The Everlasting Gaze

Alongside Danny Boy and DJ Lethal, Erik "Everlast" Schrody once upon a time rocked crowds as part of New York hip-hop combo House of Pain before they were driven apart by drug abuse and he moved on to a successful recording career in his own right. Now, having buried the hatchet, the artist also known as Whitey Ford says he's enjoying the best of both worlds with the release of his fifth solo LP and the prospects of a renaissance amongst his old crew taking form. But don’t call it a comeback.

Your last album – White Trash Beautiful - appeared on a major label in 2004, now you’re going it alone with your own imprint. What happened?

“Yeah, that record was on Island / Def Jam. Basically, what happened was, I got signed over there by the world famous Leor Cohen and it was all looking beautiful, then the dude’s best friend bought Warner Brothers and he left. When a guy like that leaves a label he takes his whole staff with him and then the new guy brings his whole staff in and basically – with the nature of the record business being what it is – if they didn’t sign you then they ain’t sticking their neck out for you.

“It left a really bad taste in my mouth, so the last couple of years I’ve just been trying to figure this out. I took a year to myself and then tried to figure out a situation where I wouldn’t have to deal with those politics anymore. The record business is over in the traditional sense; it’s really about trying to find a new way to make your shit accessible to the people.”

Did you ever imagine you'd need a shrewd business head on your shoulders to succeed as a musician when you started out, or did it take an experience like this to bring it home?

“Well, you need one, but I’ve never had one (laughs). I’m just trying to get my shit together on that level, I’ve never been the greatest business person, always just been like ‘dude, I’m gonna make rock’n’roll and be a rock star’ and I’ve not really cared about much else. I’ve found that the older you get the more you just want to empower yourself and be in control of your own destiny.”

Video: Everlast - What It's Like

Is this also a transitional period for the music? Have your influences changed in tandem with your style over the years?

“With this record [Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford], I made a conscious decision to stray away from the sounds I had been making by choosing different instrumentation, playing with other arrangements and working with a new producer (Keefus Ciancia). So all that combined made for a new sound. But I still go about writing in the same fashion, it’s just about the recording of it. As far as my influences go, I don’t think they’ve really changed much over the last 20 years. Right now I’m into Death Cab For Cutie, I’m digging what they do, but I usually deal a lot in oldies like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings – country has done a lot for me. I’ve also been into Neil Young and a whole bunch of old 70s rock; Zeppelin and all that. But primarily, at the base, I’m a b-boy; so everything stems from there. The thing about House of Pain - and particularly my solo work in the early years – is that I was primarily dealing with sampling. So you listen to thousands of records, you can’t help but be influenced by all that sound. The most inspiring thing I’ve seen recently was Roger Waters destroying...”

Coachella? Oh yes, a few of us from the mag were there…jaws on the floor.

“Oh my god, dude, Coachella was amazing. I was there with my buddy Sean Penn and we were getting together volunteers for this thing called the Dirty Hands Caravan to go down to New Orleans. I tagged along and we did some nighttime campfires and played music for the kids. We got 150 kids to volunteer straight from Coachella and did some work around the city. 20 or 30 of the kids stayed and volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, Common Ground and a few of the organizations down there…pretty awesome. But Roger Waters? Prince was great the night before but Roger Waters blew my fucking mind. What did he play for, like three and a half…four hours?”

Not much less than that, anyway, too many classics! So as a b-boy at heart, when did you first decide to pick up a guitar?

“My father was never really a player but he always had a guitar and picked around on it. So the guitar’s been around me most of my life, when I was maybe 12 or 13 I fancied myself as somebody in Kiss or Ozzy Osbourne, so I played with it a little while, but then I got into hip-hop and put it down for a few years. Towards the end of House of Pain I started picking it up again, I played guitar on a few songs where we’d sample it, manipulate it and change it up a little bit. I’ve never had any formal training or anything - I can’t read music – but I wing it by ear.”

Your alter-ego – Whitey Ford - is derived from a reputable baseball player who reigned in the 50s and 60s, how did his legacy come to affect what you do?

