Pretty Great Machine
Billy tells the story of his #1 Les Paul, via Trent Reznor and an eye-watering credit card bill
“It’s a 1960 Classic Reissue but I think it was manufactured in ’91. When I was working as a guitar tech for Trent Reznor he broke many guitars and that was the very first guitar I was given [to work on]. It just arrived in the box on the day I arrived in Georgia. We were doing production rehearsals in Atlanta and I’d just got the gig. I was removing the pickups and the soldering iron slipped out of my hand and burned a tiny little spot. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m fired and we haven’t even done a show.’ But the tech next to me reassured me. I didn’t know anything about Nine Inch Nails. I’d heard Head like a hole once or twice in a goth club and that’s it. So I didn’t know anything about the show, I didn’t realise how destructive it was. And the first night I think he threw it up and it hit the lighting troughs and broke the neck off it. So I thought, ‘Okay that’s that.’ But that was par for the course. I think they went through one to seven guitars every night on that tour.
It’s a side story but that’s why I had such good credit. I was 24 at the time and I asked the production manager, ‘Can I put these on my credit card and you pay me back.’ So he said, ‘Okay, and I ended up putting I think $200,000 on my credit card and I paid it off immediately. So, I had totally amazing credit – when I went to buy my first house the guy said, ‘You have like Ronald Regan credit!’
“So that guitar in particular was the first one and as the headstock had broken off I found another guitar just like that. We went through so many that had the exact same [break]. I found another one with the same coloured headstock, put it on. Poorly. It’s at the wrong angle because it’s not the same headstock, it’s more flat. I just tried to remove enough wood to get the splinters to go together and epoxy that. So it’s a Frankenstein guitar but for whatever reason it’s not about that why I love it.
“It really is the best sounding guitar I’ve ever had. It’s not forgiving but it’s the most interesting and it plays great and I have to get it refretted, which scares me, because I know it’s going to change it. But that’s always been my number one.” lighting. Everything is exactly the same so when you play you know your marks to hit.”
Are you exclusively using Les Pauls on the studio as well as the stage?
“For the most part. In the studio I’ve got a couple of other colours here and there. There was about the same amount of blend on this record. I’ve got a Gibson 175 with stock pickups. My [LP] guitars have Tom Anderson pickups so they’re very different to a Les Paul.
“The pickups sound harsh the way I have them. I have an H3+ in the bridge [H1 in the neck] and they’re very unforgiving. I pick up a regular guitar in normal tuning and other pickups and sometimes I’ll think, ‘Why don’t I play this?!’ Because it just sounds so forgiving and nice. But there’s a little extra work I need to do to get this to sound good and maybe that’s part of the character of the sound of the band and my playing. What I lack in technical ability, I try to make up for with soundscape, and that’s part of it.”
One thing that’s easy to overlook is the transitions between your guitar parts seem very carefully orchestrated with things like delay trails. Is that quite challenging?
“Yes because you might get the performance right but the transition is off. That’s a lot of programming the Axe-fx. I’ve got a tech, Steve, who works for me. He’s musical, he’s in a band and he knows the Axe-fx and how to get good sounds. Typically, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be home doing that for two months and he’s chewing on it right now. Get me close and then I’ll come in and tweak with you. But that’s what’s great about the Axe-fx, I can get almost anything out of it.”
Do you have any advice for players who want to combine the roles of composer, producer and guitarist?
“Everyone has access to what I didn’t have access to back then. It’s about trying to not be paralysed by choices. And trying to sound like something you love. I think a melting-pot approach is better than a singular. For me, it was wanting to be Will Sergeant and Robert Smith and Randy Rhoads and Warren Cuccurullo from Missing Persons. I couldn’t master any one of them but I could come up with my own sound from the soup that was created from all of them.”