Citation:
DRG: Going back to your solo album, I love the version of Somewhere. There’s some pretty cool volume swells. How do you do these?
Leese: Thank you. It’s just with the Sho-bud Pedal steel from the 60s and the volume. It’s all harmonics. I was going for the Jeff Beck tone of Where Were You, where he plays the melody with harmonics. I love the music from West Side Story. I recently acquired the 1939 Gibson L5 that belonged to Al Viola, Sinatra’s guitar player. The guitar that’s on My Way, but also on a hundred movies, one being West Side Story. I’m gonna do Maria on the next record with that guitar. In Somewhere I tuned up half a step and played it like the original key and did in harmonics.
DRG: What guitars did you use when recording?
Leese: When I recorded Secret Weapon I mostly used my Paul Reed Smith Golden Eagle, which is on the cover of the European version of the album. It’s actually built from the wood of a maple cupboard Paul’s bass player owned. There’s actually a plug in the top of the guitar from the hole in the drawer where the knob used to be. I also used some of my HML signature models, a 57 Les Paul Gold Top with Bigsby, a 58 Les Paul Burst, a 61 blond Strat with gold parts and a Sho-bud pedal steel.
DRG: What amp did you use? Any digital stuff or real amps?
Leese: I used my old Marshalls, my faithful Soldano No 2, the second amp Mike Soldano built and which was my main amp with Heart during the eighties. I also have a couple of Fender Tweeds, nothing extravagant, just old-school. It’s 90% is mic’ed up. On a couple of tracks I would do a rough track, a guide track with my Pod rack unit and a couple of them came out really good and they were fine so I didn’t re-do them. I wanted to be honest. I don’t punch in. I don’t like the new digital stuff where you can assemble a performance like the best sections of several takes. I like to record an actual performance. So, no punching in, no editing, no looping and no quantizing. All solos are one take. That’s how I challenge myself to improve. If I can’t play it all through I start over until I do. Then when I do a solo I can be proud and say that’s how I sounded that day. I feel like a painter. If I’m in the right frame of mind I go to the studio and work, then some days I have it, I’ve got it going on, I cut solos and I can really really play. Other days you just don’t feel it, and I stop and try the next day. That’s the advantage of having your own studio. I try to please myself and hopefully others will like it too. The singers had to come up to Ann Wilson standard. You go into the studio, you sing it three times all the way through and then you leave. We pick the best one. I tell them to sing it normally the first time, add 10 % more gas the second time and go nuts on the third and that’s always the one I tend to use. I want people to feel something. I’m not trying to make it perfect, I’m trying to make it real.
