On Light Grenades, Incubus’ sixth and newest album, Mike Einziger doesn’t play the guitar so much as he manipulates it. Manhandles it. Armed with a Fender Jazzmaster and an array of new and old school pedals, he fashions a sonic tapestry drawing predominantly from the Zappa/Vai/Hendrix school of rock. The playing is unorthodox, ranging from the improvised violence of “Pendulous Threads” to the brooding melancholy of “Earth To Bella.”
Guitar solos are seen as “
events that happen” and when the moment does arise and needs to be seized, Mike does it with an imagination two clicks beyond strange. Einziger has managed to create a modern and original guitar voice amidst a legion of impersonators.
Ultimate-Guitar: How is it that someone who seems so connected to his guitar doesn’t really enjoy talking about gear and equipment?
Mike Einziger: Yeah, I have a real sort of indifference to musical equipment, I guess. I don’t know what it is. When I find things that I really love, I love to use them. But I don’t actively pursue those things. They kind of almost just happen to me on accident. Maybe I’d be a much better musician if I were much more proactive about it; maybe I’d write better music. I don’t know. I don’t know what the deal is with that. I’ve kind of always been that way.
The idea of walking into a guitar store where the walls are lined with instruments doesn’t appeal to you?
Not at all. Ben, our bass player who is also a very skilled guitar player will spend hours looking at guitars in guitar stores and hours looking at and reading about new equipment and all these different thing. He’s actually a much better guitar player than I am. No, seriously. Ability-wise, he’s a way better guitar player than I am.
Have you always been like that?
Kind of, I don’t know. It’s almost like when I’m writing music, I feel like that’s the part of it that’s important. All the other stuff is just kind of incidental to me. It just doesn’t matter so much to me. I know people that spend tons of money on their recording studios and getting the acoustics of the studio just right and getting the room tuned a certain way, and people get really into that stuff. Then the music they’re putting out of their studio still sounds like crap. To me, all those things don’t really matter. To me, the only thing that really matters is what’s being played and the music itself.
Like a really, really great guitar player, it doesn’t really matter what kind of guitar he’s playing or what amp he’s using or what he’s using to record it with. You’re always going to be able to tell that that’s that person because of the sound coming from their fingers. Those, to me, are like the important things. I’m not saying that I’m some incredible virtuoso musician who can just pick up any guitar and be instantly identifiable, but the people I do look up to are those people. Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix and Steve Vai and John McLaughlin. You can always tell that it’s those guys playing anytime they pick up an instrument; you might even be able to tell it’s them if they started playing piano.
It’s interesting that you’re a Frank Zappa fan. That influence is impossible to detect in your playing.
There are only some times. There are a couple of times when I feel like it’s obvious, but most of the time it’s not.
Where would it be obvious on the Light Grenades album?
I would say that a song like the title track, has definitely got some kind of a Vai-Zappa influence to it. The song 'Rogues,’ there’ s a guitar solo in that song that’s very sort of Zappa-ish to me in certain respects. I don’t know, I’m kind of the wrong guy to even be commenting on that. I don’t really know how to process what my influences are. A lot of people say to me, “Yeah, the guitar part for 'Anna Molly,’ that sounds like it’s been very influenced by Johnny Marr.” A lot of people say that to me. I’ve never really listened to a lot of Johnny Marr’s guitar playing; I don’t assimilate those things, you know what I mean? It made me intrigued to go and listen to it.
After you listened to Marr, could you understand why people made the comparison?
Yeah, completely.
Over two-and-a-half years have passed since the release of the last album, A Crow Left of the Murder … Does it come to a boiling point where you’re just consumed by the guitar and feel a need to re-enter the studio with your bandmates? Does it feel cathartic to give flesh to these ideas you’ve been working on and hear them finally take life?
