In the Studio: Jubilee (Part Two)

Our early conversations about Jubilee went along the lines of: ‘What would happen if you took the most American Americana - bands like Creedence, Tom Petty, Dylan, maybe Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – yeah, Neil Young’s Canadian, whatever – but melding Creedence with the La’s, what would happen?' or 'How does Johnny Cash mix with Pink Floyd?' Those are the kinds of bands we like, and it didn’t seem that far-fetched either – it didn’t seem that different to me until people started pointing it out.

And as far as our different collaborations have gone, they didn’t seem that weird to me either. I know it sounds like total bullshit and shtick, but we really didn’t set out to get all these big names on this record. When we started writing songs, I was so busy with Nails and Mike was so busy with Queens – we didn’t have time to play shows so it seemed kind of pointless to find a drummer. The logic was that we have all these friends here in L.A who are amazing drummers. We also have our own studio and a lot of these people come by to hang out, plus everything’s always mic’ed up. We had all these demos of all these songs and thought: ‘Let’s pick certain songs for people that we know.’ We kept waiting on someone to say no and no one ever did, even towards the very end.

Then there’s a song called I Don’t Have An Excuse, I Just Need A Little Help that Maynard [James Keenan, Tool vocalist] sings on – it’s a song that me and Trent had written together on the road a couple of years ago – with a programmed drumbeat and it was almost a little too aggressive sounding for what I was aiming for this band to sound like. We knew from the beginning that the track wasn’t going to be on the album – it’s a b-side, a chance to experiment. It was like ‘Fuck it, if we’re going to have a song that’s going to start with one of Trent’s programmed beats, let’s go as far in that direction as we can by making it as abrasive as possible.’

I called Julian from the Liars to see if he’d come and play on top of Trent’s beat – just to see what that would sound like. After I’d recorded my vocals, which were done in this whispery kind of tone, Maynard came by just to see what was going on. Off the cuff I asked ‘Do you want to take a go at singing this?’ In 15 minutes he’d done one take all the way through where he’d sung on all the choruses, he’d done a full voice take, a normal voice take, two takes of different falsetto voices, and then a harmony vocal. I think I was on the roof fixing the air conditioning and it was done when I came back. I was like ‘What the fuck? Perfect.’ - made me feel like such an amateur.

Video: Jubilee in the studio with Maynard James Keenan

In songwriting, you’ve got your Dylans and your Lennons and then you’ve got a bunch of hacks. Likewise, there’s only so many people in the rock world right now that can really fuckin’ sing, and Maynard’s one of those dudes. Situations like this have been the whole vibe while we’ve been recording, but - and we’ve been saying this until we’re blue in the face - this isn’t a project band, this is a band. When people ask about that song I say it’s got Julian, Trent, Maynard, but it’s got Mike too!

I consider Mike to be the John Entwistle of his generation. When Queens were looking for a bass player and asked me if I knew anyone I said ‘Don’t audition anybody!’ I said ‘He’s 21 and I know this sounds scary, but this is the best bass player I’ve played with in my entire life.’ Now, The Who are one of my favourite bands and I always liked how Pete Townshend would play rhythm in a way and Entwistle would play the lead part on bass, that’s how a lot of our songs are arranged. I think that in 10 years from now people will look back and think of Mike in the same league.