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It didn't take long to notice the odd band out on the Ladies Night In
Cambodia tour, where Clutch emerged a mutant metal-spawn
grinding gargantuan riffs between Sevendust's high energy attack
and Limp Bizkit's metallic hip hop hybrid. A daunting task for the
West Virginia quartet? Hardly, with a resume' boasting
genre-twisting tours including the likes of Marilyn Manson, Bad
Religion and Prong, and recently released third album, The
Elephant Riders, which continues frontman Neil Fallon, guitarist Tim
Sult, drummer Jean-Paul Gaster and bassist Dan Maines'
uncompromising tradition of thick, syrupy grooves and hearty,
robust arrangements. Catching up with the band before a stop on
the Cambodia trek, a month before the April 14 release of their
album and two months before they would play a string of dates with
Slayer prior to headlining clubs on their own, Neil Fallon and
Jean-Paul Gaster discussed the past, present and future that
helped create The Elephant Riders.
P: You're on Columbia Records now. Does it feel like you're
getting a new start?
JP: It's gotten to the point now where we've been on so many labels
it's just another label and it doesn't really mean anything. You can't
really judge a career by labels. We're not dependent on what they
do, they're dependent on us. Obviously, they're the ones with the
cash, but we're the ones with the jams.
P: So, you're not about to accuse any label of not promoting
the band adequately?
JP: I mean, that's obviously the case, but these aren't things that we
sit around and let effect the music. It's music first. We would be
making these same songs with the same band if we were on
whatever label. It doesn't matter.
P: Nothing has changed as far as your outlook goes?
N: I think we're more optimistic because we're not being
suppressed. That's basically what was going on with Atlantic, and
East West was even worse. Columbia seems excited, which
makes us feel good.
P: Given the state of today's market, do you think this album
Is capable of reaching a broader audience?
JP: It's hard to say. I think we've gotten to the point where the
quality of the music on the radio's gotten so poor, we're going for
the lowest common denominator. It's worse that its ever, ever been.
I suppose it could pop. Maybe something will happen with it, I think
people are definitely ready fur something new. They're talking about
how record sales across the board are down, but look what they've
got to choose from!
N: I think if it blows up, it's going to blow up huge. I think every once
in a while there's a watershed album like when Nirvana came out.
That's what people wanted to hear all of a sudden, so it blew up.
The best possible situation is that we could be that, but most likely
not. But I definitely think it will do a lot better than the last one, given
the promotion and what not.
P: Did you approach anything differently with this album?
Do you think a Clutch fan from day one will turn it around
and say that Clutch has changed?
JP: I hope so. I certainly don't ever want to make the same record
twice. But then again, it's the four of us, so how different is the
approach going to be? It's no about reinventing yourself. It's more
about just growing and becoming better at what you do, trying to
learn something every day.
P: How do you think you've evolved with Elephant Riders?
JP: I think on this album we've definitely changed our approach to
arrangements. I think the arrangements are more mature than the
last ones were. I think the ideas have just gone to the next level that
we could bring them.
N: They're a little more technical now. We're more like your favorite
technical metal band. [laughs]
P: Do you have a problem with being of considered a metal
band?
N: I think that's a word people don't use for many things these days.
It's fine by us.
JP: It has other connotations. Some people think metal, they think
Poison. Other people think Black Sabbath. Other people think
Deicide. So I guess it's like Clutch metal. Rock ‘N' Roll is the best
word, but heavy metal is probably the more specific genre. I guess
when you write about music, you've got to use words. Sometimes
that means different things to different people.
P: Clutch is notorious for touring with diverse
acts--whether it be this tour, or past bills with Manson,
Pantera, Bad Religion.... What would your ideal tour be?
JP: I'd like to put together a package where a lot of people come.
We like to play for different audiences. This one isn't all together
different, but I think it's a younger crowd.
N: This is more of a hip hop oriented audience than we're used to.
We toured with Pantera, those crowds have some things in
common with us, but not a lot. So down the line, when we do a
headlining tour, we get people from both those crowds, and that's
good because it kind of confuses people. They realize, "Shit, I have
to just look at the band and not fool around."
JP: The point is, your playing for new people.
P: How would you define your audiences?
JP: If you want to talk about genres, we've got hardcore kids, punk
rock kids, you've got speedcore kids, you've got thrash kids...
N: ...Metal adults, we've got hip hop kids... 1 guess there's
something in the music that they dig because we're not focusing on,
"Well, we've got to make this the fastest album ever." We just want
to write a song that's, by itself, a good song. If a person can hear
that, then there's bound to be something that they like, which is a
good thing. I take pride in that. That makes me proud.
P: Do you have different individual tastes and influences
that reflect Clutch's sound?
JP: All of us have very extensive record collections that sort
encompass everything. All of us own some jazz records, blues
records, metal records, hip hop records, some country records,
blues records... Everybody tries to draw a in a little bit of everything.
Every guys taste is individual, though it's not like we sit around and
only listen to... Who do we only listen? (laughing) It's not like we sit
around and listen to only Machine Head, Black Sabbath, the
Cro-Mags...
