The Used in Gasoline Magazine no 16

[robjlea]

This is from a free magazine that I picked up in a record store.  The magazine is called Gasoline and it is the 16 issue with Bert McCracken on the cover.  Typing this up made me realize how I cannot type worth a hill of beans.

In the Studio with The Used
by Jonathan Dekel

Los Angeles: 

Nestled somewhere in the Hollywood Hills sits a lavish house, wide and hidden by foilage.  A pool lays undisturbed in the backyard, gleaming from reflections of the California sun.  The broad entrance way leads to an open concept living room where gigantic paintings hang on the walls beside gold records.  Listening closely, one can hear someone playing the intro to "Crash" by Dave Mathews Band on an acoustic guitar.

Serene and peaceful, the property belonging to producer/Goldfinger frontman/A&R guy John Feldman makes quite a powerful juxaposition to the loud music blaring from the speakers in the small mixing room, hidden in a nook adjacent to the kitchen, where Utah - bred emo pioneers The Used are mixing their still untitled third album.

"It needs to sound more epic," bassist Jeph Howard says to guitarist Quinn Allman and engineer Matt Appleton.

Feldmann, the man who signed the Used to Reprise/Warner Bros, and also produced the bands 2002 self titled debut; 2003's DVD,

Maybe Memories; and 2004's in Love and Death is nowhere in sight.

Howard and Allman are looming over a mini mixing desk and a large computer screen, where Appleton is mixing the album. 

They are listening to a guitar break from new song "The Hospital," and Howard is not feeling the phaser effect.  "It's

just not there, man.  It needs to be more heavy; it needs to be bigger."  The others agree.

"Right, orginal it is."  Appleton says and clicks the mouse.

Allman sits back down in his chair, whips away his frizzy bangs and picks up an acoustic guitar.  "Now, where were we?" he asks and goes back into the riff of the Dave Mathews Band song."Man, that's such a great riff," Howard says.  One gets the feeling that this isn't just your typical emo band jam.

Missing from the process are lead singer Bert McCracken and new drummer Dan Whitesides.  There are unconfirmed rumors that Whitesides, who also is inexplicably absent from the photoshoot later that week, has checked into rehab.  McCracken has to weigh in on everything during a phone interview two days later when he is allegedly too sick to play at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction of The Warped Tour exhibit.

Days away from releasing its second live concert CD/DVD, Berth, which was shot at Vancouvers's PNE Froum in 2005, Howard is eager to set the record straight on why what was initally meant as a kind of filler betweens albums took two years to create."There were problems with it.  It had been editied and put together, but then it sat around for a while.  There was some footage that was lost," Howard exlplains.  "There were two dudes filming and one of them took a bunch of footage home and disappeared.  Our manager's assistant flew up to Canada and couldn't find anything.  But it turned out better.  We got footage of us in the studio, footage of us hanging out, and we had old footage.  We could pour over all the footage we had, plus the new stuff we shot and it seemed to narrate better."

To add to the odd nature of all things relating to Berth, artistic director Alex Pardee had an emotional and physiolgical breakthrough when creating the cover art.  'Alex has been on medication since he was 15 and now he's 30 or something," says Howard.  "He's the longest person to ever be on this medication.  I think it's an antipsychotic.  One day, he just stopped taking it and started going through some crazy heroin-style withdrawals.  That Berth drawing is the hardest thing he has ever worked on.  That drawing took him something like 130 hours straight because he couldn't sleep.  It's so intense."

Nonetheless, Berth is a stop-gap between albums, a way for the band to satiate its fan while they wait for the new one, due out this spring.  At Feldman's home studio, the guys have recorded 19 songs.  Thirteen of those will be included in the next album and the other six will come out as an EP nine months later, according to Howard.

"We just named some of them the other day," Howard says.  "Off the top of my head, there's 'Wake the Dead,' 'Smother Me' and 'Earthquake."  I'm pretty stoked on the b-sides though, more so than some of the ones that made the record, especially this song 'Pain.'  That song is so good.""We chose the ones that made it because we felt that they best fit the arc of the album."  Allman adds.  "We really wanted it to sound different, like Peter Gabriel mixed with Marilyn Manson."

Allman feels Whitesides should be credited for much of the Used's more eclectic direction.  "I feel this album is kind of an evolution and that's because of Dan.  He's opened up a whole new world of fusion beats and rhythms.  It bought out this bigger sound."

