Michael Lockwood of Lions & Ghosts | Interview
Michael Lockwood of Lions & Ghosts | Interview
Cris Cohen interviews Michael Lockwood of Lions & Ghosts.
Topics:
The re-release of "Velvet Kiss, Lick of the Lime"
The new song, "Gurl I Luv You"
Tinkering with the original songs
His guitar work severs as a kind of backing vocal
Creating guitar parts that mesh well with female vocalists like Aimee Mann, Susanna Hoffs, and Fiona Apple
Creating music for movies, TV, Apple versus album songs
Songwriting process
His new record label, Sparkle Plenty
Oingo Boingo
His job title "lo-fi hi-fi.ist"
From the Lions & Ghosts bio - "In the midst of these multi-faceted genres arrived a quartet from Los Angeles by the name of Lions & Ghosts. Frontman Rick Parker, guitarist Michael Lockwood, Todd Hoffman (bass), and Micheal Murphy (drums). The band took its influences from The Beatles, glam rockers T.Rex, classic songwriters The Byrds, and more. Their love of memorable choruses and lyrics with a psychedelic twist shone through on their debut album, Velvet Kiss, Lick of The Lime. The record received a good amount of airplay for its first single, “Mary Goes Round,” and “Contradiction” from Southern California alternative rock radio institution KROQ. The band toured a good deal, supporting acts as varied as Gene Loves Jezebel, Love and Rockets, The Church, The Alarm, Dramarama, Guns N’ Roses, amongst others. Chances are, if you were at a cool show in the late 80s in L.A. at the Hollywood Palladium or the Palace, you saw Lions & Ghosts opening for someone."
Michael Lockwood's website: https://www.michaellockwood.com/
“Velvet Kiss, Lick of the Lime”
Cris Cohen: First off, “Velvet Kiss, Lick of the Lime.” I was curious, as you prepped this album for its rerelease and delved back into all this material, did it stir up any thoughts, emotions, or memories that hadn’t been in your mind for a while?
Michael Lockwood: Fair question. I think the whole experience of reconnecting with the singer, Rick Parker, that was so unexpected. That just created this whole sort of therapy session that has lasted a few years now, really, because I had reconnected with him right before we had the pandemic. And so, the way that happened was that I was asked to do a session here in town, and somebody ended up booking it at Rick’s studio. So, I really hadn’t had more than a hello or goodbye in 25 years. We ended up chatting all night, and eventually, we got around to working, and it was really enjoyable.
And then, when we parted, Rick and I exchanged information. And at some point, we were like, “Hey, what are you working on?” And we created a Dropbox folder and shared some music with each other. And we started talking about maybe doing something, and it was just taking forever to really happen.
So, we got together at the studio, sat down in front of each other with two acoustic guitars, and wrote this new single, “Gurl I Luv You.” So, that sort of opened the book and the journey, because there was a lot of… Are you a musician?
Cris Cohen: Only if you use air quotes and really extend the term. I’m an awful drummer, but my argument is: Learning how to play the drums made me a better listener. So, I recommend that to anyone, to try and play a musical instrument, because you hear things differently once you try and create those sounds yourself.
Michael Lockwood: Right. The reason I also asked you is that, when you’re in a band, it’s like having three wives or four wives, depending on how big the band is. And so, there’s a lot of dynamics and there’s a lot of good times and bad times with that. So, I had never really addressed how I felt. Because there were a lot of great times, but there were a lot of difficult times in a band, and traveling and spending a lot of close, quality time together. So, this journey, for me, has been sort of unravelling that and learning how I got to where I’m at through that. It’s been a really great experience.
And as I started thinking about being able to rerelease “Velvet Kiss, Lick of the Lime,” it’s great to go through all the demos. It’s great to go through all the things that we put together. It was kind of a handmade band. We made our shirts, we made programs, we made flyers, we made posters. We did all that. So, going back through all of that, reconnecting with the A&R guy and talking to him. And he remembers infinitely more than I remember going through that process. So, it was really cathartic, and it really left me with mostly just great memories. And it’s really nice that I reconnected with some old friends and reconnected with band members. It’s been a fun experience.
Cris Cohen: That’s a wonderful, comes full circle, happy ending aspect to all this that I didn’t even know was fully part of the story. So, I mean, even if you didn’t put out the album, it sounds like the cathartic breakthroughs you guys had were worth it alone.
