Elliot Easton - Truetone Lounge

[Music] here [Music] well friends welcome to another true tone lounge and today we have the honor of having rock and roll hall of fame member elliot easton from the cars and uh and the new cars and the credence clearwater revisited and uh you know you have the empty hearts and uh well it's it's just an honor i like it the geeky gods and the tiki gods yes your guitar band yes yes i see them all all above you yeah it's you know the the cars tunes especially are just still seen you know heard all the time on on the radio and your guitar solos are so iconic you know whether it's the rockabilly influence thing like on my best friend's girl or the you know you know kind of more distorted parts on just what i needed or all these different guitar styles that you kind of have under your fingers and and really one of the great kind of pop guitar stylist of the 80s and beyond but you know you know we have to recognize that you know those cars records had uh a huge audience so honored so thank you elliot for being for doing this well thank you for all those amazingly kind words i feel very blessed you know we all started out as kids playing guitar and we all had the same hopes and dreams for most some of us and i feel i feel so lucky i mean i got to realize my childhood dreams you know and and with those guys we saw the top of the mountain together and sometimes sometimes it's almost like watching a movie about your own life it's just i'm so grateful and so blessed and so happy that things worked out the way they did because there's so many people so many kids took up guitar and had the same dream you know and and you know starting with say seeing the beatles on the ed sullivan show and then to end up having ringo play on your last record and and and all the stuff in between it's it's miraculous i don't know what kind of word to use for it but it's i you know it's pretty cool [Laughter] ellie that's a beautiful way of of of looking at it you know because i can tell that you have a a gratefulness you know for for the things you've been able to experience and you know of course we recognize you know the hard work and the talent and all the other efforts but the the gratefulness that you have that's a very beautiful thing so thank you for that yeah oh thanks it's you don't have to thank me i mean i come from pretty humble background you know middle lower middle class background and wash dishes to get my first guitar and all that kind of stuff so uh you know i i'm just really you know i am grateful you know that that i have a career and that that i i developed a style that people can recognize and that people like still can like whistle my solos from you know from cars records and stuff like that that's incredible to me i think it's like all i ever really wanted you know and the rest of it all kind of the rest of it is sort of ancillary and falls into place and all the amazing stuff that happens to you like endorsements or signature model guitars or you know all all the incredible things that happen when you're a so-called rock star but you know i can look at it from the outside and go man this is unbelievable and um and and i i i enjoy it very much it's a good job yeah i i think one of the things that was evident you know earl early on in uh you know see seeing you in the in the guitar magazines in the 80s and being interviewed and such and the the photos of you with your spread you know of guitars you know which i mean i think you know later on became kind of almost a rock guitar player cliche but you know but with you it was obvious that you really loved you know these guitars and you you know you were you were purchasing vintage instruments and newer things and you'd be on the back cover with you know because like kramer had like the back cover guitar player locked up for years and and you'd be on the back cover with your signature model and uh yeah just a real love of the guitar obsessed uh you know as a kid i couldn't afford a good guitar but i would i would take the bus i i grew up on the south shore of long island in the town called masapiqua as a matter of fact i went to school with the baldwin brothers and brian setzer and jerry seinfeld all massive people that's insane so my social studies teacher was alex baldwin um but anyway i i was so crazy about guitars that i would take take the bus to to sam and ashton huntington or the graysons in freeport just to be near guitars just to be around guitars and you know all i would leave with was brochures and i would take these catalogs with me to school and i'd hide them inside my book and so the teacher would think i was reading my textbook and i'd be studying my gibson 66 gibson catalog and stuff like that really just i mean i i knew every model model number the model number of the faultless case you know the case cover yeah you know what i mean i'm so so into it and so if i let if i may i'd love to tell you a story about kind of a neat kind of completing of the circle of that whole thing yes so there was this store in in freeport long island called grayson's and it was owned by a guy named bernie grayson and his dad worked there we call pop grayson who looked just like louis dombrowski from the vowery boys the candy shop owner so we called we called him louis dubrowski but anyway um i i was so obsessed with guitars so i used to take the bus there and and sweep up and like and help the stock guy danny uh move boxes just to be near guitars and stuff like that and i got this job washing dishes and i ordered this is 1971 or 70. i ordered a custom-made left-handed fender telecaster my first one and uh you know at that time it seemed like all my heroes were playing telly's like robbie robertson and jesse and davis and you know roy buchanan and clarence white james burton desire there's so many great telly players so i wanted one that and uh i washed dishes to get it and i would drive bernie crazy i'd call like every other day is it in yet did my like as though he wouldn't have called me when it came he knew how crazed i was for it and he's such a kind man and so patient uh he took an old fender left-handed jaguar in on on a trade and it was hanging on his wall someone had sanded it and painted it with psychedelic paint and stuff he said elliott take this home with you and play this until your guitar comes in and you can keep keep this one with you until we get yours and it was so kind but also got me off his back and so but but the kindness of this guy and he knew how how crazy i was about guitars so roll up to 1979 and i'm at the namm show when it was at the mccormick place in chicago yes and uh i'd already done the first album and candio uh and the cars were going along real good and i'm standing at one of the booths and now i'm just chatting someone i look and i see bernie grayson i said i've got to go got to go over and say hello to this guy so i go over and i say bernie my name is elliott easton i don't know if you'll remember me but i i used to come to your store and and just hang out and a left-handed kid he stops me goes and he grabs me he goes wait you've got to meet my wife he drags me over he had tears in his eyes he drags me over to his wife and he goes this is the kid i always used to tell you about and he had tears in his eyes and he was so happy that i had my career was going well and and and everything was going good and it was such a warm moment and so it was like a direct link to my childhood obsession with this stuff and it continued and and showing you how you know it came true and i got to share that with these guys that i used to pester when it was just a dream right and it was such a great right and it was such a satisfying uh nice moment that's a beautiful moment what about so you have this this you know love and and you know obsession with the guitar when when you start actually having real money come in from from playing what was the first guitar you you bought you know where you you know kind of really you know blew a large sum of money on a guitar oh boy um i guess the first like large sum of money you know i i needed guitars to work with in the early days of the cars all i had was two guitars i had a les paul standard and just a garden variety telecaster yeah that i bought at man in new york and um but but when we started you know and you know when you're in a band and you sell records you don't make money right away it takes a little while for that all to catch up um but when some money i finally got some some real money the first one i got was a guitar that a lot of a lot of people know about because it was a center fold in guitar world magazine and it was a 1964 left-handed burgundy missed stratocaster oh yes i remember that centerfold yeah no remember that yeah and this guitar i'll tell you the story um i got it from larry hendrickson axe in hand either that or then it went to ed selig and i got it but anyway i bought it it was i think 2 800 or something something like that but it was unplayed and it wasn't like sort of like you could call something unplayed but there was sort of proof the receipt came from an air force base a kid on an air force base ordered this guitar and had the receipt from the music store even the time payments and you know you could see what happened he was left-handed he had to order it anyway so he ordered it with the coolest custom color and it was in a white toelex case with the black leather ends that creaked when you opened it the leather wasn't even broken in and had the booklet hanging from the headstock and flat wound strings had never been changed and the frets were new and scratchy were new hadn't hadn't been sort of burnished by bending notes a lot yet they weren't silky yet it was a new guitar wow so so that was my that was my first purchase and uh we still talk about that one yeah i'm assuming you don't have that one anymore or do you still have it assume away no i i don't have it anymore foolishly so many guitars you know we all have stories of uh you know seller remorse or the ones that got away and stuff and i wish i still have to it'd be a hundred thousand dollar guitar now but um i don't have it anymore but i loved owning it i loved playing yeah well let's uh there are you know you know on the subject of the cars there are you know a number of things i've you know become very curious about and one is the the the two record producers that you worked with you know kind of well i guess you had roy thomas baker and then you had mutt lang