The Offspring
On the long-awaited new album from punk rock stars The Offspring, guitarist Noodles has used a ton of gear – new and vintage – while channelling the Ramones, The Who and AC/DC. But even for this battle‑hardened punk hero, playing fast downstrokes isn’t easy. As he admits to TG: “It hurts!”
Besides Green Day, no band did more to take punk into the mainstream in the 90s than The Offspring, whose breakout hit, 1994’s ( Smash, became the world’s best-selling album on an independent label. In a career spanning 37 years, the band has now sold more than 40 million records. So perhaps they’ve earned the right to take it easy. But still, nine years between albums is not very punk rock, is it?
Guitarist Noodles, talking from the band’s Huntington Beach studio where Let The Bad Times Roll was recorded, explains the delay. “I think part of it was we didn’t want to put anything out until we knew we had something good,” he says. The band’s enthusiasm for touring also interrupted sessions. “We go our separate ways and then revisit what we got.
Coming back with fresh ears helps. We just love making music, man! We love playing together, love listening to music. All that helps us keep doing what we what we do.”
This raw enthusiasm means Let The Bad Times Roll sounds like the work of a significantly younger band, not only because they were significantly younger when they began recording it. It sees them working for the third time with producer Bob Rock. Best known for
his work with Metallica and Mötley Crüe, Rock is not an obvious choice of pop-punk producer, but The Offspring bonded with him over his punk roots. “We met with Bob and it just clicked. He really came up in the in the Vancouver punk scene, in the Payolas. He toured and played all over in punk clubs. We love a lot of the same music. He’s just a cool f*ckin’ dude. When Bob was working with some bands back in the day they were like gangs. It’s like the new guy in a jail yard. You walk in and have to take a swing at the biggest guy in the yard to prove yourself. We’re not like that. Hanging out with us is like visiting the Teletubbies!”
While some bands have struggled with Rock’s notorious demands for songs to be rewritten until they are perfect, Noodles and co. had the answer in the form of their own perfectionist, singer Dexter Holland. As Noodles explains: “Dexter has that kind of mindset. You know, very exacting and everything has to be right. The way Bob puts it with us is: ‘this is going to be great’, which means two things: it means we’re on the right track, but we’re not there yet.”
The road to making things great included a lot of messing around with new gear. “Bob is a guitar player, he’s always got new gadgets. Sometimes it works, or sometimes we spend half a day just jerking around and playing guitar, but we learned some shit and had fun making noises for ourselves. Bob knows so much and he just loves experimenting.”
That experimentation resulted in a small avalanche of guitars appearing on the album – “Les Pauls, Strats, Telecasters, a couple of Gretsches”—but Noodles’ primary weapon is a mid-60s SG Junior, with single P90 pickup. “It just sounds great. It’s the same model Pete Townshend played on Live At Leeds. If we’re going for barre chords with some grunge, that’s the guitar we’ll use. Some single-string riffs will use the Junior, but sometimes we’ll bust out a vintage Gretsch Sparkle Jet. We have a Malcolm Young Gretsch on there somewhere, too.”
The amp selection is even bigger. “For one guitar track we’ll mic three different amps and kind of blend the different sounds. The AC30 will add some stringiness where one of the Marshalls or the Mesas will add the grind to it. For this album we went back and got the Mesas out, a Mark IV and a Mark III. For Marshalls we have a JCM2000, a Plexi, and a JCM800. We have a Diezel, and there’s a Hiwatt in the mix. We also have Kempers and Fractals. We use those if we’re getting some clean chorus-y thing. If you want some kind of dirt on it you gotta go with a real amp and real tubes.”
For live work, though, Noodles is entirely a digital convert. “All the effects are built into
“I JUST LOVE GUITAR FOR GUITAR’S SAKE!”
the Fractal. The main thing is the sound doesn’t change from night to night. When you have a big amp, it’s always different, sometimes disastrously so, whereas this always stays the same. It may not be the best sound I’ve ever had, but it’s pretty damn good and it never falters.”
It’s refreshing to hear a guitarist still so enthusiastic after 37 years, and all of Noodles’ experiments with gear are in service of songwriting. “I still struggle with delays. How much do I need on every knob? You play with it until it becomes unlistenable, then you dial it back. I’ll have a thought, like ‘I want this clean guitar with delay to sound like the riff from this Ramones song.’ You start experimenting and a lot of times you end up with something completely different. That’s where most of our creative stuff happens.”
Creativity is one thing, but how the hell does he keep up that constant barrage of downstrokes? “You wanna try LAPD off Ignition! Oh my god, by the end of that one I’m dying. I think it’s just a matter of doing it a bunch until you break through and you can kind of loosen up, and not you’re not so tense. I’ll spend 10 minutes just as much as I can until it hurts, and then shake it off and play something fun.”
Guitar is clearly still Noodles’ passion, and he listens to everything. “I just love guitar for guitar’s sake. I don’t spend a lot of time listening to Steve Vai or Joe Satriani but I have those records and I do appreciate them.” If this is unexpected, his choice of practice material may also surprise you. “I’m trying to learn Raining Blood by Slayer! It’s so fast and it’s really kind of a silly song, but it’s super fun. I think Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell will be the next one...”
“I’M TRYING TO LEARN RAINING BLOOD BY SLAYER!"