Michael Lockwood: I think so. It certainly was for Rick and me because we spent a bunch of time together now writing and recording and mixing this song. So, it was, for me, a great way to look at this guy that I worked with when we both very young and say to him… I was able to acknowledge to him what he brought, and I wasn’t able to do that when I was 24 years old because, at 24, you’re trying to figure out who the hell you are emotionally, and then there’s musically, and everybody’s trying to claim their little piece of the pie. And now it’s like, “Dude, you can have my pie. It’s okay. [Laughs] I don’t care now.” So, it was really cathartic.
“Gurl I Luv You”
Cris Cohen: And then, since you brought it up, listening to the new song, “Gurl I Luv You,” what’s amazing when you play it in conjunction with “Velvet Kiss” is how seamlessly that song fits in with the rotation of the original songs. How much of that was, “Alright. We want to do something on purpose that sounds like our original stuff,” and how much of it is just, “If you get these players together, it’s a DNA thing. It’s always going to sound this way”?
Michael Lockwood: It’s scary that we didn’t try to do that on purpose, that it was all organic. The song certainly morphed as we wrote and recorded it. And because of the pandemic, there were lots of starts and stops. Actually, it was a song that shouldn’t have happened in the first place, because we shouldn’t have gotten together and shouldn’t have written it because it wouldn’t have happened. So, that started the process.
And then, as we recorded it, I didn’t really even think… The way I work, I usually listen to something. I sort of have a soundscape in my mind and I’m like, “Okay. It’s missing information over here. It needs color here.” I sort of paint the whole thing out in my head, and then I attack it. Well, the same thing with this, but after I finished guitars and Rick… Rick actually played bass on it. After we finished doing that and at the very last minute, I had my friend, Patrick Warren, come in and do a string arrangement for it. Then it really took on the extra flavor of what that first Lions and Ghosts record was.
And after we finished working on it and Rick mixed it, we were at the studio and we were listening back to it, he goes, “Well, what do you think?”
And I’m like, “It’s really organic. It really sounds…” And I just sort of stopped with the dot dot dot.
And he looks and he goes, “It’s really weird. It kind of sounds like Lions and Ghosts.”
And I just started laughing when he said that. I was like, “Really?”
And then he started asking me, “Did you purposely do the guitars like this?”, because I did them at my home studio.
And I said, “No.”
He goes, “So, just because of my voice, or what?”
And I said, “Yeah. I think it’s just that you fall into that pattern because you work together.” We had probably almost a 10-year run together -- maybe 7 years or something -- and you just…it works in that thing. And you’re right, the song… The mastering… I did try to master it in a way that they could sort of flow together, because they were coming out near each other.
Cris Cohen: Well, that does bring up another thing I was wondering about. When you’re rereleasing something or at least having a chance to put something out there that you haven’t touched in a long time, it would seem to me that there is an urge to tinker with things, especially because, well A) musicians tend to do that, and B) you’ve changed as players, as people, over time and maybe have different ideas about how things should go. And I’m just curious, besides setting this up so that it is available for streaming and all that kind of stuff, what other tweaks did you do?
Michael Lockwood: Well, at first, I went back, and I have the vinyl of the record, so I listened to the vinyl. I have a great stereo system. I’m really fortunate. I sort of listened to it and then I listened to some stuff from the same time period. And I thought, “Boy, we’re really fortunate, because our record holds up pretty well, sonically.” Peter Walsh, the guy that had produced and mixed it, worked with Peter Gabriel, he worked with Simple Minds. He made great-sounding records. And clearly, they’re made in the 80s and they contain elements that 80s records have, right? We were also really fortunate to have Bernie Grundman, who’s a world-class mastering guy, master our record. So, we started out on a really good note.
And as I went through tapes and everything, I think the only thing I wanted to bring to it is, knowing that we live in a world of streaming, everybody listens on their phone. I had to put that in my mind. And so, the only real tinkering that got done was, there was a bit of a volume boost, because it just needs to be these days, right? And no great mastering guy really wants to do that, because it does affect the dynamics of a recording. So, there were discussions of that. We did a bit of that. And then, there was an ever-so-slight opening up and a little more air on the top, just to get things to ring true. I think we went through three rounds of mastering.
Cris Cohen: Will this also be rereleased as an actual disc too and/or vinyl?
