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NEIL FALLON of CLUTCH
LESSONS LEARNED

SOUNDS OF THE UNDERGROUND TOUR
07.13.05

It's about thirteen years ago or so and a friend of mine is trying to turn me on to Clutch. He describes them as heavy metal Frank Zappa. That was good enough for me... I'd been waiting for some heavy metal Zappa.

Years later, it turns out that description, while bold and encompassing at the time, was really quite narrow. With a sound wholly their own, Clutch would be pioneers if anybody had the balls or chops to follow them.

They stood out more on this year's inaugural Sounds of the Underground Tour than any other band; as much for their performance as for their distinct sound.

We spoke to Clutch front man Neil Fallon while the band was out on SOTU. I'm pretty sure we covered all the bases...


S&T: Neil, it's Scott from Show and Tell

Neil: Hey, Scott how are ya?


S&T: I'm pretty good. How about yourself?

Neil: Alright.


S&T: You got a couple of minutes for me?

Neil: Yeah, sure, plenty of time.


S&T: Did you guys play yet (today)? You're in Atlanta?

Neil: Yeah, we're in Atlanta. We don't play for another... close to two hours.


S&T: Is it still pouring there?

Neil: It's weird. It pours down torrentially and then the sun comes out.


S&T: And then it gets like hot, muggy... steam comes off the pavement.

Neil: Yeah, and then it pours again.


S&T: Good stuff.

Neil: Yeah. It's nice that we're on a parking lot because it makes it all the nicer.


S&T: This is the parking lot tour, isn't it?

Neil: Pretty much, it seems to be that way.


S&T: Do you have a favorite parking lot so far?

Neil: (clears throat) I was particularly fond of the parking lot in Sauget, Illinois. It was nice and dusty.


S&T: (Laughs) Dust is always good.

Neil: Yeah.


S&T: So I just talked to (singer Dave Peters) from Throwdown... He said everybody had problems coming over the Canadian border coming back in. Did you guys get stuck there too?

Neil: No, we lucked out on our way in because we were the first bus. You know if we had been the last bus... there was kind of like a compound delay.


S&T: Right.

Neil: But it only took us an hour.


S&T: Right. That's not too bad. We just saw you (on Sounds of the Underground) at the Starland Ballroom in Sayerville.

Neil: Uh-huh.


S&T: We were actually supposed to do an in-person at that show but it was just too crazy that day...

Neil: Yeah.


S&T: ...But I did I talk to Opeth there and they'd said I should ask you if the laminates were big enough?

Neil: (Laughs) Yeah that goes, that goes back to a tour we did, oh a couple years back when their keyboard player Per was in a band called Spiritual Beggars and that was the tour of oversized laminates.


S&T: They were just huge?

Neil: Yeah, like three by five foot.


S&T: (Laughs) For real that big?

Neil: Yeah, they used posters and laminated the posters.


S&T: (Laughs) That's excellent.

Neil: Yeah, you've got to do that kind of stuff to amuse yourself after the third or fourth week.


S&T: Does it get tedious out there?

Neil: It can but, you know, there's always something, you can find something to occupy yourself with.


S&T: Like...

Neil: The nature of this tour is, you know it's such a machine... each band plays briefly it's almost like doing a little bit in an assembly line; there's no sound checks, there's a lot of time to kill and a lot of these venues are not in like the city centers, you know. They're kind of out in the sticks.


S&T: Right.

Neil: So you know, read a book, watching TV, stay out of trouble.


S&T: What are you reading now?

Neil: A book called Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban.


S&T: I don't know it.

Neil: It's a good one.


S&T: Fiction, non-fiction?

Neil: It's fiction.


S&T: Are you typically a fiction guy or a non-fiction guy?

Neil: I'm also reading another book called Pretext for War about intelligence services post 9/11.


S&T: Ah, great.

Neil: You know, it's a real upbeat book.


S&T: Yeah, it sounds it.

Neil: Beach book.


S&T: (laughs) I read a great quote by you, it's one of my favorite quotes from a musician about doing what you do. You said, "We handle the lifestyle by not embracing any part of it that isn't crucial to the music." Do you remember saying that?

Neil: Wow, I said that?


S&T: Yeah or you stole it.

Neil: (Laughs)


S&T: Any chance you can talk a little bit about that? Do you want me to say it again (laughs)?

Neil: Where was the quote from?


S&T: I'd have to find it.

Neil: It doesn't matter. I guess just to elaborate it, you know for us the most important thing is the live show and then albums come second and then stuff like videos and what not, those, those are like tertiary. There's a lot of things that could distract ya whether it's people telling you that you're going to be huge or hangers on or leaches... When you're young you just kind of have to learn those things, lessons as they come for yourself and hopefully you do learn them and then, you know, fourteen years later you can deduce what is vital and what is not.