“He was a New York Yankee, first of all, and they're one of my passions. Second of all, he’s one of the greatest pitchers of all time and he’s an Irishman. You know, you’re familiar with hip-hop music, every once in a while you’ve got to reinvent yourself a little bit and when I changed the style to come with a more originally folky b-boy sound, I felt it would be easier for people to palette. I had always been jokingly referring to myself as Whitey Ford, and one day we just kind of said ‘Whitey Ford Sings the Blues’ and I thought ‘That’s the title of the fuckin’ album!’”

Wasn't it around this time that you converted to Islam? Have you always had religion in your life?

“I became Muslim in 1995, so it was long before that. The way that came about is that I was living with a family early on in my days that were Muslim and they never really talked to me about it or tried to convert me or anything, I was otherwise raised with a Christian mentality and suddenly this new world opened up to me, so I read about it. I was never brought to Islam by any Muslim, which means I’m probably the most unorthodox…if I went to the Middle East and told these cats I was Muslim they’d probably cut my head off! At its base I consider myself a Muslim but if I was really hardcore about that I couldn’t even make music, and that just seems retarded to me because I do believe in a creator and that creator made me with this talent. I can’t do anything else. If I wasn’t successful at this I’d be a bum on the street somewhere, probably begging for change. I believe in the principal of Islam, praying in that manner does a lot for me. But I’m not a Shia, I’m not a Sunni, I’m not a Soophie - I’m none of that; this is a train of thought that works for me and has helped me become a better man who has more compassion for the world and the people around me. But I don’t think that any religion, philosophy or idea is solvent enough to swear by. You dig what I mean? I wouldn’t bet everything that I know everything. It’d be stupid. I have a song on the last album called God Wanna and there’s a line in there that says ‘I’m a walking, talking, living breathing contradiction’, it’s probably one of the truest things I’ve said in my life.”

At various times, your post-House of Pain sound could hastily be described as "something like Johnny Cash meets Cypress Hill," but you’ve taken that to its logical conclusion on this album and spliced Folsom Prison Blues with Insane in the Brain. Was there some sense of irony when you recorded that track?

“I get what you’re saying and I wouldn’t argue with it, but the way the Johnny Cash thing came about was that Muggs (Cypress Hill's DJ) has been one of my best friends for the last 20 years. Vegas called - wanting me to do a show - and I didn’t really have a band together so we put together a set of Muggs DJing with break beats, me playing guitar and Keefus on keyboards. Muggs was mixing in Insane in the Brain and after three or four shows we were like ‘We have to fuckin’ record this’, y’know what I mean? (laughs) ‘This is kinda good!’ Whenever we played it, people would just lose their minds.

“Once we did record it, I was a little wary because I have a lot of respect for Johnny Cash and that’s one of the definitive Johnny Cash songs. So I took it down to Nashville and met with John Carter Cash – his son – and played it for him to make sure they were all cool with what I was doing. They were supportive of the whole thing, so we decided to put it on the record.”

Video: Everlast - So Long

It follows a pretty hard-hitting opener - Kill the Emperor – what can you tell me about that song?

“I think democracy is dying. I didn’t want to use the word ‘President’ for two reasons. One was that I think ‘Emperor’ is more fitting to the behaviour of the President and you could apply it specifically to the dude who’s in office but it really applies to anybody who holds a seat of power and wields it like an emperor. The second was that to say ‘President’ with the rest of that sentence might get you arrested (laughs). We put it first because it seemed that there was no other way to start this record.”

A lot of soldiers have given you positive feedback on YouTube for the new LP’s lead single, Letters Home From the Garden of Stone. What was the catalyst that made you write such a song?

“That particular song isn’t saying ‘support or don’t support the war’. I was just sitting around one night and I kind of got disgusted with the whole consumer society in general, of ‘I’m going to go shop at the mall, buy new shit and not think of anything else’ while there are these guys who would love to be shopping at the mall. Instead they’re getting stuck in a fucking sand pit somewhere, waiting for some improvised explosive device to go off. I found it really hard to imagine what that must be like and all of a sudden I channeled this energy and that song came out. In a weird way I felt like something was speaking to me from beyond - not in some corny way – I did literally feel like I was channeling this thing and that’s where the title of the song came from. The Garden of Stone is a nickname for Arlington National Cemetery, where they bury all the military heroes and high ranking soldiers. I think John F Kennedy’s even buried there. It became this song about a letter home from a soldier who is already dead before it gets there. I was trying to empathise with the whole thing and put myself in those shoes. I’ve never been in a war, I tell people I’ve been in a couple of minor fist fights in my life and that’s about as close as I’ve come to it. But it’s like Santana used to say, you just stick your antenna up in the air and see what it catches sometimes.”

