...of Old-School Rock 'n' Roll Glory!
(AP Photo/ Roadrunner Records)
Recently, KISS main mouth Gene Simmons made waves when he declared to Esquire that rock 'n' roll is officially dead. But World on Fire, the latest album by rock veteran Slash, proves that rock didn't die; it just needed a good kick in the rear.
"I don't like to be critical in a negative way of what other people are doing," Slash tells Yahoo Music the day before a gig in Atlantic City. "I just recognize certain things that turn me on about rock 'n' roll. There's a certain thread that's consistent throughout my favorite bands, and that has become extremely diluted. But I don't pay much attention to other bands. I just like to make music that has a lot of groove and soul and that's loud. We blew a lot of speakers making this record."
That's not surprising. World on Fire is immediate, brash, and bluesy, an extension of the kind of blazing anthems and heartstring-tugging ballads from Slash's second solo album, 2012's Apocalyptic Love. The songs are stealthy, slinky, and spirited, yet filled with melodic bridges and choruses as infectious as Taylor Swift's.
"I don't think there was any conscious effort to do anything different than what we did on Apocalyptic Love," Slash says. "The record really is the natural evolution of this group and also working with a producer [Michael "Elvis" Baskette] who had the desire, passion, and chops to make it sound like we wanted it to sound and how he wanted it to sound. We were exactly on the same page. So I think the sound of this album comes from a combination of things. We have a band that has a real natural chemistry that we developed further because of all the touring we did between the last album and this one. And we found someone who was super-conscious about capturing that energy in the studio the right way."
Quick to downplay his own contributions, Slash credits bassist Todd Kerns and drummer Brent Fitz (who also performed on Apocalyptic Love) for providing the propulsive groove and sexual energy that drive many of the tunes.
"Finding Brent and Todd was a gift from on high," insists Slash. "I asked them to play not knowing them and having never worked with them before. Someone recommended Brent to me and he mentioned Todd so I was like, 'OK, let's try it out.' I really didn't see it coming but we got together and played and I immediately felt, 'F---, these guys are amazing!' They have this innate rock 'n' roll genuineness and ability."
The other key element of Slash's solo band — aside from the guitarist himself — is vocalist Myles Kennedy, who doubles in Alter Bridge. Ever since Slash's fans first heard Kennedy playing with Slash on two tracks from his 2010 self-titled solo album and on subsequent live tours, the guitarist has been bombarded with questions about whether Kennedy will ever fill the vacant vocal slot in Slash's other band, Velvet Revolver, which Scott Weiland (ex-Stone Temple Pilots) was evicted from in 2008. What some people don't know is that Kennedy was already tested for the gig.
"The first time I ever heard about Myles was when we were auditioning singers for Velvet Revolver before Scott came into the band," Slash reveals. "[Drummer] Matt [Sorum] was familiar with him and we contacted Myles to see if he was into it. We sent him some instrumental demos and he never sent the demos back with vocals on them. He later told me he didn't feel that he was in the right place at that time to take on the size of that project, so nothing ever came of it. And then when we talked to him post-Scott, he was knee-deep in Alter Bridge and didn't want to interrupt that."
Slash wrote much of the material for Word on Fire over the last year while touring for Apocalyptic Love. He carries a guitar around with him everywhere he goes and routinely comes up with parts on the bus or in the hotel. He says he records 90 percent of his riffs into his voicemail and returns later to listen to them.
"When you have a stockpile of riffs like that, there's no pressure to sit there and write a record on the spot," he says. "A lot of times I'll come up with an idea and go up and play it with the guys at soundcheck. Some of those ideas get ingrained in your mind. But there's some other ones you might have recorded on your voicemail in passing that all of a sudden present themselves when you listen back at the end of the tour, and those sparks of inspiration give you a whole variety of stuff to flesh out."
When the band finished pre-production, Slash planned to enter the studio with producer Eric Valentine, who worked with Slash on Apocalyptic Love. But Valentine wasn't available, so the band had to find someone else. The only problem was he couldn't think of someone who had the same creative spontaneity and boundless energy to capture the new set of songs the way they needed to be recorded. Then in September 2013, Slash was listening to the radio and heard one of the Alter Bridge tracks Baskette produced.
"I remember thinking how awesome the bass and drums sounded on that and how it had the kind of sonic quality I wanted to attach to what we were doing," Slash says. "So I talked to Myles about it and he said, 'Well, I've been working with Elvis for all the Alter Bridge records, but I don't want to have any influence on this decision. You have to call him yourself.'"
Inspired, Slash scheduled an appointment with Baskette and the two talked about guitar sounds, amplification techniques, and most important, analog recordings. Unlike many rock bands that record directly into soundboards, use amp simulators, and efficiently edit the results with computer software, Slash wanted to work with someone who would directly mic the amplifiers and record on to reel-to-reel tape.
"As it turned out, Elvis was a tape engineer for the whole beginning of his career, and he switched to digital because of the demands of the new groups that are around at this point," Slash says. "So he was jumping at the chance to be able to record old-school. It turned out to be a really great creative marriage."
Considering the now-archaic recording method Slash wanted to use, it's amazing that Baskette and the band were able to record the 17 songs on World of Fire so quickly. They entered NRG studio in Los Angeles to work on the basic tracks in April 2013, and were done by May. The most difficult part of the process for Slash was deciding on the right running order.
"Getting the tracklist together took me two and a half weeks," Slash says. "For me, that's such an essential part of listening to a record. Regardless of the era we're in where a lot of people listen to stuff online and don't listen to a record as a body of work, I still listen to stuff in an old-school way, which is one end of the record to the other. And that, to me, is still important and challenging. Everything else was fun and easy."
Source: music.yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment