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ELEPHANT GUN
An Interview with guitarist Michael Barrett
by Joe Matera
After moving to Melbourne, Australia from Adelaide in 1994, Elephant Gun's Michael Barrett (guitars), Sean Dennis (Bass) and Simon Murphy (Drums) were
introduced to Todd Angus (Vocals) and quickly started music writing together. They played their first gig in the middle of 1997 and at their third show was Roadrunner Records Jon Satterley, who was so impressed by
the band, ask to hear some demos which he loved and at Christmas, '97 the band signed on the dotted line. I recently spoke to the band's guitarist Michael Barrett about the band and their debut album,
"Albino".
MAXIMUM INK: What are the band's influences?
MICHAEL BARRETT: The four of us all come from the same musical background. Anything from the hard rock of the '70's and '80's.....the whole grunge
thing....any guitar rock stuff. I think influences are a funny thing, you digest all this music over the years and it comes out in funny ways. You've got to mention Jimi Hendrix, because in our minds, he prety much
started the whole thing.
MI: How did the songs come to be written?
MB: We did alot of the "Albino" writing over a week period. We stayed at Sean's place for a week and just went hard at it for the first few
days and most of the songs fell together then, in their rough form. Generally, the lyrics were the last thing that fell into place. That didn't happen all the time, though. An example is the track
"Battery", which was the freshest song that went on the album. It was about 5 weeks old and we threw it in. It was a typical thing where I had a few chord ideas, a progression, and Sean just whacked a bass
on it and Todd hit the vocal and there it was, a 3 and 1/2 minute rock/pop song!
MI: What was the recording process like?
MB: Absolutely hectic! We only had 10 days at Sing Sing Studio's, Melbourne, and we were working with producer Kalju Tonuma (The Mavis's, 28 Days,
Screaming Jets). We went in and did a week of pre-production with him. We went through all our ideas and sorted out what was going to make it and what wasn't. We went through a lot of production ideas such as how we
would approach a song. We broke a few of them down to the acoustic kind of thing. Just really working out what we wanted it to sound like.
MI: Did you use any gear like Pro Tools?
MB: No. We did sample some of our own stuff, just for the effect. The way Kalju works is you record and mix all at the same time, so we were working at
better than a song a day. the song was basically finished, completed in about 10 hours. So it was just madness. To do that we had to play all of it live. We start out with just the music...some of the vocals are
flat out live with the music. "Battery" was one of those songs where the drums, bass, guitar and vocals were all live. Then we'd mixed it as it was with very little post production.
MI: The production on the album is superb!
MB: Kalju is just a wizard on the desk. When I say 10 days I mean everything from start to finish. That's recorded, mixed, completed. Our last day ran
from 10am to 5am the following morning! We wanted to put out an album that matched up to what the other bands are producing in the time that they have with major labels, where they can have 6-8 weeks or more. We
thought we don't want to compromise that so we put our heads down and went for it.
MI: What made you pick up the guitar?
MB: As a kid we had a piano at home. My parents knew that had a bit of musical blood flowing through their veins so got my brother and myself into music.
I learned the piano from about age 8 until I was 16. I got through to the sixth grade exam. When I was 13 I bought a dodgy $80 Strat copy and a little 15Watt amp, and what I'll do was while I was doing all the
classical stuff on the piano I would get off that and go and relieve all this stress on the guitar and not even think about reading music or worrying about any of that kind of thing on the guitar as I was doing it
all on the piano. The guitar was my stress relief!
MI: Let's talk gear. What is your set-up both live and in the studio?
MB: I have the same set-up both live and in the studio. As far as amps goes I have a Mesa Boogie Calibre 50 head with a Peavey quad and I've got a Vox
AC30 and what I do is run my Les Paul straight into a Phaser that goes into a stereo split through my Delay Pedal. I run the two lines to each amp in a stereo set-up and the phaser travels between the two amps. It's
a pretty crazy sound when you get it all going. Then, of course, the distortion's on each amp, just the basic Boogie pedal and Vox distortion pedal, so then I've got 4 options. I can have both amps clean and then
have either amp distorted or both. I just put the pedals right next to each other so I can kick both on at the same time.
MI: What does Todd use?
MB: He uses a Telecaster and a Marshall combo. He keeps it pretty similiar. He has a Cry Baby Wah Wah and the Marshall footswitch. He has also another
distortion pedal there to kick in every now and then.
MI: What can fans expect at an Elephant Gun show?
MB: Because the album is really live in it's essence, there are some overdubs here and there depending on the song, but most of the album's songs
are straight out...no overdubs, no nothing and that works well for us because we can get up on stage and pretty much resemble what we recorded. So what you'll get at an Elephant Gun show is a big powerful sound and
you'll hear the songs as they are on the disc.
"Albino" out now on Roadrunner Records
www.metalshop.com.au
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