Thursday, March 19, 2009
Music news Interview: Bill Kelliher of Mastodon
Posted by Chad Radford @ChadRad on Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 8:57 PM
The following interview with Mastodon guitarist/vocalist Bill Kelliher was conducted at noon on Wednesday, March 11.
Chad: You got sick in Europe last year while you were on tour with Slayer. What happened?
Bill Kelliher: It was an undisclosed stomach ailment. People have speculated about what it was, but I can't really talk about it.
Really?
Yeah, as a band we decided not to talk about it, so I can't. It was a big shake-up and the band had to play as a three-piece while I recovered. We had a big decision to make about whether we were going to loose a lot of money or not. We had just flown over there. We rented the gear, rented the bus and if we would have sent everybody home when I got sick it would have cost us a fortune. The band was looking to loose a whole lot of dough and they asked me what I wanted them to do. They said we'll play if we have to, and they did. The next few shows were in Germany and we were playing first, so it was a half-an-hour set, which goes by pretty quickly when your playing songs back-to-back like we do. So it wasn't that big of a deal. They did it and I healed up.
That was the second scare you guys have had in the last couple of years, the first being what happened with Brent in Las Vegas.
Yeah, when I heard about what happened to Brent I was holding my breath and just kind of hoping and waiting for everything to be OK. This band is my life, and I don't know what I would do if I didn't have it. We were all wondering what was going to happen. But I didn't sell my guitars or anything. I was banking on him being OK and then we heard from him a week or so later and he was going to make it, so it came as a huge relief. But yeah, we were all hoping and praying that he would pull through. We didn't really know what else to do. ... We're lucky. Some bands don't bounce back from that kind of shit.
How did these scares affect the songs and stories that went into Crack the Skye?
The album is very open to interpretation. Some of it is pretty vague, and some of it is pretty specific to whoever wrote a certain lyric, but if you can find something in the songs that you can relate to, than that's what it's about.
Did you channel any of your experiences with the "undisclosed stomach ailment" into the songs on Crack the Skye, in any kind of veiled way?
No. The record was pretty much a done deal when that happened.
Would have been awfully convenient to tie-in with the story I'm writing.
Yeah, it sure would, but the record was already pretty much finished.
What's the writing process like for you guys?
It depends. It's different with every record, but up until this one it's been pretty fair between the four of us. With Blood Mountain Troy started throwing songs at us at the perfect moment. We would be searching for riffs and he would just play something and it was exactly what we needed. After Brent had his accident he was laid-up for a few months so he just sat at home writing Crack the Skye. Brann and I had be going down to the practice space everyday at like 11 o'clock or noon and playing together, and Troy was coming down too. We had about six songs worked out that didn't end up getting used on Crack the Skye.
When Brent was able to practice the songs that he was writing, they were flowing together better than anything we had. It was almost like two different bands were writing songs. Brann and I were writing these heavy riffs and some fast, old school Mastodon stuff. Just doing little experimental shit. When Brent came in he was more in a mood to let us learn his riffs and we put them into an arrangement and by the time they got to Brendan O'Brien they were pretty polished and all sounded like they belonged on their own record that was separate from what me and Brann and Troy were working on. We'll use the other songs for something else, they were just different.
The songs that became Crack the Skye really lent themselves to nice clean vocals and there were lot's of great vocal melodies taking shape. The songs me and Brann were writing were much heavier and would require harsher vocals. Normally in the past I'll write a song and it goes on the album. Brann writes a song and it goes on the record and so on. It doesn't matter what they sound like, but that's because we're all usually in the same place. But with Crack the Skye we were all in a different place. We had a year off from touring which was a first for us. Then Brent got hurt and he was at home writing and I was at home writing, but it all worked out because it resulted in Crack the Skye which we are all very proud of.
Read an interview with Mastodon bass player/vocalist Troy Sanders.
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