Video: Everlast - Letters Home From The Garden of Stone

I understand you're playing with Danny Boy and Lethal again in La Coka Nostra, how did that come about?

“House of Pain fell apart because me and Danny had issues; he got involved in drugs pretty badly and after a few times of trying to help him see the light out of that…I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with anybody in that situation, but sooner or later you’ve got to wash your hands of it and let them walk their own path. But Danny got his life together and really made a huge turnaround, we repaired our relationship and I wanted to work with him again but – and I’m not saying it could never happen again – I didn’t want this to be like ‘We’re House of Pain, we’re back!” Not that I’m comparing us to these guys in any way, shape or form – but right now New Kids on the Block are out trying to reunite and tour and shit. When I see things like that there’s nothing worse to me. In my book House of Pain is a really cool little moment in our little section of hip-hop history and I don’t want to taint that.

“However, this series of circumstances came up where Danny had this little group he was trying to start, La Coka Nostra - it was his thing. But me and Ill Bill from Non Phixion started hanging out with this up and coming MC from Boston named Slaine. They really sparked my fire to rap again - to spit – you can even see on the new record that there are occasions where I get into that groove and it works. I got in the room with these two guys and they’re beasts on the mic. They were always telling me ‘Dude, you should start doing this’, so we started making these tracks and the next thing you know we were all like ‘Yo, I’m digging this, are you digging this? Yeah, I’m digging this – so what should we do?’ Danny had this thing and we were all together so we thought ‘let’s just make this in to our group’. It’s pretty much all about having fun. I’m having a good time and I told them, as long it’s a labour of love and not just labour, I’m cool with it.”

Are we going to hear a record then?

“We’re trying to get it out by Halloween, hopefully. That’s tentative, it’s not solid. OK, my guy’s giving me the five minute sign here…”

OK, quick-fire round: What do you do when you’re in the club and Jump Around inevitably comes on halfway through the night?

“Crack a little smile, finish my whiskey and then move on!”

Video: House of Pain - Jump Around

Do you take a bow, or slip out the side door?

“You know what’s funny? I don’t hate it when that happens but I don’t like it when people shine a spotlight on me - if I’m not on stage, that is - and go ‘Hey, there he is’, It’s always slightly embarrassing. There’s something uncomfortable about it, which is weird in the day and age when everybody wants the paparazzi shooting their picture. I like having my music be more famous than me, because I like going to the supermarket to shop for my own groceries and not have a mob of people shooting pictures. The quality of life must be shitty, no matter how much money you have. You see people go insane from it; it’s going to kill Amy Winehouse, it almost killed Britney Spears. These people are soul suckers; I’d never want that to happen.”

What advice would you offer to your younger self, given the opportunity?

“Slow down, it’s a long journey. When I was young I went pretty hard and that’s probably what caused my heart condition to accelerate. Luckily I survived it, but perhaps I wouldn’t have abused my body so much. I’d tell myself something about that.”

Finally, what’s next for Everlast? Can we expect to see a tour, maybe a date in Scotland?

“Right now, after taking three years and not really doing much, that’s all I want to do. That’s all I’ve been telling my management, ‘Just get me on the road!’ We’re about to drop that Johnny Cash song with a really, really, really cool video where they’ve CGI’d me in to the old Johnny Cash television show, and it’s pretty awesome. I’ve got a new philosophy, though. I used to put out an album, go tour the cycle of the album and then go home. I’ve made it real clear that, if I have my way, I want to be a touring artist, that’s all I want to do is go out there and play my music. I came to this conclusion a little while ago; I plan on living a really long time but you never know with the history of my medical so I want to take the time I do have and really make music as much as I can.”

Video: Everlast - Folsom Prison Blues