James Murphy’s guitar solos have been gracing albums the world over for over three decades and looking at him you’d never guess he is one of the planet’s most brilliant solo guitarists.
At first glance, he looks like your every day, humble, down-to-earth guy. But underneath this humble exterior is a soul who is plugged into the very heart of the music universe.
Thanks for giving us the time for this interview. James, no other way to say it, you are a guitar virtuoso extraordinaire! You’ve done such extensive, very notable work in your career. I feel you can put a solo to anything! You come in with a quiet intensity and put down your solos just-so, in all the right places. You cover all areas of the musical spectrum, laying down intricate, superb solos to the harshest, most brutal grindcore on up to the most progressive, technical kind and everything in between. You bring beauty and brilliance to even the most brutal unforgiving of music! Tell us what’s going on these days?
James: Right now, I’m setting up a rehearsal space for this Death…I don’t want to call it a tribute, or call it sort of a, what do you call it when band members come together after a prolonged period of time and play all the songs off one particular album they played on together? I don’t know what you call that….
A reunion? Which band are we talking about?
Death. The shows have been on sale for a while, it’s two dates (note: these shows took place 11-12.12.2021) The first date is sold-out, the second one probably has about two hundred tickets left. Playing the full “Spiritual Healing” -album and a song or two, each off “Scream Bloody Gore” and “Leprosy” will be me, Terry Butler on bass; fulfilling the part of Chuck Schuldiner will be Matt Harvey from Exhumed and Gruesome. The drummer will be Gus Rios from Gruesome and formerly from Malevolent Creation.
This is crazy! I bet there’s going to be so many people going to that, when did you guys decide to do this?
We’re putting together a supergroup of guys that played on albums after “Spiritual Healing” and they’re playing a selection of songs from all of those albums. It came up about a month and a half or so ago. People are flying in from all over the world. I know a guy flying from Scotland, and one guy flying from Germany. They’re coming from all over. It’s going to be pretty cool.
I’m convinced something otherworldly is behind you being one of the most talented solo guitarists of our time. What went into the creation of what we know as James Murphy?
If there’s any sort of mystical thing I don’t think its mystical, I think its biology. Its mystical in that it’s a mystery of the human mind. I actually believe that people should take better advantage of the neuroplasticity of children and exposing them to things. I don’t think you should waste a lot of time playing kiddie music for your kids. I think you should play complex, harmonically rich, rhythmically involved music to children. Lots of cool jazz. That’s what they should be listening to and I believe it should be done while they’re in the womb even!
I was exposed to probably a lot of music while I was in the womb and hearing it blasted in the house on the stereo. I did something that a lot of kids did but maybe they didn’t do it in the same way I did it. I think a lot of musicians I know did this. I think I conditioned myself to know what music should sound like by when I was very, very young when my brain was still creating new neural pathways left and right.
I would sit in the dark with headphones on for hours at a time and just listen to my music, flipping my records, just listening to them. I listened actively. I wasn’t passively listening. I wasn’t throwing on music and reading comic books. I wasn’t throwing on the music and playing with my action figures. I wasn’t playing music and hanging out with my friends, fighting, and blowing stuff up. I did all of that when it wasn’t my music listening time.
My music listening time was sitting in the dark for hours at a time, headphones on, and I was analyzing. Total immersion into the music where you just block out your other senses. You’re in the dark, you’re not seeing anything, you got your headphones on , the only thing you can hear is the music.
By the time I ever got a guitar, I knew so many solos in my head. Of course, I didn’t know how to put that on guitar. I knew what they were supposed to sound like. I knew exactly what bends were supposed to start on a note that sounded good in the scale against the harmony underneath, and they were meant to be bent to a note that also sounded good to it. And that any vibrato’s that happened there should be in key. I didn’t know those terms to put to it, it was more instinctual. I just knew innately what vibrato was supposed to sound like, so it didn’t take me long at all to develop a good vibrato because I knew what it was supposed to sound like.
All the immersion into music will set you up.
When I see you at age 20 playing like a guy that’s been playing for twenty years it makes me wonder what the heck you were doing to get yourself to that point by then? What inspired you to get into playing the guitar?
My very initial inspiration to want to play guitar was probably my dad’s music early on, very early on. Just whatever he listened to at the time. He played a little bit of guitar and he could play a couple of songs that he himself listened to on records. So, I thought it was cool. I was like oh my dad can play the song that he’s listening to. It was just acoustic guitar strumming you know. He listened to stuff like Dooby Brothers, Steve Miller Band and Alan Parson’s Project, stuff like that.
