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Total Guitar Interview Q & A INTERVIEW - MANSUN The cooler-than-hell Mansun guitarist Dominic Chad on their albums past, present and future, and why it's all just shapes to him.Your third album, Little Kix has been out since the summer: does it feel all old to you now? Yeah, it has, hasn't it? It seems like years! We started writing it in March 1999, down to Spain and stayed deep in the hills. We just took acoustic guitars and dictaphones, back to the basics, y'know? So it does seem a bit old - although Fool (third single) came out not long ago. 'Back to basics' then: is that similar to how you worked on Six, or Attack Of The Grey Lantern? No, Six was completely different. When we started making it, we didn't have anything written, we just went into the studio with an idea of how the album was gonna start and that was it. We recorded it in order, right from the beginning, the first minute the first day, the next two minutes the second day and so on. So the record was put together like a jigsaw. The first thing we did was Six, the last thing the end of Being A Girl, and a lot of it was improvised and most was spontaneous, down to the lyrics - writing the lyrics on the spot a lot, that kind of thing. Attack Of The Grey Lantern, was probably a bit more together. Paul had written most of the songs for that on the acoustic guitar before we went into the studio and then we worked out the arrangements. The idea with Little Kix and going to Spain was to be out of the way of any distraction, just go in a demo studio, work all the arrangements before so everything was ready to be laid down. How do you feel your playing has progressed since the first album? I'm definitely more confident now. I've always intended to sit down and learn some music theory - scales and stuff. But I never have. It's all kind of - shapes - to me. Does that mean sometimes you play things and you're not really aware what it is? Yeah. I know if it's major or minor. But when you start getting into sevenths and ninths and augmented fifths, I haven't a clue. I know the blues scale, I know the major scale but I don't know any modes or anything. Technically, I still have incredibly basic knowledge of the guitar but I don't think I'd use any theoretical knowledge I had with Mansun anyway. I think I'm a bit more of a fluid player, more natural and comfortable. When we started out, I'd only been playing four years or something. You once described your guitar's role as being like another singer within the band: what did you actually mean by that? Well, like a backing vocal. That's the one thing I'm trying to do less of at the minute. I'd starting to go to town a bit on the harmonies. If you've got a great melody, to play something over the top of it just tips it over the edge, y'know? What gear did you go for on Little Kix? Amps, it's AC30s all the way. It's just a good basic sound. I don't use it that much in the studio though. I've got an old Jaguar too, and a Gretsch Country Gentleman which both have great, distinctive sounds. But I wouldn't really fancy taking them - especially the Country Gent - out on tour. My 335 is still my main guitar: it's much more suited to touring and it's reasonably versatile too. I play a Tele on a couple of things. It's a bit different to a 335 I know, but I think it's all to do with balance. And I can't stand Les Pauls either. Too heavy and uncomfortable. It's well documented that you're a big Brian Jones fan: tell us about that. I think I've been made out to be a bigger fan than I actually am. I've been a fan of early Rolling Stones stuff since I was a kid. He wasn't the inspiration for playing - that come with listening to Hendrix records. But Brian was a talented multi-instrumentalist, much more than just a guitar player. One of his old girlfriends must have read this interview and asked me if I wanted to do an interview for this Brian Jones fanzine - which I did - and the next thing I knew, everyone was going on about my Brian Jones fascination. What aspect of his playing appealed to you? It's just the fact that he can turn his hand to anything, really. I enjoy doing the same - I don't just stick to playing guitar in the studio by any stretch of the imagination. I like to have a go at anything, particularly keyboards as I used to play the piano when I was a kid. You've also just done a Peel session covering Magazine's Shot By Both Sides. How was that? Well, we did that song as that was their first single. It's probably the best known track, but I'd have probably chosen a different one myself. It's the punkiest track that Magazine did because most of the stuff is quite cheesy singles. Shotgun is pretty fast guitars, and I'll be singing it because Paul (Draper, Mansun vocalist) doesn't want to. I might cut my losses and just shout it, then no-one can accuse me of being out of tune. Moving on to the new album - can you give us any clues as to what direction it's headed in? Well, we've just recorded B-sides for the new single and so many people have said to us that the thing they like about Mansun is the live shows, and their favourite tracks seem to be B-sides from EPs. So bearing that in mind, I think we want to make an album that sounds more 'live' than before. Most of Little Kix and Six were done like that, and we want to keep that vibe. So could we expect a live album from Mansun? We've talked about it but it's a case of getting it done. We've also talked about a B-sides album. That's probably more likely, to be honest. But with the next album, we can hopefully have something a little bit rougher around the edges. Talking more specifically then: guitarwise, how do you think the new album will sound? Hopefully, it'll sound a lot more like a guitar record than Little Kix. I still think Six was entirely a guitar record but people think a lot of it's synths but it isn't - we just really went to town with the processing of guitars. I was playing the guitars through old analog synthesisers, so I think maybe use the effects a little more sparingly next time - still use them, but to greater effect. But we're on the look-out for a couple of key guitar and amps to use on the next record which I think will probably come from older guitars. I wouldn't go in with a brand new Marshall Bluesbreaker and a new Gibson 335 and use that as a starting point. You need something with a bit of character, just keep it a bit raw. I don't really want to make a lo-fi record but a very organic sound, that's it. That was the original intention with Six but we went so overboard with the sounds on it that it doesn't really sound like a four-piece guitar band. And that's what we want to achieve.
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 © 2002 David Nattriss, natts.com and Parlophone Records. This page last updated: Saturday 18 May 2002 |
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