Butch Walker On Recording Green Day Album
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.
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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
00:22 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
00:32 bit. And also he was bringing in songs and song ideas and recordings that were a little
00:42 left of center for them and didn't sound like typical Green Day. And I love that. I'm a
00:48 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
00:59 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
01:13 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
01:26 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
01:39 a record with a band. But I think it was just he wanted to see what was in my mind and what
01:43 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,
02:47 yeah, but some of the stuff Billy would send over to you, those tracks, did you have to
02:48 kind of do anything differently or work to kind of make stuff fit with those tracks that
02:49 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.
03:01 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
03:11 and then what am I going to do to that?" And it's already inherently going to sound like
03:16 Green Day because it's being done by them. But I said, "I think the key is, let's recut
03:24 some of the drums, let's recut some of the bass, let's use some of my gear, let's use
03:27 some of my instruments, my techniques and marry them with yours and we'll get something
03:35 a little different." And that's what we did. And we definitely got something that's different
03:40 from anything they've 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, it's 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? 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 power
04:32 pop favorite things, like whoever, like ELO, Sweet, you name it. I mean, lots of cool British
04:45 rock and we would emulate a lot of that going in just to be like, okay, let's get this drum
04:52 sound that's on this T-Rex record that we both love. And let's get this bass sound that
04:58 we really love on this Clash tune that we love or whatever. And the guitars, that was
05:04 the one thing on guitars too, I think Billy was excited about it, is I would come in and
05:09 we would pepper some interesting counter guitar parts on there that he wouldn't normally do.
05:15 Usually me doing it, and he wouldn't want to redo it, he would just be like, that sounds
05:22 great, let's keep it. So there was no rules about who had to play what or anything like
05:25 that. So that was fun.
05:28 Did you introduce a lot of new instrumentation and stuff?
05:34 Yeah, they were wanting to explore some of that, so it was like, sometimes we would channel,
05:39 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 he normally does? His Fernandez Strat or his Led 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, and his 58 Junior of course. And it was just like, that
06:45 right there was like the quadruplex of awesome. It was great, we would plug those in and be
06:51 done. But he also would use my Explorer, and he'd be like, "I gotta get one of these."
06:56 Next day he ends up with the most amazing Explorer I've ever seen. I'm like, "That's
06:59 that fuck you money." Mine was just like a '09, but it was awesome and we would use
07:08 it. And sometimes we would use a Rickenbacker, he had a reissue Rickenbacker 360, great.
07:15 No rules. We used his divided by 13 37 amp head, we used his Park, an old Park, heavily
07:27 modded high gain Park amp head, and then we used my 65 Princeton. So we used my 65 Princeton
07:38 on a lot of stuff for the cleaner, chimier shit, and then we also used my Goodsell, which
07:43 is like an AC30 type amp. Goodsell Black Dog. Pretty cool.
07:49 Awesome.