Old Alain and Boz article from G magazine transcribed

W

WhyteGrrrl

Guest
A friend of mine was interested in an old article from G magazine that I have had for some time. It looked dreadful after being scanned, so I typed it up word for word for him. This is such a great article, that I was inspired to share it with you all. It is espcially good for all of you looking for that Alain and Boz "sound"! Enjoy!

Wizards of Moz

A few years back Elvis Costello commented that Morrissey still penned the best song titles in the world, but sadly, forgot to write a song for them. It's true around the time of Costello's quip, Morrissey's solo career reached it's lowest ebb with the Kill Uncle album (look ma, no tunes!) but it was wrong to assume "Le Mozzerable' could never again hope to match the achievements of 'the best English band since the Beatles' (every '80's rock hack), The Smiths. The assumption that Steven Patrick Morrissey must rely on the tunesmithery of one John Mahr (aka Marr) to do anything of worth persists to this day, especially among guitar players oblivious to the fact that the vocalist has now been a solo artist for nearly twice as long as he was a Smith. More to the point, in 1994' s Vauxhall and I, Morrissey released the most consistently fine album (fact!) of his 13 year career and last stunning, successor. Pity then, poor Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer, Mozzer's trusty guitar troops and co-writers of the last three albums. The swooning Now My Heart Is Full and turbocharged The Boy Racer are theirs and there's no doubt better to come, but they'll get no thanks... because they're not Johnny Marr.

Not that this concerns their bequiffed overseer, obviously; Southpaw Grammar is the hardest, leanest, guitar-heavist album Morrissey's ever been involved in and the leeway he's given Whyte and Boorer is testament to their valued right hand status. To those who still had the singer down as a jelly-spined moper, the muscular thrust thrust of Southpaw

could come as a shock, though they'd do well to remember the words of his former partner, Marr: 'People forget that Morrissey was one of the first punks. They almost imagine him to be fey and he's not in the slightest. When it comes to music, he's really ard hitting.'

According to Boorer and Whyte, Southpaw's sonic punch evolved as the result of months on the road and a riotous rehearsal regime.

'The Boxers tour (post Vauxhaull and I) really helped us gel as a band,' says Whyte, 'and coming straight off that and recording Southpaw affected how things came together. I think you can obviously hear that Morrissey wanted a harder record'

'We demoed the songs acoustically ,' continues Boorer, 'and it just didn't work. So when it got to recording Morrissey just kept saying "harder, harder!!" We were just all playing together live in the studio with this PA set up and two monitors each in front of us and it was just so f***ing loud. If you listen to the beginning of The Boy Racer you can hear my guitar twice in stereo- one side is me but the other is my guitar being amplified by Alain's pickup on his Les Paul! 'That's how loud it was. So, yeah, it was a very aggressive recording.'

In that respect, Southpaw Grammar knocks spots off its predecessor Vauxhaull and I. The latter might have brandished the menacing drone of Spring Heeled Jim and the two-fingered-salute-and-sounds-like-it Speedway, but on the the whole it was a richer, more finely crafted affair steeped in the pastoral guitar arpeggios of The Smiths.

Whyte: 'Vauxhaull and I was, I think an achievement as a studio record. I think the fans love Vauxhaull for the lyrical content as the lyrics are very strong, and I think it's a very personal album for Morrissey too'

The lushness of Vauxhaull grew out of extensive experimentation by Boorer and Whyte, utilising pitch shifters and E-bows for string effects and, according to Whyte, 'going mad' with overdubbing. 'An example would be the arpeggio riff-just the riff- on Hold Onto Your Friends, where I recorded groups of two strings separately on a different track... each on three guitars. It was something stupid like using a Gretsch for the two bottom strings, switched to my Les Paul for three and four then a Strat or something for the top two. It was doing my brain in, just trying to get the timing right- Steve Lillywhite was very patient with me on that one! But we took a different approach on Southpaw.