and two you know very well known producers that have very identifiable styles and very identifiable vocal sounds and and very identical identifiable ways in which they stack things and eq things and was just uh curious as to because i mean of course the cars didn't sound like queen you know with roy nor did they sound like you know def leppard with uh you know with mutt lange go ahead i said racdc or acdc all right i was just wondering uh you know kind of contrasting those those two you know styles of producing and how you know because you were kind of i don't know you always got kind of put into the punk new wave thing but you were kind of you know you're your own thing and you weren't really queen or ac dc and and you know you can hear with these producers but i mean obviously it worked well but contrast the way those two producers worked okay i'll try well okay first of all a good producer you you know just because they produce a queen or mutt produces a def leopard or a cdc a good producer it wouldn't necessarily mean that you're going to sound like that group or that everything they do is going to sound the same the job of a producer is to bring out the best in that group right so we heard bohemian rhapsody and and could and could hear the elements of it whether or not it was stylistically what anything we were going for you couldn't help but marvel at like the sounds the stacked vocals and and roger taylor's kick-ass drums and the rhythm section was really rocking and the guitars had great sounds and everything so we had gotten signed to electoral records and this was a time when we were looking for a producer and elektra uh suggested rory and uh we we played we were playing this gig it was a snowed out gig at holy trinity college in worcester massachusetts or something like that they're like 20 people in like in the gym or student union building and um our manager brought roy to the gig and there's like eight people there and he loved the band and he was like roy's like a monty python character hello my loves and and he talks like that he's really funny and he said how would you like to come away to england and make a record well at george martin's studio air and that sounds pretty good to us you know i've just been collecting food stamps um you know that's not that sounds pretty good you know i i'd never been further south than washington dc none of us had ever been anywhere and and so that was an amazing thing but as far as stylistically until i had worked with mutt i would have thought that roy was like hyper technical and super exacting and super persnickety and particular and you know about perfection but compared to mutt roy is almost more of like an organic kind of rocking producer and that's the truth you know so so for roy i mean he he was so savvy he started out as a tape operator at deca working for gus dungeon and and people like that and he told me that he had engineered all right now by free and he was one of those kids that took apart radios and was a ham radio i was born to be a recording engineer you know and so he didn't play a musical instrument but he was he was a recording man and anything about mics or tape saturation that so that it would compress right and sound great on the radio and he knew all the stuff and uh but at the same time he was just going for a vibe you know he wasn't going for like this vacuum-sealed auto-tuned you know suffocating perfection that you hear now where there's no air in the music he was kind of like funky and cool in that way we would do these immense vocal things the way like those huge like good times we'll only hear that thing explode the way he would do it with us is ben greg and myself would stand at one mic three of us and we'd sing the bottom part of the chord all together in unison maybe seven or eight times then he'd bounce that down to say a stereo track or two stereo and then wipe those and then we do the next part same thing three of us seven or eight times so three it's like what like 20 21 voices say on each part then the third part and if there was a fourth part and he had the most uh unusual recording machine that you never saw it was a stephen's 40 track on two-inch tape so in the days before you could sync up two machines or get extra tracks or you know and after 16 track and all that was 24 and you had to really plan your recording uh so you had enough empty tracks to do all your overdubs and so on roy had 40 tracks on two inch and there's like three of these machines in the world and if it broke down john stevens the inventor had to fly to wherever rory was in the world and fix it and he'd had to come to air and work on it while we were doing our record but anyway so he had extra tracks but so the way he would do the wreckage is we would get get a basic track with you know like bass drums and some sort of rhythm instrument whether it was a keyboard or a rhythm guitar and and then put like a guide scratch vocal not a keeper lead vocal but just to know how it scans and where the holes are to fill and you know what the song the shape of the song and then we'd go right right into background vocals so that he would have as many empty tracks available as possible and so we would do that almost the first thing after getting basics so there was plenty of empty tracks and then you could wipe all those over dubbing tracks and have like like three tracks or whatever of the background vocals on three track and then the other stuff and so we'd get to like with both producers in fact we'd get to the guitar parts uh because mutt was similar that way in that it was pre-digital pre-pro tools or as many tracks as you want it was still like heartbeat city was two two machines linked together um but it was still you know 3m two inch tape you know but um what was i saying uh i lost my train um just uh we're contrasting the the two you know producers in the production style and you were talking about how you had vocals and then guitar right and and i know you were going to ask me in our discussions before we got together today about the process of coming up with some of these guitar solos yes and this might be a good time to explain it because i've just taken you up to the up to and background vocals and a scratch lead and so what i would do at that point is i would have the engineer make me a cassette of that um of what what we had done so six songs and i over the course of days because it took a while before we got to the guitars or just guitars since my internet connection is unstable i don't know anyway yeah you've heard up for a second there but uh but you're you're good now so let's keep going okay so anyway um i would work on these solos and i chip away and chip away at it like i think to myself like how do i start it you know and then you know and it i would want it to have a shape a beginning a middle and an end like any kind of good story or a book or a movie everything has a beginning a middle and an end it has a shape to it and with the guitar solo one of the things i would try to do was come come up with a way first of all to take off after the take off from the lead vocal in some kind of way that made sense and a lot of times i would refer to the melody of the song um because like something like shake it up i go literally playing the melody for the second half of the solo before so i i would key off the melody and and the chord changes and just like find my first lick find my my in intro of the solo and go from there and and just add to it and add to it over the course of time while we're working on other tracks in the studio so that by by the time we got to the guitars i was very prepared i had like written these solos um for the most part i would use the word written or composed i didn't wing it for the couple i did but for the most part these solos were composed and carefully did and that's how i that's how i do it i kind of sit in the hotel uh because we usually didn't record we were home i'd be in a hotel room with a cassette machine a guitar with no amp or a little battery amp and i i would just you know try to find my way in and and then as far as like constructing solos you know i don't i would think of them i kind of like you use the same approach as like a jazz player would in that and maybe it's having gone to berkeley college music or maybe it's being i i love jazz anyway but anyhow even if it's a pop song or a rock song i'll try to play through the changes and move with the chords and you know i i get compliments and comments and it's i'm so flattered that people you know like my solos and find them in some ways different than other more standard rock guitar solos or whatever it may be you know you see it's like george harrison kind of thing and and so you know if you look at like most rock guitar solos let's say it's a like a rock and song in a and most of the time guitarist will just sort of wail away in the key of a right like blue blues flavored licks in our pentatonic boxes that we refer back to not always but you know and even if the song goes to the iv chord they're just still really just wailing away in a and i never really did that unless i wanted to unless i wanted it to be static and wanted to play against the chord but it was always a decision it wasn't like i just noodle in the key of the song if you see what i mean and and so playing through the chord changes that way moving with the chords i think gives my solos maybe a different sort of melodic contour then absolutely right then it would have if i was just sort of doing sort of the typical rock thing and just kind of playing like blues hard rock licks in the key of the song which so many rock solos are and some of them are great i'm not it's not a criticism i'm just describing my process right and you know i am and i think that's a huge thing that you know differentiated you from a lot of the other solos that you would that you would hear that were they weren't playing over the changes and also there wasn't that compositional aspect to the solos but the fact that you were during the recording process you're you're getting a rough tape you know of the of the of the tracking session and then you're you're you're composing a solo year and uh and and it's it's it's very evident uh there's a uh a youtuber named rick biato who did a uh entire episode on on just what i needed and it and it's wonderful to hear the the different different parts of the track you know vocals guitar parts uh keyboard parts that are all you know taken