S&T: Did you have some hard lessons? Are you speaking from experience?

Neil: Oh sure. I mean we dealt with you know, swindlers, we've dealt with thieves... I guess it's like any other... I don't think rock and roll has a preponderance of that. I mean there's plenty of that in, you know, stock trading.


S&T: (Laughs) Right. I know a lot of guys that have been around for a while and they're just bitter and jaded and, you know, completely cynical now. How do you maintain enjoying what you do in the face of all that for fourteen years?

Neil: I think mainly boredom is the big enemy and if you can still challenge yourself musically that's half the battle. Also, you've got to have a sense of humor. If you don't have a sense of humor you're screwed.


S&T: Right.

Neil: And it also goes back to whether or not the glass is half empty, half full. I mean, I don't look to the size of a show to mark if it's a success or failure, I think it has to do with how many people that are there, do they leave satisfied or not? I'd rather blow away a hundred people than give ten thousand people a mediocre performance.


S&T: Right. Your set was a little bit longer than the other bands?

Neil: We get about forty minutes


S&T: Okay. Do you do the same set at each of these stops? Are you breaking things up?

Neil: No, we do the same thing we do on our headlining runs which is every guy in the band writes the set list one night in alphabetical order. Like for example John Paul's writing it tonight so tomorrow night I'm going to write it. That just avoids us having to sit down and kind of bicker about what we do or do not want to play.


S&T: Have you always done that?

Neil: We've been doing that for, God, years and years and years. Probably eight years or so.


S&T: Another lesson learned.

Neil: Yeah, I mean we used to get around an hour before showtime and spend forty-five minutes talking about what we did not want to play. This way you know and it's a surprise at least to see what he's going to want to jam tonight.


S&T: Does it seem to change or one guy makes his list and you're like, "Again? We play that every time you make the list!"

Neil: No, I think probably it's good everyone has their favorites and their least favorites and, you know, he may put a song on there that I hadn't thought of in a couple weeks or months that I might not know too well but that's good because it keeps your brain working. I think once you get to a comfort zone of playing the same set list that's when the mistakes creep in because that's when complacency grows and we don't need that.


S&T: Do you ever have somebody pull a song out and you're like, "Oh man, I don't know if I remember the words to that."

Neil: Yeah. I thank God for iPods.


S&T: (Laughs) You have your entire catalog on your iPod.

Neil: Most of them.


S&T: What else you got on there? What's on there that you think would surprise me?

Neil: Oh boy, that's a tough one. I got a Gordon Lightfoot record on there.


S&T: Nice.

Neil: Only I, there's, I got it just for that one track "(The Wreck of the) Edmund Fitzgerald" because I think it's one of the best songs ever but hey, I'm a sap for that kind of stuff.


S&T: Let's see... I've got some Eddie Rabbitt on mine.

Neil: Nice. "Love a Rainy Night."


S&T: Yeah that's one. I think I've got "Love a Rainy Night" and I've got "Step by Step" and "Driving my Life Away."

Neil: Ah yep, "Driving my Life Away."


S&T: It's great. I've got probably 20 gigs worth of music on random and you'll get whatever; you'll get Clutch, then a George Carlin bit, then Eddie Rabbitt... it's just beautiful.

Neil: (Laughs) It is a wonderful technology.


S&T: Are you a tech-head? You've got a song that looks like binary code ("10001110101") but it doesn't mean anything.

Neil: Yeah it doesn't really mean anything. You know, the fact that it doesn't mean anything has really upset some, a lot of people. I think they're expecting some kind of hidden command. Well the thing is to actually say something in binary code it would have to be a series of ones and zeros that would go on for a considerable length of time.


S&T: Right you'd have three and a half minutes of 1-0-1-1-0-1...

Neil: Yeah. You know I might be able to get the word "Hi" in there but I think that might be a little cutesy.


S&T: Plus you'd never be able to remember it.

Neil: No, no.


S&T: I know you're a (big fan of movies) and you're out on the road all the time.

Neil: Yep.


S&T: Do you get to get out to the movies?

Neil: I haven't been out to the movies, I've been watching a lot of DVDs.


S&T: Like what?

Neil: Um, let's see, I watched Kill Bill 1 and 2 the other day and a friend of ours dropped off some DVDs that are pretty kick ass, some City of God...


S&T: Uh-huh.

Neil: A DVD called Style Wars, it's about graffiti in New York in the early eighties... I watched Pi again last night.


S&T: Great movie.

Neil: Yep.


S&T: I love that movie.

Neil: And what else... I don't actually get out to the movies too often. I wanted to go see War of the Worlds but opportunity never really presents itself.