N: Which we do, but we have our own tastes. So when we write a
song, maybe that kind of explains why different people can hear
different things. Its not like in the Village People, where one of us is
the metal head, one of us is the country music guy...
P: So when you sit down to write a song, you write with the
band in mind, not the audience.
N: Right. Each song in itself. We try to make each one like a little
book.
P: There do seem to be themes that run through each of the
albums.
N: I think it's a mood thing. When we're writing an album there are
certain things that we take an interest in because it's written in such
a short period of time it's like a snapshot. Like the last one. At the
time I was reading a bunch of stuff on UFOs, looking out the
window waiting to see UFOs. So that ended up in the album. This
last one, that wasn't the case, I was reading more about historical
things and they just crept in. The next one I don't know. Maybe I'll be
into, I don't know, scuba diving. It'll be an underwater album.
P: Do you write all the lyrics yourself?
N: Pretty much.
P: Does everybody write their own parts?
JP: Everybody does their own thing. Like the song starts with a
drum or it starts with just one riff, then maybe we'll be like, "Alright
this is cool." Or maybe Tim's got a riff that fits with it, too. it's very
much a democracy.
P: Do you write on guitar?
JP: No. But I'll think of a riff in my head and I'll sing it to Tim and I'll
say, "Play this riff for me."
N: That's what keeps it interesting, I can't see if I were the dictator
and said, "You've got to play this bass line and this beat." Then it
wouldn't be a very interesting song, but Jean-Paul's going to do a
beat that I don't expect, and that's just going to make me think about
the song all the more. It makes it more interesting. I think that goes
for everybody. Tim's not going to play the guitar in a way that I
would expect so it makes it an interesting song.
P: Do you ever feel that if you did any thing a little
differently. and compromised your sound, you might have a
hit single?
JP: This record was actually recorded twice. It was recorded first in
W. Virginia when we were on Atlantic Records, and then it was
rejected and we came to New York City to work with a producer. So
we thought to ourselves, "Obviously we're never going to sound like
Counting
Crows," but we thought maybe we could do something with the
arrangement to make it a little more acceptable to, say, a radio
program. We found that really and truly, we were completely
incapable of writing it. We actually tried. I suppose that if we really
wanted to sit down, we
could sit down and write a Seven Mary Three song...
N: ...But we'd become so disgusted with ourselves after the fact
that it would just do more harm than good. I think if the planets are
looking kindly on us, and that's what people like anyway, that's a
great. But you can't be a follower. I, You've got to lead.
P: What was the mood like when you recorded Elephant
Riders?
N: I think you can attribute a lot of it to the fact that we moved into a
house, and wrote a good portion of that music in the house. It was
a very rural atmosphere, a lot like camping. It was a very run down
house. I don't know if there's an actual attribute to that that's in the
album but it
was a good way to be inspired, better than sitting in a studio.
Studios are not very inspiring. It was In W. Virginia, in a very old
home, stone walls and hard wood floors, a great sounding place.
We didn't have a mission statement, or anything like that, It was just
a rustic atmosphere.
P: Where did the title Elephant Riders come from?
N: That was just a flight of fancy. Fantasy metal about the civil war.
There was a b-side for this album that's about Dungeons &
Dragons. It's not about fantasy metal--It's more about that cult time
period where stuff like D&D was king. Yeah, I kind of dig that. I think
that's more entertaining than listening to someone whine about their
childhood trauma.
P: What was "The Elephant Riders"?
N: It was just an idea I came up with. It was sort of an ultimate civil
war scenario where elephants were being used as part of the
cavalry and there were different technological developments, like
zeppelins, that came out before they actually did, so I guess it's sort
of historical fiction, but that makes it sounds a lot more heavy than
it actually is. Its almost like a role playing game. We named the
album Elephant Riders, but the album itself isn't a concept. Its just a
song.
P: Were you trying to pick up a sound on this album that you
haven't done before?
JP: Very rarely do we ever sit down and say, "Lets try to make the
next Clutch song sound like this." It happens unconsciously. I listen
to parts and I try to make them flow and stick together. Wherever
we are at that point, we end up. We just sort of let things lie where
they are. Whatever you end up with is what you get.
P: Do you think there's a lot of room out there for bands that
don't follow the trends?
N: What happens is, sometimes record executives dig themselves
a hole. There'll be a whole batch of the whole alternative thing that
goes on right now. And they figured out what kind of bands that
people will buy so they keep signing them and putting them out.
Some people are going to lose interest and all these record
executives are going to get fired and then another record executive
will figure out, "Well, now people want to hear electronic music."
They call it electronica and try to do that for a couple years. First it
was industrial, then they can change the name to techno,
electronica, putting 'a's on the ends of words just to make them
sound more intelligent... Heavy Metala, it's just unreal.
JP: I think the smartest people out there today are the people that
buy records. The actual consumers. The people who sit on the top
of record labels are actually the most ignorant when it comes to
music. Those are the people who are constantly shooting for this
lowest common denominator I was talking about. That's stupid. The
people are very intelligent and they'll buy intelligent, smart music. All
you have to do is put it out there and let them know it's available to
them. It sucks that most people, when they hear a new record, hear
it on the radio. There's not very many people that go out to the
record stores and search for good albums. There's nothing wrong
with doing that.
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