and you can hear them by themselves and it's it's really interesting that beatto is you know kind of dissecting your solo and showing how you're playing over you're playing the third of the note over the changes so whatever you know what a record it changes to you you were playing emphasizing the third of whatever the the various chords were it was and it adds are really interesting i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off go ahead you have to be careful with these zoom things i i'm sorry about that but i i watched that uh rick's uh video and it was it was great it was it was terrific i loved it um i never even like thought about it as like thirds you know once he pointed it out i realized it but i think it's just like kind of like typical of me to go for the unusual and and and not like land on like like like just try to sing that's something else i would do like to like like different strategies for like solos and stuff like that like one thing i would do is sing a solo into it into a cassette tape and try to figure out what i sang because then you're not bound to the fretboard and you're like patterns and your muscle memory we always go to the same shapes and and so i would do that sometimes just sing a solo and then you're completely free you know and you could sing anything whether you know how to then figure out how to play it on a guitar right i would do that another thing i would do is uh come up with a line and then come up with a harmony to it and then throw away the original line and just play the harmony you know just different kind of things to shuffle the deck you know because there's an aspect of uh like if you if you take the seller to just what i needed where it's like you're good your guitar solo almost sounds like a counter melody to the uh that main keyboard part you know at times yeah well you know we worked real hard on that stuff uh greg and i work really closely together as far as being the two melodic instruments in the band uh to create you know intros and and hooks little lines to weave through the song or some sort of hook that would repeat at the end of every chorus you know like like a day trip or something you know a hook you know right you know you wait for performing around but all those thoughts you know having grown up on 60s am radio we were very schooled in like construction of pop songs and what what we wanted to do and like what a great pop song was and how you put one together and what you know what are the elements of that yeah and then if you move on to uh my best friend's girl you get you know all of a sudden you get this mix of of pop and and rockabilly kind of almost you know kind of going through beetle 65 there's uh you know filtering through that there's a really great yeah it sounds like hair some of it sounds like some of uh harrison you know playing on the tennessean you know that era of his guitar playing when he was yeah yeah i was thinking like sort of like that george harrison chet atkins style that yes george george playing like chet atkins but also the lick is very reminiscent of i will uh which you know and i'm sure either consciously of subconsciously i i i was thinking about that only the the thing is is even though the qu let me grab a guitar here because yes is that okay you know the song is going [Music] but the but the lick i'm going through um one six two five like you know i will it's just right yeah so i'm playing [Music] [Music] b [Music] right and that and that's something that can be missed by guitarists trying to you know cover that part is that you know you're not just playing the the one four and five that you're actually you know no and that's and that's another thing that you you know is a jazz thing is uh like the simplest version of what you'd call chord substitution right you know instead of just playing one four two one four five i'm playing one the relative minor the c sharp minor and then uh f sharp minor the relative amount of the a although the rest of the band's playing a and then b so that's another little little thing yeah and then so again i'm guessing that's another solo that was you know com composed and and was there any you know kind of i i guess there had been the stray cats and other things that were going on and i guess well this is this is before that but yeah well before uh was there uh was there any i guess there wasn't any kind of pushback with the rest of the band and having kind of a a rockabilly silicon i mean it's kind of a rockabilly song anyway so but uh it's true i mean there's really nothing about that song that would suggest a rockabilly or a country flavored solo right oh now the guitar is working yeah i can hear the flap back now so i'll make it faster okay see if i can play this damn thing [Music] and and the solo has some really interesting elements in it where you're bending you know like you have a sixth you know interval part that you that you bend up you have a part where you're uh when you're playing over the five chord where you uh you know bend up you know from the from the ninth up to the up to the third and you and you hit the tonic and the flat seven or there's just some some really yeah on the solo [Music] exact that exactly [Music] yeah it's beautiful but yeah that's it's so you know ear catching when all of a sudden you hear those sixths that are bent and then you have that you know where you're you're you're bending and and and it's kind of a jesse ed you know thing where you're you're bending up and you're playing the tonic and then the flat seven on the yes yeah that's also like a real bakersfield thing yes roy nichols you know what i mean yes like it was that too yeah and it was like it was the beginning you look not best friend's girl but me learning that stuff and just yet it was like the beginning of people like playing like pedal steel looks on guitar okay and even like to the point like even like the simple kind like say mick taylor on honky tonk women just that kind of stuff you know right but um [Music] so i'm guessing kind of jesse ed is kind of some of the entry into this because it's it's always you know it's it's always interesting when you hear someone from long island talking about you know merle haggard and bakersfield and things like that so how were you even exposed to that music i mean were there were there country stations in in long island or where how were you hearing this this music well we used to go to the fillmore east and the grateful dead used to do merle haggard songs yes um mama tried and things like that and uh we love james burton we got we got his first solo record and we started buying merle haggard records and not even just like the ones with the chicken picking but we loved like two of our favorites were the tribute to bob wills and the tribute to jimmy rogers one same train different time and james bert plays dobro on that one but yeah those though the bakersfield guys rory nichols and and burton played those in like seventh you know in unusual you know you know they they play these you know like that you know yes and so that creeped into my playing too and the other guy you know we talked about jessie ed and sixth a lot the other guy on telly that had a big impact on me was in the r b field was cornell dupree oh yeah and you know i mean like the six you know you like [Music] you know that kind of stuff um you know yeah all that stuff and his you know just his vibe you know um i i learned a lot from cornell um there's another great one you know you know i should probably circle back with you zach because you know i told i told you how roy's production style was and i never really did the second half and talked about how milk was different yes so if you wanna lay it on us i'm gonna lay it on you so like as i said we thought like you know rory was super technical and super exacting which he was and so and we did the first four records with roy and i think rick more than anyone else in the band really was thinking about maybe trying a change and uh we met a few different producers we ended up going with mike and mutt's style was like beyond like exacting you know he would wear out engineers where they'd be asleep under the board you know and and and and he had this incredible energy he'd wake up at like five in the morning and meditate and and he worked us each to death and he would be there for each of us like for instance i i'd be playing solo and over and over and over again and he'd keep going oh too bad e not not quite the one and i think i play a take and i think i can't possibly play it any better than that he'd go oh man not quite the one and what he was going for was a very hard thing to get it was like contradictory thing he wanted a perfect take that also sounded spontaneous that you weren't thinking about it so it's a hard thing to do like you have to play in something 100 times he wanted that perfect take but he also wanted to sound like he just grabbed the guitar off the stand and played it off the top of your head so that's one thing he you know was very unusual and i learned a lot he also like really he tightened me up as a as a player on rhythm tracks i i got to where i was sort of living inside the hi-hat you know and just locking just locking and locking and he was so good about pocket and grooving um he was funny i mean there was so many microphones on my guitar cabinet it looked like one of those news conferences where all these mics had jammed in there you couldn't see the grill cloth and he'd listen to all of them and you know try every kind of ant in the world and you know he he just took a long time that record took a year to make and um it went a million dollars over budget over budget that's a that's how he was he heard things that no one would hear like for instance he had an unusual technique his process was that he would do the basics with like a lim drum machine and then we'd do the drums afterwards which you think would be counterintuitive but it was clever because you could hear exactly where the tom fills were needed where you needed a lift and stuff and that's how he liked to do it anyway but he put this lin lin drum thing on and he'd go he'd listen to it it just sounded like a regular combatant whatever and you go ah man pity about that hi-hat it's a little off and he's criticizing the internal time of the lindrum and so he had this stack of ams delay machines in the studio and he'd be moving the hi-hat and the snare drum back and forth a millisecond or two milliseconds