It kind of happened a different way this time, on this record, than it did previously. It took a lot longer for me. Nine times out of ten, the way that an Incubus song starts is I’ll write a bunch of chord progressions, a bunch of parts on a guitar or on a piano or on some type of synthesizer or drum machine or something. I’ll record it in some really stripped-down, simplistic way, and I’ll give it to Brandon on a CD. I’ll just go, 'Here’s just a bunch of musical parts that I’ve been working on.’ And depending on how he responds to them, that kind of determines whether or not those are the beginnings of Incubus songs. Like I’ll hand him a CD with like ten, we’ll just call them tracks, and he just kind of picks certain ones and starts writing to them. The ones he doesn’t write to, that means he doesn’t even have to say it. It’s just like there’s a musical spark, something he finds inspiring about a piece of music or not. So out of ten song ideas that I’ll give to him on a disc, maybe four of them he’ll get excited about.
Do those four ideas that move Brandon tend to be the same ones that move you?
In every single one of them, there’s something that excites me. Otherwise I wouldn’t pursue them.
But do the two of you tend to agree on what the strongest ideas are?
Sometimes it happens that way and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes there are song ideas that I’ll get really excited about and then Brandon will just go, 'Ah, you know, I’m not really into that.’ So there was much more of that happening on this go 'round than had ever happened before. It changed the process a little bit because I had to work a lot harder than I ever had to keep writing new ideas and become inspired to just keep writing. I guess the percentage of material that I was coming up with, he was more particular about, and also for myself, too. I could write twenty different song ideas and sort of realize them all the way through, then decide that I didn’t like fifteen of them. That would happen a lot also. It was kind of just a different period of time musically than I had ever experienced with the band, in both good and bad ways. But I think that the outcome of all of it was great.
Do you think the writing matured? Or does that word have negative connotations?
No there’s nothing wrong with that word.
Did the process become a bit more sophisticated or creative?
It’s just kind of all over the place. For us, it’s very random. It’s not really something that’s easily explained, if anybody’s even interested in it. It probably would bore the hell out of most people. It’s not a matter of how much time we spend trying to write songs, the great ones just kind of happen. Songs, in my opinion, they’re not works, physical words. They’re actually more like events that happen. It’s not like somebody who is a professional athlete, and the more they practice, the better they get. It’s like one has nothing to do with the other. They’re just occurrences. I don’t know when they’re going to happen and when they’re not going to happen. So when they happen, I think the most important part is knowing when they happen and identifying when they happen and kind of seizing that moment and taking it some place.
That’s where, I think, the excitement in it lies for me. I could write the best thing that I’ve ever written ten minutes from now. It could just pop into my head. Or I could go another year and not think of one musical idea that I think is solid. That is kind of the challenge of it for me, but I guess that’s all based on intuition. But my intuition, in my opinion, has yet to fail me, so I’m excited to proceed into the future. I don’t know what our next record is going to sound like, but I’m already excited about it. I’m already excited to just know that there is going to be a period of time where I’m just going to be focusing on writing music again. That, to me, is exciting.
In these early stages of song creation, do you think about guitar tones or what guitars might work best?
No; I only usually have like one guitar that I’ll be playing at any given time. Like all the other guitars I have will be in some storage somewhere. I’ll have like one guitar in my studio and that’s kind of it. Maybe two and I’ll have a bass. Then I’ll have a ton of keyboards and like piano-based instruments. I have a small upright piano that’s really, really cool sounding. It’s an antique. I write a lot of stuff on that. I love synthesizers; I love analog-modular synthesizers and all the filters and oscillators and everything. That stuff is fun to me. That stuff is way more exciting to me than like talking about guitars for some strange reason. I don’t know why.
Does the keyboard aspect inform your guitar playing in any way?
I love hearing those things bounce off of each other. I just love hearing those sounds kind of collide. The notes rings out against each other, or if they’re dissident notes, hearing them attack each other. Those are little things that get me excited about it.
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| "I have a real sort of indifference to musical equipment, I guess." |
Where on the new album would that be happening?
