You can probably guess by looking at the layout of this page that I like guitars…and you’d be right. I have a variable number of the things based upon how much room I feel I have in my house at any given time.
Sometimes I buy a new guitar and then sell it, sometimes I buy a guitar and trade that against another guitar I like even more. But I seem to have settled on four guitars as a good number to have; there is room for a fifth, but I don’t really see the point at the moment. And then there’s my mandolin which is to my guitars what the McNugget is to a chicken – it’s bite sized and nice and a bit of a change when you don’t want the whole chicken. And if I had a whole lot of room in my house -like a basement- I’d have a whole bunch of keyboards as well.
And then there’s the music I listen to…For the most part, my taste runs very broad, but it tends definitely towards the heavy; but it had it’s roots in the early eighties when people like Gary Numan were making pretty cool sounds.
For a time there, music for me had entered the doldrums; it was hot, sticky and the air just wasn’t moving - for sure there was Britpop, which was ok; kind of McNuggetish really. And then Trent Reznor came along with Nine Inch Nails and for me, it was like the wind had started blowing again.
If you read interviews with Reznor, he says that one of his influences was Gary Numan and Mr Numan wasn’t someone who was content with using his keyboards alone to produce his sound. No! He ran his synths through distortion pedals which were designed with guitars in mind. So…Nine Inch Nails heralded the Industrial era which I particularly like because it’s got some key elements which motivate me musically: keyboards and guitars. lots of distortion and a good old beat driving it along. And the angst ridden misanthropy is an added extra!
At some point in his career, Gary Numan went broke and American Express had a hitman looking for him and then in the mid-nineties, the very same Amex launched a credit card and for the t.v. ad, they used Numan’s “Cars”. (Numan himself claims that that gave him tremendous satisfaction).
In any case, it must have been around this time that Gary Numan heard Nine Inch Nails and he must have thought, “Hmmm, I’ve still got my old Moogs, ARPs and guitar pedals, I wonder what they’d sound like if I actually plugged a guitar into them”.
And he did and d’you know what it sounds like? It sounds fantastic.
