Scott: Hunt, you and Tony have an excuse, you know --
T: I certainly hope so!
S: For being here --
H: Which one?
S: Because you're related, but how could you posibly get this group together here?
H: Well, it goes back, I'd say ten, twelve years ago, when we were -- first started working with Iggy -- Iggy Pop -- and David got involved with Iggy as a kind of a support system and -- I mean, this is how I see it, I think this is the way it was
D: No, but I'll disaggree with you
H: Yeah
T: He was Jimmy's [Iggy Pop's] friend --
H: He was Iggy's friend
T: And then he decided to get involved in a project he wanted to do with Jimmy and --
H: Excuse me, is your name Hunt?
T: Oh, I'm sorry. I sounded so much like you, I thought I'd just --
H: Well, who would know, right? So we worked with David years ago -- and Iggy -- and we'd talked about possibly doing something else, and this is -- it's finally come to -- I dunno, better late than never, right?
D: Yeah, it kind of sunk into fruition. We'd been talking about a similar kind of music that we heard, that we wanted to play, and a couple of years ago when I first met Reeves, we also had similar needs in what wasn't being supplied for us in music. And it just kind of evolved like that. That we all realized we wanted to play the same kind of music.
R: We did the ICA show in London, which was a benefit
D: That's right.
R: Which is where David and I first worked toghether, which was last spring. And the -- that was the first time the sound, I think, kind of happened
D: Yeah
R: When what was missing was Hunt and Tony
T: You betcha!
R: Jus ask them, they'll tell you!
H: Tony was out one night at a club and ran into David --
D: In LA, wasn't it Tony?
H: Yeah
T: Yeah, it was in Los Angeles and a friend of mind told me that David was going to be down at this club cause it was the end of the Glass Spider Tour -- I guess it was a wrap party --
D: Yeah
T: Or something, and I don't really party too much, so I thought "Nah, well, I'm not gonna go to..." I'd gone out to see David at the S Festival, that's the last time I had seen him, in California. And we'd be in touch every once in a while, and so I went by the club, and he was there, and as I went up to him to say "Hey, how'ya doing?" he went, "Tony! Hey, listen, I was thinking about this project, and the thing --"
D: "Remember the guitar player we were talking about?"
T: Right
D: "I just met him!"
T: And I said "Well, let's go!" So we all got together again, and we went back to the hotel, talking about "Well, should we call the drummer?" and so, laughing, we called the drummer. And Hunt's the drummer.
D: Yeah, who? Oh, that's right. Hunt.
H: And then they called me, right? He didn't work out.
S: Okay, now --
T: And then we started the thing up in Switzerland
D: I think it basically came down to that we all wanted to -- we'd commited our time to this. It was a question of all four of us getting together making our time into something real --
R: Making--
D: We've now spent now nearly on a year working -- why we want to play music, what we want to do as a band.
R: "Tin Machine" is from a song. Called "Tin Machine".
D: What do you think? Yeah, it was really a -- We really weren't interested in what kind of band name we had. It was almost arbirary. "Ah, let's just pick a song title."
R: I think the imprtant thing was to make it plain that it was a band, and not --
H: The difference being that David doing other tours, people working for you, where we're working together.
D: Against me.
T: Against -- well, that also.
H: We're working together.
S: Well, let's see. I don't know who to ask. But, there's influences, obviously, in all of you, but when you hear the sound, you don't -- I can't pinpoint it. So, could I say that maybe this is just a collection, and it's not an influence of other things? I mean is this -- it sounds like a brain trust. Did you all do this together, or is it one brainstorm?
R: A lot of the ideas originally came from -- I mean there's -- conceptually -- there's the late 60's influence of the "trio" bands, like Cream and Jimi Hendrix and the Jeff Beck group -- which wasn't a trio, but -- and there's a lot of R&B, and theres a lot of -- for us -- a lot of more like roadhouse experience. And some of the early pieces we worked on, it was like there was almost an architectural reference, in that -- like deconstructivism, and things like that. Like letting the ends of the music dangle. If the guitar makes noises when you plug it in, why can't that go on tape as well?
D: I think if you went through the entire band, I think you'll find that the influences are so eclectic. I mean it goes throughe verything. From Charlie Mingus and -- I mean, there's areas of Mingus and Roland Kirk in some of the more free pieces --
R: "I Can't Read" has got a lot of that--
H: We wanted to talk to you about that -- oh, you're talking about the song.
R: Has got a lot of that freer jazz spirit, at least.
D: But I think that we all came into it knowing that what we expected from each other was to put the one thing that we wanted in music -- individually -- into what we do. So everybody came from pretty -- a different conception of what they wanted within their music, so that the unity of the four individual ideas produced our music.
S: A great question is -- someone -- you were mentioning architecture -- okay, let's get the stage down -- put the stage together -- for the sound, which is really incredibly good, and it -- how are you going to do this? Are you going to do this live, I hope?
T: Oh yeah.
H: Well, basically, what you heard is live.
R: Yeah
H: With maybe one overdub.
R: "I Can't Read" was completely live.