A song like 'Oil And Water,’ for example - it’s probably kind of difficult to identify. It’s not very obvious, but there’s a guitar line and there’s a lot of feedback going on and there are bells being played. I guess you could maybe call it the pre-chorus. That’s where the lyric is 'Wouldn’t be the first time/Will not be the last time.’ There’s a Mellotron playing like on one side, like a Mellotron cello. Then there’s a guitar feedback playing the exact same thing. Then there’s a bell just playing the whole notes on all the beats. I wish it were actually more obvious on the recording of the record, what was happening there. It was just kind of like there’s so much going on, it’s like you start pulling everything up and finding the balance. Then you lose the vocals and then the whole point is kind of gone. But I love hearing a really ugly guitar playing the same thing as like a tape-recorded sound of somebody playing a cello. I love contrast like that. I love contrast and sound like that.
Did a part like that happen in the studio?
Yeah, that happened in the studio.
Are there moments when you are consciously laying for this type of harmonic collision?
Yeah, we do that a lot live, too, actually. Like Chris, who plays keyboards, he’s really kind of expanded into his role as a keyboard player because he originally was just kind of like triggering samples and using turntables. I found that to be a very limiting role for him in the band and I think he did, too. This is now our second record that we’ve made with Brendan O’Brien, and Brendan is a really, really accomplished keyboard player. He’s an amazing musician all around, but with keyboards particularly. Hammond B3, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, he’s just kind of a master of all those things. So Brendan kind of got together with Chris and they had kind of a connection between them with regards to that whole side of that part of the band, that musical part of the band.
Traditionally in the past, I’ve always played all the keyboard instruments myself. I’ve always played the piano parts on everything, and I did play a bunch of the piano parts and stuff on this album. But it was the first time I really felt - it wasn’t like I let him - but I wanted Chris to expand his role in the band. I think it was necessary to the evolution of what we’re doing for him to expand, so he did a lot. He played all those instruments, the Mellotrons, the piano parts, the organs. The record is littered with all that stuff.
And you personally love the sound of the Mellotrons, the B3s, and all of that old school gear?
Yeah, I’ve been obsessed with Mellotrons actually since I started working at this little recording studio in Santa Monica. I remember this one time this guy brought this Mellotron in to record something, and it sounded so scary to me. That and a Chamberlain. I remember I was really sort of taken by the sounds of those instruments. I didn’t hear about them or see them for a few years. This was when I was like in high school. Then I was messing around with one of my keyboards and I just happened to fall upon this flute sample. It was a Mellotron flute sample and it sounded just like a real Mellotron. I kind of got obsessed with it, and I started recording all this stuff with it. It was actually driving me a little bit insane because I had all of this music and it was all written on a Mellotron.
So you prefer the sound of a guitar against a keyboard rather than against another guitar?
Yeah, or as opposed to having another guitar player.
Did you listen to King Crimson and bands there were using Mellotrons?
Absolutely, but I was really into Pink Floyd growing up. Early Santana. I had a very odd musical upbringing, I guess. I didn’t really have like an older brother or older sister to turn me on to stuff. It was mostly just my mom was a musician and she was really into jazz singers. I grew up listening to Billie Holiday and Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald and Louie Armstrong and stuff like that. So I grew up with sort of like all these jazz singers. Then when I started discovering rock music on my own, I got into Slayer and all the old Metallica records, Ride The Lightning, Kill 'Em All, and Master Of Puppets. I got really into that. I would make these mix tapes when I was a kid that would be, I don’t know, 'They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing together, next to like 'War Ensemble’by Slayer. I would literally have those songs next to each other. I kind of feel like, of all the things I could talk about, if anybody was interested in how our songs get created, it’s those horrible contrasts that I think influence us the most - or at least me.
That’s why our records are like that. They aren’t like Slayer next to Ella Fitzgerald, but we do go from sort of one extreme to another. There’s a song called 'Love Hurts,’ which is a very straightforward, in my opinion, beautiful ballad type of song, right next to the song 'Light Grenades.’ Those are just total polar opposites from each other. Those are total opposite ends of the musical spectrum. I think that maybe some people would view that as some type of creative weakness or musical weakness, but I don’t know how to operate any other way. That’s just the way that we do it.
Is that a Mellotron on 'Love Hurts’?
Yes.
And acoustic guitar?
