Me meto un tiro,
¡Pum!
El eco suena,
¡Pum!
O quizás es el corazón,
¡Pum!
Que todavía sueña.

Día: 8 de marzo de 2013

Jerry Cantrell: “Hemos hecho algo completamente diferente»

Jerry Cantrell: “Hemos hecho algo completamente diferente»

Jerry Cantrell on New Alice in Chains Album: ‘There’s Some Real Filth in There’

Sacado de: http://www.rollingstone.com AND http://portalternativo.com

Alice in Chains’ new album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, comes out this May. It’s the Seattle’s band follow-up to Black Gives Way to Blue and the second album with vocalistguitarist William DuVall. According to singer-guitarist Jerry Cantrell, the band feels like they’ve made a major jump with the new album.

«We made a unique record that’s completely different from anything we ever did,» he tells Rolling Stone. «It encapsulates a period of time, like all records do. You see growth and that the band is moving ahead in new territory that we haven’t been to before, but we haven’t lost our identity.»

Alice in Chains, Through the Looking Glass: Rolling Stone’s 1992 Feature

The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, again produced by Nick Raskulinecz, who did Black Gives Way to Blue, finds Alice in Chains digging in the dirt on songs like the methodical title track, «Lab Monkey,» and «Stone.»

«There’s some real filth in there. That’s intentional, and that’s also just how we sound together,» Cantrell says of the record’s deep, gritty sound. «We’re trying to make a record that we dig and we’re trying to keep the bar high for ourselves and see if we can get past it, and I think that we did again. And of course you want people to dig it too and to respond to it, and to have that start happening is satisfying.»

It’s started happening with the lead single and opening track, «Hollow,» which hit Number One on the rock radio charts. Despite the fact that Alice in Chains’ forays into the murky waters have consistently proven to lead to both commercial and radio success, Cantrell was still pleasantly surprised by the song’s immediate acceptance.

«The initial response to ‘Hollow’ has been fucking incredible, totally not what we intended, and that’s fucking awesome,» he says. «We just put that song out there for the fans and then it ended up turning into a number one single, a six-minute sludgy metal tune. That’s always fun, to see something like that happen.»

Alice will be doing some upcoming dates with Soundgarden, which Cantrell is looking forward to. «I just saw Soundgarden a couple of nights ago at the Wiltern and it was a really great show,» he says.

For Cantrell, the road is the best place to catch up with old friends. «You maybe haven’t seen each other in years, and you meet in fucking Wisconsin because you’re playing together, or fucking Berlin or wherever – odd places on the globe you meet up and catch up again.»

He’s excited to incorporate the new material into the live show. «It’s always great for us because we get new shit to play for people, and alongside of that we’ve been fortunate to have a pretty long career and have a lot of material that people react to,» he says. «There’s really not any song in our repertoire that you can’t play live . . . The bolts of the song, we can play our shit. It’s kind of a lost art these days, to actually play your stuff without having to have some tracks to help you out,» he adds, laughing.

The band got some credit in the recent Judd Apatow comedy This Is 40, in which their track «Rooster» was cited by Paul Rudd’s character as «real rock.» Cantrell says it was an honor to be included in the film. «We had heard Judd was interested in using that song in a scene and we were like, ‘Of course,'» he says. «We’re fans of his work as well, and it is really cool to see his love of music.»

Apatow invited Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney to the premiere, where they made an unexpected connection. «His grandma, they have some jazz label, her and her husband, and she was really interested in Sean,» Cantrell recalls. «We went over and talked to her and she was trying to sign us to her label, which was fucking awesome.»

So have the two ever considered starting a jazz band? «If it’s for Judd’s grandma, we might have to,» he says, cracking up.

EN ESPAÑOL

Jerry Cantrell, guitarrista de Alice In Chains, ha charlado con Rolling Stone sobre “The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here”, el nuevo disco del grupo que aparecerá en mayo.

Hemos hecho un disco único que es completamente diferente de cualquier cosa que hayamos hecho. Condensa un periodo de tiempo, como hacen todos los discos. Ves el crecimiento y que la banda se dirige a nuevos territorios en los que no habíamos estado antes pero no hemos perdido nuestra identidad.

Con temas como “Lab Monkey” o “Stone”, Cantrell asegura que el material, producido por Nick Raskulinecz tiene “auténtica suciedad. De forma intencionada y es que así es como sonamos juntos. Estamos tratando de hacer un disco que nos guste y tratamos de mantener el listón alto por nosotros y ver si podemos superarlo y creo que lo hemos hecho de nuevo. Y por supuesto, queremos que a la gente le guste también y responda, y que eso empiece a pasar es satisfactorio.

