...In my own Summer the shade is a Tool... - Interview with Chino
Chillin' with Chino: Deftones Get Moody
By Dennis Walkling Circus- June '98
To hear the soft-spoken, laid back voice of Chino Moreno as he speaks via telephone from his
Sacramento home, it's hard to imagine it's the same voice that, as lead singer of hard-edged punk
rockers Deftones, screams with a vengeance usually reserved for courtroom dramas or battlefield
commanders. It's even more unusual to note that behind the recording of that banshee wail lies a
demeanor harkens back to hippie '60s.
"I would just hit the old bottle of wine," says Moreno, describing a scene from the recording of "MX,"
a song from the band's second album _Around the Fur_. "[I had] a music stand with some of my
lyrics on it, some candles burning, and instead of using a hand-held microphone like I usually use, I
was using a really nice microphone. I just stodd there and let loose. It was something I'd never done.
I think that's how singers usually record, but on the first record I recorded everything live with the
band in the room, with a little Shure 58 microphone."
"I thought it was pretty cool," he continues of the experience. "I'd never done it that way and it was a
lot different. It was fun. It felt a little bit more personal for some reason, 'cause I was in there by
myself, with my headphones on, and most of the record was recorded in the dark, and a majority of
the record was recorded when I was drunk. So it felt pretty good."
"Who knows?" he adds as an afterthought, "maybe I'll combine the two with the next record."
For Moreno, it's all part of the natural progression he has had as a singer - he is now more willing and
more confident with himself to try new things with Deftones. The Sacramento group has been making
waves on the punk scene since the 1995 release of _Adrenaline_, a firestorm of a record that sold
200,000 copies (and counting) and yielded the shredding "7 Words." _Around the Fur_ continues the
ferocity, but on the aforementioned moodier level. The album debuted on the Billboard Top 200 at
#29, and that coupled with the band's nearly constant touring (another leg of the tour began April 1,
and they'll be playing the Warped Tour this summer) should see them get the radio attention they
deserve. But whatever happens, the new album has the band - which also includes guitarist Stephen
Carpenter, drummer Abe Cunningham and bassist Chi Cheng - offering 10 songs of
metal-meets-punk-meets-industrial-meets-rap-meets-funk-meets-rock. These are terms Moreno is
mostly inclined to agree with, and which reflect the diversity of Deftones' musical inspirations.
"The only thing that I wouldn't agree with is rap," clarifies Moreno. "I think it's just rhythmic singing.
When I think of rap I think 'Yo' and stuff like that, with that attitude. And I don't really think that I
have that attitude. If anything, once in a while it's rhythmic, and people say rap. It's something I
wouldn't agree with."
"All the music I grew up listening to I kind of put into [my music]," he continues. "That's with all of us.
Everybody listens to so many different types of music. Obviously Stephen came from a metal
background, and Chi as well. But lately, like in the last five years, he's been completely into reggae
music and soul music. So he's been kind of adding that low end, fat bass type of thing underneath.
Abe completely grew up on music. His dad played drums. He was into the Police, and he was just
drumming, period. He's one of the most diverse people I've ever met. And me, New Wave influenced
my music."
All that came into play on _Around the Fur_, which escalated saleswise thanks to its hard-hitting
debut single, "My Own Summer (Shove It)" and its followup "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)".
Moreno and the band build on their influences, but deliver a melodic, heavy sound and twisting,
gut-wrenching gristle of a vibe. For Moreno, it's more a result of being more comfortable with who he
is as a vocalist.
"In the beginning I first started to just go along with the music and try to make my vocals fit the
music," he recalls. "And the, especially with this new record, I just kinda realized that a lot of my
favorite music was more vocal music, moody music. So I added a lot more to that end of the music.
And it kinda just came out to what it is. You can't really explan it. That's really what I've been into is
more moody slow music."
The new Deftones grind can be heard on tracks like "Dai the Flu" where Moreno's ache is painful and
sludgy, but cuts to the core of the emotion in a hard-hitting fashion. It's a bit unusual to think it comes
from a band that has very little in common sonically with Deftones: The Cure. But Moreno cites
Robert Smith as one of his biggest heroes. Go figure.