claiming that the lin drum was off things we couldn't hear he claimed ben's base was fretted misfretted wrong and couldn't play in tune ben had it he had to find a luthier in london and refret his base i i i couldn't over stress how painstaking and how you know how particular he was about every little thing so it without you got great results and the all the other things about mod the background vocals is you know it was oh we we greg and ben and me were we were the singing background brothers amos leif and denton that's what it was let me do that every record um we were potheads what can i say but um mutt would join us on the mic and you can always hear mike when he's seen you could hear him on the deaf leppard record hello hello it's like the same thing you hear on def leppard records you hear his voice it's hilarious um but you know the results were amazing we had you know drive you might think or magic uh you know a bunch of you know sing hits off that record and it was probably the most successful record since the first one i think you know in terms of so many singles coming off of it yeah without without putting words in your mouth it it sounds like that the the the mutt production was it was a little bit rough and that's from the only other guitarist i've interviewed so far that worked with mutt was brent mason on the shania twain records and he was respectful but just said how how tiring it was and how hard it was he had me tuning after every take and i just mean like a couple of notes you know a little punch in you know check the tuning and one day i got so mad i took i took the guitar off my lap and i said here not you tune it i can't take it anymore and um i remember another moment like there were things like like like like david was like really upset with the way the drums were being done you know people were ready to go home yeah because like mike was so controlling and like was gonna and he wasn't gonna back down in life it wasn't like oh the drummer in the band doesn't agree with me i'd better go with the guy in the band no um you know we had to push back when he tried to write with us you know because rick doesn't we don't need nobody writing with him and you know he's like no thank you okay man you know but that because that's what he did with jeff leopard right he was a member of the band in this in the studio you know he was more or less and he would take their songs apart and put them back together like a chorus from like he'd used like them like building blocks like put this chorus with that verse and take and mix and match and write it with them and you know because he started with him they were kids they were younger and uh and it was great you know and they trusted him and he look what he did for them but we didn't need all that kind of help that wasn't the kind of help we were looking for we just wanted a great producer and a great sounding record but his contributions you know you can hear his contributions just in the difference of the way the record sounds because other than that it's just the same five knuckleheads playing so who's uh was it a unanimous decision to to want to work with mutt or did any of did did you have reservations no no there was no it wasn't like a huge uh discussion anyway i mean who who's going to say no if mutlang wants to produce your record at that moment in time right why would in 83 you know it was like going from the best to the best you know in 77 when we made the first record roy thomas baker was state of the art and in 83 when we went back to england to make heartbeat city mount lang was state-of-the-art yeah and we were and and the cars were always uh try to stay on right on the cutting edge of the newest technology especially greg our keyboard player um you know got us in clavier early on and and and and david robinson with his sin the syndromes you know like the good times right you want to hear a cool story about that yes i watched roy thomas baker invent triggering there was no well check this out there was no no no akai nothing like that then david played his real rack tom on the song just let the good time fed that track through a small little wooden auratone speaker and for those listening who don't know what that means almost every recording studio would have this little auratone speaker in their studio to check what mono sounded like and to hear what it would sound like on a car radio it was sort of like a crummy little speaker but it was very typical and you could it was good to check your mix on that because it had to sound good on that too right so what roy did he turned it on its back that little auraton speaker so that the cone was facing up then he took the syndrome pad it was like a drum pad electronic that you'd hit he turned it down on top of the cone and he fed that tomtom track through the auratone speaker loud and it was loud enough that it would punch the syndrome and make it go boom every time david hit his time on the recording and it triggered it right [Laughter] again from his engineering background yeah so so good you know he would try anything if it meant putting a mic at the end of a mailing tube anything you know to try different stuff and um you know he had he was so he's so brilliant and such a clever man he thought about it for me how could we do this and he figured it out and it was so funny with the speaker upside down and then lo and behold it sounded perfect you know wow so also kind of backing up to the first album and eod had done demos of the songs before you started working with roy and then you work with roy and you get all those uh you know stacked background vocals was it uh was it stressful or how did you feel when you were trying to reproduce those sounds live with all those background vocals well we couldn't yeah it's impossible to and so you know we would try different things you know when the eventide harmonizer came out i mean you try feeding the background vocals through anything to thicken them or maybe a little bit of chorusing or stuff like that but no i mean you know we we could we couldn't replicate them later on um you know there were things that wouldn't have even been producible on stage um with mutt that the the what we what we did greg had a sinclair keyboard which is a sampling keyboard so for something like the song hello again which we would start our show with that year because it's a great way to start a show hello again we're back and it has backwards reverb hello hello again you know yes so how would you know in those days how are you going to put backwards reverb on something live in a basketball or even so greg lifted that off the master and put it on the sinclavia so he'd press a key and it would play that intro so later on you know so it made it just possible to even play this song you know because more and more especially by that record a lot of songs are on a clock whereas before if i wanted to you know in a lot of songs like i had areas where i could take the solo out a little longer spaces i could stretch out but if the song's on the clock and you do that you're going to keep playing and the song's going to end so you can't you it's gotta be the same amount of bars every time so that's another that was another aspect of the mutt thing it kind of locked us into these machines it was just at times you know it's not like a bad thing but it was just like that's what was going on that year you know yeah and of course going from you know from touring on the first record to touring on heartbeat city you had very different uh guitar rigs what would you say was your favorite guitar rig from your 80s touring era with the cars you know when you've got all that production and everything yeah you know i went through a lot of different stuff where finally i had one of those giant uh bradshaw racks right you know with everything in it we're now you know it's all multi-effects but then each box would do one thing so you had to have the big t your tc 2290 and the spatial expander just for the chorus you know and that you know once the spx 90 came out it changed everything because you had a multi-effect and you could do with one half rack space what you needed a refrigerator to do before right so i i wasn't that crazy about that not because it didn't sound good but it was so complex i i couldn't even turn it on without attack basically i think my favorite was just a couple of marshall jcm800s and some boss pedals and um and i had a i could turn on uh a harmon an even tied harmonizer to get that sort of tunnel tubular effect when i was going to do say a solo in sinchugon that one that kind of sounds like an ebo but isn't yeah uh and that's part of the sound was that harmony so i kicked that in but very simple just a you know a bunch of boss pedals or pedals and and a couple of marshall jc and 800s i'm good to go that's a good rig yeah it's a good rig you know i take a bunch of guitars out with me and you know have the luxury of a tech that could hand them to me and tune and everything and so i would take you know 12 14 guitars out with me and have some fun if i was in the change moods you know somewhere in the tour i felt like playing different guitar all night and i might do that you know just to break up the monotony and stuff so that was all great yeah because you know there's an aspect of you know you change guitars uh for a different sound and some people change it for you know change a wardrobe or sometimes they change guitars as an opportunity to talk to their tech and and say you know i don't like this you know change this out or what have you so right right what was the case with you with uh did you did you like to change guitars just kind of for the fun of it or did you did you prefer to to hold on to a guitar as long as it was you know kind of uh you know doing its job well and then you'd change out you know more more of that more the second one more the latter you know if something's really working and the neck feels great and it's set up great and it's low but it's not rattling and it's just you know working for you i would tend to leave it alone you know i'd always i play you know most of most of a car set on like a humbucking guitar whether it was a gibson or for a year there i played with deans or whatever it would be but most of the show was like les paul or or i played 355 monos sometimes too other guitars and then i'd always of course switch to a telecast if a best friend's girl and uh a couple other songs that that were like that that