Free Spirit
Shortly after the release of Californication, you mentionned in an interview that your newt solo album would be the soundtrack for Vincent Gallo's next film.
Right. Well, he has a movie that he plans on making that I'll do the music for, but there are certain things that are stopping him from getting started on it right now; he can't find the perfect people to play the parts, so it's all sort of on hols. But while we were writing songs for Californication, a lot of the oteher songs I was writing, in the back of my head I was imagining them being in his movie, because that was what I was thinking at that time.
A couple of years ago - before To Record Only Water for Ten Days - I made two CDs worth of stuff. Only my close friends have those two CDs. A lot of the stuff on the first CD may very well be in a Vincent Gallo movie, and some of it is gonna be on the single for "Going Inside," where I'm putting four extra songs. A couple of the songs on this alubm was recorded between November 1999 and last April.
Unlike what the album's title suggests, you didn't record the album in 10 days.
[Laughs.] No. Each song probably took anywhere from one day to three days to record. When I had drums to program, the whole day would be programming drums. Then the next day I'd add some music to it.
Neither of your first two solo records even have drums. What prompted you to experiment with drum programming this time?
Because I find that when I write a song, although I'm not consciously thinking of a drum part, I hear very definite drum part in my head. And I had never heard a drummer play on my songs where I liked the way it sounded - they never were hearing the rhythms at the right place. I was hearing so many rhytms in my head that anyone who didn't write the song couldn't possibly have heard it. Something like "Invisible Movement" has three drum feels going on at once: half time, double time, and triple time. That was just the obvious guitar part, which are just four notes [plays "Invisible Movement" guitar riff]. Those four notes were more meaningful to me than they may have been if I was to play them to an actual drummer. So I found that by promming the drums, it was sort of freeing.
What did you look to for inspiration when you wrote this record?
For this album, I was getting a lot of inspiration from different kinds of electronic music - especially from the '70s and '80s. Pretty much the whole time wew ere writing and touring for Californication I was doing research on electronic music. Joy Division and Depeche Mode are probably the two biggest inspirations for the music on this record, because for the last three years, they're the only two acts I've been excited about. I go through phases and this and that, but those two, for whatever reason, have remained absolutely constant.
Your first two solo albums were recorded on a 4-track. On what was this album recorded?
It was all recorded on a digital 8-track machine - a Yamaha MD8. Then I had somebody dump it onto 2" tape so everything could be separately EQ'd at length, and separate types of compression couls be given to each separate thing. I don't have any understanding of the science of how to "separate" thigs with the equalization, and most of these songs have a lot of different types of sounds going on; it's important for you to be able to hear each thing. On a lot of my mixes, you couldn't really hear the acoustic guitar because I would sort of favor the drum machine or the synthesizers or something; I'd kind of bury my voice and my guitar a lot, which actually should probably be the main things. So the guy who mixed it made those the main things.
I understand that the Martin acoustic you're holding is what you used for the acoustic parts on this record.
Yeah. It's from the 1930s. I borrowed it from Anthony. Rick Rubin gave it to Anthony, and Anthony let me borrow it whan we started writing Californication. I really fell in love with it; I've written so many songs on it. I just bought another one that I'm having some sort of system put in it so I can play acoustic shows - it's this "state-of-the-art" pickup system that there is now for acoustics. It's a microphone; it's not really a pickup.
Since you were using a digital 8-track, were you recording a lot of your electric guitars direct, without an amp?
Yeah. I didn't use an amp for anything.
What are some of the electric instruments you used?
The electric guitars are just whatever was lying around my house; I really wasn't picky about it. I have a lot of guitars, but most of them are kept with the stuff that we have on tour - like mu Strats and my [Gretsch] White Falcon. All that stuff is left in storage between tours. I had this Gibson SG from 1961 that I used on some of the leads; it was just was lying around my house. I didn't ake that on tour. In addition to the SG, the main electric guitar that I used was a red 1966 Fender Mustang that I bought for practicing. Ther's also a Gibson L-5 at my house that I might have used for something, but I can't remember. For a while there was always a [Fender] Jaguar at my house; I probably used a Jaguar on a thing or two. The song "Ramparts" seems like it might've been a Strat.