Indeed, the new album strips away the tinsel and instead sports foot to the floor riffing (The Boy Racer), neo- Wagnerian orchestration (The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils) and whizzing glam-a-billy (The Operation), lending it more in common with Your Arsenal- Morrissey's first album written with Whyte and Boorer, and one of the last projects overseen by the late Mick Ronson.

'The greatest thing about Ronson was his personality', remembers Whyte. 'He knew he only had a certain amount of time to live and yet he was always working, he really wanted to do as much as possible every day. It was almost spiritual being around him. He was very down-to-earth though, and a lovely person- it's very sad he's not around anymore.'

'We learned a lot off Mick', continues Boz. 'I learned how to use and E-bow, putting it up and octave through a harmoniser, and that's how a lot of the guitar sounds of Vauxhaull came about. And a lot of the feedback stuff since, too'

Whyte: ' Ronson just had great ideas. The slide part on Jack The Ripper came from him- he just told me to go up and down the neck repeatedly with the slide which kinda seemed, well, a bit of pathetic suggestion but when I did it, it worked so well for the track, it really became part of it. He just knew.'

Boorer: 'And Mick also really knew amps. He brought in his favourite Marshall- f***ing deafening it was- but with just a quick turn of a few controls he'd come up with his classic sound. Brilliant!'

Boorer and Whyte were both recruited by Morrissey around the time of the Pregnant For The Last Time single: Boz reeled in for some arrangement work, Alain originally, for less muso means.

'I was in a pub after a rehearsal with the rock 'n' roll band I was in, The Memphis Sinners. Morrissey came in and I just went over to him- I felt really dumb 'cos I'd just washed my hair and my quiff was all over the place, heh heh! But I said hello, he asked what I did and I just said how I was playing in this covers band Gary (Day, bass) and Spencer (Cobrin, drums). And he just said, "Do you fancy doing a video"? I just thought, "yeah, great!" We did that, it all went well and after I suggested to Gary and Spen that we should rehearse some of Morrissey's solo stuff just in case there was a proper audition in the offing. Sure enough he asked us to come up. We knew 15 songs so I think he was quite impressed! It was just thinking ahead really- we took the chance.'

From then on the new guitar duo's roles seemed well defined in the world of Morrissey. Boorer is the qualified music student, occasional composer, effect-ist and band MD, Whyte the more aggressive guitar player and intuitive tunesmith. Given their singer's 'normal' methods of writing- adding lyrics and melodies to Marr's finished tunes in The Smiths, conducting a composition-by- post exercise with Viva Hate's musical author Stephen Street and likewise (less successfully) with ex- Fairground Attraction guitarist Mark Nevin on Kill Uncle- writing for Morrissey must occasionally leave his sidekick's feeling like more brickies to his bespoke decorator... no that they'd suggest that, of course.

'Occasionally,' offers Boz, 'you suggest a melody but I, ummm... err... don't think that's a good idea a lot of the time...'

'We're just constantly surprised at what he comes up with,' Whyte adds diplomatically. 'There's been quite a few songs where there's sections where he won't want any vocals and I'm just thinking, "Oh... I thought that would be the verse!" But it totally works. We' ll Let You Know, for example; he wanted the little guitar refrain to go around eight times before the coda. I just thought it would be so boring... but in the end it sounded perfect. And the way he phrases the words over music is amazing. It's like hitting "Justify" on a typewriter keyboard- he can always get the words to fit into the line perfectly.'

'Morrissey's understanding of melody is just incredible,' nods Boorer. 'Where does it come from? Sometimes he'll just drop you dead.'

Boorer and Whyte's praise is predictable enough but it's also genuinely heartfelt. They know they'll never be as exalted as J*%@y M*Ar but who, apart from Elvis Costello, really cares? They were looking for a job, and they found a job... well they're pretty chuffed really.