There is an acoustic guitar in 'Love Hurts,’ but it’s kind of just a back rhythm guitar. There are a few different guitars on 'Love Hurts.’ The main guitar is an electric 12-string, a Fender electric 12-string made in like 1975 or something. That’s the main instrument. Then the verse sections of that song, I played - I don’t even remember what guitar it was, but it was Nashville turning. That was a Brendan O’Brien guitar, a little (small-bodied) 1930’s Gibson acoustic. I was playing through a Leslie. So it sounds like an organ, but it’s a guitar. Those are sort of the two main guitars, and then the solo to that song, I recorded at my house. It’s kind of an ugly guitar solo over this really pretty-sounding chord progression; I like the contrast between the two things.
Does a track like 'Light Grenades’ come fully realized in your head? Did you originally hear that type of rhythm and guitar tone?
That was a song that turned out how I envisioned it; sometimes it doesn’t happen like that. Sometimes songs just come out completely different. One song that came out completely different was the song 'Dig.’ People have had a very strong reaction to that song, and it’s really funny because there’s never been more time spent on an Incubus song than on that song. All of our other sort of pop songs so to speak like 'Drive,’ that song happened very effortlessly and literally it just happened really quickly. I had written the chord progression and recorded it to kind of just a simple drum loop, and Brandon sang over it. That was kind of it, that was how the song was written, literally the way that it exists now. I remember I played a bass part and laid it down to a drum machine. The foundation of that song was the guitar part, and then Brandon said, “Oh, I kind of like that. Let me write something to it.” I remember sitting in my car, and within the next day and he goes, “Yeah, check this out.” He sang the whole song from start to finish, exactly as it is on the record.
This song didn’t happen that way. 'Dig,’ I had written sort of like the basic musical pieces for it without the rhythmic elements, without drums, not even really bass. It was just a series of guitar parts; Brandon didn’t really respond to it. I gave it to him and he just kind of didn’t really respond to it at all. Ben kind of was into it, our bass player. I asked him if he would lay down some bass tracks on top of it, and he did that. We kind of didn’t do anything with it for like six months, and then one day I just kind of brought it back in and started playing it. Brandon goes, 'Oh, yeah, I really like that.’ I was like, 'I didn’t think you would like that.’ He was like, 'No, I really do, I really like it.’ Then we ended up changing the key because it was in a key that was really difficult for Brandon to sing to. We made it lower so that it was more in his range.
One day Ben actually sat down and started playing this drum part. Jose was gone somewhere and we were like ready. We sort of had a loose arrangement of the song, but hadn’t figured out rhythmically how to tie it all together. So Ben sat down at the drum kit and just sort of played once all the way through, and that’s pretty much the way that it ended up. We tried it a whole bunch of different ways. There are a lot of Mellotrons actually in that song as well. In the chorus, all those strings and everything, that’s all Mellotron strings. Backwards guitar and all kinds of stuff that I really like.
Where did that picking part come from?
That was a Rhodes part; that was actually something I wrote on a keyboard. Then I later started playing it on the guitar. I wrote that on a Rhodes and then doubled it with a guitar, and then the guitar was what ended up staying.
Does that happen sometimes?
Yeah. That happens a lot actually, not necessarily with like a guitar and a keyboard. Sometimes I’ll write some kind of a guitar part, and then Ben will come up with a bass line underneath it. It will change the way I’m playing the guitar part, and then that will change the way he’s playing his bass part. It’s kind of like a call and response kind of thing that happens. That’s the thing, we never really know how the songs are going to sound until we’re really all in a room playing together and playing the music together because we feed off of each other. So I can sit in the studio by myself and write tons of song ideas, but I always know that they’re going to change when we all get together. Some things, I’m happy about them changing. Then other things, I get in fights with my band members about. But it’s all part of the process.
Talk a little about the guitars that are on “Dig.”
God, I don’t ever remember specifically what guitar I played on 'Dig,’ at least for the main parts. On most all the songs, the main guitar parts were played on a Fender Jazzmaster. I have like these reissues. I also have a vintage one that I used on a lot of stuff, but a lot of it I just stuck with the reissue. I just like the way it feels and I like the way that it sounds.
The Jazzmaster is not typically a guitar that players use.