Michael Lockwood: Well, we talked about that in the beginning. I think, right now, we — when I say we, my manager and I — have a record label called Sparkle Plenty. And at the same time, we’re releasing a new artist, John Brodeur from the East coast. He has a band called Bird Streets. His record is coming out. We have a single coming out in a couple of weeks, and then his record comes out in November. The vinyl comes out in January, and we have a bunch of stuff happening.
So, I think the Lions and Ghosts thing, it was a labor of love, and I personally knew a bunch of people that were hoping that, someday, it would be available for streaming and download. So, that was sort of the first chunk. We’re talking about doing the second record. I have an endless supply of demos for any crazy Lions and Ghosts fan — which I’m sure there’s three — who would want to hear. So, I think, right now, we’re going to stick with digital, and then we’ll see. I’ve had a lot of people ask me for vinyl. I’d, personally, like to go down that lane.
I think, at the moment, we’re just going to stay with digital for that, and then maybe we’ll start having discussions about vinyl. And then, I know some people, they’re still kind of hanging onto the CDs too.
Cris Cohen: I still love them. Yeah. Although, I’m of that generation. I grew up with… you got the album and you would sit there and look at the cover art while you listened to the entire album, be it vinyl, be it CD. Yeah. And that’s been my own thing, is when COVID shut everything down and suddenly I didn’t have access to concerts, I got really tired of streaming and the lack of sound quality. I started rebuilding my stereo system, and suddenly it’s like I could hear all these great elements that were not in the stream.
Michael Lockwood: That’s it. I’m so with you. I love music so much, and I spend all of my time either making it, listening to it. How do I have an environment where it sounds… it’s perfectly set up? I have a great, like I said, great stereo system that I’m constantly growing down that rabbit hole. And I recently sort of rediscovered CD, and I’m like, “I used to complain about CDs, and I’m not going to complain about them anymore after listening to all this really…” I listen to high-res streaming, but a lot of times I listen to the radio streaming too, and the quality’s so bad. It’s so sad.
Cris Cohen: Right. Especially when it comes to things like bass.
Michael Lockwood: And there’s nothing left up in the high end either.
Guitar Parts As Vocal Harmonies
Cris Cohen: And then, talking about having an ear for the dynamic aspects in all of these songs, as I was going through this, I would classify your playing on most of these songs as… it’s almost like your guitar work is kind of another backing vocal. There’s a harmony to it, a lyrical essence to it. It’s not just a show-off shred kind of thing, but more…
Michael Lockwood: There’s no more shredding now. [Laughs]
Cris Cohen: …but more layers of, again, it’s like a harmony. I’m curious, how did you develop that style? Where did that come from with you?
Michael Lockwood: That’s a great question. And I, obviously, have a lot of guitar player friends and we always sort of talk about guitar players and what we like about them and who influenced us. And I’ve always been the guy that says, “Listen. There’s no vocals happening. There has to be an event. But I don’t think it needs to be a shredded event. I want it to be lyrical and melodic. I want it to be something that sets up something that’s about to happen or an answer to something that just went by.”
And it’s the way that I think if I’m playing bass or if I’m playing keyboard or anything. That’s my first thought, “What serves this song? What serves this singer? Okay. Do I mimic the melody of the chorus on my solo?”
I don’t know where I got that from. I grew up listening to the Beatles. That was sort of my first big musical influence. Clearly, those guys are great crafters of arrangement and ideas and little things that orchestrate their music. So, probably some of it’s that. And a lot of the guitar players I listen to and grew up listening to, like James Honeyman-Scott from The Pretenders… Even Jimmy Page is a parts player. I know that he’s a shredder too, but he’s really an orchestrator of parts. And I really enjoy that when I’m working on music.
Aimee Mann
Cris Cohen: And then, you mentioned you try and back the singer. You try and create a guitar part that fits the vocals. You’ve worked with a number of really impressive women in the world of Rock. Aimee Mann and Susanna Hoffs and Fiona Apple. And something that I’ve never really asked anyone before -- but I was just curious -- if you’re creating a guitar part for a female voice, do you choose, I don’t know, maybe different tones or make different choices than you would if it was a male voice?
