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| Omar sarà sulla copertina di Guitar Player di febbraio 2010:  eccone un estratto: CITAZIONE GP’S INTERVIEW WITH OMAR RODRIGUEZ LOPEZ for the February 2010 cover story was quite extensive, and there was a lot of additional material that we were not able to include. These lightly edited interview outtakes are presented in no particular order.
The Mars Volta is often described as a progressive rock band. Are you comfortable with that or would you prefer to be pigeonholed in some other way?
It doesn’t matter to me. As long as I don’t try to define my music I’ll be fine. People will always try to pigeonhole music because it’s a natural human instinct to look around and try to make sense out of everything by putting it into some sort of order. But to me, the moment you can define something it’s lost its charm. From the moment you say “I am …” then it’s past and you’re dead because you’ve arrived somewhere. You are something and you’re stuck in that.
Do you feel any kinship with the progressive rock bands from the ’70s?
I like a lot of those groups, particularly King Crimson and early Genesis, because progressive rock was one of the many genres I grew up listening to as a kid—but that music isn’t what I primarily listen to anymore. All those genres have blended together because that’s what we are as people—we are the sum of all our experiences. So, when I hear my music I might think, “Oh yeah, there’s that sort of Black Flag Greg Ginn thing there, there’s a little influence from when I used to listen to King Crimson a lot, there’s that Fellini influence, and there’s a little bit of Robert De Nero, and some Salvador Dali.”
What would be an example of a Fellini influence?
There was a lot of Fellini and Ennio Morricone on the Frances the Mute album. I really like that grandiose and very stylized storytelling.
So you mean the actual soundtracks to the Fellini films?
When I said Morricone I was thinking of that, but no I mostly mean the characters in the films. For example, I thought a lot about the main character in Satyricon while I was making Frances. But I was also thinking of the polar opposite of that film’s heavily stylized and art-driven scenery, namely, the neo-realism of the Pasolini film Accattone. So it’s all these blends, and they definitely contradict each other—and contradiction is a major thing for me. I have to exist in contradiction. I think every human being does. People don’t admit it to themselves, but we exist in contradiction and without that you can’t have a whole truth—you only have half a truth.
Rich Costey is credited as mixing Octahedron, but you were also deeply involved in the mixing, right?
Yes, of course. My input plays a huge part, especially because I’m coming from a conceptual place and not a technical place, but the role is his. I spent a lot of hours in there with him, but he’s the real genius. That’s his craft. I go in there and I butcher his craft [laughs]. I’ll listen to his great mix and say things like, “Turn that up and take that out and change the EQ on that, and in this part we should bury the drums, and in this part the drums should bury everything else.” In my role as the producer I provide the conceptual approach to what makes something sound the way it does, just like the director of a film does. But if you’re not cutting the film yourself then you’re not the editor, and you’re not going to take or try to share the credit with the person whose craft it is to do that.
To what extent are you involved in technical matters such as mic selection and placement while you are recording?
When I feel it calls for it I’ll mess with things like that—but for the most part I have a very factory approach to the recording process. For example, I like to use Neumann U-67s as overheads, I like AKG C-12s as room mics, and I like to put Shure SM57s on snares and guitar amps. And when I’m just trying to get a song down I not only don’t take the time to get involved, my engineers complain that I don’t give them enough time. I’ll just say, “Get the mics up—okay good, close enough. I’m very impatient, and that’s one of my biggest flaws. And of course that’s also why I like musicians that can get parts right away, and when they can’t I put a lot of pressure on them, which obviously makes things worse. Your creative process and emotional outlet—what people call art—is not separate from your personality and your life. So in my life with my family and with others, this is something that I have to work on. That said, I’ve also gotten used to the fact that I tend to pervert sounds so much that I’ll often take a really pristine and beautiful sound the engineer has labored over and mess with it so much that you can’t even hear the original sound anymore.
Given how quickly you work I’m guessing serendipity and happy accidents play a big role in your creative process.
Definitely. Most people try to avoid accidents, but I welcome them. They make me excited. So, sometimes we’ll do something wrong technically and I’ll say, “No, it sounds cool. Leave that.” And the engineer will object that is out of phase or something and I’ll say, “Yeah I know. I like it.”
How important is it to recreate studio sounds when you’re playing live?
It’s not so much a matter of re-creating them as it is having a live interpretation of them, and it’s the same with the compositions. My philosophy is that they are two completely different mediums and I just try to do what is best for each one. It’s like the difference between a play and a film: One’s happening right there in the moment, and the other you get to do over and over and change the lighting and whatnot until it’s perfect.
Do you practice?
Yeah. At least I think I practice. I used to practice a lot more.
It sounds like you’re playing all the time, which is a form of practicing.
I do play a lot. I have guitars all over the house, not just in the studio. My problem—or my strength, depending on your perspective—is that I don’t assign the guitar that much importance. It’s strange because I think people perceive me as some kid who’s in his bedroom all the time rehearsing, and because a lot of people think I know theory they imagine that I’m intentionally writing difficult music and guitar parts. But I’m just writing what sounds appealing and then later I might realize, “Oh yeah, that’s some f**ked up time signature.” For the most part I’ll just be in my room having a conversation or reading a book or watching TV and the guitar’s in my hand because it’s fun and that’s what I’m doing and it’s not that important to me. In that particular sense it’s part of me.
