For all of the perks of being the child of Cher and Gregg Allman, vocalist/guitarist Phillips Exeter Blue I (otherwise known as Elijah Blue Allman) has still had to pay plenty of dues in the band Deadsy. Formed back in 1995, the band has had its share of record label woes throughout the years, despite earning consistent respect from fans and peers alike for its hybrid blend of 80’s-influenced synth rock and goth-metal. Deadsy’s latest record, Phantasmagore, was finally released in August after a 2-year delay, and Blue says that even with the setback, the band’s focus has never been sharper.
Now with the new label of
Immortal Records and a fresh perspective, Deadsy is about to set out on a tour with the Deftones and ready to connect with audiences that still might not be aware that Deadsy has been around for more than a decade.
Blue recently talked with
Ultimate Guitar about his hope to create music that is artistically daring and visionary years down the road.
Ultimate Guitar: Your latest release Phantasmagore was originally supposed to come out in 2004. What caused the two-year delay?
Blue: We had no label for a while. When Dreamworks got bought by Interscope, we kind of got lost in the shuffle. But you know what it was? We didn’t have our shit together. I think a lot of bands that were totally ready to go got either put on the backburner indefinitely or it wasn’t happening. I think our story with all of our delays has always been a combination of us, but also the label.
Did you ever feel stifled because your music was a bit different from other bands in the music industry?
We don’t sound like any other band. People in the industry are afraid that we’re not going to fit in to the formats. There’s just that big fear of like, “We know this band’s great. We know the kids love them, but will they ever be accepted?” So now I think here’s how it goes - we’ve been around long enough to where we hear our sound in so many things that it’s finally like validated. We’ve influenced our own peers from Los Angeles. Plus, I think it’s wherever things are, with the Interpols and The Killers and all these different bands nowadays, there’s that sort of real edgy thing we’ve always tried to touch on. That sort of post-punk, synthesizer, sort of Sabbath stoner rock, we’ve doing that for 11 years. When we started doing that, grunge was just ending and nu-metal was just starting. We do what makes sense to us. We’re not going to come in and do whatever trend de jour to win people over because the second that thing goes away, the band goes away, too.
On your MySpace page, the band mentions “creative entities from before 1990” as a primary musical influence. What is it about the pre-1990 bands that is a bit more forward-thinking than bands in the next couple of decades?
It’s real simple. Before 1990, people knew what cool was. After 1990, people don’t know what cool is. Like the old kind of Warhol regime, and then you Warhol dying and then you had a turnover. Nirvana was a good band, but it’s the most overrated band in the history of music. And I think he (Kurt Cobain) knew that. He knew that it was just cool to have a rock band and make cool songs. But all the people between the artist and the kids, that’s always the problem.
My thing is like, “Dude, let’s back to the basics.” You’ve got to make a great record. You’ve got to make a record like something wasn’t there before you made it. That’s my stand on it at least. I have to put something out there that does not exist, and I think that we’ve done that - twice.
I don’t think all young kids are ready to start getting into the super-old stuff. But I look at all of it as cohesive and timeless. All of it’s relevant, like Bobby Vee and The Shadows and Elvis and Johnny Cash. These people are obviously still relevant in our culture. So I think the kids and all this new music, it’s really good that it’s one thing, but it’s not really good, which I think is the issue. There’s obviously been some sort of disconnect between the great, great, great artists of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and early 80’s, and now. I want to look back into that and rediscover things, and through that come out something completely original. I think there’s a palpability to that when kids listen to the record. I think hopefully, dare I say, that we might be able to be the Bowie, Sabbath like lineage of it.
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| "People in the industry are afraid that we’re not going to fit in to the formats." |
And do you think bands these bands aren’t necessarily thinking in those terms?
(In melodramatic tone) Oh, I’m so emo this…All I know is that I hear emo, and I think of one band called Fugazi. That’s it. I don’t have any more room in my mind for emo than a band like Fugazi. That’s it.
