She Sells Sanctuary
The sparkle in your Falcon, keeps me alive
Player Billy Duffy Album Love (1985)
“Itried to be part Steve Jones and part Ennio Morricone,” Billy Duffy tells us of his approach in forging The Cult’s sound as their only guitarist in the early days. “How can you make the guitar ballsy but have this spacial sense?” This song was his response to his own question. “But at the time Shesells Sanctuary came out in ’85 there weren’t any guitars in the charts,”
he adds. “Which is probably why it did well, because it was different.”
Stray Cats fan Duffy was drawn to the Gretsch White Falcon during his time in Theatre Of Hate. “If I take that guitar, that look, and make it heavier… that’s what my goal was,” the Manchester guitarist explains. “The Gretschs just sounded different to a Les Paul. I was aware that it was a way to go to get a different sound going on, and it was all about getting a unique sound at that point. A Les Paul into a Marshall really wasn’t going to get it. I just messed around with amps and discovered that the Roland JC 120, in conjunction with a valve amp together made this sound that gave me what I was hearing in my head. Add a bit of delay, and chorus. I never used a chorus pedal on the floor and the only chorus I used was on the JC 120 amp. That was basically it, and I just experimented at looking at different amps to go with the JC 120. I ended up getting an Ampeg VT22, which was kind of a weird, rare bird. But I ended up getting a Marshall eventually.
We know Billy Duffy’s delay settings for this anthem because he told us: “I’ve always used two delay pedals... an analogue Roland [Boss] DM-2 and I use that in conjunction with the DD-3. And for that intro to Shesells Sanctuary or the beginning of Fire Woman, that picked sound is just a combination of JC 120 with these effects. It’s an approximation but they’re roughly set at 400 and 800ms. Then for solos I just use to 800ms on the DD-3, it just makes it sound bigger. I think I learned that from Steve Stevens… repeat echo on a lead guitar tricks the ear and you think it sounds bigger.”