By Andrew Bansal
Maryland rock stalwarts Clutch have had a fabulous year, with their tenth studio album ‘Earth Rocker’ getting a unanimously positive response from fans and critics alike, and some tremendous live performances to follow the success of the album. They did a North American tour with Orange Goblin, Lionize and Scorpion Child in March and returned for another run around these parts with The Sword and American Sharks. This tour visited the House of Blues Sunset Strip on November 9th, and a few hours prior to the show, I had a chance to sit down with frontman Neil Fallon to talk about tours past and present, Earth Rocker, lyrics, his recent appearance on VH1 Classic, holiday shows, and much more. Enjoy the conversation below.
Neil, great to have you on Metal Assault again. The tour you’re doing right now started a couple of weeks. How has everything been?
It’s good! It’s a great bill with American Sharks, The Sword and ourselves. It’s a great night of music and it’s good to be back out after a brief break. We’re still supporting Earth Rocker and will continue to do so for at least another half a year.
Talking of that album, every Clutch fan I’ve talked to has said that Earth Rocker is the best you’ve done since Blast Tyrant. That’s the consensus. It must be a good feeling for you, to put an album like that even after all these years, an album that people are really enjoying. Usually with bands that have been around as long as yours, people prefer the older stuff. But Earth Rocker is as strong as anything you’ve ever done.
I think the producer Machine did a good job of tapping into our strong points. We’re one of those bands, and there are other bands like us, that are inclined to do new things. And that’s just part of the creative process. But sometimes in trying to do new things you can miss your strong suits. He kind of made it a point to say, ‘You do this really good and you do that really good.’ He emphasized that on this record and that’s what a producer should do, be a temporary dictator and say, ‘You’re great at that but not so great at this, so go with what you know.’
So you don’t like to be a dictator yourself in the working process of an album.
Well, the four of us are a democracy, and that’s great climate to work and live in but sometimes it takes a long time to get things done, just like any other democratic government. But if you can hire somebody to kind of crack the whip and say yes or no, that’s a good thing. Specially when you’ve been a band as long as we have, it’s hard to be objective about stuff because you live in such a bubble, and as long as the dictatorship ends when the album recording process is over, that’s okay.
He has the veto power during the process then.
I wouldn’t say that, because there’s four of us and he’s like the tie-breaker. There’s plenty of times when we tell him, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’ But sometimes it’s best to defer it to someone else’s judgement, as a leap of faith.
Well said. And I believe later this month on November 26th you’re putting a double vinyl with a LP of the Earth Rocker studio album and a second LP with the Earth Rocker Live thing which you recorded through a bunch of shows in May on your last US tour.
Yeah that’s correct. Jean-Paul kind of took the reigns on that and just recorded it every night and hats off to him listening to the show right after performing. I couldn’t do that. He was also taking notes every night about what was strong and what was not. It was not so hard for us to do because this was really the first record where we played every song live very quickly after releasing the record. For some of our past records, some songs never really saw the light of day on stage. It was a fun process and I’m looking forward to having it get out there. It’s a double picture disc.
So, you find it strange listening to your own show, specially soon after it’s done?
Oh I can’t stand it. I think that’s just because everyone is their own biggest critic. I don’t hear the awesome parts, I just hear the flaws. Plus, I like to have a little bit of silence just to clean the ears out before going in. And live performances are brutally honest. Sometimes you don’t want to be told the truth (laughs). You want at least a little bit of time between the performance and listening to it.
Right, and in terms of the lyrics on this album, I think you’ve made it a lot of fun this time, specially with the title track and songs like that. Have you felt like you’ve expressed the lyrics more freely on this album as compared to before?
For one, I tried not to over-think the lyrics. If I have a criticism of myself, it’s that sometimes I can over-write and put too many words in trying to make a song that really should be a short story. I’m not saying dumb it down, but just go with your gut instead of your head so much and have some fun with it. ‘Strange Cousins From The West’ was a pretty dark record. Records can sometimes be a reflection of the mood, but I want rock n’ roll to be fun. I think Led Zeppelin records are fun. AC/DC records are fun. Black Sabbath, even though they have a lot of dark stuff, they are still fun in their own peculiar way. I hope that I was able to capture at least a fraction of that.
