Tag archives for Beck

Wel­come to the most-read page on this site; good to have you on board. The fol­low­ing inter­view was con­ducted by phone, while I was sit­ting in Dorset, UK, hav­ing a room dis­man­tled around me. It appeared in Bassist mag­a­zine, around the release of Mid­nite Vul­tures. Mr Meldal-Johnsen was an atten­tive, patient and enthu­si­as­tic inter­vie­wee, fas­ci­nated by the tech­ni­cal aspects of bass­ing. It’s a shame there’s only so much you need to talk about for any one inter­view – some­one should really do an in-depth talk with him, as he’s the kind of guy who gets to see the indus­try as it is. I’d be glad to, given the request.

With two major Beck releases on his CV and an ansa­phone unable to cope with requests for his ser­vices, things are look­ing pretty good for Justin Meldal-Johnsen. The depar­ture of most of the band upon com­ple­tion of Beck’s ‘Mid­nite Vul­tures’ album means that Beck, Justin and key­boardist Roger Joseph Man­ning Jr make up the core of the Beck project.

Meldal-Johnsen has been work­ing with Beck since 1996 when the ‘Ode­lay’ album went on tour. The record marks the point at which Beck com­pletes his jump from straight(ish) folk to hip hop and funk. Here we strike on the rea­son why music’s lat­est bravura boy wanted to secure him­self a bassist.

“That’s a good ques­tion. I think really with ‘Ode­lay’ Beck wanted to pass on the respon­si­bil­ity so he could con­cen­trate on the other stuff. He was really look­ing for an insti­ga­tor for the live per­for­mances, some­one who would just take his idea and go with it. He needed some­one who com­fort­able with all the styles he was using. It was much the same with me and Roger on key­boards. He wanted to leave it to us and for us really to carry it off.”

“I’m a real fan of the way he plays bass any­way. He absolutely goes for it and does all these really unnat­ural bends that appeal to me. I mean he’s doing stuff on bass that I haven’t heard since these really bad ‘60s Ital­ian soundtracks.”

With such a mul­ti­tude of styles — and that’s even before the hyper-everything ‘Mid­nite Vul­tures’ hits the road — you’re going to need a pretty sharp col­lec­tion of instruments.

Justin says, “I’ve got six basses that I take out on tour with me. My very favourite is this 1967 Fender Coro­n­ado. I play that a lot. It’s got this weird hol­low body and has a nice 1960s sound­tracky flavour. It’s good live.”

“Then I’ve got this Guild Starfire, which is my favourite to play when I’m record­ing. There’s a cou­ple of oth­ers — a 1964 Jazz bass and a 1962 Pre­ci­sion. I use those a lot. For some of the more folky songs I’ve got a Schecter 8-string Hell­cat. It’s very resilient. With a lot of eight-strings you have to put all your energy in just to get a sound, but this one’s almost totally oppo­site to that. There’s not much play­ing to it, it’s very easy.”

“Beck likes me to use the basses to the way he oper­ates. I’ve got a Roland G77 and he makes me use it a lot. It’s this really hideous look­ing ‘80s thing, you know, with an arm across the top. It’s like you have to be strapped right into it. I didn’t record with it, but Beck likes it partly because he’s got one, and another guy in the band’s got one, so at one point there’s three of us play­ing them at the same time. I think you can see the effect he’s after.”

It seems then that the band is required to get into Beck’s sin­gu­lar groove. On a recent Top of the Popsappear­ance you could have caught Justin decked out like Sid Vicious, throw­ing him­self around like a mad­man while pick­ing out the intri­ca­cies of the sin­gle ‘Sexxlaws’. What was that all about?

“You know, that shirt was the exact same shirt that Sid Vicious was weraing when the Sex Pis­tols swore live on air on that TV show? Yes, we have this enor­mous box there in the mid­dle of the dress­ing room, full of these really awful awful fan­tas­tic clothes, and Beck dishes them out every night. It’s like ‘You can be the punk rocker tonight’. I love that — I mean the night before I was a school cus­to­dian in a jump­suit. These char­ac­ters are great and they never last more than a night or two.”

“I feel really priv­i­leged to be work­ing with Beck because, you know, you’re really not sure what he’s going to say or do next. I really get a sense of that, and we’ve been work­ing together for three years.”

So what about effects? Beck’s set is so var­ied you’d imag­ine there to be quite a few…

“Oh yeah, God. I could just reel off a list. I’ve got this custom-made pedal board an old asso­ciate of mine made years ago. It’s starts off with Electro-Harmonix Bass­balls, and goes into a Bass Synth. I’ve got a Japanese-made Guy­a­tone Phaser and a Guy­a­tone Ana­logue Delay.”

“An Aus­tralian friend of mine gace me an effect called Prunes and Cus­tard which deliv­ers a sort of con­trolled fuzz weirdness.”

“I’ve also got this Boss OD1 Over­drive and an HM2 Heavy Metal and I step on both of those if I want some really explo­sive feed­back. There’s a Boss Octover and a Sansamp GT2 for a nice warm bass distortion.”

So what about the new stuff. ‘Sexxlaws’ has this really intri­cate and funky bassline — it was pretty strange see­ing ‘Sid Vicious’ play­ing black ‘70s funk on Top of the Pops.

“We like to call it Booga­loo rather than funk. It’s inspired by the ‘60s British TV style, you know where you have this really over-active bassline like some guy’s popped a cou­ple of pills and just really gone for it. There is a black ‘70s ele­ment, but it’s not quite laid back enough. Oh there’s noth­ing laid back about ‘Sexxlaws’.”

What about the other stuff on ‘Mid­nite Vul­tures’? Are there any stand-out moments for you?

“Well, there’s ‘Mixed Biz­ness’ which is I sup­pose sim­i­lar to ‘Sexxlaws’ in style. ‘Pres­sure Zone’ exploits that sort of angu­lar Brit artrock thing. It’s got lots of noise explo­sions all done on bass, where we over­laid quite a few tracks.”

“I think my favourite moment is on ‘Milk & Honey’. The mid­dle sec­tion of that is like the deep­est sex disco ever ren­dered. I think it’s my best-played thing on the album. I tend to spaz it on stage a bit, and being the stu­dio was a good exer­cise in ton­ing it down.”

So what else is going on apart from the Beck mate­r­ial? Are there any other irons in the fire?

“Roger and I are going to France shortly to work with Air. I toured their ‘Moon Safari’ album, so we’re look­ing for­ward to that. I’ve worked with Mark Eitzel, and I’m about to start some new stuff with him. He’s fan­tas­tic — that really is where I’m at musi­cally. What else? I’ve worked with Sasha, who are big on trance, and I’ve done a remix of Jamiroquai’s ‘Black Capri­corn Day’. Stuff on the Mel C record, Moby… Oh, there’s been quite a lot lately.”