Punk Funk Mofos from Hell
Last modified: 23:11:16 CET on 08 Nov, 2010 |
The Gear
John: I played mostly Strats and Les Pauls on the record. I was still hung up on Floyd Rose tremolos, which Flea hated, though I didn’t care. But then I started to realize that since most guitar players use those things, none of the shit you can do with them will sound original. Now I just use a stock Strat tremolo system, and if I want to pull up, I push behind the nut. For a while, my main guitar was a ’68 Strat, but it was stolen. Since then, I’ve gotten a couple of others that I’ve fallen in love with. But our basic philosophy is that our tones are in our fingers, and the particular instrument you play, or what kind of pick you use, doesn’t matter much.
Flea: Music Man basses are the best basses ever. I play a StingRay, baby, which is what I used when I first started playing. When we became a little more popular and I could afford it, I got a Spector because it was more fancy and supposedly better. But a few months ago, I bought a Music Man while we were on tour. It was the cheapest bass in the store. I’ve also got a Music Man 5-string and a Music Man fretless. No matter what amp I use, it breaks. I’ve used MESA/Boogie amps and cabinets, which cost an extraordinary amount of money, but the amp kept breaking. I kept the cabinets, but switched to a Gallien-Krueger head, and it kept breaking. I sometimes use a Boss envelope filter for the wah sound. For recording, I usually mix the direct signal and the miked amp. For strings, I like GHS Boomers. No wait, I think I like D’Angelicos. Which are the ones we get for free?
John: I play a MESA/Boogie amp, I forget which one. It broke before we started touring. All the knobs on it are frozen so I can’t move them, but they’re frozen in a good spot, so it’s okay. For the album, I played through a Soldano head, which goes to “11.” I use a Boss Distortion pedal, an Ibanez wah-wah, and a big old ugly Boss chorus pedal. On the album, a lot of the effects were done in the mix. The solos were recorded with just the guitar through the amp. I like green [Dunlop] Tortex picks. I use D’Addario strings, but only because I’ve been using them ever since I started, and I like having stupid habits like that. My roadies think I’m an idiot. Just to be dicks, they put D’Angelicos on my guitar, but didn’t tell me till later. They fooled me.
The Attitude
Flea: It’s a matter of unity, of four guys listening to each other and playing together. We tried to capture that on the record. There might be a great guitar solo going on, but at the same time there’s a chant, and percussion over it. I think that represents the band, as opposed to featuring a soloist.
John: When I was growing up, I used to practice 10 or 15 hours a day, working on technique, or every Frank Zappa or Jimi Hendrix song I could get my hands on, just approaching things from a technical standpoint. But you have to be able to learn everything, and then forget everything. That’s a much more challenging option—to do guitar parts that really fit into what
’s going on. A lot of players have problems doing something that’s supposedly below them.
A big part of your attitude is your boosterism of other bands that you like. You even include sample tributes to several L.A. bands on your new album.
John: We feel a connection with any bands that play music that’s a reflection of their lives, of how they feel about the world. Even if what they do sounds completely different, it’s the same shit because it’s all soul. The music that I listen to is nothing like the music I perform, because I want the music I perform to be completely different from something else.
Flea: When we hear bands that are influenced by what we do, it’s a total compliment, and it makes me feel like what we’re doing is really valid.
How do you balance getting wild onstage against messing up the groove?
Flea: The groove is the almighty thing. Anything that might happen onstage is a natural reflection of the music. It doesn’t matter if I fall backwards on my head, because everything that we do is inspired by the notes that we play. Or at least that’s how we feel about it.
---Joe Gore