you know had a different sound on it um [Music] and then you know just i'd have extra ones just you know you have backups and then i would keep a couple just if i got them you know a couple of wild cards if i just felt like playing a junior all night just like having to get it all done with two knobs and one pickup and i'd enjoy that and and find my whole world there you know of tone yeah there's uh there's there's clips of you playing a red junior with a white pickguard and uh you even play like uh yeah best friend's girl and you you play a a lot of that uh that live show on on that one guitar and it's it sounds great yeah i mean people you know may go and myself included make such a fuss about which guitar which amp and this or that but but there you have it i mean i can play best friend's girl on a les paul jr like it's like almost counterintuitive from like the a twangy telecaster and sounds fine you know good so you know i hate the cliches like the tones and your fingers and all this goofy stuff but on some level it's kind of true like you know i really think like your vibrato is your fingerprint you know maybe your your your tone is like you know like you know what you want to say but like your vibrato is who you are it's like your nervous system yeah it's it's your signature it is and and the other thing i think about that is that like i think people have like their own built-in speed that they go at where people who can shred can almost do that after playing for six months and it's not because they're more talented it's because or anything else or they practiced harder i could practice from now until doomsday and i would never be a shredder it's because of the speed at which their nervous system goes for instance you know some people talk in a slow lazy laconic way and some people talk real fast and i think it's the way you're wired you have a speed you go at and and what feels comfortable to you and and i think that really is a big part of like you know like there's so much emphasis on how fast you can play but i think a lot of it is you can only play as fast as you can play because that's how fast you run and your internal engine yeah i i believe you know you know i i know that you know hours and hours of practice you can improve and and improve your you know dexterity and speed and stuff like that but i think at the end of the day you are who you are and and you hear things the way you do and feel them the way you do and i think it's a lot is is like encoded in your genetic code you know anyway yeah we'd uh talk about the the early you know the fender custom shop and you kind of you had an association with fender i guess you know also in the in the 80s you know strats were kind of you know king to a degree but uh you you kind of started an association with fender with the the lead series and then then when the custom shop came on you you were one of the early customers for that tell us about your association with fender okay just put mr toy there actually um i've got the two custom shop guitars out i can show show them to yeah please um i'll just pick one up while i'm telling the story so you can see it while i'm talking i don't know if you can see can you see me yes i can see you're small but i can see you the guitar is in a lizard skin aqua case nice awkward lizard anyway this is um this is the first custom shop vendor guitar built for an artist it is number 007 and i don't know if you can see john page's signature on there yes you can see the the early stamp that uh that they put on with the with the the the builder's signature yes i got the james bond not double 07 but triple 07. yes it's a left-handed thin line seafoam green with a beautifully bird's-eye neck yes so what happened with the whole custom shop thing was i i went down for the first time uh to fender and they were still in uh in fullerton it was still like the fender factory they hadn't moved to the corona or anything like that of course not the custom shop and um and i i i met a gentleman named john page and we you know you meet some people in your life and you just instantly friends you just click we just liked each other right away and he had he was new there and he was working and freddie tavares was working there still with him wow talk about connection to the the early days he helped us design the stratocaster as you know as many people know and freddie was awesome he was like this beautiful hawaiian guy who he go get jump on the floor and do marine push-ups and clap his hands and he'd set my guitars up for me and freddie tavares is like shimming my neck you know yeah awesome so i went down there in 79 to meet with them and they had this new model the lead and they asked me if i would play it and help them promote it and i said i would and so they made me uh two left-handed ones the lead one and elite two later i had what we called for jokingly a lead one and a half which was a lead one with a lead two neck pickup which was more versatile than two pickup guitar and um particularly the lead one was a great guitar i wish i still had it it's hanging up at a hard rock cafe somewhere but um it had this really unique humbucking pickup that you could you could do series parallel split and had like two toggle switches on just one pickup you know so it got a lot of sounds out of it and so i played that guitar and and you know from there it grew to you know asking john hey can you build me this or that and it got to then it it went you know and and he was trying to get all this stuff done without a custom shop you know when it was just a production line and i'd call him and say john we we need to send a pink guitars for a video uh you know i played a pink stratocaster and shake it up video and ben got a pink precision bass you don't see greg's but greg got a pink telecaster custom with binding and you know and and then another time i called john and i wanted a telecaster custom just a regular sunburst rosewood neck one with binding i said but can you put like the little thin black white stripes like on a like a more fancy guitar on the inside of the binding like a les paul custom you know to make the binding stand out with that black stripes there yeah they kind of highlight it and he's like oh geez okay and he'd make three bodies you know five to make sure one came out right and so finally and he he kind of like gives me some blame or credit or how whatever you want to call it for starting the custom shock you said to me i'll tell you he goes one of the reasons i started the custom shop is because you kept asking me to make stuff we don't build and and and and and so it occurred to him you know and he was probably getting i'm sure i wasn't the only one and so artists were calling us you know can you do more like an old one this and that from there you started seeing like the reissues you know the 57 uh strat and the 62 strat and the the the black guard telecaster the butterscotch teddy came out and then slowly the custom shop got going and so this guitar you know there were six guitars before it but they were pre-ordered by a music store in texas i believe and um i was the first artist to order one because i was talking to john all the time he goes hey you're gonna like this i can finally build you whatever you want and you know we have a custom shop now so so i ordered this crazy thin line and i ordered uh a mary kay strat which i can grab that one you want to see that one please well i tell the story yeah all right this is triple eight and this one is torx case see i i love that i love that attention to detail where they gave you you know really one-of-a-kind cases and oh my goodness that's beautiful that's how it was then that's how it was i i have like another case it's like maroon eel skin tolex with white leather well you know the cases were beautiful even yeah this is the very beginning so this is um number eight the the telly is number seven this is number eight mary kay straggle gold hardware blonde finish and again it's number eight triple o eight so these these were the first two and um in the i think in defender in one of the fender books and i think there's a book called just a custom shot book there's a photo of um john page and michael stevens with that seafoam telecaster on on on the bench and they're like discussing it and working on it and talking about it yeah and so it's nice to be a little part of the fender history that way it's really really cool i i remember a guitar world you know article on the uh on the birth of the the custom you know the fender custom shop and they had some pictures and there were a couple of left-handed teles that they were making for you one of them was even uh like a rosewood board with a white pick guard you know that was you know it's like they you you were having a couple couple of telly's made up i guess you had a lot of fun with that right it was like you know opening up the gates of heaven to say to me as a lefty you can get whatever you want because you know as a left-handed player if you walk into a guitar store you usually see like maybe a black strat american standard and you know maybe a a les paul standard or an epiphonist paul that's about it so to be to be as guitar crazy as i am to know all that we all know about guitars and vintage guitars and all the rest i knew what to ask for you know one thing i could do is spec out a guitar and so what does he say when she said you know we can do it now i i just had a lot of fun with it i really did i drive down there once i moved to l.a leave six in the morning and be trafficked and go down to the custom shop and meet with those guys and have lunch with them and we really became friends you know it was really good times great so and then on vintage guitars you know of course you've you know you've already talked about the burgundy mist so of course but even with vintage guitars you have a much more you know limited uh stock of even vintage stuff that's hard to track down so what are some of the more interesting left-handed vintage guitars that you've tracked down well uh not not as many as as a right-handed person would be able to but no complaints yeah um currently uh vintage ones i have um i have a 1965 trini lopez um a rock and roll one the the 335 one right the castle yeah um i have a 62 barney kessel with paf's first year issue in a brown and pink case with the the rare laminated spruce top instead of instead of the pressed maple yeah and it's the best jazz guitar it's got the wide flat 61 