I kind of just grew up on that. But I reached a certain age, it was probably about eight or nine, where I decided that I wanted to play guitar. At that point, I think I was probably listening to stuff like Aerosmith and Queen, probably the heaviest. The first two albums I ever purchased was Aerosmith’s “Toys In The Attic” and I think Queen’s “News Of The World” along with other stuff that had nothing to do with rock like Parliament (“Funkadelic”, “One Nation Under A Groove”).
Other than that, just my dad playing and being into those bands, what finally kicked me to want to play guitar was Kiss like so many kids of my generation. I started seeing things about Kiss, started getting inculcated into their whole commercial culture of Kiss that existed in the mid-to-late-seventies. “Destroyer” and “Love Gun” and all those albums sort of sucked me in as a kid. Then of course there was “Kiss Alive II”. I loved it so much that I started really doubling down on asking for a guitar.
Then I started getting stuff like Cheap Trick and a lot of their albums. I started really gravitating toward guitar things like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Rush, and then Judas Priest of course as well. Believe it or not, I asked for a guitar every year for my birthday and for Christmas from the age of eight to like sixteen or so.
What really grabbed me by the tail and drug me was Ace Frehley, then Angus Young, then Tony Iommi and Alex Lifeson and then Randy Rhoads and then it was on.
When did you get your first guitar?
At sixteen, I was living in Germany because my father was in the army. I was there for a total of six years. At the age of sixteen, I decided to take advantage of the Department of Defense Dependent Youth Employment Program. That meant that during the summer, you could go apply for this program and the US Army would assign you a job somewhere on one of their bases. I worked two summers in a row as a helper to the handy man at the officers club on the Giessen military base in Giessen, Germany. I saved all those pennies and in between times I went and mowed lawns and did everything that kids usually do to save money until I had enough money to buy my first electric guitar for myself.
I went down to a little music store in Eason, and bought a Flying V, not just a little influenced by players like K.K. Downing, you know guys like him, like Michael Schenker. I also bought a couple of pedals and someone had given me a piece of crap – practice amp and I started practicing.
Let’s talk about Agent Steel, how did you get that gig? You were 20 and already amazingly skilled at solo playing. You hadn’t made a name for yourself publicly yet had you?
There used to be this music store called Thoroughbred Music. This was a place where I went and always ran into the local musicians and it was sort of like a hub of connection for the whole scene. That’s where I first met guys like Ralph Santolla back then. He was teaching guitar lessons at Thoroughbred. Santolla was eventually in Death, Deicide and Obituary in later years. I went there once in 1987 and I go back to the bulletin board because that was our internet back then, that’s how we found gigs. You put one up on the bulletin board or you go look at it. By this point I already had “Scream Bloody Gore”, I had a Nuclear Assault -album and I had a few other things from Combat Records. I was a fan, so I was familiar with them.
So I’m reading this flyer on the bulletin board in 1987. Even though I’m coming off a string of failed auditions, it did absolutely nothing to curb my determination. I’m sitting here looking at this bulletin board and I come across this flyer that says, “Combat Records band recently relocated from California looking for a guitarist and bassist for our upcoming European tour in support of our upcoming third album”.
So, I’m thinking this is a band from Combat Records, they don’t want to say who, they’re playing coy about that. But they’re letting it be known they’re on Combat Records and they have an album already in the can that’s about to drop and they have a tour of Europe in the UK booked or being booked at the moment that they need musicians for. I’ll bite! I’ll fail another audition, no big deal, I’ll learn something from it, no biggie.
To be honest, I probably wasn’t thinking like that at all. In fact, I know I wasn’t because instead of tearing off the one little tag, I think I took the whole flyer down and threw it in the trash. I didn’t want anyone else calling!
So, I called, and I reached the guy who had already been picked as the bass player. That’s whose number was on the flyer. He told me the band was rehearsing at his house, that he had a rehearsal room, a dedicated standalone rehearsal building behind his house and that’s where they’re rehearsing and if you come out here on this and this day, and play for us, that’ll work. I said ok that works for me. I had quite a little trek in my 1971 Plymouth Fury 3 that I had at that time. I got out there and I played. It turned out to be the band Agent Steel and they were about to drop their album “Unstoppable Force”.
