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Re: Talking Metal with Chris Pitman
http://www.captaint.com/talkingmetal/ta … eps238.mp3
Thanks to jarmo from HTGTH.
Re: Talking Metal with Chris Pitman
My transcript. Here's the GN'R stuff (sorry, I don't have all day to go through everything)...
Can you talk about how you got involved with Guns N’ Roses, and what it was like meeting Axl for the first time?
Yeah I was introduced to them through Billy Howerdel, he worked for Tool for awhile. Billy’s just a fun guy, he was way into computers and stuff before many people were. He was doing recordings and playing a bunch of instruments, and was like myself, and he turned Axl on to the Lusk record, and Axl was way into the guitar sound and the orchestration we did, and he invited me down to hang out and the first night I met Axl, I didn’t know anything about the band too much, besides their big hits they had on the radio. And when I met him, he was just a really cool guy. He was so warm, and we just had a blast hanging out and he was playing tons of tapes and stuff and eventually he invited me up to his house, like a guest house that was made into a studio, and we wrote music there for like three years just me and him. It was a great neutral zone without people bugging you and a lot of great stuff came out of there. He’s just enormously talented, and he was playing a lot of lead guitar back then.
Really?
Yeah, a lot of people don’t know that. I want to give him props up for it. He was astounding really. He approaches guitars like he approaches vocals. Where you can’t think of anyone in the world doing what he was doing. And I was shocked, he was doing like Blue Oyster Cult double-lead type things. He’s an amazing fella.
When you approach writing a song back in those sessions, what comes first? The melody? The groove? How did that work when you first started writing with Axl?
You just never know. If you start trying to predict it or make a formula, that goes out the window. The funniest instance of us doing stuff like that, I was up at his house for about a week or two, and I was setting up rack mounted samplers, and you had your fake orchestra with synthesizers. One would be the strings, one would be the brass, and I was setting that up for him, and I was going “now this module here, we’re going to us this for brass instruments and here you have horns…”, and he was playing while I was switching the sounds, and I switched the sounds to French horn sound and he was playing this chord progression and I went to another sound, and he goes “oh no, go back to that one” and we went back and it was the French horn sound and he kept playing this progression and it sounded really cool and I turned around and turned on the tape machine and that ended up being the very intro for the song “Madagascar”. And that’s just how that evolved and he just had this chord progression and all of the sudden it married with the French horn and it was their super-moody song and that was the start of that song. We actually recorded it really quickly up there at his house and he just sang unbelievably on it. Great song.
It’s really great that you couldn’t go in there and predict. That’s something that only happened by complete chance. It’s just great that you were able to capture that moment. Because look what it turned into, such a great song.
Yeah, that exact moment is still on the record today, which is what surprises me. It takes me right to that day.
You guys play that live, Dizzy actually plays that in the live setting right?
Yeah, he plays the French horn parts and I’ll play the strings over the top of it. And it comes off great. Pretty powerful. When you hear these recordings… it’s quite astounding. I mean sound wise they’re pretty hybrid of a lot of different processes, that have taken years to do. But while doing it at this pace, you will have not heard anything like this before, cause who’s taken that long to do it, you know? And to work on it that through, it’s quite a sonic feast (or piece) for people to enjoy.
Is Chinese Democracy an album, you think needs to be enjoyed in it’s entirety, or is it an album where you can just pick out one song here and there and listen to it? Is it important to listen to it as an entire concept?
It’s hard for me to judge that, because I’m too far inside of it to be objective like that. To hear it as a whole… I wouldn’t think you’d have to. You could drop the needle anywhere on the record, and you could find something really interesting. It’ll take awhile for people to absorb it, because it’s very rich. There’s a lot of information to deal with. It’s not a record that’s monochrome that sounds like the same, like the band just playing a set. It fuses a lot of different elements together. And that’s Axl’s expertise. He has this kind of collage-like ability to bring things together, like you wouldn’t have thought.
It’s coming out on vinyl too
If you can get the vinyl, get it.
How hard was it to decide on all the material you worked on, on the album, was it hard to decide which songs were going to be on the final album, or is there anything you wished had been on it, that isn’t on it, that you might be saving for the future?
Yeah, there’s a whole wealth of material. I mean 10 years… there’s hundreds and hundreds of songs and ideas and stuff. It was really hard to conceptualize down to what would work together and that was Axl’s thing. He made that part happen. And to this day we’re still working on what’s coming up next. You know, pushing forward things, you know the Chinese thing – cool, you know let’s move on to the next thing. It’s just moving upwards and his spirit is to always to express himself. He hasn't gone back to 1987 or whatever – yet – for nostalgia’s sake. But he very well could.
How does it feel to know after all these years of the press talking about the record, that we finally have a real release date and really only a few weeks away at this point. How did it feel to hear the release date finally final?
A little bit shocking [laughs]. It still is weird. I can’t describe it really. But I’m happy because now people are getting an idea, because they would just continually bash us in the press, like they love to do, because Guns is such a popular band, but the end result is we knew what we had. Very confident about it and it’s something unique. I think people, once they can sink their teeth into it and get an understanding of it, it will have been worth it.
Chris, you co-wrote one of the tracks we’ve all heard so far, "If The World", and it’s great that song became part of the BODY OF LIES movie.
Yeah, especially Ridley Scott, that guy, what a hero. He went through a bunch of our songs, and he picked that one. That was great, but yet still you haven’t heard it in it’s best form yet – high fidelity. It’s going to be exciting. That’s a fine (or fun) one, that one actually is going to be really good for live shows and stuff as well.
Chris, where does the nickname ‘Mother Goose’ come from?
You know it’s funny, I haven’t heard that in quite a while. When Buckethead came into the band, everyone associated with Buckethead has a nickname. It came and went real quick, I only hear it from those people who were associated back then when Bucket was still playing with us. It’s kind of funny to hear now.
[when referring to hanging out with the Talking Metal guys in Jersey]
...I want to come up there and visit Ron and Frank, ‘cause those guys are some of my greatest bros – really. Definitely when Guns comes back to town, we’re gonna have to ‘go large’.
Note: this is about a 99.8% accurate transcript. A few lines here and there were omitted from previous discussion in the interview, in order for the GN'R stuff to 'flow' better
Re: Talking Metal with Chris Pitman
That was a great interview by the way.
We're really finding out how much Chris is truely a member of the band Guns N' Roses. This guy had a HUGE influence on the direction of this material. Maybe more so than Axl himself.
Chris' comment about "okay here's Chinese - now let's move on" really explains the silence imo.
If Axl is actually downplaying this release, so he can shed this 800 pound gorilla off his back, and then move on to future albums, I think that's great.
I know I get frustrated, I call new band kicking ass, I call reunion one day, I call anything that'll get me MATERIAL.
All I want is albums baby. That's all I care about is the music. Just deliver me some albums. I want Chinese now, I want another in 6 months, and so on and so. I'd love to see GN'R start putting out an album like every year, that'd be bitchin'.
Granted he didn't say that, but I just want this band to be active again. On any level.
Re: Talking Metal with Chris Pitman
Cheers for transcribing. Interesting read, I never knew that just Pitman and Axl worked together for a couple of years by themselves bascially "3 years just me and him"!
When you hear these recordings… it’s quite astounding. I mean sound wise they’re pretty hybrid of a lot of different processes, that have taken years to do.
^ Ain't that the truth, it's definitely reflected in the sound of a lot of songs. They are bits and pieces from this session and that session or this year and that year, this idea today and that idea from years ago, all spliced together.
Edit - fixed Axlin08 - yeah it kinda did look like I was quoting you and not him. 