You’re right, the fun has gone out of rock n’ roll to a large extent. I’m glad you’re still on it and delivering the fun in the music.
That’s the whole point, really. If it’s not fun, why are we still doing it? I think there’s a lot of self-indulgent negativity in bands where they feel like it’s just what they have to do. I’m not interested in hearing somebody’s diary entry put to music, you know (laughs).
I agree! Another thing that’s pretty unique about Clutch is, you do the holiday shows. Not too many bands do that and they just take the holidays off. You do those shows every year, right?
Yeah we do a run after Christmas and we do a New Years’ show. It was real success the first year. We usually do it around the East Coast or Great Lakes because it’s easier to do it that way geographically for us, to do the drives and be home on New Years’ Day. We’re away from our families a lot, but that’s a period of time when a lot of people are not working, they are not in school and they’ve got time on their hands. So the shows are usually pretty great.
I can imagine! One thing I wanted to ask you about is, I was actually in the studio audience when you did the ‘That Metal Show’ episode for VH1 Classic in April this year. Now, I don’t associate Clutch as being a mainstream VH1 band. Was it strange at all for you? I think you had that look on your face which said, ‘What am I doing here?’
(Laughs) I did have that feeling going into it, because I was thinking that those guys were going to grill me on metal and I’m not particularly that much of a metalhead. If anyone in the band is, it would be Tim or Jean-Paul. But those guys are fans of Clutch and I thank them for just being open-minded, because they do bring on the more classic metal bands and personalities. I think may be they are trying to change that a little bit because you can only introduce so many of those classic bands before you kind of tap out that well. But Clutch has also toured with a lot of metal bands. We’ve toured with Motörhead, Slayer, Thin Lizzy and Iron Maiden. So I think there’s that and some people consider us a metal band. But metal purists certainly do not.
Yeah, that’s why it was a pleasant surprise to see you on that show and I think it was a good episode. You had a pretty fun interview there.
It was fun! I don’t do well around cameras but I just said to myself, ‘As long as you try to be yourself you’re not going to screw it up too bad.’
The other thing you did recently was a guest appearance on the latest Soulfly record, on the song ‘Ayatollah of Rock ‘n’ Rolla’. I was talking to Max Cavalera about it not too long ago and he was saying that you lent your own touch to that song and brought something different to their album. What was that experience like for you?
Max reached out to me and we’ve known each other for ages. Sepultura took Clutch out in ’94 on what was one of the most important tours of our career. We got exposed to a whole new audience, and then again in Europe two years later. We did their Chaos AD and Roots tours, and that was amazing. We’ve kept in contact off and on over the years, and he just emailed me and asked me if I could do that song. I did it at home in my basement where I have a little home studio. I listened to it, and Max has got such a distinct voice that I can’t really compete with that too well, so I kind of did more of a spoken-word thing at the top, at the close of the song and one verse. He told me to write my own words, and I thought that was pretty cool. So I wrote some words for it. It’s always a learning experience working with another band. I know the guys in my band so much that it’s second nature, so when I heard Soulfly’s music, it was more of a challenge for me because it’s different and it’s got that signature Max Cavalera sound which isn’t too foreign to what we do but still, it was fun.
They played at the Viper Room just two nights ago, that’s why this question came to my mind.
Oh no kidding? Awesome.
But are you open to doing such a thing again with more metal bands too, specially with people who you already know?
Sure! Any excuse to make music is a good excuse, whether it be metal, country, jazz or what have you. I’ve only got one life to live and I’m not going to say no to stuff, unless I think it’s terrible, because in the process you can learn something even if you learn that you don’t like doing a particular thing, you’re still learning. I’m always open to new ideas.
Related: Clutch LA gig review and live photos
Visit Clutch on the web at:
Pro-Rock.com
EarthRocker.com
facebook.com/ClutchBand
twitter.com/ClutchOfficial
youtube.com/OfficialClutch