Tommy Stinson - A.V. Club interview

[jarmo]

The A.V. Club: You have a pretty varied r?sum?: The Replacements, Guns N? Roses, Soul Asylum. Do you see a common thread in those bands?

Tommy Stinson: Just that they?re all rock bands. And that they all have fairly emotional singers who are a little bit on the dangerous side. And they?re real?they?re all the real deal. I guess I got lucky enough to not have to play with people who aren?t.

AVC: Do you consciously seek out those types of singers?

TS: It?s sort of by default. I think there?s a yin and yang to it. I?m probably more comfortable with Dave [Pirner, of Soul Asylum] and Paul [Westerberg] than I am with Axl [Rose], just because I?ve known them longer and I?ve been friends with them longer. That?s not to bag on Axl in any way?it?s just to say that I think I?ve managed to get along with Dave and Paul better.

AVC: How did you end up with GN?R?

TS: It was kind of a fluke. A friend of mine, Josh Freese, was playing drums with them, and I asked him what he was up to, and he was like, ?Oh, fuck, I can?t really talk about it, but I?ll tell you anyway.? And it turned out he was playing drums, and working on the record. He said, ?It?s funny that you?re asking me, because Duff [McKagan] just quit, and we need a bass player.? I was just joking with him: ?Oh, that would be a fucking hoot,? given my thoughts about Guns N? Roses at that time. But I did it anyway just as a laugh, and it turned out pretty good. They didn?t really audition anyone else. They liked me, and because Josh was doing it, it was a compelling notion.

At the time, coincidentally, I was about to get kind of screwed by yet another record label with the Perfect record. I felt like, ?You know what? This is enough.? It?s been five years of trying to get this thing going, I keep getting screwed, and I just want a break. So I looked at it as something to do until I figured out my next move. And it worked out pretty good, all things considered.

AVC: Chinese Democracy took all of 10 years to make. What was the recording process like? I mean, you couldn?t have been working at it every day for 10 years.

TS: At first we were in there a lot. We were working on the writing aspect of it, but it just kept going on. We had [Interscope Chairman] Jimmy Iovine intervening in a not-so-productive way, and we had other guys coming and going with nutty ideas. My summation of the whole thing is that Interscope, when they took over Geffen, really led Axl to believe that Jimmy Iovine would be involved, and would help get this record done and make it happen. But basically what he did was let it completely fall apart. Then he had this great idea to bring in [producer] Roy Thomas Baker to make it sound better. All he did was re-record everything three or four different times, trying to make it sound like something it didn?t need to sound like, and spend $10 million in the process. My two cents on the whole thing is that I really think Jimmy Iovine fucked the whole thing up.

It was a bummer. Most of the songs that are on the record now were done 10 fucking years ago. But all the talking heads in the mix were saying, ?Make ?em sound better! Make ?em sound better!? So we kept redoing this and that. And it ended up coming back down to the same fucking songs that they were 10 years ago, except that now they were a super-dense mishmash of a bunch of instrumentation. That whole era pretty much sums up what happened to the record industry. Those kinds of people, making those kinds of decisions and not really helping the artist.

Full interview: http://www.avclub.com/twincities/articles/tommy-stinson,56282/






/jarmo

[One.In.A.Million]

Brilliant interview, and a really cool insight into Tommys views on Chinese Democracy. Too much time spent on making the songs better, when they were perfect to begin with. Too many middle-men getting in the way, trying to imprint their vision onto the project...

It is something that I was saying in the other thread, that the record was completed. But other things were getting in the way, like un-needed production or overdubs, and other additions that never needed to be made. 

I can't really argue against that, Tommy said it all there. 

[AxlReznor]

To be fair, I think the kind of songs that are on the album do sound better with the additional instrumentation. If the record sounded like Appetite For Destruction style stuff, then sure, it would have been serious overkill. But I've always felt that big songs require a big production.

I can understand why the band members would be frustrated by this, though. Especially considering this was coming from people outside of the band. Businessmen should leave the songwriting to the musicians, and just count the money if/when it rolls in.

[jarmo]

It is something that I was saying in the other thread, that the record was completed. But other things were getting in the way, like un-needed production or overdubs, and other additions that never needed to be made. 

Weren't you saying the record should've been released years earlier? But since people like Jimmy didn't think it was "done", it couldn't have been.


Here's something Axl talked about in the Billboard interview from 2009:

Here's how things worked until they were no longer involved-that is, until recently. Jimmy [Iovine] and whoever would come down to the studio. Things would be good for a month. Then, according to whoever was involved at the time from their side, someone above Jimmy would start putting pressure regarding us on him, Jimmy would start pressuring others at his label [and they] would begin doing the same with us. We get that it's just how business -- and perhaps especially this business -- tends to work, but after a month of this the whole thing would get ugly and extensively interfere with getting anything productive done, and near the middle of the third month we'd arrange for Jimmy to come down again. They'd go away happy and the entire process would repeat itself over and over and over.

[Former Interscope Geffen A&M president] Tom Whalley brought in Roy Thomas Baker to produce and [A&R executive] Mark Williams suggested Marco Beltrami, among others, to play strings on the album. And Jimmy had an idea for low guitar in a track and the EQ on a drum part. That's it as far as I'm aware. They were all good things, but in all sincerity, that's it. Now, what efforts were made to help keep Universal or Vivendi off us for as long as possible could very well have been extensive, and in that regard either would have been or would be most appreciated. I like Jimmy, but I've never understood him in regard to us or this album. Everything's always been, "That's easy," or "We can fix that, no problem," but unfortunately rarely added up to any kind of reality for us until [he found] Bob Ludwig for mastering.

