially at that point in time, the ‘80s was probably one of the worst decades of all time for music [laughs].

Which is similar to the current climate–disposable pop and Xeroxed metal bands.

Exactly. We hated everything that was going on everywhere, so we ended up falling together. It was sort of a fluke how it happened, but it was inevitable because individually, we couldn’t pair up with anyone else–we each had our own personal direction. We eventually all got together, and that was the only combination that worked. Against all odds, we went head long into this thing. But it wasn’t preconceived–that’s just who we were. When we went in to do the album, we just wanted to make our album, and to be good at what we did.

But were you reacting against how plastic music had become?

No, it wasn’t that. It was just that, given the time period, what we did was very much against the grain. And we enjoyed the static. [Laughs.]

Your playing was more raw, melodic and bluesy than the fleet-fingered style that dominated the L.A. hair-metal scene back then. What were some of the reactions to your style?

I wasn’t riding anybody’s opinion. It wasn’t until way later that I got recognized as a half-decent guitar player. But in the Hollywood scene, we were such a brash band that the whole thing was overwhelming. I just liked to play what I liked to play. As long as I thought I was playing well, I didn’t really give a shit what anyone was thinking. But I’ve always been very paranoid about the quality of my playing. I’m one of those guys who always asks afterwards, “Did I play okay?” But I wasn’t judging my playing by anyone else’s standards but my own. I didn’t have any convoluted dreams about being a guitar hero.

But you became one anyway.

There was point when I started getting phone calls to do magazine interviews. And then at another level, me and Axl got the lead singer/lead guitarist combo thing going that was very recognizable. From that point on, I started to get recognized as a guitar player. Which was very flattering. I appreciate the fact that I’ve done pretty well for myself in the context of being one fifth of a cool rock and roll band.

How difficult was it to get the band’s sound on tape?

Capturing it properly was a hard thing to do because it was very raw, and we didn’t want to use a lot of effects and other stuff to embellish it too much. At the same time, we did have a certain amount of professional integrity, and we wanted it to sound tight. There are a lot of bands that try to sound unhinged. We were unhinged, but we also liked to tie it together enough to keep it from exploding all over the place. So it always had that sound where it was just about to fucking fall apart, but it was a little tight at the same time.

What was your daily routine like at that time?

My existence has always been that detached gypsy kind of thing–very focused around my music, but as far as everything else, very detached. So I’d work all night until 11 or 12 or whenever, and then hit the street, find a place to hang out, then find a place to sleep, and then find a way to get back to the studio the next morning. That was the making of the whole record.

Would you indulge at all when you were recording?

One of the most important things to know about how Guns worked, is even on our worst days, everything else would take a backseat to the band in order to do that properly. So there was a little of everything within reason [laughs], but it wasn’t as excessive during the actual recording process, because as soon as you couldn’t play well, then the whole point of being around ceased to exist. So in the studio, maybe a little Jack and coffee [laughs]. But after a day’s work, it was go-for-broke. And then the next day, you just showed up at the studio on time, and no one had anything to say, as long as it didn’t affect your performance.

So where did it start to go wrong?

First there was Steven [Adler, the band's first drummer who was let go for excessive drug abuse]. That was a big change, but we survived it. But that still had a big effect on the camaraderie of a bunch of guys who–I hate to sound cliche–really came from the gutter. But it was hard, because I was only 20 and Steven was only 21 when the band really started. We had professional ethics, but at the same time, we were a crazy bunch of kids. Trying to keep a tab on any one of us was difficult [laughs]. We just knew when we had to show up for work, but after work… god knows what was going on.

So when we buckled down to do Use Your Illusion, [former Cult drummer] Matt Sorum came in, and he was just like the rest of us, so that was cool. And then we’re doing this whole double-record thing because we had so much material. And then we had all these huge shows coming up, so it’s like we were touring during the making of the record. There was a lot going on. So we were out for two-plus years on those albums.

Then Izzy left, and a lot of that had to do with the excessive shit happening on the road, as far as going on late and riots and that kind of stuff. We were a really simple band from the start. We really looked forward to getting up and playing every night–that’s what we’re all about. But when that started to get complicated for reasons that didn’t have anything to do with the rest of us, it put a strain on the band.

