Guitar One Feb.`99-interview-w/JRzeznik-part3--by John Stix

On the more recent recording, your songwriting has changed. You open up and let the chords ring rather than chug. There is more air and use of space. You can`t be afraid of the space between notes. As I got older and could play better, I learned there are so many different ways to derive power, and you don`t have to scream to get people to listen to you. That`s definetely something that I know. When we made our first record, it was all balls, and no brains. That`s okay, that`s cool man; I was 20 years old. And that`s all right.

Every record is the way it has to be. If you`re 20, you`re 20. It`s like people complain that Van Halen doesn`t sound like he`s 20 anymore. That`s because he`s not. Or how come Metallica isn`t angry all the time? You can`t be angry for 20 years. If you are angry for 20 years, you are a candidate for some serious medication.

Now you are more open to experimentation as you go along. For example, "Dizzy" has a cool middle section. But it`s opposite of what a solo does when it "takes it to the next level." Here you bring it down. Yeah, I just thought it was cool. Breaking it down there set this really interesting kind of mood. That song is 2 1/2 minutes long. It`s the tightest wound rock song on the record because it`s very succinct. It ain`t brain surgery, but it`s catchy as hell.

As a trio, you do a lot of overdubs on record. So for the live performance you have to decide what you are and are not going to play. Exactly, because it`s a completely different animal. Playing live and making a record are two different things. I got a second guitar player [Nathan December] and a keyboard player [Dave Schulz] who play with us live. I sing and play the guitar. I do all the solos. I play the guitar and sing, but I wanted it to be a bigger thing. I wanted to get across a lot of stuff we did on this record because I think we did a lot of really interesting work. I wanted people to be able to hear that live.

On "Black Balloon," did you write the song and then say, "Let`s put this cool harmonic thing over it?" That happened accidentally in the studio. Then Jack Joseph Puig, the guy who mixed the record, turned it into a loop and put it underneath what I was singing in the intro of the song. We sampled that loop, and the keyboard plays it at the top of the song. It has a very mechanical feel live when you use the sample.

Part of that song reminded me of "Walk On The Wild Side' or "Baba O`Riley" or "Bitch." That two chord thing has been done in a billion songs, but once again it`s what you put over the top. It`s what you sing over the top. It`s what you do melodically that can make it fresh, make it new, and all the different textures you can put around it.

So you go to the studio with a vision, but you are comfortable discovering along the way? Well, yeah, a lot of it we didn`t even discuss. When we did preproduction with Rob Cavallo, the most important thing that we thought about was to get the arrangements super-tight. The arrangements to the songs had to be dead on. The structure to the song had to have a meaningful flow. The songs were already written, but the structures were real loose. It was really important that we made the arrangements interesting and strong, that people could follow a natural flow of things. It was all about what felt good. Everything was just like, close your eyes and feel it. Just feel where this goes. Does it take you with it?

You arrived at that place. I have a quote where you talk about the album Hold Me Up and say, "We weren`t that good of a band when we started that record." We weren`t so great, but that was the whole thing. Armand Petri, the guy who produced a couple of our records, that was his trip: feel it, follow the right thing. Musicians always try to explain to me what I`m doing. I`m just like, "OK, cool."

You`re no different than Van Halen, who believes that if it sounds good it is good. Right. I have actually learned to respect Eddie Van Halen a lot more than I used to when I was a kid. I was always like, "Oh yeah, he`s a f**ckin` heavy metal guy. Everytime he does a guitar solo I want to throw him a fish." But he was a real innovator, man, a real innovator.

When it comes to guitar solos for you, I hear a lot of open strings and that Keith Richards style. I play the same guitar solo in every song. They only reason they invented the guitar solo was because the song was too short. I maintain that philosophy. The song is only 1 1/2 minutes long? Well, stick a guitar solo in it and it will be two minutes.

It worked well in "Iris." You do a long middle section. Yeah, it is; it`s an epic [laughs]. That was all written on the guitars at first [sings interlude]. I wrote that song in my hotel room. Rob had more of a vision of what that section was going to be about than I did. I was playing it for him, and when we worked on the arrangement, he was like, "Dude, we are going to put strings in there." Remember it was a song for a film, and I wanted it to have a very lush, cinematic, slightly ostentatious kind of thing going on. It worked.

You do a bit of slide guitar in there. I didn`t play that, man; a dude named Tim Pierce played that. He was in Rick Springfield`s band. He wanted to play it so bad. I was like, "But I want to do it." Then he was like, "Come on let me do it." So I was like, "Sure, go ahead and do it, what the hell." He did a great job.

As a songwrtiter, do you work on an assignment, like, say, Paul Simon might, or are you more of an antenna, where songs pass through, and you catch them? I`m definetly a sieve or a colander. The stuff passes through and I catch what I catch. I think there is a slight bit of inspiration involved in everything. Paul Simon says, "I have an assignment, and I`m going to do it, and it`s going to be in this key." But he starts playing in that key, and it comes through, and he points things in the right direction. You still have to have that bit of inspiration, that bit of serendipity. You can also have a spark and then nothing more. But you can apply a spark in a certain direction and get a fire.

If "Name" hadn`t happened, were you prepared to slog on? Was there ever a point where you said, "If we don`t break through this month, we are out of here"? I was going to try and find a way to go back to school or something.

You toured so hard for A Boy Named Goo that you almost burned out. I wasn`t burned out on the people I worked with. I love Robby, and we have a great band now. I was burned out on the music business. I have to state this very clearly. This is just my opinion, but in my opinion I did not have a fair record deal. I came to have that opinion because I sold two million records and didn`t make any money.

Is touring easier now that you have people helping and making sure everything`s how you want it? I`m trying not to get used to having my ass kissed, because it`s starting to feel really good. I got a great bunch of people working around me. I owe them a lot because I rely on them so heavily. The booking agent, my manager, Pete the drum tech, and my guitar tech-I owe him everything. Our tour manager is fantastic, and the two new guys that work with us, and Mike and Robby. Everybody is working really hard together. This is the first time in my entire career where it feels like everybody is rowing the boat in the same direction, and that`s a good feeling.

Does success make it harder to get to that place where you are alone with the acoustic guitar? There is less time. I always say to myself, "John, you are going to have to seriously reconsider what the hell is going on in your life when you spend more time talking to lawyers and accountants than you do with your guitar." If you`re talking about the business more than you`re talking about music, or doing music, then you`ve got to take a step back and dig back into the music.

GUITAR ONE feb.`99--interview by John Stix