'Some reviews are pretty pointless, though,' Boorer shrugs. 'The music's not reviewed , Morrissey as person is. But what can you do, eh?'

'Just get better,' beams Whyte. 'My aim is to be as good as Hendrix- or, umm, just be as good as I can be! I think you have to have a goal and an aim. I'm very proud of this new album. It's a complete work and you have to listen to it all the way through- maybe that's why some reviewers didn't get it. We've had to work hard in this band but I've learned so much. To play with such good musicians and have fun... It's great!' ~Michael Leonard

Written in the sidebars were these two little bits...

If The Capo Fits...

As a writer, Alain exhibits a Marr-esque knack for twisting chord progressions- no doubt bolstered by this recent enrollment in a few harmonic theory lessons- though Morrissey's own demands as a singer might have helped accentuate the smilarities. Just as Johnny Marr would use a capo at the second fret ( Shoplifters of the World, What Difference Does It Make? et al.). so Boorer and Whyte are often asked to play in F#. As they don't naturally write in that key (hey who does?) they again have the option of either capo'ing or, more favoured by these two, detuning. Hence on The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get (Vauxhaull and I). The guitars are detuned semitone to allow Boorer to play the Marrish G-shape arpeggio (second verse). Dagenham Dave (Southpaw Grammar). on the other hand, is played in C#, but the guitars are again detuned a semitone to allow for more easily fretted D key shapes. Likewise The Operation (Southpaw Grammar); in fact, it's a simple trick the duo use on a number of other tracks.

...Grammar: of the knobs

Neither Boorer nor Whyte experiment too much with actual instruments, preferring to rely on old favourites and they colour their sound with effects. Boz Boorer's main guitar for years has been a (mostly stock) '63 Fender Telecaster, though a few years back he traded in another of his Tele's, a 70's Tele, for this hybrid thing. It's had loads of work done on the pickups and I play with flatwound strings- and it's got this real brilliant sound. A good example of that is on Spring Heeled Jim.

'I also use a Rickenbacker 480 (featuring a 4001 headstock),' Boz continues. 'For acoustics, in the studio I'll use my Martin D-45 but I'm a bit scared to take that on the road so I'll use Al's Takamine and a Sigma 12-string. It had a little soundhole pickup which didn't sound too good so I've also put a Martin pickup in the back and I blend the two. It's got a much better sound now. For effects, I rely mostly on a Yamaha A3 footpedal. The built in pitch shifter is something we used a lot on the Vauxhaull album.' Boorer's amps are inevitably a couple of Mesa/Boogies or a vintage Fender Twin.

Alain Whyte, on the other hand, relies on either a Marshall 100W head atop a 4x12" cap or a Roland JC120. Perhaps bizzarely, given the rockier sound of Southpaw , he has been relying more on the JC120- 'take the chorus off and early '70's black Les Paul Custom, 'bought back in 1987 for about 500 pounds.' Alain got the Bigsby off his brother and fitted it himself though the guitar's main attraction lies in its bone-buckling weight- 'it's a tree!' -and an outrageously microphonic pickup. 'Half the backing vocals for Southpaw were done with me signing through it! The pickup's seen some serious harmony backing vocals.'

There is also a picture from the article that did scan fairly well that I can upload as well. Alain is quiff-less!
 
Oh, bless 'em! They sound like my husband!

I bet they couldn't believe their luck when someone actually wanted them to rattle on about the minutiae of their equipment (if that doesn't sound too rude) rather than just to pump them for titbits about the strangeness and mating habits of Morrissey. Although it felt perilously close to a "turn it up to 11" encounter at times

Quiff-less Alain, you say? What is the world coming to? Post it on LJ!
 
Great to hear so many details from the lads themselves...Would love to read an ROTT version of this!
 
I would love to read something like this for every album!

Why is it though that guitar magazines only put the same ol hair bands and such in their magazines? Does anyone really want Slipnot tableture?
 
Back
Top Bottom