Aw, that’s such a good song!
I’ve played it a couple of times, but my mother almost believed that because I invite an entire whole crowd of people in unison to call upon the Devil that he might arrive! Like, whoa, you know? So my mother asked me that on the three’s the charm, I not at least make it a trifecta of Satan. How do you fucking argue with that question? She used the word Satan and trifecta together. She fucked me up. So I’m gonna have to release my Devil song as a bonus track.
Does she know about iTunes or anything?
(laughs) Is your mother keen to iTunes yet? Is she aware of this new thing? You know man, actually, I have it. It’s called ‘The Devil’s Best Song.’ That was my spiteful, ironic title.
So the hook for ‘Wanna Be In L.A.,’ are you playing behind the bridge, is that a thumb piano, a kalimba, what is that?
Did you just say thumb piano? You’re fucking almost dead on, dude. We were at Sound City, which is such an amazing fucking studio, you know. Old records, from Fleetwood Mac to Nirvana to Ry Cooder to Cheap Trick and whatever. They have this big ass grand piano that Brian Wilson had brought in to never use and not only never used it, never even set foot into the studio and commenced recording yet again at Capitol. So it sits in this fucking weird corner and Josh took the drumsticks and hit the strings directly with the drumsticks. It’s funny, because it is such a weird noise, and if you have any curiosity, you’d wonder what it is.
That’s just one example, but it seems like you’re working with a lot more, sonically, on this album.
Yeah man. I always believe that if you’re in a band, or write music, and you’re kind of in some small sense saying, ‘Hey, follow me to where the music is,’ and when you do that, you’ve got to take people somewhere. Also, in your personal life, you need to grow. I didn’t know shit about rock ‘n’ roll. I came into this in such a fairytale, lottery ticket of rock ‘n’ roll kind of way, I didn’t even think that I had the right to discuss it in those terms.
I sucked when I first came here. I couldn’t even stand up and sing at the same time and play guitar, we had to hire a coach for the first tour. I had only played guitar for fucking six months before we did the first tour, you know? I wrote my first record when I had only been playing guitar for only three months, in a shameless demonstration of total thievery of all great songs, you know. That’s the truth.
Now that I’ve been on a couple of tours, how did Joshua put it, ‘Yeah, you’re getting better at guitar Boots, now why don’t you stop sucking at writing?’ (laughs) And he’s right, you know. So we tried to step it up. I mean come on, if you’re going to do anything, you might as well go up. It was really freaky for me though, because I have no fucking problem with the ABCs of rock. It worked for the Ramones; it’s good enough for old Boots. But it gets scary when you want to put more changes than two.
After you wrote Peace, Love And Death Metal, I saw you on that tour at CBGB’s, and Claude from Ween was playing with you guys.
Yeah, that tour was fucking rad.
It was weird, because I think he didn’t know the songs very well.
That show was like his third rehearsal.