It wasn’t a “success kills” kind of story, it was just that what Axl had originally planned all along, started to become something that none of knew anything about [laughs]. So when the tour was over, I looked at what was going on, and I realized I felt very estranged. What bound us together was really lacking as soon as we were missing a couple guys. You just can’t reinvent something like that.

We tried to hang in there as long as possible, but Axl was going in a musical direction that none of us could fathom. Eventually, it just wasn’t fun for me, and I finally left. And consequently Duff left, and Matt got fired. Now Axl is doing Guns on his own. I have no regrets about the whole thing, because it was a slow, systematic thing that went on. I’m just waiting for the new Guns album to come out so I can have something solid in my hands to explain where Axl was headed–just to clarify some things [laughs].

But musically, at least, something good came out of Axl’s temperamental side.

Oh yeah. He’s one of the most brilliant lyricists. He’s got so much going on, and he’s really an intelligent fucking, amazing fucking guy. It’s just… it depends how much of that [emotional baggage] you want to experience with him. A lot of it is stuff that not everyone in the band necessarily understands. So you try to understand, and you try to be a good friend and bandmate as you go through it. But when it negatively affects everything the band is doing, it’s really hard to stand by him.

I’m also interested to hear the new Guns record because so much has gone on since this whole thing started–I know he’s got a lot to say. Even a lot of his stage performance is fueled by angst. And it’s essential to have that sort of soul and energy for have the music come across as genuine; that’s an integral part of rock and roll. But it just depends on how far you want to take it. It’s like, if you can get it all out of your system in the two hours you’re onstage, great–as long as you’re onstage [laughs].

You’ve been jamming with Izzy again. Any new perspective on why your playing styles work so well together?

It’s the kind of thing where no matter who comes up with the initial idea, I never really have to go, “Izzy, play this part this way.” He just plays his thing his own way and we never really talk about it much. Last night, we went in and took two songs from scratch–just basic chord changes–and worked them into full songs. That’s one of the things about me and Izzy working together–he knows where I’m at, and I know where he’s at. And that’s the way it’s always been. I make up something that accompanies [his part], and at the same time accents it, and he does the same with my parts. We have that kind of chemistry. We’ve always been good friends, so for us to get in a room and play is a very easy thing to do.

What can we expect from you next?

I’m putting together another record with some stuff I’ve done with Izzy, and other stuff I’ve done on my own. I want to start writing with other people, as well, and put together an album with a lot of guests–a really cool rock and roll record with people you wouldn’t expect to hear together.

And finally, what’s the strongest impression you have of your time creating Appetite For Destruction?

You should probably ask the rental car companies who rented us the vans we used to drive from the Valley to Hollywood and back [laughs]. There were a few damaged vans–we must have dropped off about three or four in the middle of the night. So many rental places were pissed off and ready to sue–except there was no entity to sue really. That’s what that album was about–an appetite for destruction. It was us against the world. And it was a really cool time because we pulled it off.

Appetite For Construction: An Interview with Producer Mike Clink

“I absolutely love it. This is it. We start work right away.”

It was four a.m. when Mike Clink received that fateful call in the fall of 1986. The excited voice on the other end belonged to Axl Rose, who had just heard a rough mix of “Shadow Of Your Love,” a track Guns N’ Roses had demoed with the producer over the weekend.

For months prior to that weekend, the band had achieved disastrous results with numerous other producers, including Kiss’ Paul Stanley. Money and patience were growing thin.

“A lot of people came along that we didn’t like,” says Slash. “And we scared off a lot of other producers. Basically, everyone who worked with us from the very beginning had a very distinctive personality.”

The band were initially attracted to Clink through his work on UFO’s Strangers In The Night. But his skill at capturing a twin-guitar assault was only part of the equation that kept him behind the glass for Guns’ essential discs.

“They trusted me because I always told them how it was,” he says. “That’s the reason I stayed in that camp for so long–my brutal honesty.”

In this rare interview, Clink shares the truth behind Appetite‘s construction.

The band had a reputation for being difficult. Did you initially have reservations about working with them?

Absolutely not. I loved those guys. They were characters from the first day I met them. I went to S.I.R. Studios for a rehearsal, and they were telling me about themselves and asking me about some of the records I had worked on, and they were spitting over one another’s heads. It was very strange to me, because those guys were living on the street, and that was a whole different mentality. But by the time the record was over, I understood it completely.