So, I played some stuff for them and they said here’s an advanced copy of our album, go home and learn these four songs. Come back in a few days or next week and play again. Something like that happened. I went and learned those songs and came back and auditioned. They said awesome you got the gig. An audition finally paid off! I got the gig!
That opened the door directly to me getting in Death. The reason being that literally just the next year after that tour I didn’t stay with that band, I had no desire to stay with them. Lots of stuff happened on that tour that led me to say hey guys it’s been real, this is not the band for me, I probably just phrased it along the lines: I’m looking for heavier stuff, you guys are a little more power metal proggy than speed metal even. I want heavier stuff.
Can you tell us about your brief stint in Hallows Eve? Were you even in the band long enough to do anything?
I went back to teaching guitar and eventually I decided, you know what, I want to go to school for this. I found a little school in California, Guitar Institute, GIT, that was a bit beyond my means. I didn’t have the family support. but there was a sister school to it up in Atlanta, which was only eight hours from where I was living in Florida, called Atlanta Institute of Music, AIM.
I decided to pull up stake and move to Atlanta and try to go to this school. In my search for people to live with there I came across David Stewart who had been the guitar player in Hallows Eve on Metal Blade Records. They had two or three records out on Metal Blade. They had sort of disintegrated. We decided to become roommates. Then we started trying together to revive Hallows Eve. We got Tommy Stewart on board. We were working on that and I was trying to figure out how I could attend AIM. It just sort of seemed like it was beyond my means and I needed to live in the meantime, so I went and got a job landscaping. I was working a landscaping job and jamming with these guys that were maybe going to be the new Hallows Eve lineup we weren’t sure.
So, how did you get into Death? You appeared on their album “Spiritual Healing” in 1990.
I was a big fan of Death. They played, I don’t know the date off the top of my head, but it was 1988 at the Sunset Club in Tampa. They were supporting “Leprosy” that night. The club no longer exists, the whole building is gone, but back then bands played there all the time. I’d gone to a number of shows there. I’d seen Morbid Angel there; I’d seen everybody there.
So, I’m walking into the Sunset Club from my car, and I happened to be wearing an Agent Steel t-shirt I had gotten from the tour that I did. As I’m walking to the door, I see some people in the periphery of my vision in a small group talking, three four people. I wasn’t paying much attention, I’m looking at the door trying to get in to get a good position. As I’m about to reach the door, I hear a voice go “cool shirt dude”, almost like a California surfer type voice. And I recognized him as Chuck Schuldiner. I recognized him because I had seen Death live and from having the album. I was like “hey Chuck”. “Hey yea man cool shirt dude, Agent Steel rules”.
Despite being from Florida, he talked like a surfer guy. He did “Scream Bloody Gore” out in California so he was based out there for a while. He wanted to know how I got that shirt. I earned it; I was the guitar player in the band for the tour. He said “oh yea dude I heard of you. You’re the dude from here that got the gig with Agent Steel. Yea I heard you were good man, I heard you were good.” I said “oh cool”. We started talking .and Terry was in the conversation and Bill was also in the conversation at this point and we realized we all had a mutual love for early eighties French heavy metal bands like Sortilege and H-bomb. So, we bonded over that sort of stuff. As I had planned to do, I asked them if I could do this little interview thing, they were all up for it. We went across the street to a vacant lot, and I asked the questions and I said let me snap a couple of pics, I had probably a Kodak disc camera. I had to stand against this building at the end of the vacant lot and snapped some really horrible pictures because I had absolutely no sense of photography back then.
I said “if anything comes up where you guys need a guitar player…” I just said “you guys are pretty well connected, you guys know more people than I do, you know me by reputation. I know you haven’t heard me play but dude if you kick me any leads on bands, I’d super appreciate it”. At that point my goals were to make a record and to go out on tour and support it. I had already gone on tour in support of a record I didn’t play on. I didn’t want to do that anymore, I wanted to go out and tour on a record I had played on.
I gave them my phone number. I said “you guys obviously got your full lineup but who knows what the future will bring. If you ever need anybody for anything even if it’s to fill in give me a shout”. I went on about my business. And that was in 1988.
So, I’m at home. Oddly enough I was organizing my cassettes among which were “Leprosy” and “Scream Bloody Gore” when Dave came to my bedroom door, knocked on it, stuck his head in and said, “hey man you got a call”. I figured it was my mom or somebody, so I said, “ok man I’ll be there in a second”. He said, “dude I think its Evil Chuck”. That’s what everyone called Chuck back then.