Yeah, I used the Jazzmaster; I’m 99% certain of that. I actually recorded the main guitar track at home through a series of ProTools plug-ins. There’s no guitar amp on that. Then when we went into the studio, I was sort of trying to recreate that, and I couldn’t. So I just said, 'Why don’t I just use what I just used?’ Like that was the demo. It was what I would give to Brandon on a CD to write music to. I just used that. It was the same tempo and everything, so I just dropped it in and it worked perfect.
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| "I probably expend many more hours playing acoustic guitar than I have electric." |
When you’re in the studio, is the whole band there cutting live tracks?
Yeah.
When you start overdubbing, do the keyboards go on before guitars so you can get a feel for the bed the guitars will lie in?
Most of it is recorded live. I’d say 85% of what you hear is recorded completely live, unedited live tracks. It’s not that we’re setting out to do that. It’s not like we’re on a mission that we have to record everything live, but when we get into a studio - and this is why we’ve always made our records so quickly -and we’ve been playing and practicing the songs, we play them really well together. We play them better when we’re all together. I’ll play the guitar parts better if I’m in a room with Jose and Ben and Brandon singing. And the same with Brandon when he sings. He sings with us in the room. Like 90% of his vocals, 99% of his vocals are recorded while he is in the room with everybody. Then he’ll go back and record his backup vocals and all that kind of stuff. But he enjoys it way more. He doesn’t like being in a room by himself with some candles lit. He feels like it’s too much attention focused on him. He likes when we’re all together, rocking out, and he’s not thinking about what he’ s doing.
Do you like overdubbing?
Yeah, I do. Like when I have a solo section coming up, sometimes I’ll do it really fast and I won’t even think about it.
Do you have to put yourself in a certain frame of mind to do a solo like the one in 'Light Grenades’? Find the inner fire so to speak?
It was totally of the moment, that particular guitar solo. I didn’t know what was going to happen there. I just knew that we had left a space for me to do something there, and then I just kind of did the first thing that came into my mind. I remember sitting there and I said to Brendan, our producer, 'Hey, I’m going to play a solo here.’ He was like, 'All right, go for it.’ I just played what is there. It took me like a couple of minutes to figure out what notes I wanted to play or whatever, but that happened just like really fast and in the moment.
And you knew that you had something right after you finished?
Yeah. I never have a problem knowing when something is finished. I’ve been around a lot of musicians, and that’s kind of a problem that a lot of other people seem to have. That’s not a problem that I’ve ever had. I always know when something is done.
Did you play the solo on the Jazzmaster?
Yeah. It’s actually doubled, too, I think. Yeah, I think I played twotracks.
Do you do much of that?
If it sounds good, yeah. I try actually not to do too much of it because a lot of times, I won’t like the way it sounds. But in some instances, I do. Sometimes I love the way it sounds. Yeah, Steve Vai does tons of stuff like that, but he’s just such an insane guitar player. He could probably play twenty-four layers of the same thing and make it sound like one guy playing it because he’s so good.
Is there more acoustic on 'Earth To Bella’?
Yeah. Brandon actually wrote the whole song by himself, the acoustic parts. Then Ben and I played bass together on that song.
What kind of bass do you use?
I have an early 70’s brown Fender P-bass. I love it. I play it live onstage, too. It’s kind of like 'Big Bottom’ by Spinal Tap. We all play bass. Ben and I are playing bass together. It’s a really cool, thick sound and I play it through my Marshall. I love the way a bass sounds through just a Marshall, all distorted and gross. It’s great.
When you go from the acoustics to a huge explosion of guitars on 'Earth To Bella’, how do you create that?
That was one of those things that we didn’t really get into until we were in the studio because Brandon kind of had this idea for that song. I think he wanted it to be more of kind of like a Massive Attack kind of thing, with like drum loops and stuff like that. It just turned into this big, dark, brooding, heavy part. I don’t think that was the original intention that he had for it, but it ended up that way and we were all just really happy with it. Again, it was like, 'Ah, yeah, that sounds good.’
There are more acoustics on 'Paper Shoes’?
