A Quote by John Rzeznik
I got into alternative rock in the early 80s, bands like Husker Du and The Replacements. Bob Mould's playing was a huge influence. It was very heavy with a lot of open tunings, which was great because I played in trios, so I used open tunings to get a fuller sound.
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When I first learned guitar - when I was 14 or 15 - I had an older cousin who showed me some stuff. And he was into all these tunings. He was showing me tunings that people like David Crosby or Neil Young used - like dropped D and open D tunings.
I think that open tunings are a trap really because it's really hard not to sound like an open tuning when your using one and that gets old as well as what you learn in one open tuning is going to stay there.
I enjoy having some boundaries to work within. That's why I generally don't like alternate tunings and stuff like that. I like the boundaries of regular tunings.
I was never a fan of open tunings, because some people will do that and fumble around. But that's not my jam.
I was in band that played mostly covers for a while, and the bands that we would cover were, like, the alternative rock bands of that day: we did a Jane's Addiction song and a Faith No More song. All the kind of alternative radio of that time, the late '80s, basically.
Signing to a major, there weren't many bands from our sphere that were doing it. I mean, obviously R.E.M. had done it, and Husker Du and the Replacements had done it, and maybe Soul Asylum, but that was probably about it. Those four bands were pretty much the only ones from that milieu that had signed to a major.
Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.
I was pillaging a lot of music that had nothing to do with guitar playing, using a lot of strange tunings and voicings and chord structures that aren't really that natural to the guitar; I ended up developing a harmonic palette that's not particularly natural to the guitar because I was always trying to make my guitar sound like something else.
When you're playing guitar, it's the tiny little nuances that make the difference. For me, obviously, tunings is a huge one.
A lot of the time I use slide tuning for rhythm parts. I play a lot of slide in regular tuning as well as open tunings. I'm still mad about slide, there are so many ways of progressing on it.
I think Thurston's and my weird tunings lent Sonic Youth a very different sound from the get-go. In the band's 30 years - aside from covers - there are maybe two or three songs we wrote using traditional tuning.
I use a lot of tunings because I listen to a lot of jazz.
I play and I've played in heavy bands, but when I write for myself, I don't particularly feel like writing huge rock riffs. It just doesn't work for me and my voice.
I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.
One month I'll be completely obsessed with Bob Dylan and the next Arcade Fire. I like early Elton John and David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. I listen to a lot of American bands. But I like listening to new bands, too.
Hearing a lot of early rock n' roll records from a very young age was a huge influence.
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