So you would join in the fun.

Oh, absolutely. It was a lot of fun to go out with those guys. I couldn’t do it every night, because I was making the record. But on occasion, I definitely went out. Those were some wild times.

What language would they use to describe the sound they were after?

They wanted it to be raw, and they enjoyed the interplay of two guitarists, which is something that I’ve always loved. They would also talk about the records they liked, especially Axl. Axl came to rehearsals with cassettes–he listened to music constantly, and one of the bands he loved was Metallica. And Izzy was a Dixie Dregs guy. Slash was a Rolling Stones guy. Duff was a Misfits-style punk guy. And Steven enjoyed all of the above.

How many songs did you have to work with at the time?

A little over 20 tracks. After I became familiar with the tunes, we wrote down what we felt would comprise the best record. The one song that was a point of disagreement was “November Rain.” It was an epic, and the rest of the band felt it wasn’t right for the first Guns record–they wanted to keep it guitar-oriented. Obviously Axl felt it was his finest moment–and it was, it’s a great song. That was one of the tougher hurdles to get over on that record.

What was the biggest obstacle once you got into the studio?

The hardest part about recording Guns N’ Roses was getting five guys to do the same thing at the same time. They were extremely scattered, always wanting to do a thousand things at once and nothing at all. So just getting them in the studio and focused and playing was difficult. Another thing I excelled at was knowing when the band had peaked and when it was time to back off. I innately knew when they had given their best performance.

On average, how many takes would you need to get the basic tracks?

Some of them were quick, like five or six takes. And some we played as many as 10 times. But we never beat it into the ground. We were very well-rehearsed by then.

What would you shoot for on the basic tracks?

I come from the school of live performance, so I was going for as much as possible: drums, bass and Izzy’s guitar. I didn’t go for Slash’s guitar, because he just didn’t have a tone at that time.

How did you capture the guitar sound?

I used two Shure SM57s, a Pultec EQ and the old style DBX 160s for compression. Mostly it was just tweaking the amps. I would run out constantly to tweak the amps and move the mics around in the isolation booths. Both Izzy’s and Slash’s amps were close mic-ed. I got the effect of the distance and spaciousness with a Roland SRV2000 reverb. I had six of them, and I used them for the guitars. That was a big part of the tone on the record. We used chorusing and Lexicon delay on some songs, and an octave divider on one song.

So many albums from that era sound horribly dated. How did you achieve such a timeless sound?

I try to make every band sound like themselves. A trend in the ‘80s was for a band to use all of the producer’s gear. I wasn’t afraid to use whatever was right to make it work. I mean, Carvins were not my favorite amp, but they worked for Izzy. When I finished that record, I was really proud of it. The amazing thing was, I had so many people come up to me and say, “This is the biggest piece of crap I’ve ever heard.” And after it sold a million copies, those same people said, “I always loved that record.”

Did you have some sense at the time that you were creating a classic album?

We knew that what we were doing was right. It felt good the whole way through. I would put those rough mixes up, and they just sounded amazing. I don’t think I knew it would become a classic. But [Geffen A&R coordinator] Tom Zutaut came out to Take One Studios towards the end of the sessions for a playback, and he said, “Mike, what do you think this record is going to sell?” I said, “This record is going to sell two-million copies.” And I felt good about that. And he said, “You’re wrong. This is going to sell five-million records.” We were both wrong [laughs].

Do you still get people coming to you for that “Guns N’ Roses Sound”?

I’ve always had that. Being the producer of Guns N’ Roses has been a blessing and a curse at the same time. Because that album was bigger than life, everyone thinks that if I do a record with them, they’re going to sound like Guns N’ Roses. And I go, “Does your music sound like Guns ‘N Roses? If not, you really won’t.” It goes back to the fact that I try to make every band sound like themselves.

What is it about your approach that allowed you to succeed with the band when so many had failed?

I can work around a problem. Usually when people are insecure about themselves it’s because they’re afraid to make a mistake. I make them feel comfortable. And through my experience, I know shortcuts to make things work more easily. And I like to have a good time. When it gets to be a painstaking job, then it’s not fun for anybody. I want to be productive. Mostly, it’s understanding the insecurities of a drummer, a guitarist, and a singer. I get everybody feeling like they can conquer the world.

