“You know, you catch the spark of discovery in the music, in the moment, and get that on tape, rather than labour over it and overdub later. I like to catch the band unawares before they really know what they’re doing too much and before they’re thinking about it. Most of the solos are live on the take, and most of the takes are the first or second. I liked that so much I started using it with the Heartbreakers as well.”ĭid you record the band live in the studio? You’ve got a nice sound and you can put it through the PA to make it as loud as you want.
“I went to see Neil Young here in LA once and he was playing through a little tweed amp, and they had a microphone on it and up through the big PA – it sounded huge, you know? And what’s great about that is the stage sound is not blasting. I got that idea from Neil Young, actually.
But when I started playing with my band in the clubs, I went down to an even smaller amp like the Princeton, and I also used a Fender Tweed Deluxe from the ‘50s.
As the years went on, we got tired of loud stage amps and got the slightly smaller amps. Loud as crap, and I don’t know how Tom sang over those, but he did. We had these things called Vox Super Beatles, which were 100-watt amps and they’re about 4ft tall. “When the Heartbreakers started out, we had big loud amps. Can you explain how you also came to do that? Using a small guitar amp to get a huge sound was a secret weapon of many ‘70s bands. Mike Campbell (front) with guitarist Jason Sinay, bass player Lance Morrison and drummer Matt Laug (Image credit: Chris Phelps) Those are the first ones that come to mind.” The title track External Combustion was a piece of a riff that was on tape, and I thought, ‘Well, I can make something out of that now…’ and maybe a couple more. “A song called State Of Mind, which has Margo Price on it, was an old track I had completely forgotten about. I had forgotten about them, but they turned out to be really good, so it worked out. I found three or four songs from those old tapes back in the ‘90s that ended up on the album. I’ve got a bunch of analogue tapes and I’ve been going through them, baking them and restoring them. Was all the material written specifically for this album? I went to see Neil Young here in LA once and he was playing through a little tweed amp, and they had a microphone on it and up through the big PA – it sounded huge Those are my roots and those are the influences that I draw on when I make my own music.” It was such a renaissance as we look back on it – the ‘60s and early ‘70s. “Well, the ‘60s is where I grew up, which I think was an amazing time to learn guitar. What are your influences when it comes to writing your own material?
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