Michael Lockwood: I never thought about that, but I do think I’m always trying to sculpt whatever sound I feel is needed in it. It gets sculpted around the vocals. So, you work with three different guys, you’re going to probably sculpt and record stuff that suits their voices. And the difference between working with maybe Aimee or Fiona or Susanna is they’ve all got really different voices, and there’s things that work. Aimee’s voice was interesting because, a lot of times when we recorded, everything around her was very dry. So I tended to make everything very atmospheric around her, so that there was some sort of yin and yang in that. So, I think it’s not female versus male more than it’s just every voice is different and would call for some sort of thoughtful process about what to put next to that voice.
Cris Cohen: You’ve also created a lot of music for movies, for television, for even Apple iMovie. Do you need to be in a different mindset to create that kind of music? Do you look at it like, “Okay. I’m kind of shifting my perspective to create this type of music,”?
Michael Lockwood: No. I think I’m always coming from the same place. The things that I did for Apple, they’re just sort of mini versions of songs. And it’s funny, when you work for a company like Apple, you don’t get a lot… I didn’t get a lot of information, because I don’t think they’re able to give you information. You can’t really know exactly what this is for. I think you get this general idea of what you’re going to be doing.
When I created the songs for Memories that is part of the Photos app — when you create a memory, there are soundtracks, and I had some of those — all those were, to me, little, tiny songs. So, with that, there was no… Well, there was some background vocal stuff that I sang. But I always try to find something to be the singer, whether it was a Casio keyboard whispering a melody or something. So, that’s really fun. I really enjoyed doing that process because I actually got to make a ton of them. And then I got to ship them off to them, and they decided which ones they used. And it was a fun, easy process because it was just me alone in the studio going nuts.
Cris Cohen: And what is your songwriting process when you’re given complete blank slate? Do you start with some sort of drum track or something like that and build of that, or…?
Michael Lockwood: Drums come early on for me for sure. Either I jump on a keyboard or acoustic guitar, and I sketch out… Let’s say I have all the melodies or a good portion of the melodies in my head. So, I find a basic sort of outline of the chords, and I usually lay that down. And the second thing I usually do then is create drums and then start working from that. I sort of jump all over the place. Sometimes I’ll spend half a day just writing and working on the chorus and nothing else.
Like the Apple stuff, sometimes I would get an email with a few words, “Think porch.” So, what do you with “think porch”, right? I’m like, “Okay.” So, I created things that were like some people sitting on a porch, playing guitar together. And then, “No, more campfire.” These are the types of things that I get. So, those things, I had some sort of idea.
When I’m writing, it’s usually because I’m inspired by something I just heard. Or if I’m working with somebody and, say, it’s a younger artist and they’re not sort of clued into their direction yet, then we might talk about where they want to go. And sometimes I’ll create something in that direction. I’m a big lover of new pop music. I love everything. I love classical music, country music, jazz, new music, old music. And I have two teenage daughters, so we listen to a lot of pop music. And thank God I love it. Otherwise, I would have been my dad going, “What the hell is this kind of music?” Luckily, I’m not that guy.
Cris Cohen: Well, then I have to ask, is it reciprocal? Do they appreciate what you create?
Michael Lockwood: I hope so. It’s so hard. My daughters are 14, or they’re about to be 14, and we can sit there and talk about music all day long. “Oh, this song by Halsey, why do you like that?” And they’re really great at sort of picking apart stuff, which makes me really happy.
And sometimes I have them help me with percussion and do stuff on the songs. And in fact, they did a bunch of stuff on the Apple songs. So, the only time that I get a reaction is when they open their phone and they’re like, “Look. It’s you.”
And I say, “No, it’s you. You’re on that.”
But when I play them new stuff that I’m working on, I don’t get a whole lot of feedback. It’s like, “Oh, come on. You guys are killing me. It’s crickets. You’ve got to tell me something.”
Cris Cohen: That reminds me, I saw an interview with Jerry Seinfeld and he talked about, with his kids, he has to tell them, “Alright. I’m going to try a joke out on you.” Because, he says, if I just throw out something, they’ll just look at me and be like, “You feel funny now? Yeah? You think you’re funny?”
Michael Lockwood: [Laughs] I know. Kids are killer. Oh, boy.
Sparkle Plenty
Cris Cohen: Also, you mentioned a little bit ago your new record label, Sparkle Plenty. Now, an interesting time to start a label, for one thing.
Michael Lockwood: He says with eyebrows raised. [Laughs]
Cris Cohen: Well, first off, from your perspective, coming at it from an artist’s perspective, how is this going to be a different label than what’s out there right now?