Why?
Oh, I don’t know, just cause of Death Metal. Not because of anything actual evil, nothing like that. Just because death metal had that image thing. He said, “dude I think its evil Chuck”. Chuck was not very evil but he certainly had his temper and his moments, but he was a family guy, into his family, into his pets, his dog and his kitty kat, he was not an evil dude. That was his nickname just because of his voice. People thought it sounded like evil dead or something.
I was like “no way”. I got up and went answered the phone and it was Chuck. And he said, “hey man we fired Rick”. I was like “whoa ok”. He goes “we’d like to audition you”. He said, “I got your number from your mom” and I said “oh great, hey man I’m really flattered but I’m living up here now and I’m jamming’ with these guys and I’d feel really like a jerk to leave them at this stage”.
We just started looking for a drummer, in early talks with Metal Blade to produce some new demos do this Hallows Eve -thing up here. He said “oh ok well I understand. No problem man, good luck with that and have a good one”.
Which I find a little weird because you were so into Death and here’s the guy from Death actually asking you to join the band?
It was but I was loyal. I had this weird sense of loyalty to these guys. Loyalty should always be a good trait. It should be considered a good trait in general. So, I’m hanging out with these guys later and we had a party scheduled. Some guys came over and we were going to have some drinks and it was me, the other guys who were in this sort of Hallows Eve -lineup that we were trying to build and our friends in the band Nihilist, the American Nihilist though and the brothers there named Brent and Richard Turner. They were hanging out and so all these guys were there and Dave Stewart asked “so what happened on the phone with Chuck?”. I told them he asked me to come audition for Death and I told him I had this thing going on. Every single dude at that party, including the guys I was jamming with were like “are you nuts?!” “Are you flipping nuts?!” “Dude, they’re going to be big, dude what are you doing?” I was like “oh wow”. I thought they’d appreciate my loyalty, they thought I was stupid. And I’m like “you’re right!
So, I tried to call Chuck back, no answer, he was gone. Got home from work and immediately ran in to call Chuck. I caught him. I was like “dude I don’t know what the hell I was thinking I definitely want the audition”. He says “dude we didn’t have any time to waste so we moved down to the next guy on the list. He was down, he came out to audition last night and we told him he had the gig. He’s in man. His name is Mark”.
I was like “oh man”. I was like “I understand”. I blew it. Then I said “you know what, because I couldn’t reach you on the phone I had to go ahead and start making my plans. So I’ve already contacted my work, I’ve already taken the Friday off and I plan on Thursday night to start driving. I’m going to be there Friday Saturday and Sunday and I’m not going to start driving back until Sunday afternoon. I’m going to be there in Florida. I’d like to at least meet up with you guys and hang out. I’m already coming, my family is already expecting me, I’ve already told my work, I’ve already partially packed my car”. He was like “ok I guess you can come hang out if you want, we definitely got our guy but if you just want to come hang out we’ll be at Terry’s house”.
So, I drove out, arrived on a Friday, spent time with my family, went out to Terry’s house and hung out with the guys. We listened to records out of Terry’s record collection, again reminiscing about old albums, early 1980’s European heavy metal albums that we all loved. We spun them because Terry had them of course, and we played them and then I was prepared. I had a guitar in my car, I had a little practice amp, and I had a boom box. I said “hey man I want to play something for you guys”. And I brought the stuff in and I said “look I’m going to play some of your songs for you. I just want you to know I can do it in case anything ever happens with this guy. I don’t want to waste the time I have here because I’m staying up in Atlanta now. I would have moved back for you guys, but you never know what can happen”.
They were like “oh ok”. I kind of had them on the spot. So, I played through a selection of songs off “Scream Bloody Gore” and “Leprosy”. Where there was a Rick Rozz Delillo on “Leprosy”-song I just played my own thing. I already knew from talking with them they really did not like Rick’s whammy bar style. Rick is like a whammy bar master. That’s what he does, He’s the whammy bar king. I appreciate it, I like it. I like his solos on “Leprosy”. They’re cool, they’re classic. It would be weird to hear those songs and hear any other solos but Ricks. But they didn’t want that for the next Death-album so what I did was I played my own thing over the top of Ricks solo. It worked because Ricks solos weren’t so busy or dizzy, they were whammy bar stuff. It was almost like extra background stuff to what I was playing. It didn’t hurt. It allowed me to be able to play and improvise solos over these parts so they could see what I could do solo wise.