Yeah, that song was written at the very end while we were in the studio. I had written that chord progression actually a little while back, and Brandon didn’t really respond to it again. Then I started playing it one day in the studio and he goes, 'Yeah, I really like that one.’ I was like, 'You did?’ He goes, 'I love that one actually.’ So we recorded it kind of really fast, and it was the last song that we recorded for the album. It actually turned out to be one of my favorite songs. I love playing that song live, too.
What is it that attracts you to the acoustic? Is it that organic quality that you also find in pianos?
Yeah, exactly, that’s exactly what it is. I love the sound of something hitting a string and the string just ringing without being amplified through anything.
Obviously you feel pretty comfortable with an acoustic.
Yeah, I love playing acoustic guitar. In fact, I probably expend many more hours playing acoustic guitar than I have electric, just because it’s easy to like pick up an acoustic guitar. You don’t need an amplifier and you can travel with it.
Do you compose on an acoustic?
Yeah, a lot of the songs actually - even the heavier songs - they’ll get written on an acoustic guitar. The song 'Megalomaniac’(from A Crow Left of the Murder…)was written on an acoustic guitar. I know what they’re going to sound like when they’re played heavier.
You know what a song is ultimately going to sound like and earlier you mentioned that you know when a song has reached its final version. Those are difficult elements for a musician to recognize. Maybe that’s why you’re able to use one guitar for an entire album and avoid having to go through hundreds of them searching for that elusive sound?
Yeah, I’m not interested in that at all. I really am not. Our old bass player, Dirk, he would sit there for like hours and be like twisting knobs, trying twenty basses. We’d all be sitting in there going, 'Dude, it’s a bass, play it. It sounds good.’ He’d be like, 'Oh, I found this amazing sound.’ Two hours later we’d come into the studio and we’d be like, 'It sounds great, it sounded great before. What’s the problem?’ But some people, most people - it’s not just like some weird thing that only a couple people like to do. Most people like to do that. I don’t. I just get bored of that. I think what’s way more important is what you’re actually playing.
A lot of these newer metal bands seem to be more concerned with what the guitar sounds like rather than what they’re playing.
I don’t really know anything about any of those bands, to be honest. I kind of live in a bubble. I should be more filled in on whatever is happening musically at any time, I guess. I’d rather listen to a Jimi Hendrix record than go out and try and find something new that I like. I’m sort of a creature of habit.
Is the world wired in such a way that it’s still possible for a new player, a modern Jimi Hendrix to emerge?
Yeah, I think it is possible. Absolutely. But I don’t know who they are or how they’ll affect people. But yeah, definitely. A lot of it’s timing and your generation. Kids grow up and they don’t even know who Jimi Hendrix is now. Kids grow up with hip-hop and other stuff that just didn’t exist at the time that a guy like Jimi Hendrix was playing guitar. That’s no knock at all on hip-hop, we’re just living in a different world. It’s a different time and a different place. Kids are growing up around different things. I grew up listening to Hendrix and Santana and Zappa and the Mahavishnu Orchestra and stuff like that. Some kid growing up today might not even know what any of that is and listen to a newer band, then hear something older and think, “Hey, this band Pink Floyd copied so and so.” It’ s just a matter of timing. I discovered Steve Vai before I discovered Zappa, so when I got into Frank Zappa’s music I was like, “Wow, this really sounds like Steve Vai.” Only to really realize that it was the other way around, which is cool when that happens actually. There are moments in Steve Vai’s music that are just so Zappa that you can’t even believe it. It just sounds like it’s Zappa. But Steve Vai is an insanely creative guitar player.
Have you met Steve?
Yeah. I’ve hung out with him. I’ve actually jammed with him before. He’s a great guy, really cool guy.
Did the classic English trio -Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton - touch you in any way?