H: And these days, you're talking with forty tracks and overdubbing and overdubbing and processing until everything is processed out. Y'know what I mean? As opposed to the big-band days or the 50's, where a band would go in, they'd get one mic set up and do it, and you'd have that energy. Did you feel that on the track?
S: Yes, sure.
H: Y'know what I mean? Whether it's Stan Kenton, or -- I dunno...
T: As it lays --
H: Yeah
T: We walked in, and whatever pieces of music we all had, we'd all gotten together at different points in the preceding months. We just got into it. Sometimes, Reeves and Hunt and myself would go to lunch, and we'd come back, and David would have a whole page of lyrics done. And then he'd go in and he'd start to lay down a vocal; then we'd go "Hey, how about this and how about that? Why don't we throw this in? Let's throw that out!" It was a collective effort.
D: But it was essential to us that the basic track that we did as a band in the studio with me singing. If it didn't have the excitement, it wasn't a track. So that's why we did something like 30 tracks. We just wrote them and played them as they came -- as they hit the dek. We wanted to come out of the box with energy -- the energy that we felt when we were writing and playing. So there's very very little overdubbing on it at all. So it's -- for us, that is our live sound. The album is the live sound.
R: The album is almost the bottom line. It's like that's where the live sound springs from. It's developed -- in the live playing we've done, it has developed from there.
S: You've probably mentioned twenty names when we brought up influences and so forth -- at least twenty. There are a lot more, but there's an interesting thing to virgin ears -- that there are a couple of words that come to mind, like -- it is original. And it is unique. As many people as you said influenced things in there, if you listen, it's not the album that "sounds like so-and-so" --
R: I think --
S: So I think you've got something here. You can call it "The Tin Machine", I guess, which you have --
T: Well, you've got to call it something
S: Yeah?
R: The --
H: Y'know? What's in a name?
R: Well, thing about our influences is that they're -- as opposed to a lot of, well, a lot of other groups are much younger. I think the median age has something to do with it in a band. But --
S: Experience, huh?
R: The influences are fully assimilated, as opposed to being worn on our sleeves. They've been digested fully.
D: I think it's real interesting that when you start to get -- none of us are kids, and I think it's infrequent that there are many bands that would get together now, after what we've all been through, and just still want to do rock and roll. There's not -- it's still -- rock and roll is growing up in that way, that is -- people of our age that grew up with rock and roll that still want those needs filled, like we do, and it's just interesting to find that when you do get together, there's still music you want to make and things you want to say. And the energy -- and the enthusiasm that you derive from that knowledge is just fantastic.
S: All you have to do -- and I can see there isn't any lack of enthusiasm for performance and live, because all of you have that within you, and I'm sure you're ready to --
D: Oh, if we weren't here --
S: Right now, kick a board. And I mean, never stop. Especially doing something that you have now put together that is something that you all have within you, that is not one thing -- it's a whole lot of things -- and what's great, because everybody's contributed. But you do have what isn't there right now
T: Well, that's --
S: And whether you can say "Cream did that in 1968," or whatever, that is true
T: Yeah, that's getting a little general.
S: But now, nobody's doing that in 1989. The 90's are ahead, and --
D: Do you know what gets exciting? It's that as we finish this album --
S: Everybody's bored!
D: And we're -- it's all mixed up and everything, and we just want to keep on writing! It's like "Ah!" We just want to go back and just work more. It's just been so -- it's just been such a blast to work like this. We just want to keep doing it. It's great! I'll tell you, that was the nice thing. To be able to write this with other people. I'ts -- for me -- it's something I haven't been able to do for a long time. It's great working and bouncing off each other for ideas for songs. That's been an integral part of -- the band produces a body of work, and so we're working it in that way. We want people to be able to realize that we're working with songs. And the songs -- the collection of songs in their entirety is what the band is all about. Not a -- sort of a sample.
S: Would it be save to assume that this is something that -- from what you've said, I must take you at your word -- that this is not a one-time deal? That you've decided to try?
D: No, we're already working on --
S: Great
D: What we want to -- We just -- there's nothing to work on, it's just -- we just want to get back in there and write and record. That's the next thing we want to do.
S: And you also want to tour. Obviously, you'd better.
D: We want to play live more than anything else in the world.
R: It's very much a live unit. I think it's more a live unit than a recording band, and what we've done is had to contour the recording studio to suit our live approach.
T: Well, yeah.
R: I mean, we've had -- well, you have to admit that originally it took a certain leap of faith on the part of the engineers and things to trust us and the way we wanted to record.
H: Mm.
R: They kind of looked at us funny because we wanted to play all at the same time, and David wanted to sing, which is generally not done anymore, I think, by-and-large.
T: Right, they all said, "Yeah, you don't do it that way --"
D: "These days."
H: These days.
T: These days, right. And we go: "That's right. But we do it this way these days, because we like the way it sounds this way. These days."
S: It's been a pleasure talking to you, getting some inner feelings of the group and where you really are and what you want to do. It's been great having you as guests.
T: Thank you
H: Thank you
D: Thank you very much, Scott.
R: Thank you.
S: And thank you for being a new part of the World of Rock.