"Bigger" is a popular adjective in the Used's camp these days.  It is something that the band sees as instrumental in pushing its songwriting forward.  "Playing the new stuff, it's a whole different world.  it's just bigger.  It feels bigger and it sound better.  There's some kind of magic behind it," Howard explains.

Of course, "bigger" means moving away from the genre that helped bring the Used mainstream success.  Having helped spawn countless emo bands which flood the Warped and Taste of Chaos tours every year, the members of the Used feel it's time to move on from that style, something they also credit to McCracken's newfound maturity as a lyricist.

"The influences [on this album] are really broad, especially with Bert and his poetic element," Howard says.  "Bands like My Bleeding Heart and My Chemical Romance may have spawned from that poetic element, but now Bert has really come to get a grasp on his poetry."

McCracken agrees.  "I've been reading a lot of poetry books recently, Edgar Allen Poe, stuff like that.  I think that it's really matured my songwriting.  So when the element is fused with the music, I didn't feel that we had to run from the emo cops."

With the new album, the band is aware of the need to move beyond its emo heritage to reach the widest audience possible.  A prime example of this more pop departure is a new song tentatively titled 'The Bird and the Worm.'  Propelled by anxious pizzicato strings and huge Muse-esque drumming, it sounds a bit like Panic! At the Disco.  This comparison doesn't sit too well with McCracken.

"Panic at the motherfucking disco?!" the eccentric frontman screams over the phone so loud that an office interen slams the door in fear.  "So everything with strings now sonds like Panic! At the Disco? Panic! At the Disco fucking suck.'

Let's assume he's not a fan.

Back in California, the door bell rings and the quintessential California dinner has arrived, three vegan burritos and a veggie burger.  Along with the dinner arrives Feldmann.  He marches into the mixing room and listens to the band's progress that day.  The grimace on his face does not look encouraging.  He slams the door."He's not in a good mood," Howard points out and returns to the food in hand.

While they chow down, Allman and Howard try to describe what the Used stands for today.  After several minuets of quiet contemplation and several comical false starts by Howard, Allman looks up.  "We stand for hugely average people," he decides and then takes another bite of his burrito.

Prehapes it's the beautiful dark blue sky or the last rays of sunshine reflecting off the pool, but at this moment, sitting in a mansion eating veggie burritos and watching the California sun set through the glass doors, it seems there's nothing hugely average about the Used.

Sendspace links:

Crash Into Me

The Bird and the Worm

Comments

[zillahseye.livejournal.com]

You are MADE OF AWESOME for typing up all this, thank you.

[robjlea.livejournal.com]

I had been meaning to type it up for a few days now but hey life got in the way. Picture that.

Dan having gone to rehab (they tried to make me go to rehab but I said no no no) I found really interesting. Well to be honest any information on Dan right now falls into interesting.

[azrielen.livejournal.com]

Well to be honest any information on Dan right now falls into interesting.

Haha indeed.

However, they say it's an unconfirmed rumor, so who knows? We'll have to wait until someone else finds out more. I hope another interviewer follows up on the rumor, tho Dan might prefer not to comment on it or something.

I do find it intriguing, tho. Dan has a rather large straightedge tattoo on his back. Maybe he was having problems and decided to try to get back to it now that he might be in the public eye and on tour where things could get wild around him. Hmm. He seems to be doing well now, tho, so if he did go to rehab it must have gone OK. *pets Dan*

Frankly, Bert or Quinn need to go more than Dan probably did. LOL.

[robjlea.livejournal.com]

Yeah I have no idea if there is any truth to the rehab story. I do wonder about him being straightedge and working with the band but I haven't really seen anything with the guys being drunk or stoned for awhile so who knows what there levels are now. I could not just be seeing the 'right' interviews either for that matter.

[zillahseye.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the rehab thing has been confirmed yet.

[robjlea.livejournal.com]

I have not heard anything about it.
I have not seen anything to suggest heavy use of anything by anyone in the band in promotion of the new album.
I am willing for a sane person to point out I'm wrong but all the interviews I've seen and the show I was at the band seemed clean.

I am really getting sick of everbody putting the wasted label on Bert and everyone attributing everything Bert says as a diss to MCR. Then I have to remember that these are 13yearold fangirls saying the stuff that is pissing me off. Grr!