I think that bands get successful and everyone clutches to it because there is the business aspect of the industry and the bottom line is bloodletting profit. There’s the business with the Internet. I’ve talked to a lot of people about this in the industry. I don’t think the Internet is as much as it’s just like music that’s not so great. You know, you’ve got a couple people doing it right. You’ve got Josh Holmes. You’ve got Jack White. You’ve got Paul Banks from Interpol. You’ve got Stephin Merritt from The Magnetic Fields. That’s what supposed to be happening. Maybe there’s an awful lot of those guys. I’ve got to think there are a lot of talented people out there. I’d like to see more of that.
Considering you’re working with synthesizers, z-tars, and guitars, is Deadsy’s approach to songwriting a bit more complex?
Every song that I come to know exists in a weird sort of process. You just sort of go. You know what the song wants, so do that and just go with it. I’ll lay down a keyboard sound or a melody. I sort of hear it come from like another plane. So it’s almost like taking notes. It’s a little bit like that. It’s a little bit like it already kind of exists in some sort of deeper form, and you’re just bringing into this sort of final form where people can hear it and it’s more definite - which part of me doesn’t like. Part of me likes just having the music in my head. There was this painter who said, “Every time I go to paint, it’s not as good as it is in my head.” So he stopped painting. It’s like a little bit of that. It never ends up the way it does in my head, but it goes somewhere else that I like.
Carlton (Megalodon), our other guitar player, and I, we put a lot of work on the record. And then Alec will work on the drums. We sort of do each song as it comes. Some songs are just written on a guitar. Some songs are written with the full band. Then we get all the raw elements down and we sort of dress it with like the keyboards. We go from the core of the song outward. All of the arrangements are usually put on after. But sometimes I’ll start a song by hearing an arrangement in my head and it will go from there. A song like “The Last Story Ever” was written on piano. Alec (Pure, percussion) and I wrote that song.
Does the band share the lyric-writing process as well?
I write all the lyrics and I’ll usually have a melody. Sometimes like with the song “Carrying Over,” the whole thing came to me at once. It all appeared in my head.
Another musician, Phil Pirrone of the Casket Salesmen, recently said that he believed that his music comes from a muse in the sky.
That’s the reality. The musicians that are open and sensitive enough to receive just the stuff that’s floating on frequencies that maybe other people can’t see, that’s really the truth of it.
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| "Before 1990, people knew what cool was. After 1990, people don’t know what cool is." |
What was it like to grow up with two parents that had such a heavy presence in the music industry (Cher and Gregg Allman of The Allman Brothers)?
The music of my childhood was not so different than the musicality of my peers. It was just like any kid. The last thing I was ever interested in was anything having to do with my parents! When we first started touring with Deadsy, I was used to it because I had been on the road a lot since I was a kid. Just going on the road with my mom, going on the road with my dad, and hang. With my mom, I always played with her in the band. I was really young, but when I was like 12 and grew older, I was like, “This is not like so cool.”
Was it at that point new musical influences entered your life?
I just started getting into the history of music, gathering different things. In the late 80’s, early 90’s, I was very much into Nine Inch Nails and Ministry and metal, but also New Wave. When I started Deadsy, I listened to Gary Numan and Sabbath and Bowie and Type O Negative’s first few records. Musically, who I am and where I’ve been, it’s as much as people would think in a generic sort of way. It’s not who my parents are. It’s more being around that lifestyle. And not in an ego way, but you just start getting really attracted to that rock and roll lifestyle and what it’s like to do what you love. I guess being around my mom’s world gave me a foreshadowing of what I would do with the rest of my life.
What do your parents think of Deadsy?
My dad’s never seen us play. My mom’s seen us play a lot. She really didn’t get it. She didn’t get Hendrix back then. I mean, she’s go see Hendrix at Monterey and not get it! She doesn’t really get stuff that’s radical. She gets Michael McDonald. She’s not a big lover of music. I am a lover of music and I love what I play. She loves making it and she’s obviously really, really talented, but I don’t see how music is a huge part of her daily life in a real spiritual way.
You do have some prominent spiritual themes in your music, particularly in “Asura,” which is about a Hindu deity.