Do you ever think, “I’m going to learn how to play these Brent Mason country licks,” or “Boy, I wish I could play like Django Reinhardt,” or something?
I do sometimes. But when I realize it’s taking this much work to barely become a rock guitarist. But, yeah, Django Reinhardt or Segovia, those are my true heroes. My biggest hero as far as a guitar-like instrument is Yomo Toro, who is a cuatro player. But with any of the other players, it’s like, again, that takes everything I don’t have—finesse, sophistication, and an understanding of how music works and why it works.
You did some film soundtracks and you’re actually making a film too. Is that right?
Yeah. I made four films to date and I’ve done three soundtracks.
Is that something you want to explore more deeply in the future?
Oh yeah, definitely. I like exploring anything that’s challenging. Going back to Segovia and Django Reinhardt and all this stuff—I have classical guitars at home, and I have friends who play like that. I try to have them teach me things because I’m always learning. I just never developed like a guitar player—like a bona fide guitar player—which is why it’s been really interesting to get recognition as a guitarist. It’s a really interesting contradiction.
How do you make the transition from the hotel room to being “on” for performing?
The main thing is that I like to spend an hour together with the whole band. Everybody can be doing whatever it is that they are doing, but I always arrange for us to be in the dressing room together warming up. The main thing is just being together and having that day-to-day exchange. tratto da: http://www.bassplayer.com/story.aspx?id=10...=omar+rodrigueze un altro, incentrato sul rapporto con Frusciante (infatti è tratto dal fansite frusciantiano Invisible Movement): CITAZIONE Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of The Mars Volta, El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez and a bunch of other projects is talking about what he learnt from John, how he influenced him and what was his role in recording the band's album Octahedron, which was published back in June.
Guitar Player - What picks and strings do you use?
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - I like the orange Dunlop Tortex picks and I use Ernie Ball strings gauged .013 to .056 with a wound third.
Wow, is that why you don't use a lot of vibrato?
Maybe. I never realized my strings were so heavy until other guitar players were like "What the f**k are you doing?" When John Frusciante realized I had them he was amazed and kept asking me if I was really doing all those bends using those strings. But if I use lighter strings I really pull them out of tune because as I said I don't have a gentle touch - and that also affects my vibrato. Someone like John plays with a lot of finesse, so you can hear all those little things that he does with vibrato and everything, whereas my playing is sort of bulldozer-esque.
Speaking of Frusciante, what were his contributions to Octahedron?
Besides being a very close friend of mine who understands what I'm trying to do, John is another musician that I utilize to execute my compositions. What I look for in a musician is the ability to learn and memorize horribly fast, because I'm impatient. And they have to be able to do it without fear or reservations, and to play with all their heart and soul so that their personality comes through. In filmmaking terms, I'm the writer and director and the musicians are actors. THey learn their lines and say them, and then we share the bigger story together.
In what ways has he influenced your playing?
He's the reason I don't have the affinity for the guitar that I should: because I know that I'm a phony. John's one of those people that I've always wanted to be. He picks up the thing and there's no separation between him and the guitar. Every single thing he plays has finesse and beauty to it. He's a natural, whereas for me it has come through a lot of playing and stubbornness, and thinking that the guitar and I are stuck with each other so we'd better make the best of it. Inoltre, un articolo dal tecnomagazine Wired che inserisce i TMV tra la "miglior musica del millennio": CITAZIONE The Mars Volta: Deloused in the Comatorium (2003), Frances the Mute (2005), Amputechture (2006), The Bedlam in Goliath (2008), Octahedron (2009)
For two skinny dudes with six names between them, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala have manufactured a universe worth of labyrinthine art-rock in 10 short years. Once the screaming voice and incendiary guitar of hardcore Texas punk band At the Drive-In — whose 2000 effort Relationship of Command is also one of the finest efforts of the decade — Omar and Cedric broke out of that genre’s straitjacket and freed themselves of boundaries altogether. The result was some of the most challenging, dense and rewarding epic music of the ’00s, delivered by a band of visionary artists who are masters of their individual instruments.
Rodriguez-Lopez is probably, pound for pound, the most talented and electrifying guitar player in rock, a cerebral hybrid of Jimi Hendrix, Alex Lifeson and Carlos Santana capable of annihilating his fretboard on a daily basis. As the group’s chief sonic architect, he’s responsible for not just the labyrinthine rock tomes found on all of The Mars Volta’s releases, but also well over 10 solo efforts released under his name in this decade alone.
Meanwhile, Bixler-Zavala has some of the most diversely powerful pipes since Robert Plant and Black Francis — his voice hop-scotches from punk to rock to funk without losing breath, delivering dizzying lyrics that slipstream between suggestive poetry and naked portrayal like something William S. Burroughs could have written. In addition, the band’s influences vary wildly from esoteric cinema to the art of Storm Thorgerson, who designed mind-warping cover art for The Mars Volta as he has for legends like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. All told, The Mars Volta’s technical and creative artistry faced little real competition in our Auto-Tuned ’00s.
“Half the time, it’s about staying interested and not getting bored with the repetition,” Rodriguez-Lopez told me in 2005. scoprite gli altri 9 artisti del millennio secondo Wired USA: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/12/music-millennium/6/ |