sg les paul neck that 6162 neck right which is my back my favorite kits in there and uh the pencil has that let's see i've got a beautiful uh 66 jazz master of that weird rare variation from 66 where it has dots but binding yes no yes and actually has large frets because you know what i'm talking about yes i do yeah i've i've played some uh some 66's you know telly strats and jazz masters that all of them had like i was like has this been refretted and then and then they haven't they had some big threats for a while they ran out of guitar frets and for a couple of weeks or months they used the bass frets well that explains it right couldn't stop the line for a fret so because there's a different one just a different line yeah and then and the dots with the with the binding is really a beautiful look that that yeah that was only for like a year and a half or something like that yeah yeah you know what i have that isn't really popular with collectors but i've always loved them probably because i grew up you know looking at the 68 catalog and stuff and and like the fender you know like gallery of stars was the the roger ross meisel designed acoustics yes i would always my whole life if i could have could ever come across a wildwood kingman i would grab it in a second i have a lefty malibu and i have a lefty the smaller one and and i have a lefty 68 villager 12 string but i i i would have loved to come across the dreadnought and they're not popular you know with with players and you know some of them have that piping running down the body and stuff like that they're a little weird but i like the malibu and i'll ostring it like nashville high strung sometimes and take it in studio and play it it's good for that you know and it's got the electric neck it's so easy to play i just think i you know i've had so many vintage guitars i had a i had a 54 les paul left-handed that i traded bunny carlos from cheap trick the drummer for um he's left-handed too and he liked to collect guitars and so we were we were near them they came to our show wherever we were playing chicago maybe near rockford or something and um i i had a a 63 candy apple lefty strat the matching headstock and he wanted that and he had two gold topless poles and he brought him both to the show and rick was with him and rick looked over my guitar to make sure that it was a good fair trade and we just swapped even and so i i got the 54 uh les paul which i played on stage quite a bit around 82. a lot of pictures of me wearing like this japanese flag red and white shirt playing this gold top is either playing that or this cherry 355 mono that i used to like to play a lot yes um i i had a 63 335 um lots of strats i had a 59 rosewood lefty like first year of rosewood uh a 58 telecaster mint um a 66 fender electric 12 string very rare with the hockey stick headstock yeah um i had a 46 martin triple o 28 all kinds of all kinds of good stuff oh i had a epiphone i had a 12 string epiphone bard from the 60s which is like the b4512 right the upgraded conversion had one of those i think i paid 600 bucks for it you know all kinds it wasn't you know when when we were acquiring a lot of these vintage guitars the prices weren't what they are now right they were not like what they are now i could have had the only left-handed firebird 7 65 for 1400 and instead the guy also had an l-series left-handed lick placid blue telecaster and i got that for 650 and then freddie tavares freddie tavares set it up for me and and put the neck on right and shimmed it and made it play good for me so lots of lots of great ones lots of good stuff yeah so hey can i show you my i got this new guitar this blue les paul yes absolutely yes i i definitely want to look at that because he was kind of 64 inspired yes yes yeah it's like a concept guitar yeah and you know the folks that might you know your your fans might enjoy me sharing this so let me right here i'm just going to step away for a second and grab it get it i want to get it just up on the wall here so again this this was kind of inspired by you know what it what if the les paul had had the the normal single cut away you know les paul standard had continued to be in the line going into uh you know 64 or so and so then you have this really cool pelham blue uh tiki god uh headstock inlay and the stingers double stingers the heel too yeah and it's it's light as a feather and it's not chambered yeah so yeah you you said it my concept was if the les paul wasn't discontinued in 1960 what might a 64 les paul be like yeah and so i i went right to the firebird color wheel chart of custom colors i thought okay they'd probably be painting them in flashier colors and i went to the the black knobs which made me think of black plastic parts instead of the cream on a 50s guitar and um going with um pelham blue one of the firebird custom colors and um you know uh nylon bridge saddles and you know so this is like a concept guitar um and then and then i you know to personalize to make it my my own kind of thing i put my little titiki there's a tiki inlaid on the headstock instead of the usual les paul silk screen signal yeah i love the the touches on that it you know the uh yeah the the color and then the uh you know the uh the the black you know the black knobs that i go or are those called top hats yeah yeah uh yeah i guess yeah reflector or reflective right with the silver inserts yeah this thing well let me turn the amp down a little bit right um [Music] okay [Music] yeah what what all did you have going on on there i'll tell you what um i i mostly when i get a new gibson uh custom shop guitar i i send it down to rs guitar works in in kentucky yes uh to roy roy bowen down there and i have it i have a he has a special uh lundy freylin pickup that lindy makes just for him called the true 60 and it's based on lindy's the best sounding set of paf's these 1960 pas and so i always put those in and tone pros hardware so everything's locked down good and tight and got the nicer gear ratio tuners and um 50s wiring jensen oiling paper caps and just you know he roy does all the gut guts and sets it up for me and then i feel like i'm ready to go do battle with it yeah it's optimized yeah exactly what were you running through as far as uh effects through the through the amp what were you what were you running through just now yeah um i'm i'm running through um an mxr reverb a dunlop echoplex pedal um my my distortion is coming from an mi audio crunch box okay which is my favorite version it's called the distortion uh plus i think the it's called the crunch box distortion plus was sorry sorry rainfall yeah um so i use that and i use it i use alpha meter zen drive for my uh crunch in fact if you if you want i'll just take the computer for a second and show you the board sure if you'd like to see can you see it yes okay so i've got a keely 30 millisecond on there for doubling and the jangle box for compression and the roto choir from tech21 is my leslie got a decimator on there for hum and then this little loop that i can switch between the zen drive and the distortion without having to turn one on and another one off or i can just switch them out of the loop with the other button with just like you know uh one touch operation perfect oh and two mini pedals are a mini wah and a mini volume so that's about it little buffer yeah yeah it's a great little board and just you know it's it's perfect you know i have a big board with more sort of atmospherics and and and ambient kind of stuff available to me but this is like you know my main board that i use for most yeah so i get you know just on on the subject of of of gear uh you know what what gauge strings do you tend to use on guitars do you switch them out depending on the scale length or anything or to use kind of the same items yeah well i i i do i've been having a little bit of issues with my my thumbs and stuff uh you know i'm 67 now yeah and i i i like a nice easy playing guitar so i previously i'd i'd always strung you know get my gibson like solid bodies not jazz guitar but you know regular like less balls with tens and um and even fenders but lately i've been using 9.5s on the gibson and 9s on the fenders and just that little bit i actually like the way lighter strings sound on a telecaster in some ways like they sound different when you want that little slappy bakersfield thing i think james burton uses like eights you know like people's talk of picking up his guitar and they can't play it you know right those kind of flurries you know because he has like a 12 for a g string yeah well he was the he was the guy who came up with taking a set of strings throwing away the low e before rock and roll light sets were made that's right and moving it all down a string and then putting a banjo light on for the high e and the plain g string so he could bend notes and we've all read the stories of like all the all of our british guitar heroes he drove them crazy because they couldn't figure out how he was bending notes like that right until they learned that trick because there was no ernie ball slinkies there was no rock and roll strings you had a wound g like you know gibson sonomatics or black black diamonds whatever right but um you know finally like the fender 150s came out near any balls and stuff and that was awesome you know they were out by the time i right just a a a curiosity uh there was kind of this switch over where most electric guitar strings were you know were pure nickel and then they kind of switched out and they started having hex cores and they started doing nickel plated steel and and and such and that yeah well there were there was kind of a transition that happened in the 70s and and and then into the 80s where you know string construction you know like the standard string set was starting to change yeah did you pretty much use you know pure nickel or or or nickel plated or what what were you using like back in the day do you even remember yeah i've been endorsing diaderio since 1979. and i used the just d'addario xl's nickel wound not the pure nickels nothing none of the weird ones not the new york balance tension or any other just regular good old diaderio tens yeah you know and on acoustics you know mediums or lights depending on you know just their phosphor bronze not any weird mixture it you know i i know what you're saying it's like it it goes in phases like i remember there was a period in the 70s where like guys like john carruthers and at the same time