I don't like overdubs, never liked them.
For the 'Load' album, I was experimenting so much with tone that I had to keep journals on what equipment I was using. For 'Hero of the Day,' I know I used a 1958 Les Paul Standard with a Matchless Chieftain, some Boogie amps and a Vox amp - again, they're all blended.
I recorded 'Play God' in a shed. I don't know how we got it to sound as good as it did.
The instruments that bleed into each other are what creates the ambience. Once you start cleaning everything up, you lose it. You lose that sort of halo that bleeding creates. Then if you eliminate the halo, you have to go back and put in some artificial reverb, which is never as good.
If I wanted to make big, bombastic, distorted, echo-y, trippy music, the atmospheric stuff, a studio is nice. But it's nice to know that it's not necessary.
One thing I'm doing on the new Titanic recording is actually bringing in different acoustic spaces.
I usually like to hide my vocals behind the music. I don't like to hide them consciously, but I have a tendency to prefer the vocal at the same level as everything else and put lots of reverb on it.
I had an old, red-covered '63 AC30 - one of the best AC30s I've ever heard. I cut the whole of the first record with it.