I’m definitely into tapping into the most powerful kind of battery of the planet, which is that science. I don’t really know it in the same way as George Harrison or Brian Jones. On “Paint It Black,” we heard that same level of performing all these new instruments. It was me and someone else who did all the guitar and the Sarangi and the Tanpura and all that stuff. We’re into a lot of stuff and we’re really just getting started with the potential of this band. I’d really like us to grow sort of darker, more experimental. I always respect Radiohead’s career, what those guys have represented.
Do you think that there was a big difference in approach “Phantasmagore” in comparison with your earlier music?
We wanted to make it more accessible, as in more rock and just straight-ahead. I think our next record will be completely out-to-lunch and in the realm that we really want to get to. Hopefully we’ll be able to establish ourselves enough on this record where we can start to do what we really want to do, the real sort of out-there shit. When I say out-there, I don’t think it’s out-there in an inaccessible way. I think it’s out-there with being sounds and the experimental music that nobody has ever, ever heard yet. It would be like listening to Indian music for the first time. I mean, we’ve heard a lot now, but back in 1940 that’s something if you saw a guy playing a sitar. It would be weird, but you would also be very, very attracted to it at the same time.
I remember when I first heard Alice In Chains, and there was something about their sound. I was really taken by it because I couldn’t figure it out. It was such an enigma. That’s the kind of music that’s meaningful. There’s nothing that’s wrong with a pop song either, but I’m attracted to something that’s enigmatic.
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| "I think our next record will be completely out-to-lunch and in the realm that we really want to get to." |
Talk about the “Legions,” who are the dedicated fans of Deadsy. Did you notice crowds immediately connecting with the band?
The numbers have grown. I guess it’s people that this music speaks to. Certain kids get this, and then there are other people that it just goes right past them or through them or whatever. They don’t register. Those kids have their own frequency of what they kind of fit into. I like to think the Legions are the kids that are not like the outcasts, but like the kids that are really special, who really are sensitive to a lot of the artistic temperaments.
Your stage show has always added to the artist elements that you are talking about. What was your approach to the latest stage setup?
We’ve been around for so long, I think we’re very jaded. We wanted to show that jaded, been-around-the-block feel. I wanted to make it a little more simple. This album was definitely like more of a goth-rock album, so it just made sense to sort of go with the black. You can’t go wrong with black. I mean, Johnny Cash. You can’t go wrong. We still have a little bit of the color, but it’s more metaphoric. All the color, it’s almost like it represents the universe and it represents the higher scale. There’s always been like a metaphor for what it really is. So now instead of displaying that, we just sort of keep it in with the metaphor thing with little accouterments here and there to show that we’re not just a bunch of dudes in black. There’s actually a bit of a formula to what we do, but not so much to detract from the music.
What guitars and amps are you using these days?
I play custom guitars that are made by Stephen McSwain. He’s been making them for me for years now. He’s made me a couple of new ones that I’m going to take on the Deftones that are kind of like a Les Paul mixed with like BC Rich Warlock. They’re badass. I’ve got a Bradshaw Switching System, which is good for pedals. My main amps are Triple Rectifier Marshalls. I have one of those custom-made blue amps that aren’t Orange, but it’s like a different company that used to be affiliated with Orange. They still make boutique amps that make like every other color. So I’ve got one of those. I try to get a lot of the same textures live as I do on the record. I’m actually sort of getting that sort of more together for Deftones. We get that sound live that we do on the record pretty good.
When you perform “Paint It Black” live, do you use a synth to recreate the sound of the sitar?
No, he plays one of those real old Danelectro guitars that were the guitarist’s guitar and then also synthesizer. For a couple songs here and there, we might run a little bit of tape. It’s just some songs you want it sound gigantic. So running tapes is not like the worst thing. And it’s only like a couple songs here and there. Some people do it with like every song, but if you use it sparingly it’s not a big deal.
Are you planning on releasing any of the songs that didn’t make it onto Phantasmagore on a later CD?
We might do that. Those tunes will see the light of day, if by bonus track or by ITunes or by something. We’re trying to get that figured out right now.
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2006
Every song i've heard by Deadsy sounds like an Orgy ripoff.
That's why i don't like Deadsy I rather listen to Orgy!