when people were stripping their fender guitars down to natural they were putting brass parts on and i didn't like that at all i found it to be a tone-sucking affair right you know i mean i'll let you know alembic with you know was like influential and you know everything was like the best of the best but honestly i found i i didn't like it you know i didn't like that period so they it was that period everybody like sanded their beautiful valuable jazz bases down to nothing you know what i mean and uh and and i think it's it's part of that same thing you know and so that period on brass and then came you know the metal period and people were looking for brighter and brighter and brighter and more top and the stainless steel strings came out and uh strings like that that were like designed to just be so cutting right because you're trying to cut through all that that amount of you know kind of saturation that you have to have something that's bright when you have that much saturation going on right to get any kind of definition you need that edge you need that that transient when you hit with the pick so yeah i've seen those phases you know then you know slash kind of brought back the popularity of les paul uh you know because pride you know i went to the whole super strat period where everyone wanted what ed played may rest in peace uh and you know the floyd rose period and and so on in fact that's a funny thing because that you refer to the my kramer signature model which is the first my first signature model and i had them do two versions i mean i'm i was the only one who could get them to do a not a pointy hockey stick headstock for one thing and more traditional headstock and there was a there was a a there was a model uh elliott pro one and pro 2 and the second one was set up like a telecaster exactly yeah and it was cool because it had that early p bass pick guard that went up the cutaway yes you know and i like that i think i saw jeff beck had it on his orange um jackson yes or one of the guitars you know and unlike anyone else you know i'm influenced by i see something cool and so that was in my head and i thought let's do that pick guard you know and uh so i had a television and in fact um what what's his name uh tom anderson built the prototypes for those guitars he was building prototypes for kramer at that time and he gave one of them to mick jagger the one of the teletype ones and they played it in like on stage and in a video and stuff he's got a black one right and uh my dear friend andy babyuk who you know i play in the empty hearts with but was also known for writing the beatles gear book and the gear of the rolling stones yeah amazing books yeah yeah and in the stones when i get because we're pals he put a little picture of nick playing that creamer yeah coming around so interesting you know kind of after the after the cars you were you know associated with some some other other groups like you did credence clearwater revisited with some with some of the guys you know from the original band and uh and then you did the the new cars but then the original band minus ben you know got back together and did an album and and got inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame and uh it's so it's so rare when a band gets kind of a second act uh how did it how did it feel to to be able to get back with those guys and be able to kind of celebrate your accomplishments oh it felt great it felt great i mean we've we've been through so much together that it doesn't take a whole you know a lot of time to get back into the groove like you never left of course but i was really happy you know for one thing that rick lived to to to do the rock and roll hall of fame thing and for my own reasons too because there was a lot of healing that took place the week we were there we rehearsed for a week in cleveland and uh at the um house of blues was dark that week and they let us rehearsed that and you know the jokes and sitting having meals together and kind of like you know burying some old ghosts and things and the one thing i could say about the whole i mean the experience was incredible and it was a wonderful thing but i was also happy that when we did sadly pass away that i wasn't left with that feeling that i wish i could have talked to him one more time and some things i wanted to say and stuff we kind of got a lot of that at the rock and roll hall of fame and got a lot of closure you know bands are families for good and bad dysfunctional families and there's good stuff in this bad stuff and it's not that anything terrible or any gossipy kind of stuff it's just you know the misha goss that bands go through and um so it was really great in that way to like spend a week together after the we had nothing really to prove we're just hang you know doing this thing and having fun with it and and it was really great the new cars was was fantastic uh band we had todd rundgren singing and chasm sultan singing and playing bass so greg used to call it autopia because it was like the cars in utopia together it was such a good live band though because those guys are monsters you know and you know a criticism that the original band got sometimes is that we weren't sometimes that great live which i i don't i don't really agree with that i think we were great live but like rick was not comfortable on stage he'd rather be writing songs in his basement or recording and he wasn't comfortable like he wasn't one of those hello cleveland you know are you ready to rock he wasn't one of those guys you know he was just a poet and a songwriter and a shy guy and so he wouldn't talk between songs and say even maybe a thank you maybe he'd say you know and so we were quirky that way so with the new cars was kind of a different experience because todd is the consummate showman and is all over that stage and talking and telling jokes and stories and stuff so it's a little different that way and um but it was a really good band you know chasm has such a beautiful voice he sang drive and he did such a fantastic job with it and todd has it has a a a history of playing other people's music as well as his own you know whether it's that walk down abby road thing or playing in ringo's all-star band whatever it may be right he's comfortable playing other people's music and he he really did justice to to cara's stuff he really he really brought it it was great you know so that was a lot of fun um a quick aside uh again kind of uh referencing back to the uh the rick biato uh kind of him dicing up just what i needed was really interesting to hear benjamin orr's you know voice isolated and i guess my question for you having been there when it was recorded was was that the way he was tracking the vocal i mean it just seemed so exact i mean uh you know and uh either that or on or on drive you know was i i guess with without uh without asking did the vocals have to be massaged much much or did he just have that exact you know vocal sound down he had that exact vocal sound and i'm not saying that he would get everything in a take he would punch in you know right fix a word a word here or there or maybe he'd sing it a few times and they'd comp one together um and then even then fix one or two things when they got done with the comp you know how that goes yeah there's still some still something to fix we worked on them but as far as the quality the tone uh his instincts as a singer his phrasing the way he works a microphone where he can kind of like you know really like knows how to hit a mic and and the breathiness and all the things that you make a great singer um that comes from ben he's just a natural gifted great singer wow yeah it was just so so impressive to hear his vocals you know isolated and uh his intonation and his phrasing was just breathtaking yeah we didn't we didn't i mean the first record we only took 12 days to record it think about that second yeah we were in england for 21 days it took 12 days to record and nine days to mix because roy insisted on only mixing one song a day because then his ears would go yeah so it you know because it was basically our live set and so we we were real prepared we've been playing those songs for the better part of a year and ready to go in and you know i did all those guitar parts on that first record and i'm not making this up on my mother's memory i did them all in a day and a half the whole album that's very impressive and i was sick too i ate something weird in england and i was like you know spewing from both ends and and i was green and i played it was only in the last couple you know in the last decade or two that you started getting gastropub and and uh and other other kinds of you know good food in england no no offense but uh no no no it's funny i mean it's true what you could always get good was indian food right curry yeah yeah but which was you know which was an acquired taste and that was funny because roy thomas baker took us to our first indian restaurant and i didn't know what anything was and he ordered me a vindaloo i thought it'd be really fun yeah and i had just tried szechuan for the first time growing up we thought chinese food was chicken chow mein and spare ribs that were dyed red we didn't know hunan and sichuan and spicy foods and so we went to this little a great place called the agra in london because we went back because it was so good but i i mean it smelled like dirty socks to me i didn't i hadn't eaten indian food before and and right chicken vindaloo and i took a bite of this thing and drank an entire water pitcher one of those plastic water pitchers down i never tasted anything there wasn't anything that hot it wasn't a matter of never tasting it i don't think there is anything is hot you know a pure capsicum or something but um and he was just roaring with laughter he thought that was very funny but then you can always get good in any way you're right yeah so one of one of the things that uh i wanted to hit back on and uh and and this is because of some interaction that we had you know on social medias you know i had posted something about jesse jessie davis and uh and i i said you know you took a little bit of an exception because i said something about him being unsung and and you were absolutely right you had been singing his praises in interviews you know you know from the beginning and so had john and so had john lennon yeah you know so i figured he's pretty sung you know yeah you're you're right yes john john's london's