The debut EP from Skinny Mirrors is a compelling paradox—a collection of sugar-in-the-raw pop songs, short in the making yet long in the finishing.

The group, a collaboration between singer-songwriter Robert Cherry and producer/multi-instrumentalist Craig Ramsey, took shape one winter in the basement studio Ramsey had set up in Cherry’s Mid-Century modern ranch home, mere blocks from a slate-and-olive Lake Erie, then ringed with wave-shattered sheets of dirty ice.

The acoustic warmth and hopeful sentiment of Tear-Stained Teen Age stands in stark contrast to that wind-blasted lakescape, owing more to the pursuit of the perfect pop song and the limitations imposed by ungrounded electrical outlets.

Cherry and Ramsey finished tracking the songs over the course of an inspired weekend, with a little help from Cherry’s wife, Carla, on backing vocals, and friends Bill Broun and John Curley on synth and bass, respectively. While excited with the results, they back-burnered the project to pursue other groups (Plastic Ants and Hot Coma for Cherry, and a solo debut and Bears album for Ramsey).

The songs kept calling, though, and the files eventually made their way to Adam Boose, the big ears at Cauliflower Audio, who mixed and mastered the tracks, preserving the spontaneity of the recordings while adding a flattering matte finish.

The cover art by painter Cherlyn Varga Toth perfectly captures the mood within—tough yet tender, timely yet timeless.

Here's a preview of the album art from the forthcoming Skinny Mirrors EP. The artist is the amazing Cherlyn Varga Toth.

I recently revisited the transcription (only lightly edited here for clarity) and realized I’d caught Bowie at an interesting time, mere weeks after his adopted hometown had been rocked by the September 11th attacks, and mere days after he’d performed two songs at The Concert for New York City, entertaining the local ladder that protected his family. In essence, there was more of human interest than I’d remembered.

So… ten years after the fact, here’s my “lost” Bowie interview, followed by a review I penned of the album upon its release. Hope you enjoy.

I guess your performance went well the other night, judging from the reviews.

The audience was really quite amazing. It was quite an extraordinary event to have done. And I guess because I’m in lower Manhattan, not that far away, I felt duty-bound to do something.

Was it more of an emotional experience because the beneficiaries were in the audience?

It was, because my local ladder were there and I knew that. I’d walk past them with my little girl every week, so we kind of know the guys down there. And they lost 14, or something like that. So it was an emotionally impacted thing to do. I think everyone was great. They really knocked themselves out. It was a real… I don’t know, it was a very chummy gig to do. It was a nice gig. The same kind of feeling as Live Aid way back in the ’80s. It was different doing it for people you live around, or who live in your own community, than doing it for people in another country.

How is this affecting your music for this new album? Have you written any new tunes since September 11?

No. We’d pretty much gotten down all our tracks before. I’m recording with Tony Visconti. Which is exciting. The nucleus of the band is Matt Chamberlain on drums. He’s got to be one of the most inventive drummers I’ve worked with, in the way that he was creating a lot of tapes and loop things that we were throwing into what we were doing. It’s just a great way of working. And his choice of percussive instruments is just a scream. There’s lots of dustbins and saucepan lids and bits of old metal he’s found and hacksaw blades—just the most incredible collection of things he hits. He’s so solid.

And then we’ve got David Torn on the majority of guitar, who I’m also a huge fan of. And Tony Visconti, primarily on bass and few other things, like recorders and things like that. A lot of the other stuff I’m playing myself, nearly all the keyboards, some guitar, saxophone, Stylophone, synth work, programming like a Roland 707 and stuff to use as loops for Matt to work against. Sometimes we’re trebling up on loops.

What inspired you to roll up your sleeves and play that much on an album again?

It wasn’t a pre-thought-out thing. I had done advance writing on this album. I’ve got pretty much 20 to 25 pieces that I really wanted to start working on. It’s when I started playing them in the studio that Tony and I took out five or six days of putting down our ideas on how these things should shape up. I was playing a lot of the parts myself with Tony playing bass. And it just felt right, the way I was playing them. It’s just that my work sounded better in terms of what I needed to have done. It has a sound. I just have a feel for those particular kinds of things.

