Q and A: Richard Patrick (Filter)

By PAUL SOUTHWELL

FILTER became a household name in rock and metal circles when the hit song “Hey Man Nice Shot”, , from their debut album, Short Bus. took the world by surprise in 1995. Given the band was formed by frontman Richard Patrick upon leaving his tenure as touring guitarist for Nine Inch Nails, who were also becoming huge at the time, the similarities in some of the music led to an overlap of eager fans. But their latest album, their eighth studio effort titled The Algorithm, contains a vast variety of sounds and styles that should have some broad appeal, whilst still pleasing the diehards.

Those who have seen Filter live know they have a unique sound and are not easily categorised and that is just the way they like it. Recently in Australia,we spoke to Richard Patrick to discuss all things Filter.

Hot Metal: The Algorithm could be seen as a follow up to Short Bus. After 30 odd years, I gather that your approach to songwriting has changed?

Richard Patrick: “It has, and it hasn’t. I like to work with other people and I also like to do it myself. For example, yesterday I wrote a song, recorded it and had it ready for the band in four hours. It is basically that I have this really high standard of what I think is good and I try to meet that standard every time. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks to find an idea that is worthy of continuing to try to flush it out as an entire song. You cannot just write hits every single day of your life, you know what I mean? Sadly, we are not all John Lennons and Paul McCartneys. They literally can poop out a song in five seconds and it is “Hey Jude”. When I work on records, I do try to work with other people, but I also like to have my time to myself, you know? I have my own studio here in Los Angeles, California.”

HM: Technology has changed massively and it is staggering to think about all of the advances in equipment. The Axe-Fx processors, Kemper profilers, represent various improvements that are getting better. Do you embrace the digital age?

RP: “I embrace everything, I love all of that stuff, I love buying guitars, I love analogue equipment, I have a bunch of outboard analogue equipment, I have a bunch of keyboards and I have around 15 guitars in this place. I am constantly buying new stuff even though I really don’t need it. But I love acquiring new musical equipment and being inspired by it.”

HM: Looking at live rigs now, people can carry their sound around on a flash drive. 

RP: “Yeah, I was blown away. [Years ago] my producer and I went to go and master the record and he pulled out a thumb drive, and said, ‘okay, here it is,’ and I was like, ‘what?’, and he goes, ‘yeah, here it is, the whole record is on here and is ready to go’. That was around 15 years ago but now it is like, ‘of course, throw down a thumb drive,’ it’s no big deal.” 

HM: I would imagine that to some degree, the industrial music scene would be a pioneer in that kind of thing as they are always looking for new sounds?

RP: “Yeah, well, Trent Reznor was a huge inspiration to me, obviously, and he was constantly doing things like,’ well, here is a GK [Gallien Krueger] amplifier, it is basically an amplifier but it has got a great DI [direct injection to console], and it sounds great, so we don’t have to lug a lot of equipment’. We called them little toasters, those GK amplifiers, and they sounded fine. He was like, ‘it sounds good, we don’t need Marshalls’ but of course we ended up getting Marshalls because we played bigger stages. Also, I needed to have a bigger sound because we weren’t using in-ears [live mix monitoring devices] at the time. He inspired a lot of quick fixes in the studio. It was a case of, ‘we’ll just do this, we’ll just use this great DI, we don’t need a bass amp, this DI sounds fine, let’s move on’, you know and he was great like that.”

HM: Audiences are getting used to seeing sparse stages without needing the ridiculous backline of cabinets.

RP: “Yeah, I mean, you don’t need it. On the Rob Zombie tour that we did, we had two Marshall cabinets behind Johnny [Radtke – guitarist] but literally, we’re not using it that much, it is not miked. He had everything from his Axe-Fx, and his Line 6 Helix [guitar multi-effects floor processor]. You know, he had everything lined up in there, and it sounds fantastic. The acoustic guitar sounds amazing. He is a great guitar player.” 

HM: Is there a particular track on the most recent album that you are most proud of at this point?

RP: “I really like ‘The Drowning’ because there were a lot of random guitar parts created through AI [artificial intelligence software], just using the random function on a sequencer. All that [bassy, big sounding] stuff in that song was kind of random,and Johnny learned it on guitar and played it, but when I created it, it was a guitar sample. I like cheating like that and pulling stunts like that but honestly, the whole record is amazing, I am really proud of it. “

HM: Production dynamics on it are quite good too, going from say a gated guitar to a very dense, layered chorus, then back to a sparse verse. Does that take a lot of rehearsal or preparation?

