INTERVJU: Phil Campbell

Vi fick några minuter med Phil Campbell på Sweden Rock Festival och han berättade bl a lite om sitt kommande soloalbum:

It´s not gonna be what people expect. I play piano on a few tracks. I don´t know, since it´s not finished yet. I still gotta write another six songs for it, but it´s not gonna be all totally like Motörhead

 

What are your memories of your very first guitar?

I borrowed one off my cousin. It was a Hofner Futurmama Duo. He had it sprayed all psychedelic, so that was pretty good. The first guitar I bought was a 12 pound guitar from Woolworths. I used to love it and I wish I still had it.

What was it about guitars that made you go “This is my thing!”?

It was because Jimi Hendrix made it so cool. I borrowed an album called “Hendrix in the West” (1972). It has since been deleted, but you can get it again now. It´s eight tracks played live and it sounded amazing.

Will there be a full album with The Bastard Sons?

Yeah, we´ve started writing already and I´m also doing my solo record and I´m halfway through that one. But yeah, we´ve started writing for The Bastards and we should have an alum out next year. Trying to keep busy.

Do you have the same approach writing for The Bastards as you had in Motörhead?

Not really. When we wrote for Motörhead we´d lock ourselves in a studio for like six weeks. Now we´ve got our own recording studio and we´ve written about seven or eight songs. They´re not totally finished and we haven´t done any vocals or anything. We go there a couple of days a week or whatever, so it´s a bit more relaxed.

What about the solo album then? You´ve got Rob Halford on it, Chris Fehn from Slipknot and so on?

Yeah and Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) is doing some vocals. Benji (Webbe) from Skindred has done it. I´m really lucky to get these people on it. Matt Sorum´s (ex Guns N´Roses, ex The Cult) gonna do a track. He´s doing it next week. His mixing desk blew out. It´s gonna be good.

What´s it gonna sound like?

It´s not gonna be what people expect. I play piano on a few tracks. I don´t know, since it´s not finished yet. I still gotta write another six songs for it, but it´s not gonna be all totally like Motörhead. After many years it´s just nice to be able to do what I want. I could do what I wanted in Motörhead, but we didn´t wanna stray too far away. We´d put a saxophone in when we wanted and a piano and acoustics…

There´s a track on the Bastard album called “Life in space”. It´s a really soft and mellow song. What can you say about that one?

Todd (Campbell) wrote most of that one. He did all the melodies and vocals. He´s got an incredible voice and he can sing anything and in any key. I think it took him like two hours to complete that song with the lyrics as well. It´s a great song!

What´s it like playing and working with your sons?

Apart from my wife and my dog I´m the worst musician in the house. (laughs) It´s good. Now they´re getting older. The youngest one, Tyler, is 26. When they were teenagers they were into music I wouldn´t necessarily listen to, but the influences are there, somewhere back in everyone´s minds. What´s good about music is that there are no rules. You just play the way you feel.

Can you teach them anything about the business?

Not musically, just the way I portray myself I guess. Stuff like my ideas and my attitude, I guess. They´ve seen me make mistakes and they learn not to do them.

Text: Niclas Müller-Hansen