El músico, pese al tiempo que lleva ya en el negocio, se sigue sorprendiendo como los temas de su banda siguen logrando tal aceptación comercial: “Hollow”, el anticipo del nuevo largo, logró encaramarse al primer puesto de las listas de radios de rock de EEUU.

La respuesta inicial a “Hollow” ha sido jodidamente increíble, no lo que esperábamos y eso es la hostia. Simplemente sacamos un tema para los fans y acabó convirtiéndose en un single número uno, un tema de metal pantanoso de seis minutos. Y eso siempre es divertido, ver como pasa algo así.

El cuarteto coincidirá próximamente en algunas fechas con Soundgarden:

Vi a Soundgarden hace un par de noches en el Wiltern y fue un concierto realmente genial.

Cantrell se muestra orgulloso de las capacidades del grupo:

Siempre es genial (tocar en directo) porque tenemos nueva mierda para la gente y junto a eso, hemos tenido la suerte de tener una carrera bastante larga y tenemos mucho material que hace reaccionar a la gente. No tenemos ninguna canción en nuestro repertorio que no podamos tocar en directo… Los tornillos de la canción, podemos tocar nuestra mierda. Es una especie de arte perdido en estos tiempos, tocar tu material sin que te hagan falta pistas (grabadas) de apoyo.

En otro orden de cosas, le preguntan al músico por la inclusión en el último film de Judd Apatow, “This Is 40″, del tema “Rooster”.

Oímos que Judd estaba interesado en usar esa canción en una escena y dijimos, “Por supuesto”. Somos fans de su trabajo y mola ver su amor por la música.

El director invitó a Cantrell y al batería Sean Kinney:

Su abuela, tienen una especie de sello de jazz, ella y su marido, y la verdad es que estaba muy interesada en Sean. Fuimos y hablamos con ella, y la verdad es que nos quiso fichar para su sello, lo cual fue la puta hostia. Si, quizá tengamos que montar una banda de jazz.

Scott Weiland: “No volverá a haber un tiempo como los 90″

Scott Weiland: “No volverá a haber un tiempo como los 90″

Scott Weiland: I don’t think there’ll ever be a time like the 90s

Scott Weiland

It’s good to get in the trenches and really connect with the fans.
You have to sort of feel passionate and feel real about [playing music], and be pragmatic that, unless you do it the real way, you’re not gonna make any money. I’m one of the luckiest people in the world that I was able to do what I fell in love with and be able to make a living doing it. But it’s a shame that the part that I love about it the most, which is the artistic part  — creating, writing and producing music — there’s not that emphasis put on it anymore because the business people don’t make money from it. I still love making records, and I’m able to do it because I own my own studio, and I try to do it as much as possible. That’s what I really, really get off on. And I love playing live. I just don’t necessarily like being away from my fiancé and my kids for extended periods of time. That’s the only part about it that kind of gets to me. And having to wear dirty socks for three days in a row sometimes.

People would come up to me and say, «Scott, people really root for you.» I haven’t heard that in a long time, and I don’t know why.
It was a very special thing that people would say, and I would hear it all the time. But the interesting thing is that it’s been almost 11 years since I used drugs, and I don’t really hear it [anymore] except from my friends. There’s another side of it that I take personally. For example, we had to cross into Canada last night to make it to the show in Niagara Falls, and we went to the border crossing. There was this really cool [customs official], and he took our passports and he asked us if we had anything to declare. We told him we had a little bit of food, a little bit of beverages, and on days off, some of the guys in the band would play some paintball. So we thought everything was cool. He says, «Just pull over on the side for the routine inspection.» So we pull over to the side, and as luck would have it, this Mr. Mountie Friendly read us the inquisition about past transgressions decades long-gone. That’s a life I barely recognize anymore, and the point is, I’ve been on tour throughout Canada over the last couple decades many, many times. I’ve never been treated that way before. It was kind of shocking, and it was actually kind of humiliating.

Now bands really have to self-promote.
They have to update their Facebook and be on Twitter. The ones who really self-promote are making their daily videos to keep their fans active because people want daily information. It’s sort of instant gratification, like, «What have you done for me lately?» I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s just different. But with that, there’s a feeling that you do have to be more responsible for the decisions you make, because there’s not the same privacy there was before.

Rocketing to success overnight was what you dreamed of, but there’s no way to prepare yourself for it.
I don’t think there’ll ever be a time like that again: My band, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Smashing Pumpkins going from indie bands or big local bands and regional bands to being rock stars overnight. It was a pretty magical time. At that point, people were buying CDs and even cassettes. We were selling multi-platinum albums. I think people who are younger look back at that as the last huge organic movement, and people like me or those who are sort of left, there’s a rock’n’roll story that goes along with it — the resurgence of drugs within that culture. It was a perfect storm for a lot of people. There are a lot of people that were casualties though, and that’s what was really unfortunate about it.