"It's mainly just the moodiness of him," says Moreno. "I think our music is lyrically and vocally moody
music. And if you listen to The Cure, I think totally that's what they are. It's really moody msuic,
whether it's a good mood or a bad mood or completely just whacked out. It's not so much that he
taught me how to sing, but he made me want to sing, inspired me to want to try to sing. All my
favorite Cure songs are all the really depressing songs, the sad songs, more like the really long songs.
I think I kind of took that and used that in some subliminal type of way."
This foundation, of course, betrays Moreno's day-to-day approach. "The next record I could be
listening to Slayer all day and our next record could be heavy as hell. Who knows? I can never say
what it's gonna be like. I think that we basically survive on instinct. No matter what, I think we have a
certain sound. We really have no boundaries, because we're so interested in music, period, that I can
go anywhere."
That includes enlisting the help of non-members of the group. On "MX," Moreno went with the spur
of the moment for the vocals and asked for help.
"I didn't really like ["MX"] that much, and I had complete different vocals than I had written in the
practice place when we were writing it," he says. "When I was recording the vocals in the control
room, and I started to [say to myself] 'this is boring. Throw this song away or stop rolling the tape.'
And I just wrote a whole new song over the actual music. New melodies, new whole idea. It was just
something that I was feeling at the moment.
And then Abe's wife [Annalynn] was there in the studio and I was thinking there are these parts that
I'd really like a girl's voice on, so I asked her if she'd do it. She was like 'I don't wanna do this' and I
talked her into it. After it was all done I had a completely different song. Right then it became one of
my favorite songs, 'cause it was something I completely changed around myself. It could have been
just a normal, kind of boring song, but it ended up being on of my favorite songs, in about an hour,
with me just realizing that I can completely do whatever I want that completely changes it. So that
was cool."
The Deftones had rather humble origins, founded (and funded) as the result of a highway mishap. The
story is that Carpenter bought band equipment with money he got from the settlement of an auto
accident suit. For the most part, Deftones' rise to prominence was all a very casual affair, as the group
never really believed they'd be famous. Also, Moreno knew both Cunningham and Carpenter since
he was around 11 years old (the former was a local skateboarding buddy) and they hung around
together for years before the Deftones was even an idea in their heads.
The band actually formed in 1989, but didn't even release a piece of recorded music until 1995, when
_Adrenaline_ came out on Madonna's record label, Maverick. Moreno relates:
"We got signed about a year before our record came out," he remembers. "The first couple years
nothing was really serious. We would kinda jam, but we never... we'd just try to go in there and try to
make up songs. None of us had ever done it before. We were trying to just make up songs. And then
we'd throw them away and try to make better ones. We taught ourselves how to do everything.
Once that happened," he continues, "we made ten or twelve songs and went out and played shows.
We didn't play our first show until after we were together for like a couple years, and until we actually
felt comfortable about playing shows. Then once we did start playing shows, we played shows all the
time. We'd play a show and it'd be like 'That was cool. Let's go back and make some more songs
and just try to better ourselves.' We'e always just trying to make songs that we will always feel
comfortable playing."
"We were never a band that wanted to get out there and try to get signed," states Moreno in true
punk spirit. "We never tried to do anything. We started getting indie labels kinda like saying 'You guys
wanna make a 7-inch?' or make a record here, whatever.
Finally, out of the blue," he added, "we were playing a show in L.A. and somebody was there who
knew somebody from Maverick, and they asked if they wanted to sign us. We felt comfortable
enough with what we were doing to actually do it. It just so happened to be a long time since when
we started. And then we got signed, and it took us a long time to actually get in to do our record. We
did our record, and by the time it came out it was like a year after we'd gotten signed, picking a
producer and actually recording the record amd waiting for it to come out and everything else. And
then once that happened we went on tour.
So although it seems like a long time, that whole almost ten years-and we only have two records-but
the majority of the time was just us basically learning how to be a band. Started basically from
scratch. Nobody knew anything. We were just 16 year old kids who just wanted to play music,
y'know?"
