2012.01.20 - Music Radar - Interview with Bumblefoot at NAMM

Transcript:

Bumblefoot: We're about to do a f**king interview and this guy takes a f**king bass solo [bass playing in the background].

Joe Bosso: There you go, hi this is Joe Bosso withMusic Radar and I'm sitting here with Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal. Ron?

BF: [incoherently making noises into microphone]

JB: There you go, my Jersey friend, so how's it going?

BF: Everything's good man, I just had 3 shots of Jager and I'm all s**tfaced, s**t hammered and we finally get to hang out and just bulls**t a little. First time playing a guitar in 2 weeks since being off the road, yeah, so...yeah, yeah.

JB: So we're here with Vigier guitars of which you have a long history, how did you get involved with the company?

BF: Oh man, it was back in 97 and I was doing a tour, like a little clinic sort of tour in France and one of the reps he gave me a guitar and said, hey check this out, see what you think? And at that point I was building my own guitars, I would make all these weird guitars, I wasn't really looking for an endorsement but I played them and they just felt really really good.

JB: Right.

BF: And we started talking and I said look I make these weird guitars would you guys be willing to come up with things and let me stay you know creative on that end of it and just work with me on that and they were cool with that. So we made this one guitar it looked like a giant foot you bend the vibrato bar and wings popped out of the sides and crazy s**t like that. I had this swiss cheese guitar they made replicas of it and yeah then they made these fret-less guitars so for a lot of the Guns stuff I need have both at once so they made me a double neck that has fretless on top a fretted on the bottom and it's one of the main things that I use for a lot of my stuff and a lot of the Guns stuff. Even, I mean besides some of the stuff that I did on Chinese, even if you listen to the stuff off of Appetite they're playing and then suddenly there's an overdubbed slide that just comes in doing something, I can switch to that neck, hit it and jump back so it really is the greatest guitar to use for the Guns s**t.

JB: I was going to ask, does the actual sound of a Vigier guitar does it inspire some of the conceptual sound?

BF: It does, least when you're doing a fretless guitar you throw a noodle in the round and you start coming up with sounds that you can't get with frets, things where you're dragging a harmonic or just dragging chords and you end up writing different kinds of riffs and different types of songs based on that so it will lead to a whole different angle as far as writing stuff and just the way you approach whatever you're playing over. So yeah.

JB: So you just came off the Guns and Roses tour, which was a pretty long tour.

BF: It was alright.

JB: Yeah, if you had to pick one special moment from that right now what would it be?

BF: Sorry, my favourite moment. So we just played Salt Lake City and show ended everybody went back, I was staying behind, I had 2 friends with me we were just hanging out in the hospitality room and then one of them said, let's go up to the mountains and I was like you know what f**k it, let's do that. So it was about 5 in the morning when we left and we drove up to this 9000ft mountain up to the top and there was a spot up there and we got naked and we jumped in this big giant spa hot tub while the sun was coming up, snow was coming down on us, heat coming up and it was just these beautiful mountains around you and it was just a beautiful experience and from that point on I was like, it was just one of the changing things when I was like, you know what, as far as the tour goes, from this point on, all I'm going to have is a good f**king time and I've been doing that ever since.

JB: Now speaking of a good time, you recently did have a car accident last year.

BF: Yeah it was great.

JB: Yeah, how are you feeling?

BF: Well right now? Pretty numb so that's good, it's just a question of dealing with pain management and trying to find what works, whether it's pain killers, muscle relaxers or acupuncture or surgery or a combination of all different things or like deep tissue massage or I mean just anything or exercises and for me I found what works is whiskey so I just keep a constant simmer going with that and everything is ok and there's no mind bending pain that makes me want to just f**king stab myself in the face and I can be functional. So yeah, I just do that, I'm doing that right now infact.

JB: Now on your website you've been releasing like a single at a time for the last year or so and I noticed that a lot of them are 60's songs, you've got a great cover of There's a Kind of Rush what do you like about the 60's so much?

BF: Well I mean back in the 60s they wrote great songs, it was all about the song writing you didn't measure the quality of a song by its angst or specific rhythm it was all about the emotional content, what was being said, the melodies and it's something that I always appreciated and it's something that I always just wanted to pay my own tribute to and just do it.

JB: I love your version of There's a Kind of Hush, it's really really great.

BF: That one, I know, Herman's did it first in 66 but Engelbert Humperdinck did a cover of it and that's the one that inspired the version I did, I get very kinda cheese lounge, I love old cheesy lounge s**t. So yeah that's what I went for is that vibe but just with a contrast, I love the contrast.

JB: So last question, not to give away any secrets but what are you working on?

BF: No, I haven't worked on jack s**t but maybe I should. What have I been working on is just doing a lot of touring with Guns inbetween I've been doing a lot of producing, I produced a Mexican artist named Poc, her album will be out soon, the drummer of Guns Frank Ferrer played drums on it, I did all the music, I co-wrote some of the stuff, some backing vocals it's going to be a really cool album. There's that, I just did Scarface the rapper from the Ghetto Boys, we just did an album, I did some guitar on it, did the final mixing and the mastering, did that and yeah then putting out my song a month things. So between putting out my own music, doing the producing and hitting the road with Guns I stay pretty damn
busy.

JB: There you go.

BF: Yeah.

JB: Well thanks for spending some time with us today.

BF: Always a pleasure man, why don't we get to do the space ship flash.

JB: My Jersey friend.

BF: Yeah.

JB: This is Joe Bosso with Music Radar and I'm here with Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal at the NAMM show, thanks a lot

BF: Thank you, thank you so much.