RP: “No, it was all done in the computer. We recorded pretty much everything into the computer and then just went back and refined it. There were a lot of Logic Pro X hours.” 

HM: So, I gather you throw yourself into programming.

RP: “Yeah, I love my computer, I think it is amazing.” 

HM: Even though these methods of making music have changed and evolved, you’ve still got to have that creative process.

RP: “Yeah, and for me, it’s my ears. My friend Brian Virtue mixed it with a set of [Yamaha] NS-10s that he has been using for 30 or 40 years, and he doesn’t even use a sub-woofer. He mixed it pretty much in his living room, with just two NS-10s, and he made it sound fantastic, and it is just because he has great ears. It is not the equipment; it is that you have to have ability in your creativity and in your mind. He did everything in the box. There was no big mixing console. There was never an SSL [Solid State Logic] mixing console in front of him ever He did the whole thing in his box, you know, in his computer.”

HM: Is the album line-up, the touring band line-up for the upcoming tour?

RP: “Yes, it is Elias Mallin on drums [now new drummer Tosh Peterson], then Bobby Miller on bass, Jonathan Radtke on guitar, and me, myself and I.”

HM: Because of studio recording complexity of songs, do you find you have to drop certain melody lines or guitar parts for the live arrangements?

RP: “Yeah, you’ve got to take the best of whatever there is in the song. But we’re industrial so we bring a computer, you know what I mean? So there are just sounds that we created in the studio that you cannot reproduce live, and to bring, you know, three or four guys playing samples, it was just ridiculous. So, just like Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry, and others, there is definitely a computer involved when we play live.”

HM: Technological advances in guitar are expanding. Someone like guitarist Steve Vai is an incredible musician but his latest Hydra guitar concoction combines IT aspects, computing, and instruments, with ethernet connectivity, live instruments through digital rigs, and live set ups.

RP: “He is amazing. Technology has changed things but in the case of virtuoso musicians, they have to be amazing, since that is what the audience wants. Musicians have to bring it, so that’s why, when we play, it’s on. We are playing for our lives. We’re like, ‘there are a lot of great bands out there, so we’re going to have to bring it, and bring it hard, live.’ We don’t take it for granted.”

HM: When you were starting out, working with Trent Reznor, did you find his stature intimidating musically or did it help to bring the best out of you?

RP: “I was just kind of like, ‘that’s all Trent!’ you know? Because he was an inspiration. For instance, when I played the guitar riff to ‘Hey Man Nice Shot’, he was asking, ‘what is going on here? What kind of magic is going on here?’ and I just said, ‘well, it’s Drop D [tuning], so I am not plucking it with barre chords, I am playing it with just my finger’ [sings riff], and he amazed, saying, ‘what the fuck? What is that, dude? You’re cheating!’ and I went, ‘exactly! Yes, I am cheating’ and he was thinking that I was playing some really complicated riff. But it was just playing barre chord like you would one note, and I’m like, ‘yeah, but, you know, it’s a lot of open playing’ and he was taken aback by the fact that it was, ‘what do you mean, drop D?’ and it was, ‘yeah, drop D,’ so that was awesome and it was funny. There was a lot of that, but he definitely provided a lot of wonderful help too, he had Flood [Mark Ellis], and a lot of great talent, like Adrian Sherwood, and a lot of amazing producers that were with him in the beginning too. It wasn’t just 90 to 100 percent just Trent. There were other people. I am not saying that he is not ‘the shit’, because he absolutely, 100 percent is ‘the shit’, but he had some great producers that were helping him as well.” 

HM: There are some keyboard washes in your music, was Gary Numan ever an influence?

RP: “No, not really and I don’t use a lot of keyboards in Filter. But they are there, yeah, and ‘The Drowning’ has a cool keyboard part. But it is mixed in with guitars.”

HM: It fleshes out the sound a bit when building to a chorus to give that more dense mix. But on that, I gather the mixing can be quite involved for Filter’s music. So, when do you know that the mix is finished?

RP: “Oh yeah, I mean, I will get it to a point and I’ll be like, ‘we’re done, this is the best I can do.’ I am looking at my computer screen, seeing all the different tracks, and I am not necessarily hearing any additives that I can think of. So I’ll just go, ‘fuck it, it’s done, this sounds great’ and then I will send it to Brian Virtue through Dropbox, and he’ll take it, and work on it for like a day or two, and then come back and say, ‘here’s your mixed song’. Ha-ha – and then I’ll go to Howie Weinberg, and get him to master it.”