I don’t think that rock’n’roll is gonna save the world.
I think it’s fun. I do think you have a responsibility to the fans, and I have been late to shows. That’s something I definitely would like to work on. But that’s happened with every person in a band. Being a little bit late here and there — that’s why fans come late to shows, because they expect it. Everyone has liabilities.

EN ESPAÑOL

SPIN publica una entrevista con Scott Weiland, el ex-vocalista de Stone Temple Pilots, en la que habla de los cambios que ha sufrido la industria o como ha ido perdiendo apoyos con el paso de los años.

Weiland asegura no reconocerse en muchas actitudes de años atrás y le duele cuando se las recuerdan:

Era especial cuando la gente me decía, “Te apoyo”, y lo oía constantemente. Pero lo interesante es que ya casi hace 11 años que no tomo drogas y ya no oigo que me digan eso (excepto mis amigos). Hay otra cosa que me tomo de forma personal. Por ejemplo, tuvimos que pasar por Canadá anoche para hacer un concierto en Niagara Falls y fuimos a la frontera. Había un tipo realmente guay (agente de aduanas) que cogió nuestros pasaportes y nos preguntó si teníamos algo que declarar. Le dijimos que llevábamos algo de comida, alguna bebida y en los días libres algunos de los chicos de la banda juegan a paintball. Así que pensamos que todo estaba bien. Nos dice, “Aparcad a un lado para la inspección rutinaria”. Así que aparcamos ahí y suertudos nosotros, este Mr. Policía Montado Amable nos leyó la inquisición de pasadas infracciones de décadas lejanas. Esa es una vida que casi no reconozco y el tema es que he ido de gira por Canadá muchísimas veces en las últimas décadas. Nunca me habían tratado así antes. Fue chocante y también bastante humillante.

Los tiempos que corren requieren que las bandas se impliquen en la promoción de sus obras por medios como las redes sociales:

(Las bandas) tienen que actualizar su Facebook y Twitter. Los que realmente se autopromocionan hacen vídeos a diario para mantener activos a sus fans porque la gente quiere información diaria. Es una gratificación instantánea, en plan, “¿Qué has hecho para mi últimamente?” No digo que esté mal. Es diferente. Pero dicho eso, existe la sensación de que tienes que ser más responsable por las decisiones que tomas porque no hay la misma privacidad que había antes.

Lejos quedan los tiempos de apogeo del rock alternativo:

No creo que vuelva a haber un tiempo como aquel: mi banda, Nirvana y Pearl Jam y Soundgarden y The Smashing Pumpkins pasando de ser bandas indies o grandes bandas locales y regionales a ser estrellas del rock de la noche a la mañana. Fueron tiempos bastante mágicos. Vendíamos álbumes multiplatino. Creo que la gente más joven mira eso como el último gran movimiento orgánico y gente como yo o aquellos que quedaron, hay una historia de rock and roll en eso – el resurgimiento de las drogas en esa cultura. Fue la tormenta perfecta para mucha gente. También hubieron muchas bajas y eso fue realmente desgraciado.

Tiene claro que ha cometido errores pero cree que puede trabajar en solucionarlos:

Creo que se tiene una responsabilidad con los fans y yo he llegado tarde a conciertos. Eso es algo que me gustaría mejorar. Pero eso le ha pasado a todo el que está en una banda. Llegar tarde aquí o allá – por eso los fans vienen tarde a los conciertos porque lo esperan. Todo el mundo tiene sus lastres.

Setlist del concierto de Scott Weiland en Nueva York

Setlist del concierto de Scott Weiland en Nueva York

Setlist of the Scott Weiland’s show in New York

Scott Weiland: “No volverá a haber un tiempo como los 90″

Setlist:
Crackerman (Stone Temple Pilots song)
Wicked Garden (Stone Temple Pilots song)
Paralysis
Naked Sunday (Stone Temple Pilots song)
Creep (Stone Temple Pilots song)
The Jean Genie (David Bowie cover)
Kitchenware & Candybars (Stone Temple Pilots song)
Where the River Goes (Stone Temple Pilots song)
Mountain Song (Jane’s Addiction cover)
Big Empty (Stone Temple Pilots song)
Can’t Stand Me Now (The Libertines cover)
Still Remains (Stone Temple Pilots song)
Vasoline (Stone Temple Pilots song)
Interstate Love Song (Stone Temple Pilots song)

Encore:
Roadhouse Blues (The Doors cover)
Sex Type Thing (Stone Temple Pilots song)