S&T: I just saw it the other day... I actually tried to see it last week and I made it about thirty minutes in but there was too many teenage girls in the theater...

Neil: Oh god.


S&T: ...just yapping, you know, talking on their cell phones. I couldn't take it. I wound up leaving and going back the other night. I enjoyed it; it's basically a two hour chase movie.

Neil: Yeah. I mean I always approach Tom Cruise with a lot of skepticism but you know, I saw him in his, in what, Collateral?


S&T: With Jamie Foxx.

Neil: Yeah. I thought he was actually really good in that. He plays a great dick.


S&T: Yeah, I always got the impression he'd be good at playing a dick.

Neil: Yeah, he plays a better dick than a hero I think.


S&T: There's a couple of good movies out now. Batman, you've got to go see Batman.

Neil: Yeah, I heard that's actually very well done.


S&T: Great movie and actually the guy that directed Pi (Darren Aronofsky) was supposed to direct it first.

Neil: Hmh.


S&T: And I don't know why he didn't but it wound up being Chris Nolan who did Memento.

Neil: Yep, yep.


S&T: What else can you do to kill some?

Neil: Well you know, a typical day is just you get up at, you know, nine or ten and then go find something to eat, go find the shower, maybe watch a movie, read a bit and then come three o'clock there's the signing and then after that, you know, there's usually a series of interviews and if not that, failing that just, you know, watch another movie, read a bit more and showtime comes around eight o'clock, finishes up by nine and then it's an exercise at just trying not to drink.


S&T: Is that a struggle for you?

Neil: No, not as much as it used to be.


S&T: Another lesson learned?

Neil: Yeah. I mean you... it's pretty insidious, it creeps up you, especially when it's free.


S&T: Right and everywhere.

Neil: Yeah.


S&T: Is there any kind of preparation for you (before you go onstage) or just this is so old hat you just kind of walk off the bus and climb up there.

Neil: Pretty much. I mean, we just, I get into my stage clothes which is, you know, it's not like it's a sequin suit, it's just clothes I don't want to smell like ass all the time


S&T: (Laughs)

Neil: And then go over the set list with the rest of the guys and just do it.


S&T: I have to say you guys were probably the standout band for me at the show, at the Starland...

Neil: Oh thank you.


S&T: ...just so tight. Put it this way, my wife who doesn't really like your music...

Neil: (laughs)


S&T: ...really, really enjoyed your set.

Neil: Oh cool. That's a plus. Well, you know that's a typical thing where I see a lot of girlfriends that have been dragged to the Clutch show.


S&T: (laughs) Do you have to be a guy to appreciate it?

Neil: Well, first this kind of hard rock and roll is predominately male, you know. That's just kind of one of the things... rock and roll's demographic, you know. I'd prefer to see more girls at the show just because they're more pleasant to look at.


S&T: (Laughs) And they tend to smell better too.

Neil: Yeah.


S&T: I think the music itself, the genre is full of testosterone.

Neil: Yeah, I think that's what attracts young men to this music and you know, old guys, aggression or what have you but there are girls out there that I think maybe once they take a second look they realize that it's not really, you know we're not alpha-male guys.


S&T: Right.

Neil: Hopefully they can find something more to it than that.


S&T: I think given the chance, even if they don't get the music or enjoy, I think the sound is just so tight and so big and so seemingly effortless when you guys are up there that I don't care male or female, there's got to be an appreciation for how well you do it, do you know what I mean?

Neil: Well thank you.


S&T: I think seeing you live has got to win them over.

Neil: Some people they see us live for the first time and then they're hooked. And, you know, I see people that decide that they're not going to like us before we even play a note because of the way we look. but those are people I don't... you know, I would just assume them not come to our show because they're assholes.


S&T: Right. SOTU is interesting too because I think there's a couple bands... there's like eighteen bands on your tour and like a dozen of them are pretty, pretty close to each other.

Neil: Yeah.


S&T: There's all these bands that sound a little too similar to each other and then there's a couple bands that really stand out and I think that on a tour like this it has to benefit you because you're nothing like any of these other bands.

Neil: Yeah, that's the truth and some people have said, you know, "Why are you here, you're not like..." or you know, "How's it going? Are the crowds accepting you?" and to be honest we were skeptical about it at first but it does work in our favor. I mean after our set's done and even if they didn't like us they'll remember us.


S&T: And I think at a show like this there's a little more open mindedness than at maybe a Slayer show where they're there to see Slayer and they can be pretty brutal on an opening band that's not Slayer.

Neil: You know what's strange though, we opened for Slayer for, you know, months and the crowd was great. I think we went over really well and that was, you know a surprise to us but we opened for Nickleback once and that was the toughest, that was the most hateful, violent crowd we've ever stood in front of. You wouldn't think that to be the case but you have these radio head, you know, these people who heard the band on the radio and they see us play and we're like everything that's wrong to them about music.


