The
following interview was taken from CMJ
New Music Monthly May 2001 issue.
CLUTCH:
Grinding It Out
Story
by Amy Sciarretto
Clutch's
live show is the stuff of legends. No one can stir
up a crowd quite the way this West Virginia-by-way-of-Maryland
bourbon-rock band. I caught up with gravelly voiced
frontman Neil Fallon after he got back from a vacation
in between tours.
Where
did you go on vacay?
My wife and I went to Ireland. I went there to sing
on a track by a band called Throat. The tickets
were paid for. They are a nuts-and-bolts rock band.
They are fans of Clutch and a mutual acquaintance
hooked it up.
Why
did Clutch return to Atlantic Records for Pure
Rock Fury?
In a nutshell, we're trying to get on the radio.
We did the indie thing over the past two years.
It was successful, good and healthy for us to do,
but we're not going to get on the radio that way.
If anyone is going to get us on radio, it's [Atlantic
rock promoter] Jon Nardachone. He was always in
our corner. All those guys at Atlantic are good.
They don't try to appease us by stroking our egos.
We always kept in contact with Nardachone. We recorded
this album outside of Atlantic and paid for it ourselves,
swapping a high royalty rate for that. It was a
good thing.
The
best thing is that there are no obvious "radio"
songs on the album.
We're not capable of making those kinds of songs.
We don't have skills to do that. But we want exposure.
Why not? Radio changes the amount of records you
sell and we want to continue making a living. There's
no shame in that. We're not gonna change our sound.
If we never did get on radio even after making those
kinds of songs, we'd be left with an album designed
for commercial purposes. And that's it.
Has
Clutch ever considered issuing a live album?
We've recorded a great deal of material over the
years and always say we're going to mix it. Our
problem in the studio is that we can't capture our
live sound. It's something we have to do. I think
live records happen after you've sold a significant
amount of studio records; we have three or four
records of live material in the bag. We recorded
with the BBC and that sounds fantastic, and on Pure
Rock Fury, "Smoke Banshee" was live
with overdubs. "Frankenstein" has live
portions. The best way to capture our live sound
is to record live. I don't know why we didn't figure
that out 10 years ago. We're the kind of band that
once we record, we write five new songs right after,
and that's what we're anxious to play.
Do
you fancy Clutch to be perennial tourers like Phish?
We're going to tour through summer into fall. At
this point, it doesn't do us any good to tour endlessly
for a record. We play shows because we enjoy playing,
but there's a threshold where you have to take a
break. There are a couple of festivals in Europe
we are eyeballing, because they're more eclectic,
instead of eight variations of one band. Big tours
are good for exposure, but we have some semblance
of ego thinking we're not going to play in the afternoon.
Will that be effective? If we got a good slot, sure.
A lot of those tours are incestuous and you have
to be in the "in" crowd.
Finally,
who are you dream tourmates?
Dream bands like Jimi Hendrix, but something practical
Beastie Boys or Red Hot Chili Peppers or Tool for
that matter. Those would be good bills for us to
be on.