first choice for guitar player that's pretty good that's you know because taj played the rolling stones rock and roll circus i'm sure you know right right it's about the only video there is of that band yeah uh who ate that a lot of love just like give me some love and anyway so the stones and linden they all like love taj and delaney and barney and the band it was that time you know and uh and so when john came to elaine and i'm making records of course you know jesse played on and you know the first thing people know from him is docked in my eyes i guess but um i really got into it with taj mahal yeah and i i learned so much i learned so much from him as a player yeah what what a great player and and i'm glad that you uh you know one or one of the guys that continue to you know to sing his praises you know through let me grab a telecaster sure you're zach you're familiar with the taj records right you know yes with so cuckoo and bacon fat yeah yeah yeah so so something like this say what what what a wonderful lesson this is in arpeggiating and like a descending baseline or something like [Music] yeah i mean it's simple but it's so beautiful it's so beautiful or like you know that that's such a lesson if you can play that where because there's so many ways that you will use that in your life on a on like a beetley kind of pop thing with like a descending baseline an arpeggio it was like a a great lesson and i put the lesbian pedal on because jesse would play through a real leslie yes because they weren't any club like that back then and uh he'd take it on the road you know play live too you'd have an amp and a leslie um but i i you know something like you know [Music] i remember this stuff from high school i haven't played it in you know 40 50 years but yeah i still remember well like the you know the solo on six days on the road that he does is such a beautiful introduction to like country guitar [Music] yes [Music] right [Music] i think that that solo has been a a gateway drug for a lot of rock players into more country influence playing and i've heard a lot of people i think i would say it was for like some of the english like famous guys too like mick taylor all of a sudden they started working they went three frets down and started playing their blues runs the major could do the majority you had to move the move your blues riffs down three frets but um if you think about it like that kind of playing like on honky tonk women and that sort of like like sloppy groovy cool like rock with country kind of thing i think like it sounds to me like jesse only threw les paul in an ant pen yeah well there's one other you know interesting thing with you know some of the players that you you mentioned there was this kind of uh confluence or uh this weird influence was going in between jesse ed maybe george harrison and and maybe uh you know robbie robertson where everyone you know kind of had the telly into a leslie and they were all kind of experimenting with it kind of like what you hear on like the first uh like the first band record there's you know some of the stuff where uh where robbie's playing through a leslie like at a really slow speed like the beginning of tears of green yes tears of rage yes yeah but i i was just wondering if you had any kind of you know take on that because it's it's it's curious to hear you know them all kind of experimenting with this telecaster into a leslie thing and i was wondering if you had any insight who you thought it started with you know was it george was it jesse who was who was doing that first and started influencing the others on that um that's a really good question who used the leslie first jewel aikens on the birds and the bees let me tell you that [Music] [Laughter] hey that's a fast leslie yeah yeah i mean my brain wants to say george harrison because yeah i gotta they probably tried it on beetle records and stuff like that but right there was a mutual admiration society going on with those guys um they and and and eric clapton as well right it was part of i would say you know switching from a gibson to a fender stratocaster and playing a more american style of music and basically forming a band with delaney and barney's rhythm section certainly is another indicator of that sort of influence he you know he started playing more more like jesse you know and and uh and george switched to a strat and found his voice on slide but um they all loved each other i think you know the the big pink had a huge impact and also the first delaney and bonnie had a huge impact on the musicians in london at the time like the beatles and the stars they really loved it and the whole thing of like get back was part of the same thing that engendered music from big pink was like a return after the psychedelic hangover of 67 let's get rid of all the all the bs and all the backwards and crazy and let's just get back to rootsy good rocking music and so the band come out and it sounds like a group that a rock band from the civil war you know and and everybody and and and those english guys just adored it and um and then also creedence clear order revival you know as was another get back banned and there was a you know uh and and and these bands had a huge influence like like like i don't think you'd have elton john's tumbleweed connection without saying big pink and or something like matthews southern comfort or you know um uh what's richard thompson's band um airport right you know and so the like the band and that american music that was coming out right that had a huge impact on some really influential people and really that's to me what the led ba album is it was originally called get back the whole project was called get back and it was to get back to your roots it wasn't get back get away from you or anything it was to get back to you know after sergeant pepper and the white album let's get back after revolution nine let's get back right and so so and that was the whole idea we're going to make a record without overdubs and just strip down record and sit and play and i have i don't know how many hours like like seven gig worth of audio of the month that the beatles spent in twickenham studios making let it be and it's the nagra tape machine that would record dialogue and a movie set so it's all the arguments and all the jamming and they try they play a little bit of george does anyway to kingdom come off big pink they play a little bit of who'll stop the rain and all kinds of really surprising things and you can really see how they love that crop of american bands they like the creedence and the band and stuff like that you know george started playing the telecaster yeah you got that got the rose with telly yeah he never played its podcaster before that that i know of um paul had an esquire but george i don't think he had any attitely and so anyway so you know it's all like one kind it was like a feeling like after the i i always felt like it was like kind of like after like i call it like the psychedelic hangover right to kind of like you know get back and just play some some some good rootsy rock and roll and that seemed to have been like the influence at the time and it was influencing each other to make a short story probably way too long well the the to bring things around the empty hearts uh one it's of course you know you and the drummer from from blondie and the league lead singer from the romantics and then andy the uh baba week is that is that how you say his last name abuke by buke okay yeah of course uh you know is part of the band also and i think that's a fun way in which you've been able to uh kind of uh yeah it because listening to those tracks you can hear the beatles influence and you know which is very very evident then you even had ringo you know play play on a track on your last record right right the album before that we had mac ian mclogan playing keyboards right on the whole record which was wonderful it was one of the last sessions i think he ever did rest in peace and then yeah ringo and that happened in a really like kind of like cool organic way it wasn't it was nothing like hey i wonder if we can get ringo to play on our record or wouldn't it be great to have a beetle it was none of that we recorded the song and while he wasn't like satisfied with it he i don't use the word satisfied but like clem coming from punk rock and you'll understand this plays more on top of the beat he's more of a more of a forward drummer and ringo is just behind the beat almost late like al jackson well fat with charlie charlie what and i think while he thought to himself man i really wish we could have that ringo feel on the song with the big palm fills and so wally had toured with with ringo in the all-star band so all he did was call him and ask him if he would do it and i know him too and andy does and he said yes and so we we did it the way you would imagine we sent him files of the song and he had his assistant set it up and on his put his headphones on and sat down in his drum kit put drums on it and sent it back and there's ringo on drums on our song and you know i wish i could have been there while he did it but that would have been impossible cost prohibited but um but that's how it happened you know it was just we wanted the ringo feel and while he goes wait a minute why don't we just ask greenville how amazing yeah you want what that drummer is we call that drummer that's all it was yeah wow well well elliot we've we've had a wonderful time and i i think we probably should uh bring you know close it out uh i'm so appreciative of of your time and uh thank you for for taking the time to to tell us some of your story and getting to hear some insight and and just about how the your solos were put together and uh yeah great stories and uh thank you so much yeah thank you so much for for being part of this it was a huge treat so thank you well it was a treat for me too you ask good questions and you're a great guy and good to talk to and i hope everybody enjoys watching this and be safe out there love you and keep rocking all right thank you

Channel: Truetone

Views: 35,370

Keywords: truetone lounge, elliot easton, the cars, ask zac, zac childs, Just what I needed, my best friend's girl, telecaster, jesse ed davis, taj mahal, fender vibratone, leslie cab, Gibson elliot easton, kramer elliot easton, shake it up, roy thomas baker, mutt lange

Id: tvg1NPWPTJY

Length: 107min 6sec (6426 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021