I never got into Jeff Beck and I never really got into Clapton. I did really get into Jimmy Page. I love Led Zeppelin, but not so much necessarily for Jimmy Page’s guitar playing. I think he’s an unbelievable guitar player, there’s no question. It’s just kind of like, in the overall big picture of what Led Zeppelin is, I’ve never really loved the vocals. I’ve never really loved Robert Plant’s singing. But musically, the rhythm section that they had was just…John Bonham and John Paul Jones, just playing the things that they played. Then sort of the level of orchestration that Jimmy Page brought with blaring guitars and Mellotrons and keyboards and stuff like that. That, to me, is hugely inspiring. That’s kind of where it’s at for me.
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| "I don't know what our next record is going to sound like, but I'm already excited about it." |
Page called his manner of orchestration as building 'a guitar army.’ Do you think of it in that way when you’re building up parts?
I see it, for sure. Absolutely. Jimmy Page is one of the most creative people with that in the history of rock music. There’s no debating that. That’ s not even a debatable issue.
And Hendrix?
Hendrix was just an unbelievable guitar player, but also being a black guy playing rock music in front of all these white people. I forget what the guy’s name is, but he’s a music critic. I was reading this book and he was like a reviewer. He totally said a bunch of racist shit about Jimi Hendrix and cut him down and was saying that he was doing this whole thing to try and oppress white people. I read this and I was just completely…music critics are the fucking worst. What impresses me so much about Jimi Hendrix is his irreverence and just the way that he played, like every day was going to be the last day of his life. He definitely went out with a bang. And he had a very short career, too, and changed music that much within the course of his short-lived career. He’s probably way more influential now than he ever was.
It’s kind of unfortunate that things are never fully appreciated until they’re gone. That’s just the way it is. Like I remember being a younger person, and I loved Nirvana growing up. I remember when Kurt died and it was like all of a sudden they became such a more important band than the day before Kurt had died. I had always loved their music, but then for me, it was so morbid. It was like, 'Wow, I’m never gonna get to hear this guy write another song.’ It changed the way that I looked at Nirvana completely, and I think it did for everyone else, too.
It kind of bothers me that after only a few records people compare him to John Lennon.
But it’s a generational thing. If you discovered John Lennon at a period of your life. Say you’re a 14-year-old kid and you discovered John Lennon’s music and you identify with it and it speaks to your soul. Twenty years later or however long later, a 14-year-old kid has that same experience with a Nirvana record. That voice, those lyrics, they speak to some kid. He is that kid’s John Lennon. To him, he is John Lennon. It’s just time and place. Obviously they’re both amazing songwriters But yeah, John Lennon made many more records. I wasn’t around during that time, but people were probably very dismissive of The Beatles at first as just being a teen sensation. The same with The Beach Boys, too.
I think that Brian Wilson is probably the 2nd greatest writer to have ever lived.
They’re just beautiful works of art, the way that they stacked all those vocals on top of each other and the way that the drums were played and the bass and the keyboards and the way it all fits together. It’s genius. It’s genius shit.
What about a song like 'Pendulous Threads’? That solo is pretty furious.
That guitar solo was improvised on the spot; I just played. That was just what I played and I got used to hearing it and I loved it. I think I had the intention of maybe trying to come up with something different during that solo. Then I just kind of liked what was there, and that was it.
How did you create that?
I was playing a Jazzmaster. I have a Marshall Plexi guitar head and a vintage 4x12 cabinet. That was what I was using during that song. There was a lot of reverb on that. I also have this pedal called a Reel Echo. It’s a Danelectro (DRE-1) pedal and it’s a delay. It’s like a tape simulator delay that you can change the rate of the delay without changing the pitch. A couple times I had it set really fast, like really, really fast. And I kicked it on a couple times, so it sounds like this weird feedback. But it’s really just like a really fast delay kind of mixed with this reverb, and was probably kind of feeding back through my amp, too.
Is Light Grenades, in its final form, the album you had originally envisioned?
Pretty much. There are always going to be little things that you’re like, 'Ah, I wish I would have done this differently’ or 'I could have made this better.’ But for the most part, yeah, it was a picture of us during this period of time and that’s just what it is.
And how do those songs translate live?
I think they’re better live. I think we’ve always been better live than we’ve been on recording. I’ve always felt that way. I love making records. It’s really fun and really creative, but I think that the best way for anybody to ever hear our music is to watch us play it. I think that’s the only true way of seeing what we’re doing and the people that are making it. That’s a different experience.