I knew they didn’t like whammy bars, so I just didn’t even put the whammy bar into my guitar. I left it in the case. I just improvised and played solos with no whammy bar whatsoever and I played I don’t know, four, five, six songs. They were like “yea dude you can definitely play the stuff man and your solos are way cool, they’re definitely cool as shit bro”. The night came to its natural end and I bid my farewells and I headed my ass back up to Atlanta feeling like a putz for not jumping on it when he first called me.
Days later, Chuck calls me back. Dave comes to my door, “dude its evil Chuck again”. I go “what? oh weird”. “Hey man what’s happening”. He goes “dude we fired Mark, three days in a row the dude called out of rehearsal, we don’t deal with that. He’s done”. I said “do you want me to come down and audition?” He said “you don’t need to audition. You already did at Terry’s house. We know you can do it. You have the gig, it’s yours if you want it”. I was like “dude I’m going to repack my car right now. I’m going to quit my job in the morning, then I’m going to head out”. That’s what I did and that’s how I joined Death.
So that was what year? What did you do when you got down there?
That was 1989, one year after I saw him at that gig. I arrived and they were already writing the music for “Spiritual Healing”. They had four songs written and I immediately integrated right into the writing process. They had four songs to go and right off the bat Chuck was like “dude you got some riffs?” I was like “yea” and just started playing riffs. The secret to that in which everyone knows by now is that I didn’t really have any riffs. I just started making up riffs on the spot. Every single riff I presented, every single riff I pulled out of my ass, they accepted. To this day it’s in a Death song on the “Spiritual Healing” album. I co-wrote half the album with the guys because half of it was done when I got there.
The only other things we did before entering the studio was, we played a show in Orlando and I think we went and played Milwaukee Metal Fest III. We drove up and played that. Then we went into the studio. So, I joined the band in 1989 and the album was recorded and in the can before the end of the year. It came out in February of 1990. We started touring in February of 1990, right before the album came out all over the US and Canada.
Is it true that all of you guys stayed in one hotel room during the making of the “Spiritual Healing” -album?
Yea, I think so for the most part, but I think Terry went home and maybe Bill went with him, I don’t really remember. It wasn’t all four of us every night, I think it was just me and Chuck some of the night perhaps. Terry didn’t live too far away so best memory serves he might have gone home at night, I couldn’t tell you for sure though. It was no thrill lol.
How did you get in Obituary?
As I was leaving Death, I called Scott Burns and I told him “dude I’m quitting”. And he goes “dude really? I got Obituary in the studio right now and they need a lead guitar player”. And I was like “oh do you think they’d want to check me out?” And he said “let me talk to them, call me back”.
So, I called him back and told him I’d be around tomorrow. They didn’t need to audition me. They knew who I was, they had seen me play with Death, they had heard that Death album, they knew exactly who I was and what I could do. So, they didn’t really need to audition me, they just said “look, the gig’s yours if you want it. We’re right now at the stage where we’re ready for solos to be recorded”. So, they had already had their entire album written while I was still in Death and I had no idea about Obituary needing a guitar player. I never wrote any music for Obituary at all. Had I written any music for Obituary, it would have fit. It would have worked with Obituary and they probably would have used at least some of it.
They had not only written the album, they had already recorded it except some of bass, some of the vocals, and guitar solos. Drums and pretty much all the rhythm guitars were done when I walked into the studio. So, the songs were completely written. I had nothing to do with writing that music.
I co-wrote half of the “Spiritual Healing” -album and I played on the rhythm tracks and I played my solos. With Obituary, all I did was walk in and I played my solos. Here’s the solo section, starts here and ends here and I was like “cool let me write something, let me come up with something”. Scott Burns would roll tape and I would start making stuff up, right off the cuff, until I came up with something good and I’d go “yea cool let’s keep that”.
What about the “Cause Of Death” -album, it’s said you used riffs intended for that album on Disincarnate’s “Dreams Of The Carrion Kind” -album.
Absolutely not. That’s grossly incorrect and I can’t even imagine who told you that. Now where somebody probably got confused and you ended up hearing it the way you heard it, is that ultimately, I’m a writer! I got to scratch that itch in Death because I co-wrote half that album with the guys. But I didn’t get to scratch that itch with Obituary.
