Butch Walker On Recording Green Day Album | Music Radar
Butch Walker is a very rare animal in the musical world; a multi-instrumentalist with his own expansive discography of solo albums and a production plus co-writing resume that includes some of the biggest pop stars in the world and a host of rock names. He's unique, and he knows a lot of about getting results with musicians – especially when tracking guitars.
Transcript
00:00 Yeah, it actually was pretty easy because my manager manages them and he just started
00:12 managing them on this album cycle. So it was, but not easy to get the gig obviously, like
00:18 Billy Joe's very particular and he's produced his own records for the last 10 years and
00:21 he's really good at getting that sound and knows what he wants. But I think he was looking
00:27 to venture out finally of his comfort zone and have somebody tell him what to do a little
00:31 bit. And also he was bringing in songs and song ideas and recordings that were a little
00:41 left of center for them and didn't sound like typical Green Day. And I love that. I'm a
00:47 huge Green Day fan and always will be. But I also love any band that's been around for
00:52 20-30 years who wants to keep pushing the envelope and doing something different. So
00:58 that was the thing. When we got on the phone to talk, Billy and I, we were talking about
01:02 records and our childhood record collections were identical. Same records. He liked metal,
01:09 he liked power pop, he liked punk, he liked everything. And those were my records growing
01:12 up. That was my three genres that I dove head first into. And pop. So I liked it all. And
01:21 so did he. So we were able to bond on a lot of levels. It just was organic. He sent me
01:25 a couple ideas. He said, "Why don't you mess around with these at your studio?" So I would
01:32 do stuff, play stuff on them. Not typical behavior for what you would do for starting
01:38 a record with a band. But I think it was just he wanted to see what was in my mind and what
01:42 was in his mind. And so I would send him stuff back and he'd get excited and be like, "That's
01:49 great. Let's do more now. Let's move this here. Let's move that there. Let's add this
01:54 here and add that there." And it just all led to pretty much after like two or three
02:00 or four songs, I was like, "Are we making a record?" I called my manager, I was like,
02:05 "Am I making the new Green Day record?" And he goes, "I think you're just making the new
02:08 Green Day record now." So we just kept going and then got Trey in and Mike in and then
02:14 everybody just became a collaborative effort. All the way from using tracks that Billy had
02:21 recorded on his own with his engineer, Chris Dugan, who's a genius and I love. He's an
02:26 amazing producer, engineer, mixer in his own right. So a lot of the record is a combination
02:31 of everybody doing everything.
02:33 Okay, cool. So you were saying, when we mentioned this earlier on, you were kind of like, "Oh,
02:45 yeah, but some of the stuff Billy was sending over to you, those tracks, did you have to
02:46 kind of do anything differently or work to kind of make stuff fit with those tracks that
02:51 he had recorded himself or was it just a big kind of mountain climb?"
02:55 Well, what it was, was I was like, "Okay, you want me to do a thing that you don't do.
03:00 So if you want me to do a thing that you don't do, then we don't necessarily want you to
03:06 I don't want you to just send me already recorded bass drums and guitar and vocals and then
03:12 what am I going to do to that?" And it's already inherently going to sound like Green Day because
03:16 it's being done by them. But I said, "I think the key is, let's recut some of the drums,
03:25 let's recut some of the bass, let's use some of my gear, let's use some of my instruments,
03:30 my techniques and marry them with yours and we'll get something a little different." And
03:36 that's what we did. And we definitely got something that's different from anything they
03:40 put out so far.
03:41 Yeah, that was going to be my next question. I've not heard the album yet, but from what
03:42 I've heard and what I've been told is like, yeah, expect it not to sound like what you
03:43 expect it to sound like.
03:44 Yeah, no, no, early Green Day fans hate my guts. They're like, "Fuck you, you ruined
03:57 my band." I'm like, "Well, not really." I was like, "Billy actually came in with the
04:01 vision, don't shoot the messenger." But at the same time, yeah, I helped them do what
04:07 they wanted, which was venture out of their comfort zone and do stuff that explored their
04:11 other roots.
04:12 How did that manifest itself? In which kind of way did you go?
04:18 We just wanted to go, we were like, let's take their punk rock influences, like The
04:25 Clash, obviously. It's always The Clash at the bottom line. And then some of their
04:32 power pop favorite things like, whoever, like ELO, Sweet, you name it. I mean, like lots
04:43 of cool British rock. And we would emulate a lot of that going in just to be like, "Okay,
04:50 let's get this drum sound that's on this T-Rex record that we both love. And let's
04:56 get this bass sound that we really love on this Clash tune that we love." And the guitars,
05:03 let's go. And that was the one thing on guitars too, I think Billy was excited about it, is
05:07 I would come in and we would pepper some interesting counter guitar parts on there that he wouldn't
05:13 normally do, usually me doing it. And he wouldn't want to redo it, he would just be like, "That
05:21 sounds great, let's keep it." So there was no rules about who had to play what or anything
05:25 like that. So that was fun.
05:28 That's cool. Did you introduce a lot of new instrumentation and stuff? Was there anything
05:33 like that?
05:34 Yeah, they were wanting to explore some of that. So it was like, sometimes we would channel,
05:38 we would do some Pet Sounds things and marimbas and glockenspiels and whatever, like timpanis
05:45 and things like that, that were on records like Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's and things
05:51 like that. And that was fun to implement into some of the songs as well as just the big
05:59 guitar rock record as well. Like all the guitar sounds being like that big Green Day thing
06:04 that they do.
06:05 Did Billy use different guitars than, I mean, he's normally on his Fernandez Strat or his
06:14 Les Paul?
06:16 He brought in about four guitars that were worth more than my house. And the rest of
06:23 them were all my guitars, which were beaters. But yeah, he had a 50s Nocaster, he had a
06:30 59 Burst, he had a 60 Goldtop, right? And he had like, yeah, and his 58 Junior, of course.
06:43 And it was just like, that right there was like the quadruplex of awesome. And it was
06:49 just, yeah, it was great. Like we would plug those in and be done. But he also would use
06:52 like my Explorer. And he'd be like, "I gotta get one of these." Next day, he ends up like
06:57 with the most amazing Explorer I've ever seen. I'm like, "That's that fuck you money." You
07:01 know, it's like mine was just like a '09, you know, but it was awesome and we would
07:07 use it. And sometimes we would use a, oh, he used a Rickenbacker, he had like a reissue
07:12 Rickenbacker 360. Great. Like no rules. Used his, let's see, we used his divided by 1337
07:21 amp head, we used his Park, an old Park, heavily modded, high gain Park amp head. And then
07:32 we used my 65 Princeton. So we used my 65 Princeton on a lot of stuff for the cleaner,
07:39 chimier shit. And then we also used my Goodsell, which is like a AC30 type amp. Goodsell Black
07:47 on the prequel.