1995-01 Guitar Player
THEY MIGHT BE NUGENT: John Flansburgh Gets Crunchy
By Joe Gore, Guitar Player Magazine, January 1995
Archived from: https://web.archive.org/web/20031018232754/http://www.tmbg.net/articles/guitar1995.html
For nearly a decade They Might Be Giants--guitarist John Flansburgh and keyboardist John Linnell--have used an 8-track tape recorder for all their live accompaniment. But the manic Brooklyn songwriting duo has lately mutated into a sextet, and Flansburgh has assumed a more muscular style to the suit the instrumentation.
"I"m philosophically opposed to the notion of the 'guitar hero,'" he states. "I'm more into the song hero. But I'm just as big a guitar dweeb as anyone, and the new lineup has refocused me on my role as a guitar player in a head-on rock combo."
The Monty Python of rock bands hasn't abandoned its hyper-kinetic humor, but their latest album, John Henry [Elektra], flaunts a new, riff-fueled swagger. Flansburgh, 34, insists the move isn't out of character: "I am of the '70s generation, after all--I bought more than one Alice Cooper record! I really enjoyed experimenting with things like tuning down three half-steps or moving into simpler voicings with a more saturated sound, trying to play simpler and bolder."
Flansburgh even exhibits the direst early-warning sign of retro-rock fever: a Les Paul. "I held off on making the Gibson leap because of its Lear Jet rock star image," he laughs, "but it just works so well. Actually, Joey Santiago of the Pixies opened my eyes to the fact you can make those big Les Paul/Marshall sounds without being a creep."
Flansburgh's new riffs have a thick, overdubbed sound, yet Flansburgh did little double-tracking. "I modified the old Ted Nugent trick of doubling the same rhythm part and panning it out hard left and right," he explains. "We'd run a single guitar signal through two very different speakers and pan them left and right. Most of the record is a late-'70s Les Paul of little distinction through a Fender Deluxe and my dad's crummy old hi-fi speaker. It sounds like Siamese twins playing the same part. It lets us keep the vocals at pop-record volume but still have that heavy, quasi-overdubbed sound."
Newfound crunch aside, John Henry jumps genres as feverishly as any of the group's past albums; if the duo had better voices and a worse sense of humor, they'd be awash in Beatles comparisons. Says Flansburgh, "The Beatles were such a big part of our background that its hard to figure out where they stop and where everything else takes off. They were the perfect example of a pop group that would do every sort of music that worked with their combo, and even some that didn't. People love Kiss nowadays, but the Beatles are better. Hey, even Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies kicks ass on any Kiss album!"