Pete Townshend came to the studio the other week. And his overall comment was—and this is because he liked the album—he said for him it was like Franz Kafka meets Ed Wood. Which I thought was an immense compliment. I thought, Yes! That’s exactly what I think it sounds like.

Was that because you happened to be wearing a dress that day?


It was the mohair that did it. [Laughs.] But I really got what he meant. There’s a kind of handmade quality to it that I’m really enjoying. And it does kind of harken back to… only in that way does it harken back to what I’ve done before. Diamond Dogs and Low are very different albums, and not even remotely similar. But that element of handmade is within the two of them. And this one indeed has that same quality of handmade. But again, it’s absolutely… I couldn’t compare it to any work that Tony and I have done before. It definitely is a sideways move.

Those are very different albums, but at the same time they’re not very optimistic albums.

This one probably has a spiritual sense of positivism about it, although—and I’m sure I’m not the only artist that this has happened to—but there are quite a number of lyrics on the album that just… they just dropped us after September 11th. There were things that were so kind of appropriate for that particular thing that happened. But again, I think a lot of artists are going to be finding that’s happened to them.

You’ve had that sort of prescience in the past. Did that unnerve you at all?

It scared me more than anything else. The immediate thing one is concerned about is one’s own family. The first thing we did is evacuate Uptown a bit to get out of the way of the Ground Zero area. But two or three days later they insisted to go back again. They’re pretty brave about the thing. But, yeah, I look at the lyrics or hear the lyrics in a very different way than before.

In your early work you had all these apocalyptic images…

Yes. I think they were probably pessimistic without much spiritual life to them. I think that probably the difference is that this one has a way… well [sighs]… I would have to qualify that… there’s a lot of spiritual doubt on this album as well.

Does it resolve on a positive note?


I don’t think so. I don’t think I ever resolve anything on my work. There are inevitably a series of questions in as much as anything else. And they try and capture an atmosphere that I’m living through to a certain extent. And I think in that particular way this album is an unqualified success. I’m very pleased with it in that way.

Have you written a follow-up to “Kooks” for Alexandria?

[Laughs.] Not for public consumption. I must say I’ve written a brand new tune to “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.”

Any lyrics on the album that stand out for you?

Yeah. [Laughs, knowing he’s going to withhold the info]. No, I wouldn’t want to do that at this stage. Also, I wouldn’t want to force the thing too much, “Good god, these were written before the eleventh.” I’d like the album to be viewed much more as a whole than identify a couple lines and have those lines become key lines. ‘Cause I’m not sure that that really is the point of the album.

It sounds like these songs were written more bedsit-style than you have in recent years, where you were kind of working as you went along in the studio.

Exactly. Very little improv in that way. They were pretty much cut and tailored before I went in. But, of course as I always do, I gave the musicians quite wide berth. I gave them a leeway to work and interpret the stuff as they were hearing it. They’re pretty structured in terms of their chordal progressions and the route they’re going to take. I had a pretty firm blueprint of exactly what all that should do. And that was pretty much written out, as far as what are the chords and the key riffs. But I gave David and Matthew free reign to provide the kind of atmosphere that they felt appropriate for the piece we were doing. It’s just a great way to work to ask for that kind of creative generosity from musicians you’re working with. And those two guys are just great and they gave back a lot.

And how did working again with Tony come about?

The last album we physically worked on in a big way was Scary Monsters. We’ve actually talked about doing this for a number of years now, but I didn’t feel the opportunity and the material was absolutely right for what I knew I could pull out of him. I usually work with people and I know what they’d be good at doing. And there was just this certain series of songs that I knew Tony would really get behind. And to have him work on these particular songs was the right chemistry at the right time. Sometimes you have to be patient until that particular kind of creative window comes up.

At the same time, you’re an artist who doesn’t like to backtrack.

Exactly.

Was that tough decision, then, to bring someone in who’s had such an impact on your previous work?

Not really. Because, in a way, nothing that Tony and I have really done together… with the possible exception of the three Eno albums… but they had a similarity only by virtue of the kinds of people that were working on them, more than anything else. But nothing else that we ever did together has sounded the same. The diversity of material from Young Americans to Low to Scary Monsters, it’s all very different stuff. And I just knew that neither of us had the patience to re-create something we’d already done before. So I knew that whatever we did would be pretty adventurous and fairly brave.

Since he knows you so well, is he more likely to argue a point he feels strongly about?