We'd love to have their and Jimmy's support after this. But to continue at this juncture feeling as we do, keeping things so behind the scenes, unfortunately feels like the same 'ol same 'ol for all of us and, at least momentarily, a bit much to digest. Jimmy did point us in the right direction for mastering, and I believe he's sincere in his appreciation of our record but still for whatever reasons gave up pretty early in those areas.

/jarmo

[One.In.A.Million]

It is something that I was saying in the other thread, that the record was completed. But other things were getting in the way, like un-needed production or overdubs, and other additions that never needed to be made. 

Weren't you saying the record should've been released years earlier? But since people like Jimmy didn't think it was "done", it couldn't have been.


Here's something Axl talked about in the Billboard interview from 2009:

Here's how things worked until they were no longer involved-that is, until recently. Jimmy [Iovine] and whoever would come down to the studio. Things would be good for a month. Then, according to whoever was involved at the time from their side, someone above Jimmy would start putting pressure regarding us on him, Jimmy would start pressuring others at his label [and they] would begin doing the same with us. We get that it's just how business -- and perhaps especially this business -- tends to work, but after a month of this the whole thing would get ugly and extensively interfere with getting anything productive done, and near the middle of the third month we'd arrange for Jimmy to come down again. They'd go away happy and the entire process would repeat itself over and over and over.

[Former Interscope Geffen A&M president] Tom Whalley brought in Roy Thomas Baker to produce and [A&R executive] Mark Williams suggested Marco Beltrami, among others, to play strings on the album. And Jimmy had an idea for low guitar in a track and the EQ on a drum part. That's it as far as I'm aware. They were all good things, but in all sincerity, that's it. Now, what efforts were made to help keep Universal or Vivendi off us for as long as possible could very well have been extensive, and in that regard either would have been or would be most appreciated. I like Jimmy, but I've never understood him in regard to us or this album. Everything's always been, "That's easy," or "We can fix that, no problem," but unfortunately rarely added up to any kind of reality for us until [he found] Bob Ludwig for mastering.

We'd love to have their and Jimmy's support after this. But to continue at this juncture feeling as we do, keeping things so behind the scenes, unfortunately feels like the same 'ol same 'ol for all of us and, at least momentarily, a bit much to digest. Jimmy did point us in the right direction for mastering, and I believe he's sincere in his appreciation of our record but still for whatever reasons gave up pretty early in those areas.

/jarmo

Yes, and I still stand by that comment. I did say that I felt that the record would have been a bigger success, if released sooner, due to the way the music business has gone in the last 7+ years. And it seems like Tommy feels the same sentiments, in regards to that interview.

I'm not blaming GN'R, I was criticising whatever it was that made it "never" get completed. Which now we know, was all of the middle-men like Jimmy Iovine, and Roy Thomas Baker....

[FunkyMonkey]

AVC: Chinese Democracy took all of 10 years to make. What was the recording process like? I mean, you couldn?t have been working at it every day for 10 years.

TS: At first we were in there a lot. We were working on the writing aspect of it, but it just kept going on. We had [Interscope Chairman] Jimmy Iovine intervening in a not-so-productive way, and we had other guys coming and going with nutty ideas. My summation of the whole thing is that Interscope, when they took over Geffen, really led Axl to believe that Jimmy Iovine would be involved, and would help get this record done and make it happen. But basically what he did was let it completely fall apart. Then he had this great idea to bring in [producer] Roy Thomas Baker to make it sound better. All he did was re-record everything three or four different times, trying to make it sound like something it didn?t need to sound like, and spend $10 million in the process. My two cents on the whole thing is that I really think Jimmy Iovine fucked the whole thing up.

It was a bummer. Most of the songs that are on the record now were done 10 fucking years ago. But all the talking heads in the mix were saying, ?Make ?em sound better! Make ?em sound better!? So we kept redoing this and that. And it ended up coming back down to the same fucking songs that they were 10 years ago, except that now they were a super-dense mishmash of a bunch of instrumentation. That whole era pretty much sums up what happened to the record industry. Those kinds of people, making those kinds of decisions and not really helping the artist.

I've always been led to believe the delays were Axl working on the CD.  But here, Tommy paints a very different picture of what was going on.

Really good interview.

[jarmo]

People often like to think they know what's going on, and in this case they like to think that it must be Axl because they choose to believe all the bullshit.

When somebody speaks and says the opposite, it's just ignored. Because it just doesn't fit the "truth" people have been fed.





/jarmo

[sofine11]

Seriously, I've got  bad feeling that the labels going to make it very hard for us to hear the rest of the CD Era tracks.  Is there anyone we can send hate-mail to make sure that doesn't happen? 

[FunkyMonkey]

People often like to think they know what's going on, and in this case they like to think that it must be Axl because they choose to believe all the bullshit.

When somebody speaks and says the opposite, it's just ignored. Because it just doesn't fit the "truth" people have been fed.

Yeah, I thought that was some really interesting information -- I'd like to hear more.

Tommy strikes me as someone who tells the truth...or says nothing at all.