HM: Fair enough. A song like “Say It Again” is almost metal.

RP: “Yeah, well, that’s my guitar player friend, Zach Munowitz – and he is an amazing young guitar player. Definitely check him out on Instagram; that is how I found him, and he is amazing.”

HM: Oh wow, the music world has indeed changed.

RP: “Oh yeah, I know, but I heard his guitar playing and I asked him, ‘can I sing over this? and he replied, ‘sure,’ so I said, ‘send me three parts that are cool, that work together, and I’ll arrange it, then figure it out’. So, he did and then I just basically copied and pasted a bunch of the parts over and added some guitar overdubs to make it sound more like Filter. I did my guitar overdubs on it,and then sang some cool lyrics, and it was done. The Zach Munowitz songs are easy for me, they are really easy songs to work on because he just sends them, and they are done, the sound great. “

HM: He contributed on the first single for the album as well, and on another song [“Up Against the Wall”].

RP: “Yeah, he did, the single was “For the Beaten” and his guitar playing, again, is like original. I thought to myself, he sounds like a new Eddie Van Halen.”

HM: Wow, that’s a pretty high accolade.

RP: “Not sounds like but is like Eddie Van Halen, like in the fact that Eddie was so ground-breaking.”

HM: Do you ever find there is pressure to create another “Take a Picture” hit?

RP: “Well, the funny thing is that ‘Take a Picture’ was not well received by the record company. They were like, ‘Rich, this is a departure, you’re supposed to be an angry industrial metal guy’ and I said, ‘well, yeah, I know but I am not 100 percent committed to being full-on like that’ and I said that the reason why I did “So Cool” and “Stuck in Here” on Short Bus was because I wanted to expand, and to do different types of music on Title of Record as well. But they were saying, ‘yeah, but your fans are going to hear this, and they are going to think what the hell happened to Richard Patrick?” and I just said, ‘I would hope that they are as mature as I am in that you can listen to say The Smashing Pumpkins and they can beat your ass, but at the same time they can do a song like “Disarm” and it’s beautiful’. You know what I mean? So, I kind of got picked on because I did ‘Take a Picture’ but I loved and was proud of that song. So, to feel pressure to write another hit, oh, that is always there. They are always saying, ‘hey, go and write another hit,’ but the world has changed. ‘Take a Picture’ worked in 1999 but now, the world of pop music has changed so much that you’ve got to basically be Taylor Swift, to compete in that world, which I do not want to do. I like just doing my own rock shit and sticking to my own genre.”

HM: That makes perfect sense, but regarding maturity, the lyrical content of that song should be clear to fans what the song is about, and similarly, a lot of people assume that industrial music has got to be all nihilism, but it is not necessarily the case.

RP: “Yeah, well, “Burn Out the Sun” on The Algorithm is pretty epically positive, and I am proud of those lyrics as well. It is all about, ‘yeah, we’re going to make it’. You know, there is a little optimism.”

HM: The average intense industrial music fan would probably freak out at the prospect of hearing acoustic guitar.

RP: “Well, see, that’s the thing, am I fully industrial? You know, do I have to do that? In music, as in life you can do whatever you want. You know, there are no rules. That is why I like The Clash because they were saying, ‘fuck it, we’re hip-hop, fuck it, we’re reggae, we’re punk, we’re hardcore, we’re pop. They were all over the map and it was Joe Strummer’s voice that kept it all together. So that is why Filter is definitely like it is. And the big complaints about Filter, was when I released The Amalgamut was that it was too all over the place. People were like, [imitates keyboard warriors] ‘you’re geared heavy, and then you’re light, and then you’re heavy, and then you’re light’ and I’m like, ‘yeah, that’s kind of the way I am’. Maybe it is because I am bi-polar, I don’t know, but I don’t wake up with the same emotions daily and I don’t want to just poop out the exact same type of record every time. I would hope that my fans could explore things with me.” 

HM: Oh certainly. Given your set list for the tour will probably cover a lot of material, do you find that the older songs have changed in the live arrangements much, over the years?

RP: “Yeah, I mean, with ‘Hey Man Nice Shot’ we put in a pretty cool guitar solo at the end of it, with Johnny Radtke kind of going off on it. But most of the time, we pretty much kind of stick to the way the songs are on the records for the live arrangements, just because I think that people want to hear it that way. But ‘Take a Picture’ is definitely weird because we play it with an electric guitar, so we don’t have acoustics for that song, but it is pretty much the same arrangements.”