De roadie pour Yes (si si) à défricheur guitaristique de talent au sein de PIL (en passant par la formation de Clash), tu parles d'une trajectoire originale. Vais aller me réécouter la Metal Box pour le coup tiens
You had a lot of unusual guitars—Travis Bean, metal-neck guitars—how did you come upon those?
Levene: I originally had a Les Paul Deluxe. Then I had this Mosrite, which I wish I kept. Then I had a Les Paul Special, which was doing fine for me. Then when I got signed, I got a few really good guitars. One was called a Veleno and it was an all-aluminum guitar—that was the original metal guitar. It looks like an aluminum Telecaster. I had a couple of those and then, because I could, instead of getting another Gibson or this or that, I got this new thing: a Travis Bean Artist. They were really fucking individual. It was an amazing guitar.
One day I was on Denmark Street buying some strings, and I asked, “What’s in that flight case?”—because it looked like a coffin. I thought it was going to be one of those godforsaken Flying Vs. I can’t stand Flying Vs. And I opened it and it was a fucking Travis Bean Delta. This spaceship triangular thing with a metal neck just like my other one. I asked, “Is that for sale?” And they said, “Yeah.” And I said, “I want that and I want that amp to match it.” There was a metal amp that was a flight case all in one. It was a cube. I never used big stacks. I never needed to. I didn’t like them and it was a statement, I guess. Travis Beans were definitely playing into the sound I wanted: that glass-shattering-loads-of-notes-equals-one note. I don’t do conventional lead solos, but I do use really high notes and a lot of them that can be very fast and that can be a repeated pattern. Aside from that, I used a Fender Twin Reverb silverface with a master volume.
Did you use pedals?
Levene: I don’t like effects. When I record, I count using effects as production. I like the sound the guitar gets through an amp with nothing in between.
Your distortion was always from your amp?
Levene: Yeah. A lot of the time it was the Twin Reverb silverface, but no reverb. I hate reverb. I had the guitar plugged straight in, but if it’s the lead bit of the “Public Image” tune or “Poptones,” I had a thing called an Electric Mistress on the side for that. I’d have a direct and I’d have the [Electro-Harmonix] Electric Mistress. I was quite pedantic about it. But then I stopped using that and, invariably, if I plug in onstage, I plug it straight into the amp because live’s live.
When I see bands now—punk bands, bands that are trying to be serious—the amount of equipment they have on these fucking pedalboards and all this stuff. I get it. But I say keep it in the bedroom, keep it in the studio, and do the best aggregate of it. I normally do it all as I record. I call it sound-at-source. If I’ve got an acoustic sound and maybe it’s got a delay on it and what-have-you, that’s the sound it’s making and that’s the sound I’m going to record. I’m not the kind of person that starts going, “Doo doo doo doo doo,” while this fucking loop goes around. I don’t do any of that bullocks.
In rod we truss.
"Quelle opulence" - themidnighter
"It's sink or swim - shut up!"
