|
|
 
 |
Deftones
Published: July 2003
Story: Jeff Royer
Photo: Press photo |
Just when you thought tour packages couldn't get any bigger, along
comes the Summer Sanatarium tour - all the hard rock you can fit
under one roof coupled with a set of rock star egos you couldn't
possibly fit under any roof anywhere.
Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Deftones, and Mudvayne are
preparing for their joint romp across America. But it seems that the
tighter the bands get in rehearsal, the looser their tongues become.
It's turned into a cat fight of the "my band rocks harder than your
band" variety.
"There's a lot of junk being tossed around in the press right now
between bands. It's pretty silly," says Deftones drummer Abe
Cunningham during a recent interview with Fly Magazine.
"I look at it like life's too short. It's really childish. I mean, I
happen to be in one of the bands that's apparently doing some of the
shit-talking. Not me, though. I could give a rat's ass," Cunningham
chuckles. "I'm looking forward to [the tour]. Metallica's one of the
bands that I grew up on and our whole band kind of grew up on."
By far the most melodic and literate of the bands, the Deftones have
been ever-so-slowly inching their way to stardom since their
breakthrough album, White Pony (2000), went platinum, won them a
Grammy, and put them on the hard rock map. The No. 2 debut of the
band's follow-up album, Deftones (May 2003), as well as the charting
success of the lead-off single, "Minerva" (No. 10 at press time), is
proof positive that the band's success within the mainstream realm
was no fluke.
What many don't realize, however, is that the Deftones' story has
actually been 15 years in the making, and that, by influencing and
paving the way for more glittery bands like Limp Bizkit, they are
indirectly responsible for the genesis of the nu-metal movement.
For Cunningham, though, a nice and quiet rise into international
acclaim is just what the doctor ordered.
"We've sold records, but it's never been the motivation," Cunningham
says. "With all the records, thank God, it's gotten better each time.
It's gone up each time. Our whole path over the 15 years we've been
together has been pretty slow. It was very gradual, which I'm also
very thankful for.
"As far as being a signed band and having a record deal and all that
shit, we've been out for about eight years. We've been touring
constantly in that time," he continues. "To me, that's the best way
to do it. We never relied too much on radio. We still work it in the
way we've always done it in the past, before MTV and before we were
lucky enough to get any radio play."
For sure, if the Deftones had adopted the rap vocals, bling-bling,
and hip-hop trappings that other hard rock bands have embraced, they
would have led the ugly pack into the new millennium. Instead, the
Sacramento-based quintet stuck to its first love - ambient, textured,
plodding rock with soaring vocal melodies - and gathered a monstrous
fan base and tons of street cred in the process.
But street cred doesn't make it any easier to watch your
backwards-baseball-hat-wearing peers outsell you by several million
albums. "These bands - which we don't need to mention, because we
already know who they are - did things that we don't feel comfortable
with to get to their level. And that's fine," shrugs Cunningham. "Our
whole thing was coming from a - dare I say - punk rock,
do-it-yourself kind of ethic. That's us. We didn't take certain
routes that probably could have made it bigger in the whole grand
scale of things. But at the same time, I'm very proud of where we're
at. So that's why I harbor no bitterness. It's all good."
Further consolation can be found in the fact that the very factors
that kept the Deftones from the top of the nu-metal mountain are the
same factors that will save the band when the whole genre comes
tumbling down. "We made it so we could never get lumped into
[nu-metal], so when it did die, it wouldn't take us with it,"
Cunningham assures. "I don't feel threatened by that at all."
As the Summer Sanatarium trash-talking continues, the Deftones are
busy learning how to play their new songs in a live setting. "It's
kind of weird. We're in the studio, we write songs real fast and
record them, and we never have the time to learn them," Cunningham
laughs. "So we're just kind of rehearsing and getting that stuff
going again." He's not worried about it, though. In fact, Cunningham
doesn't seem to worry much about anything other than having a good
time with his old high school buddies.
"You know, we're five brothers who bicker and fight and yell and
laugh and love each other and all that shit wrapped in one. So the
main thing is just our happiness," he says. "These guys are my best
friends, and I can't wait to see where it goes."
|
|
|
Untitled Document
|
|