Mike Einziger’s Gear Box
Mike Einziger is not exactly a gear hound. He typically opts for one guitar to shoulder the majority of the work and on Light Grenades, he again followed this minimalist path. The main instrument was a Fender Jazzmaster Reissue sporting a Custom Shop neck and Seymour Duncan JM-2 pickups. A normal Jazzmaster neck runs a 7 ¼” radius, very round and meant primarily for rhythm playing. Because Einziger was shifting between rhythm and lead, the neck was replaced with a 12” radius. This one is much flatter and is similar to a new Stratocaster in feel. One of the few original parts were the Kluson tuners. According to guitar tech Larry Melero, these bastardized amalgams have “No year to them.” Einziger does use a 1962 Jazzmaster (original) as well.
The guitarist switched to the Fender in 2003 near the end of the Morning View tour. He had been using a Paul Reed Smith plugged into a Mesa Boogie.
“He was like, 'God, there’s got to be something else. We chased down Vox guitars and Fenders, stuff with single coils and Les Pauls. He tried a Strat but the Jazzmaster fit his body more. It doesn’t weigh as much as a Les Paul and he liked it because it was different.”
Other guitars include a variety of Fenders (Stratocasters and Telecasters that were mainly brought into the studio by producer Brendan O’Brien) as well as an early 1970s Precision bass and vintage same era electric 12-string. There are Gibson Les Pauls (all circa 1970s), and a 335 (also O’Brien’s).
Acoustically, Mike picks on Guild D40 Jubilees fitted with Duncan D-TAR pickups.
Live, Einziger runs through a modified VOX AC30 Reissue top. Guitar tech Melero eliminated the tube rectifier and re-wired the tube socket to accommodate a solid-state rectifier. This bit of sonic surgery results in “The power tube section running a big hotter. The amp responds to Mike’s pick attack better.” Â
Additionally, there is a Marshall 1959 SLP 100-watt Plexi Reissue that has also undergone the knife. The preamp stage was reconfigured to extract additional gain and a master volume knob was installed. The knob is situated where the second speaker jack normally goes into the rear of the amplifier. The head powers a Marshall 4x12 slant cabinet outfitted with Celestion vintage 30s on top and Celestion 75s on the bottom.Â
A Top Hat amplifier was also used for the Light Grenades sessions.
Effects-wise, the live arsenal’s signal chain runs as follows: Electro Harmonix Memory Man; Danelectro DRE-1Reel Echo; Jim Dunlop 95 wah; Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere; a pair of Boss PH-2 Super Phases(the first one is set to Mode 1 and the second one set to Mode 2); DOD FX13 Gonkulator Modulator; Boss RV-3Digital Reverb/Delay; EVH MXR M101Phase 90; DOD VFX 25B Envelope Filter; Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer; Boss OC - 2 Octaver; Digitech Multi-Chorus; and a Boss Tu-2 tuner;
The live rig utilizes a Whirlwind A/B switcher (clean/dirty)and two Voodoo Lab power supplies. Melero has custom-designed power supplies for the Rotosphere and Memory Man. An EBTech Hum Eliminator fits in-between the A/B switcher and the amps to get rid of ground loops. A Japanese-built Boss DS-1, Digitech Bad Monkey, or a Digitech Tone Driver is inserted before the Plexi for a “little extra kick. We pick one of them depending on the mood of that day,” explains the tech. And a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor is occasionally placed in front of the Marshall if they need to “quiet it down.”
Surprisingly, the guitarist does not run a wireless. The system is completely cabled with Mogami 2425 instrument cables fitted with Switchcraft jacks (again, Melero handcrafts every piece).
Picks and strings are Dunlop green jazz Tortex and Ernie Ball RPS .011 - .048 sets respectively.
“I’ve been with Mike for seven years and he definitely knows what he wants,” says Larry Melero. “I try and give him a big, full, buttery rock and roll tone. It should sustain and be warm but not big and bassy. It shouldn’t be grating.”
2007 © Steven Rosen