Oh, absolutely. Though that hasn’t actually occurred on this one. We’ve been in absolute sympathy with each other’s views on what exactly we were doing here.

So, will you tour this album?

It’s looking good, if we can find something that doesn’t fly [to travel in]. [Laughs.]

You were never a big fan of planes.

[Laughs.] Less of a fan now than I was a few weeks ago.

David Bowie, Heathen (Columbia)
Early word on Heathen delivered promising news for lapsing Bowie fans. The rock pioneer was working once again with longtime collaborator Tony Visconti, the producer and multi-instrumentalist behind such diverse classics as Diamond Dogs, Low and “Heroes.” The new album had what Bowie called a “handmade” quality to it, in part because Bowie was playing more guitar, sax and “Space Oddity”-famed Stylophone than he had in decades. And he’d also brought in guest musicians such as the Who’s Pete Townshend, who claimed the album was “like [existentialist author] Franz Kafka meets [cross-dressing B-movie director] Ed Wood—and that was because he liked it,” according to Bowie.

By my count, 1980′s Scary Monsters was the icon’s last consistently great album on which he sounded completely invested as a writer, player, arranger. It was also his last produced by Visconti, and featured a cameo by Townshend on “Because You’re Young.” One hoped the chemistry would yield similar results this time around.

When I interviewed the icon last fall for a preview piece, though, he was reluctant to provide details about the lyrics. The interview took place on October 23, days after he performed two songs at The Concert For New York City. He was still shaken by the events in his adopted hometown, claiming he’d like to tour the new album, but if only he could find an alternative to air travel. The former messiah from Mars has always had a fear of flying, and he joked that he was “less of a fan of planes now than I was a few weeks ago.”

Having mostly completed the album before September, he was also viewing his words in a different light. “There are quite a number of lyrics on the album that just dropped us after September 11,” he said. “But I think a lot of artists are going to find that’s happened to them.” For that reason, he wouldn’t offer any examples, because “I’d like the album to be viewed more as a whole rather than identify a couple lines and have those become key lines. I’m not sure that that really is the point of the album.”

Listening to Heathen now, the lyrics he alluded to are easy to spot, present in at least half of the album’s nine original songs (he also interprets the Pixies, Neil Young, and early psychobilly artist the Legendary Stardust Cowboy):

“Sunday”: “Nothing remains. We could run when the rain slows. Look for the cars or signs of life. Where the heat goes… It’s the beginning of an end. And nothing has changed. And everything has changed.”

“Slow Burn”: “There’s fear overhead. There’s fear over ground.”

“A Better Future”: “Please don’t tear this world asunder. Please take back this fear we’re under.”

“Heathen (The Rays)”: “Steel on the skyline. Sky made of glass. Made for a real world. All things must pass.”

Bowie has since concluded that the lines are pure coincidence, saying in recent interviews that “the songs came out of a general feeling of anxiety I’ve had in America for a number of years,” and claiming that he’s always had a talent for expressing dread.

True enough. Play any of his best albums, and they, too, seem relevant to recent events. This writer, for one, had Ziggy Stardust‘s apocalyptic “Five Years” running through his head in the days following the attacks: “News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in.”

What the lyrics do mean is that Bowie, at 55, is plugged into the zeitgeist once again—and conveying it in his classic tuneful, inventive style. This time, however, he’s not just expressing dread, he’s confronting its abstract source and demanding change.

On the pneumatic-rhythmed “I Would Be Your Slave,” he speaks to a higher power, requesting that it manifest itself in a two-way conversation: “Open up your heart to me. I would be your slave.” And on the Martian lullaby, “A Better Future,” he makes a litany of requests—”please make sure we get tomorrow… give my children sunny smiles”—and threatens to stop loving Him/Her if the demands aren’t met.

Yes, the songs may not have been directly influenced by the events of September 11. But one aspect of the work puts some heavy punctuation on the above-cited lyrics. The album hadn’t been named when I’d spoken with Bowie in October. The title Heathen suggests terminal disappointment in the higher power’s response to the singer’s demands and a turning away, a belief that maybe we won’t have a tomorrow, much less a better tomorrow.

Let’s hope it was just a fleeting, linear-time-based expression of pessimism, and not another foreshadowing of events. “Five years, that’s all we’ve got”?

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.