S&T: (laughs) I got ya.

Neil: You know the psychology of it... You could probably write a book on it but you know, it's strange.


S&T: That's a great story... I can remember when Motley Crue did "Home Sweet Home" and all of a sudden all these jocks at my school were like, "I love Motley Crue" and I'm like, "Do you want to borrow the album? Because there's no way you've actually listened to the album."

Neil: Yeah. Well, I think the people that come to a tour like this are music fans, I mean they know about up and coming bands, they get fanzines, they collect vinyl, they're immersed in it where as people who are fans of a top ten song, that's all they're fans of. They're a fan of that song and their love begins and ends there. To them they just want to see the band go perform this song and once that's done there's really not much of an incentive for anything else.


S&T: Right.

Neil: But you know it's like a band like Slayer, you know they never had a top forty hit but they could play anywhere at any time for the next, you know, God knows how many years and sell out that show whereas a band not even two years ago, they may have had the number one song in the country... they can't put ten people in the club.


S&T: Right, right. That comes up in conversation a lot... just the idea of longevity. The bands that are on tour with you right now, are we going to remember their names in twenty years? Will they still be touring in twenty years?

Neil: Yeah, well the odds are that they won't but there may be one or two that are willing to adapt, to change and grow. I think that has a lot to do with it.


S&T: The thing I've always liked about Clutch is that you don't, there is no concern for what the trend is or what's going on or what people are listening to. You guys really just seem to make your music.

Neil: That goes back to high school, you know. It's like, at least when we were growing up, like if you were in a band, like hardcore band or punk band it was not cool, it was, you were probably a bit of a freak and you got, you got fucked with because of it. Now, for whatever reason, this kind of music is much more socially acceptable but we still have the same sense that we did when we were in twelfth grade where it's, we just want to do what pleases us and ah you know damn popular opinion. We're not, you know we tried out for the high school talent show contest and we got rejected.


S&T: (Laughs)

Neil: And not much has changed.


S&T: Are you still trying out or did you give up?

Neil: No, no we just went back to the garage and started drinking beer.


S&T: (laughs)

Neil: Been doing it for fourteen years since.


S&T: Was there, has there ever been along the road, has there ever been any pressure to like conform or to a try to write a pop hit or...

Neil: Usually what would happen, especially when we were signed with Atlantic and Columbia, is we would do our music and then they would listen to what we were doing and they'd kind of pick a single and sometimes we would be encouraged to do, the label would tell the producer on the side, "Well, this is a song, kind of nurture this song to make it have as much pop sensibility as possible."


S&T: Right.

Neil: Nowadays that, not only because that time period has come and gone, (but) we're self sufficient enough that we don't need someone to tell us that and that's not what this band has ever tried to do and I don't think we have the capability of doing it and that's all right. I think probably the most egregious example of that is one time my, our former manager and our former A&R representative asked me to shave my beard for a photo shoot.


S&T: (Laughs)

Neil: To make it more commercially appealing.


S&T: Good stuff.

Neil: Yeah, I thought that was pretty hot.


S&T: Because you're like, "Yeah, I'll do that because you know it only takes me like a week, week and a half to grow it out like this."

Neil: Well the thing was I had, I had already gotten rid of it for some reason and I led them to believe that I wasn't going to do it, just to fuck with them but you hear stuff like this and you wonder what someone else's idea of music is compared to yours.


S&T: I get so much music come across my desk that I think, "I can't believe how many people needed to think this was good in order for it to be released. What were they all thinking?"

Neil: I think it comes to a point where, like, they don't even know. They're just gonna throw shit at the wall and see if it sticks.


S&T: And its not like there's any kind of followup or nurturing... It's like, here's this album and they throw it out there and if they don't sell (enough units) these kids are gone. They had this big dream, they're 20 years old, they got signed and they thought "signed" meant "rich," (laughter), the album comes out, it doesn't sell enough and they're dropped.

Neil: Yeh, I'm sympathetic to that but it happened to us four times (laughter). What we did was we continued. There has to be some kind of idea of idea of work ethic. Some people make the mistake of looking to a label as to being a mother, to hold your hand. Nobody's gonna give you shit for free. It always baffles me when a band breaks up when they get dropped. What? So now you don't have tour support to be on a bus? Well, you weren't making money at that anyway. Get in a van and make a little bit of cash. You may have to suck it up a little bit...

I think a lot of people go in really naive. Which we did as well. Now we know.


S&T: Another lesson learned. Neil, it's been an absolute pleasure, I thank you for your time.

Neil: Hey likewise, thanks for the opportunity.


S&T: We'll see you next time you come around.

Neil: Sounds like a plan.

interview by scott sisti