Michael Lockwood: Well, first and foremost, nobody tells me no. And that could be good and could be bad. There were a few reasons for doing it. And we also did it during the pandemic, such a weird time for all of us. And that’s when I actually met my manager during the pandemic. And the only time we’ve ever met in person was when I was about 25 years old and he came to a Lions and Ghosts show.
Otherwise, we just do what you and I are doing now (video conference). He’s up on the outskirts of Sacramento, and we do Zoom meetings.
And when I started talking to him about doing this, he was kind of like, “I’ve got you your own deal. Which direction do you want to go in this?”
And we talked about a bunch of different things. I was producing some songs for Bird Streets at the time, and I thought, “John (Brodeur) is such a great artist, a singer. His lyrics are so thoughtful. And what’s happening? He’s making this record. How are we going to get this record out for people to hear?”
And it was a pandemic, he was not playing live. There was all this different talk. I had introduced him to a bunch of different managers, and everybody was in such an odd state, I couldn’t figure out how to help this guy. That’s what I really wanted to do.
So, that’s where the label came into play. I went, “This is perfect. I’ve got a vehicle to help this artist, and we can actually do whatever we need to do.” So, he’s the kind of artist that deserves a double album, two vinyl discs at 45. He deserves to have his lyrics… We created lyric books to sell with his things. That’s the kind of thing I want to do. It’s like, “Depending on who we’re working with, what do they need?” And they probably wouldn’t get that at a major label, because there is a lot of worry about the cost of things. Things can be pretty inexpensive. It’s mostly man-hours. And that’s Jeff and I. We’re able to put a lot of time into these things, and we don’t have the pressure of having a weekly meeting about the finances about things because it’s our own time.
So, it’s a vehicle for us to sort of help artists that we really like and we want to turn other people onto. And the Lions and Ghosts thing, it was a pet project, and I always felt like it’s a great record and it never really happened. And in these days, days where Kate Bush can be a huge success (again), why not go back through and reintroduce this record to the world? So, those are our first few projects, and we got a bunch of different stuff coming out next year. I’m looking forward to just letting the label grow and become what it’s going to become.
Cris Cohen: The other question is: Lessons learned from Lions and Ghosts, the biggest band that wasn’t necessarily. You listen to it now, and you’re like, “How the hell did this not blow up?” That kind of thing. And I know there’s things that are out of your control, and I’ve heard horrendous stories about record labels throughout the years. So, how much of what you learned through that experience now informs what you’re doing with your own label?
Michael Lockwood: Well, the business has changed so much from those days to these days, and I’ve seen so many success stories. Working with Aimee Mann for years, I saw her go from a major label to an independent label, and she did it so successfully, so smoothly. She had a really loyal fan base that helped her transition. And also, it sure doesn’t hurt to have songs in movies that everybody’s watching or TV shows that everybody’s watching. She worked really hard to have the kind of career that she has. She really tailored it to her.
And her label was so well done. That was a great lesson learned about how to do things. And she runs that label, and the label is really sort of her baby. And it looks a certain way, it sounds a certain way, and that’s really inspiring. I’m also inspired by labels… Do you remember labels like 4AD and Sub Pop, these labels that were their own little entities? That’s inspiring.
And lessons learned from the bigger companies are that they pick and choose who they’re going to bless, so to speak. So, when you’re talking about things out of your control, those are things we’re talking about, right? There’s a band like Lions and Ghosts, who had a really nice, big following in Southern California. We put a record out, and hey, we sold 100,000 records. That’s amazing. It was all in California. It wasn’t anywhere else. So, part of that is, “Why didn’t we have an agent that did this? Why didn’t we do this?”
So, we started blaming it all on ourselves, and we ended up sonically changing things and becoming unhappy, and that’s it. I think it was the record that could have (been big). It just didn’t because of those things that are out of our control. We should have stuck to our guns and gone down that path. So, I’d love to have a label that would allow an artist to stick to their guns and make three, four records to get where they need to go.
Oingo Boingo
Cris Cohen: Yeah. And I mean, yours is certainly not the only story along those lines, especially as someone who grew up in the Los Angeles area. For instance, I was a fan of Oingo Boingo, who, I thought, was going to be just tremendous. And they were in the LA area. And then I talked to a friend who, he went to college in Boston, and he said, “Yeah, I got to see them in this tiny club.”
I’m like, “Why are they playing a tiny club? They sell out the Universal Amphitheater.”
And he’s like, “No, no one really knows them.”
