Call Reznor Captain Bligh?
Smoot
By Don Kaye
It's been four long years since Filter released their debut album, Short
Bus, which featured the eerie hit single, "Hey Man, Nice Shot." Upon its
release, the band, originally a two-man project assembled by former Nine
Inch Nails guitarist Richard Patrick, toured the world for two years. But
when Filter finally got home and Patrick began writing a new album, he
faced a series of upheavals in his personal life. He ended his
relationship with his girlfriend and his partnership with Filter
collaborator/ programmer Brian Liesegang. On Filter's new album, Title of
Record, Patrick delves into these painful separations.
DrDrew.com: You've been through some changes in the last few years, most
notably with original Filter programmer Brian Liesegang. You and he really
represented yourselves in the press as the best of friends I think you
compared yourselves to "an old married couple" in one article.
Richard Patrick: The magical thing about Brian and I was when I would
write the songs and he would be the producer. He would add things. But he
wanted, I don't know, publishing royalties or something. When he sat there
with a guitar in his hand, which is not his strong point, it was really
weak. Just bad music. How do you tell someone they suck? So he did not
take it well. He always thought he could do what he was doing. I hate to
say this, but I got signed a week after I left Nine Inch Nails. He left
Filter two-and-a-half years ago and no one's signed him.
DrDrew.com: The lyrics to some of the new songs deal with the end of this
and other relationships?
RP: Yeah. "Captain Bligh" is an amalgamation of the mutineer and the
mutinee. One is this stodgy, stuck-up captain, and the other guy is
rebelling. On one hand, you have the greatest navigator of the Royal Navy,
Captain Bligh, and because of his stuck-up inability to relate to his
crew, he loses his ship, the Bounty. On the other hand, you have his first
mate, Fletcher Christian, who ends up burning the ship and ends up on an
island and will never go home again. So they both lose.
So in this song, I'm trying to examine why these male professional
relationships fail. Maybe if someone made an apology or realized that they
were doing something wrong--but instead, we always have this friction
between people. So on one hand, Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails is
Captain Bligh and I'm Fletcher Christian. I leave, but I don't have Trent
to guide me. It can also relate to Brian and me. The bottom line is, why
can't these things work out?
DrDrew.com: You also split with your girlfriend during this same time.
RP: "Miss Blue" is kind of this conversation I had where I said, "I don't
want to live my life without you, and I can honestly see myself dying
because of this relationship." And she's like, "No, I want you to live, I
think I'm the first one who will die." And I realized as I wrote the song
that it turned almost into this old couple fighting over who was gonna
pull the plug first. It gets very Jack Kevorkian. It's a sad song about
the end of a love and the end of a life as you know it. I lost it when I
sang the last lines of the song, and you can hear that on the record.
DrDrew.com: Is "It's Gonna Kill Me" also about this relationship?
RP: Yeah. It's about the girl. "She's my favorite piece of plastic."
That's the telephone held next to my ear. "This girl's got a grip/Where's
mine?" She had me in control. "I spent the last night walking home/I spent
the last night dreaming/I spent the last night screaming." I went from
having this amazing time and walking home to screaming on the telephone.
The typical date gone bad!"
©1999 drDrew.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
--
"I plan to be the Ricky Martin, the aging Ricky Martin, of the
next millenium." Peter Buck when asked about his plans for the
coming century.
Write me at TheS...@aol.com.