Here I am going out to tour an album again and at least I played the solos, at least I’m going to play my own solos but it’s music that I didn’t even help write. That itch started coming back and I need to scratch it. So, I didn’t have anything to write for, I didn’t have an Obituary album to write for. It was already recorded it was brand new. So, I started writing my own stuff, in my own style, with no regard to Obituary’s style at all. I started forming the idea, wow, I really like this stuff I’m writing, it’s pretty cool, so I should do a side project. If I’m going to stay in Obituary I’m going to need to do a side project so I can record this music.
One day Trevor (Perez) showed up and said “so you’ve been writing these riffs what have you got?” And I told him I hadn’t been writing anything for Obituary but I had been writing some stuff for a side project. He was like “oh cool let me hear them”. I had literally just got done telling him I did not write these for Obituary, I wrote them for a side project. I thought that was all he needed to know and understand was “hey these are not going to sound like Obituary”. I let him know these are for something else, these are not for Obituary.
But I went ahead and played him the riffs. And he listened and he goes “yea those don’t really fit with us”. And I’m like “yea I said that”. So, I think they got the idea that I couldn’t write music that fit Obituary because I was playing them Disincarnate-riffs. He didn’t ask me to write any Obituary style material you know. He just asked me if I had been working on any riffs, I said “just some stuff for a possible side project, something of my own”.
Why didn’t you stay in the band?
When I joined they said “look we’d love to have you, the gig is yours if you want it but there’s something you have to understand. Allen is our boy, he’s our friend, we grew up with him. He is only leaving because he’s worried about supporting his family. So if Allen were to ever decide to come back, we will probably take him back”.
That’s exactly what happened. Obituary went out and became very successful in the death metal world, and Allen decided to come back. I knew right from the beginning that it might be a thing where it wouldn’t be permanent. And that’s yet another reason why I started writing my own music in my own style.
How did Cancer, a band from the UK, find you to perform on their album? Did you tour with Cancer in support of that album? I find your work on the “Death Shall Rise” -album really strong, super solid.
A lot of people make the same mistake I think you are; I was never in Cancer. I’ve never joined that band. That was nothing more than an unnaturally prolonged guest position. It was literally supposed to be one guitar solo. I went into the studio, recorded the solo. Then the next thing I know, those guys are all having a pow-wow without me, then they hit me with, “dude, how would you feel about doing all the solos on the album?” I said “well if you’re asking me to play all the solos as a guest guitar player and you plan to get a guitar player later that can play them, cool but I cannot join your band”.
I made it clear from the beginning that I had no desire to join their band, to be a member. I was to be a guest member only. Honestly, my photo was not even supposed to appear on the album with the band. The reason why is because I was supposed to be listed as a guest musician and not as a primary musician. The reason it was done is because their record label was just greedy, and they figured they’d sell more copies, and they had this famous death metal guitarist from Death and Obituary presented as a main member of the band and not as a guest.
Talk to us about Disincarnate. Was this a solo project that you and others came up with or was this your solo project? After doing work for Obituary, Cancer, and Death, did you feel it was time to put together something of your own? Were you exploring your musical oats at that time?
Not a solo project, it was meant to be my band, helmed by me as the main writer, the main visionary, the captain of the ship. Real members. I created Disincarnate. It was my plan from the moment I left Obituary. I wasn’t going to join anyone else’s band; I was going to try to get a deal for my group. That way I can put out my own music and then I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I had Disincarnate signed with Roadrunner before I even found a member. I sent Roadrunner my demo tapes of my songs. I made pretty detailed demo tapes with programmed drums, layered guitars.
A couple of things happened to Disincarnate all at once. A convergence of three factors. One is the youth factor. I thought if I get young guys that don’t have wives at home, don’t have jobs they’re afraid to leave, they still live at home with their parents, they’re like 18-19 and don’t have a lot of obligations, they can go off and go on the road for months, no big deal. I wanted guys that had open minds to learn. Well, that came back to bite me. We had a bit of a rough time, and they wanted to bail. They wanted to go back to mommy. Maybe go back to college and get a career.
Another factor was grunge. Grunge was starting to explode. The labels that had traditionally put out metal for all those years just started clearing house. We were up on the chopping block at Roadrunner. They were only going to hold on to a couple of death metal bands. They held on to Deicide and Obituary for a while. They didn’t drop us, but they wanted to hear demos. We thought we were past the point of demos. Turns out we weren’t, they wanted to hear demos of the new material before they made their mind up.
