GoW-Article 7

GoW-Article 7 Third Eye Blind's Kevin Cadogan, BAM magazine, 4/18/97

Thanks to Dana at Swimming Into View: the Unoffical Arion Salazar Page for finding this for us! From Music Universe.

by David John Farinella
(First appeared in BAM magazine, 4/18/97)

If you've heard Third Eye Blind's hit "Semi-Charmed Life" on the radio or picked up the band's debut album, you'll be a touch surprised to hear that guitarist Kevin Cadogan composed the songs on an acoustic guitar. "The big distortion sounds that are key in my playing I try to keep secondary to the music," he says. "I think the songs should be able to translate over in their barest form." There it is: Kevin Cadogan's musical golden rule.

Yes, this is the same Kevin Cadogan who got his start playing in the hardcore punk band Cult of Bigness when he was 14 years old. When that gig ended he moved into a ska-punk band, a moody-pop band and finally into Third Eye Blind.

The Irish-born Cadogan credits U2's the Edge and Tim St. Clair of Los Angeles' Choir Invisible as his early influences, but, he actually took lessons from guitar whiz Joe Satriani for about six months. "When he tried to teach me solos, I had to quit," Cadogan admits with a laugh.

When Cadogan was coming of age guitar-wise in the mid-'80s, he was playing with the standard cadre of digital pedals. "A lot of my playing at that time had the little triplets stuff, the rhythm thing with the delay," he explains. "I liked to do volume swells and create those lush sort of sounds. That was a big part of my playing, but I was a real rhythm player. It was more groove-oriented playing." He played with a delay, a flanger and the amp's natural distortion back then, although he's trying to steer away from that these days. "Even though the effects add to the music, I want them to remain secondary. I don't want to completely rely on them, or have effect-oriented guitar sounds."

So, in order to get a different tone without the aid of an effect pedal, Cadogan started experimenting with alternate tunings. "I got sick of hearing the same chords over and over again. If I had an idea in my head, sometimes the chord wouldn't work or it wouldn't ring right in standard tuning. So I started tuning down a bit, one string from B down to A or the E to an F sharp." He points to the new album's opening track, "Losing A Whole Year," as an example: "That's probably the strangest tuning, because it doesn't sound good when it's strummed openly."

And, while he's found the sounds he likes, there are still some issues to be solved. "It's kind of a pain in the ass live," he says, "because I have, like, five different tunings and I have to switch guitars. So, I have guys throwing guitars at me all the time." In the studio and with partner Stephen Jenkins, though, it's just plain fun. "It's like solving a puzzle," he says. "It's fun to turn things upside down and to challenge yourself. Just take the bloody tuners and turn 'em and twist 'em and see what you come up with. When things aren't happening and you're not creating anything, that's one way to shake it up and try something different. Maybe something will come out of it." Yeah, like a debut album.

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