I’m like, “How can they not?” And you’re young, you’re a kid. You think, “Well, it’s great. It will spread.” But you don’t know about machinations that happen behind the scenes.
Michael Lockwood: Right. And that’s a good band to bring up in that sort of scenario, because they should have been massive. The opportunity was there for them. Super talented guys, clearly. And they were in tons of soundtracks of that era. And you’re right, outside of LA, it’s like, “Oh, I think I heard about them. Aren’t they that quirky band that had that song in ‘Weird Science’?” They just really didn’t… Is that the label? Was it the timing? Did they get lost in the shuffle because there was a lot of that in LA in that period?
The scene was massive, but it was a scene of hair metal. The Sunset Strip thing was happening. There was sort of the post-punk band thing. That’s kind of where we came from, because we ended up playing a lot of shows with Gene Loves Jezebel and Love and Rockets and all these imports from overseas. So, we did sort of get put in that bucket. But then we’d play with Guns ‘N’ Roses at the Roxy. So, nobody knew what to do with us… especially us. [Laughs] And there are many bands like us of that time period. I’m glad you brought up Oingo Boingo, because I do remember thinking they were massive, and they really weren’t.
I think that there’s a different perception today because now we listen to a lot of streaming and we listen to Sirius or XM radio. And the people that put together those playlists, they’re sort of creating what history is. If you listen to First Wave or any of these different… I listen to a lot of Sirius stuff. They play tons of REM. They play tons of Oingo Boingo. They play all this stuff that wasn’t necessarily as big as it sounds like it was now. So, they’re sort of rewriting history by what they’re playing now. Classic rock radio is like that too. I mean, Guns ‘N’ Roses are now classic rock radio. They’re played with the Stones and all these others.
“lo-fi/hi-fi-ist”
Cris Cohen: So, as part of my research, I of course went to your website. And on the homepage of your website, it lists the description, the titles “Producer, Guitarist, lo-fi/hi-fi-ist.” And I was just wondering, what is that third line a reference to?
Michael Lockwood: Well, there was a period of my guitar playing where, the more lo-fi it was, I thought the better it suited everything I was working on. And then that’s sort of come full circle. I used to be the guy that would walk in with a trunk of pedals, only to make a pristine guitar sound like a bad $10 keyboard. And I thrived on that for a very long time. And then, as I got older and I started morphing my style and working with different people, I now feel like I’m a hi-fi enthusiast. But I find room in my pallet for things that don’t sound great but work really well in a song. So, I suppose it’s a bit of all that. And forever, my friends tease me because I can really come up with some really bad sounds. But on purpose.
Cris Cohen: But I mean, you talked about streaming and getting rid of the highs, getting rid of the lows, and squashing everything. I think that’s also… at least, with mainstream, there’s this emphasis on perfection. And (by contrast) there’s a lot of stuff in my vast CD and vinyl collection where it’s technically wrong, but sonically, it just sounds so right for the song.
Michael Lockwood: And it resonates with you, right? That’s where I sort of come from in that lo-fi thing. I felt like, lyrically, the record that I did with Aimee Mann, “Lost in Space.” That record is handfuls and handfuls of very lo-fi sounding stuff, but works so well with the lyric and Aimee’s voice for that sort of journey. Because, to me, that record is a journey, and all the human emotions that are in it. I wanted sounds that would reflect that. And I felt like we did a great job of matching the sonics to the lyrics in that. And that was a big lo-fi adventure for sure. But the production’s hi-fi. The mixing’s hi-fi. The mastering’s hi-fi. So, it blends all those things.
And there’s a book that I read from this English author, Jez Rowden. He wrote about all of Aimee’s records and the production, the lyrics. And that record, for him, really resonated, and part of it was because of the sonics. And that made me very happy and very proud.
Cris Cohen: Yeah. I think it’s great, on the one hand, that you can do things with Pro Tools and take a snippet here and then move it… and you can get some very creative stuff. But at the other end of the extreme, I also think about the legendary story of The Kinks, when they were making “You Really Got Me” and Dave Davies gets the guitar sound by taking a razor blade and slashing his amplifier. Because he didn’t like the sound and then he got something really raw and was like, “Oh, that’s it.”
Michael Lockwood: Wouldn’t be the same song without it, would it?
Cris Cohen: No, no. Not at all.
Michael Lockwood: It’s amazing, that journey.
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