A third factor was as I’m trying to negotiate the first two factors, trying to keep our deal with Roadrunner going, getting them a demo of new material to convince them we were deserving of another record, was that I got a call from Mike Dieter who I had known as a music journalist. He had interviewed me when I was in Death and Obituary. He said he was working for Atlantic Records in A&R and asked me how I would feel about playing for Testament. I told him I felt good about it right about this point because I love Testament, I was a huge thrash fan, one of my routes to death metal was thrash. That first Testament album “The Legacy”, I got that while I was on tour with Agent Steel in Europe in 1987 when I was 19. I was like “this album is sick! This band is sick!”
By the time I was talking to Death in that empty lot in Tampa, I was listening by then to Testament’s second record “The New Order”, and loving it. By the time I got the call and was brought in to Death, I was rocking’ their third album “Practice What You Preach”. So, I was a fan already. So, I went for it. Things were going a little rough with Disincarnate.
People want to see you doing Disincarnate again. Are you going to revive Disincarnate? “Sea Of Tears” is my favorite song on the Disincarnate album, it has such a haunting solo at the end. Also, “Immemorial Dream” is such a great way to end the album. Also, I can NOT get over the wickedly awesome artwork on the “Soul Erosion” -demo. The angel being impaled on that stick is to die for! Who thought of that?
I know right? Lol. It’s crazy. The artist, I know his name perfectly well but it’s escaping my memory. I want to say his name is Dale, he was an artist in the local area, and I think he actually played in a band too. I hope to revive Disincarnate and I’m hoping that’s another thing that gets kicked in the butt by these shows playing the Death album.
I don’t have any plans to retire soon, retirement sounds boring to me. I’m going to keep on going until I drop, and I don’t want those remaining years, however many they may be, to be stuck in a studio. As much as I enjoy that work, it’s what I’ve done for the last 20 years. Since my surgery in 2001, I’ve spent 20 years in the studio. There’s this other side of me I’ve neglected. Last time I ever played live before these Death shows was 16 years ago at the Roadrunner United Twentieth Anniversary Concert in New York City in 2005.
Let’s talk about your solo albums. “Tempus Omnia Revelat” on the “Convergence”-album is so beautiful, simply brilliant! Such feeling. I feel this album was a commercial effort. Was it supposed to be a commercial effort? The “Feeding The Machine” -album was less commercial sounding, more solid, more heavy, more James Murphy -style frankly. “Epoch” is amazing.
No, as the song goes its kind of short. It was more like sort of an outro; it was meant to create like a vibe. The song would certainly never be played on the radio. As far as the piece, “Tempus Omnia Revelat”, it’s an instrumental outro to an album that’s half instrumental you know? It was sort of my way of getting in there this Latin saying “Tempus Omnia Revelat” which means time reveals all.
There’s another side to you: producer, mixer, master, and engineer! Safehouse Production is your production company where you record, mix, master, and produce artists’ music. When did you start Safehouse Production and what made you get interested in the production business? There’s a Safehouse Production Bandcamp page that lists some of the work you’ve done that people can look at. https://safehouseproduction.bandcamp.com/music.
I started to get interested in the recording side of things from the moment I entered the studio with Death to record “Spiritual Healing” which was my first album that I ever played on. Right off the bat, as soon as I entered the studio, I just had an affinity for being there. The gear intrigued me, I wanted to learn how to use it, how it all operated, what signal flow was so I started studying. I would bug Scott Burns the producer and get some information from him. I don’t think I was too much of a pest to him. He didn’t show me a lot, but I did learn a few things from him from paying attention over the course of making a few albums with him.
Each time I entered the studio, I just learned what I could from whoever was producing. When I got in Testament, by then I was voraciously reading industry magazines of the recording industry like Mix Magazine and Sound on Sound. I would read books about digital recording and when I’d get in the studio with whoever the engineers, producers, or mixers were I’d bug them and start to learn about this stuff. As it approached the time I did Testament in 1993, I started finding out the entry level for getting into some pretty professional recording gear, and that that entry level price tag was about to go down because something was about to come out called Modular Digital Multitrack. You no longer had to have a big giant two-inch machine that you had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for if not more. Some could get up to a quarter mil, whereas you could get a modular digital multitrack for about two grand. You could chain those together, they were eight track seats, you could hook them together to be perfectly in sync, so you could have fifty-six tracks or more. You could just keep linking them together. So, for under ten grand, you could build a pretty incredible studio.
