Last year, Jerry Cantrell flexed his riff-writing chops once again with his latest solo album, I Want Blood – and, for two of those tracks, it turns out he was inspired by Jeff Beck to use an oddball piece of rare gear.
To no surprise, the record’s tones are exquisite, with the Alice In Chains icon’s trusty G&L Rampage electric guitar playing a key role. However, beneath the riffs are some weird and wonderful textures at play. For those, Cantrell dug out some old faithfuls, as well as some new favorites.
“There is a lot of Cry Baby and talk box on this record,” he says in the new issue of Guitar World. “We went heavy with those. We used two different kinds of talk boxes on Vilified and Throw Me a Line. One is the Dunlop that I’ve been using forever, which is just the box on the floor and the tube coming up to the mic.”
The album was recorded at JHOC Studio in Pasadena, California, and a search for more textural goodness saw Cantrell and co-producer Joe Barresi (Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Melvins) turn to some old clips for inspiration.
“While we were messing around with talk boxes one day, Joe showed me a clip of Jeff Beck with a Kustom The Bag on,” Cantrell continues.
Released in the late 1960s and brought to the stage by Peter Frampton and Steppenwolf’s John Kay, The Bag looks like a weird cross between a bagpipe and a talk box. It’s slung over a player’s shoulder with a tube running from a bag to he player’s mouth for wah/talk box tones. Not many were made.
Jeff Beck most notably used it on the Blow by Blow record on the track She’s A Woman. The below clip was possibly the one that captured Cantrell’s imagination so vividly.
“It was a different feel, but it was so fucking expressive,” Cantrell says of the clip he say. “I had never seen that clip of Jeff Beck before, and then Joe was like, ‘I’ve got one of these, man. We should try this!’ So he whipped that thing out. I believe The Bag is what you’re hearing on Vilified and Throw Me a Line.”
The record has, understandably, been warmly received by fans, with Cantrell declaring it to be “some of my best songwriting and playing.”
Bass duties are spearheaded by a heavyweight one-two of Duff McKagan (Guns N’ Roses) and Robert Trujillo (Metallica), while Faith No More’s Mike Bordin also features on drums. That essentially saw the Cantrell/Trujillo/Bordin line-up behind 2002’s powerhouse double album Degradation Trip re-unite.
Cantrell had caused a minor stir last year when he declared that his iconic G&L Rampage Blue Dress guitar had been stolen, only to find out it had just been misplaced. It may have seemed an overreaction, but he’s now offered more context to his panic, revealing he once lost an electric guitar that Eddie Van Halen had gifted him nearly two decades over.
He’s also spoken out against amp modelers and has admitted that tracking solos are usually expletive-filled affairs for him.
The latest issue of Guitar World is available now. The issue details Marty Friedman’s Madonna or Megadeth moment, why the sons of rock legends are taking over, and much more.
Single issues can be grabbed from Magazines Direct.
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