When I joined Testament, I was put on a salary, and I had more free time. Whenever we weren’t on tour or in the studio, I had free time so I’d go work as an assistant at a studio in the San Francisco area and learn what I could there. Then I signed a deal for my first solo album with Shrapnel, that was in 1995, and I took all that money, and I rented a loft that already had a studio built into it, not the gear, but the space.I took my budget money and I went and bought one of those 32-channel 8-bus consoles, and a stack of those modular digital multitracks, and I had a thirty two channel recording studio pretty quick. I just launched from there and have been doing it for a total of 25 years.
In 2001, you were diagnosed with a brain tumor which came back in 2011 but was non-cancerous, now you’re recovered. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I’m happy your health has returned, and all is going well. It must have taken tremendous, powerful inner strength to get through something like that. How long did it take to get back to work making music after your diagnosis? I’ve heard musicians talk about how their music was somehow different after an injury. Did the way you create music change after your diagnosis than before? What saw you through those dark times?
A little over a year. I never forgot how to play. When I was fully in the throes of this thing, I was out on tour with Testament playing every night. I could remember the songs, I just couldn’t remember when bus call was, I couldn’t remember where it was, I couldn’t remember the name of our hotel. In 2011, my tumor started growing again. It started showing signs of growing and expanding again. They put me on a pharmacological bombardment. They changed my medicine and had me take massive doses. I still take medication. I don’t have to take it every day, I take it twice a week. I stay on top of it with regular visits to the doctor to get MRI’s and to make sure nothing is growing. Every year I get another MRI.
There was a recovery period and during that recovery period I ended up getting a couple of guitars donated to me. I got hired by a Greek band called Memorain to play solos on almost every song. They had me do like six solos. They paid me very generously. I made enough money off of those to buy myself a new computer set and a couple of other things to help get myself up and running. That allowed me to do some more guest spots for other people at an even higher standard. I started getting back to work with a vengeance. I’ve worked hard and 15 years ago I started buying my house with a 15-year mortgage. I worked my butt off and last year I paid it off.
So, musically, just to bring everybody up to speed, besides these Death shows, what else is going on?
I’m playing on albums all the time. I did Sabbatonero. It was a guest spot, I played it. It’s out now. I always have something coming out I played on. I’m about to play a guest solo on the new Abigail Williams and the new Lord Mantis. They’re on Profound Lore Records. Sometimes I play on as many as a dozen albums a year.
Any favorite foods, hobbies, movies, books etc.? What do you like to do in your downtime from creating?
Multiple things. My fiancée’ cooks for instance, ribeye steak tacos and Thai Red Coconut Chicken curry. My favorite genre of movies over all are what most people would call “dystopian future” movies like Brazil, Dark City, A Clockwork Orange.
I love reading music biographies and one that I got a few years ago and that is in my cue real soon to finally read is K.K. Downing’s book. I had a long que at the point that I bought it and it’s rapidly approaching the top of the pile.
I don’t read as much fiction these days, but I’m revisiting some fiction that I read a long time ago. The Necroscope Series by Brian Lumley, the first main five books of the Necroscope series. The song “Dead Spawn” on “Dreams Of The Carrion Kind”: the lyrics to that song are pretty much the stories about the Necroscope-series. These days I have less time to sit and read so I tend to listen to audio books more often these days.
You need to have a book. You have stories!
People have asked me about it. I got a lot of stories for sure. I think ultimately, I will have a book. I’m not sure what the right time for it is. I wouldn’t want to write a book myself, I would want a co-writer, like K.K. had, like Stephen Pearcy had, all those guys had someone helping them with their book. I would want and even need that.
What do you think of a K.K. Downing/James Murphy -collaboration on stage? I think fans would LOVE to see you guys share the stage!
I’d lose my mind! I’d love to do it. I’m a huge fan and I support many of his endeavors. I covered a Judas Priest song with Testament. You can find it on Youtube. We did “Rapid Fire”. Look up Testament: “Rapid Fire”, and you’ll hear our version of the song. I do a crazy solo back and forth with myself. I was the only lead guitarist.
I’m so glad I got the opportunity to do this interview! Thank you so much James, I sincerely appreciate you giving us your time for this. Stay safe and well, and I hope we keep seeing more of you in the future!
Interview: Heather Williams
