Deftones endured a turbulent time making 2006’s Saturday Night Wrist, with frontman Chino Moreno clashing with veteran producer Bob Ezrin and his bandmates. But when Metal Hammer joined the band on the road in support of the album, we found a band which had rediscovered their sense of purpose and were ready to regale us with tales of onstage brawls and flying cinder blocks.
It looks like Metal Hammer might have gotten into a bit of bother with a stingray here! Earlier in the evening, the patrons of the posh Chez Sophie restaurant in Saratoga Springs NY, looked on nervously as preternaturally young looking Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham, Eddie their tarmac-hardened road warrior of a tour manager and yours truly went about inventing a cocktail in memory of heroic crocodile botherer, Steve Irwin who had sadly died that morning.
It took 13 attempts to get it right and at the last count contained four different types of rum, two fingers of tequila, brandy, vodka, and coffee – and by the last round every person in the joint was downing them in one and shouting out “Crikey mate! Straight through the old ticker!”
On the way back to the hotel, Abe starts telling us how the tour is going, but is cut short by walking straight into a brick wall and knocking himself out. (Ironically, we later discover that if you drink 13 ‘stingrays’, a bottle of red wine and have only four hours sleep, you do wake feeling like your chest has been punctured by an angry aquatic death machine.)
We’re catching up with Deftones halfway through their jaunt round the States on the Family Values tour with Korn and Stone Sour among others, tentatively road testing new material from their excellent new art rock album Saturday Night Wrist. One or two new songs, such as the deliciously gloomy new single Hole In The Earth, have crept into their set and are proving that out of all of the bands who emerged during the nu-metal phase, they might not have been the most successful but they certainly stand head and shoulders above their peers in terms of creativity and intelligence.
Tonight’s venue is Saratoga Performing Arts Center and sits on the lip of a large, Blair Witch Project-style pine forest. The entire area is literally throbbing with the noise of insects because it is praying mantis mating season. The sound is that of several million male insects making sweet lurve to their ladies. And then having their heads bitten off.
Ever-resourceful Hammer lensman Bomber McMurtrie commandeers a golf cart and we start razzing around the park looking for the tour bus. Among the several people we nearly mow down are Jim Root – the world’s tallest man – and his diminutive missus, Cristina from Lacuna Coil.
The band’s bus is easy enough to spot. Onboard there is the ominous rumblings of a woken beast. Something is stirring in the Stygian gloom. “BWAHOO-HAAARGGHHH!” comes its primal roar.
Banks of pungent fog part to reveal the silhouette of a creature that is part Rubeus Hagrid, part Wookie, part ancient Nordic Berserker, part Mexican-American pot-head.
“Ah, that’s got it,” beams Stephen Carpenter, the Deftones’ genial and permanently chonged guitarist, clearing his chest. He then carries on loading up hydroponic science into his hi-tech cheeba combustion device. After holding enough smoke down that would make a normal person’s lungs disintegrate like sponge cakes in a Power Shower, he exhales slowly and brandishes a hand that looks like a scoop from a JCB and says: “Do you like my nails? I just had a really good manicure in town.”
The entire band sit around talking about Steph’s immaculately gleaming nails as a few frosty brews are passed around. When talk turns to Hole In The Earth, reserved and softly spoken frontman Chino Moreno says: “It has nothing to do with environmental issues, it’s a metaphor for the relationships within the band. It’s amazing that everyone thinks it’s an eco thing, especially people coming up with video treatments for it.”
Well thank God you put them straight or you could have ended up with a video like Michael Jackson’s Earth Song, we venture. The band agree that it is right at the art rock end of what they do and its genesis was somewhat traumatic.
“The last few years for me have been the hardest,” Chino declares. “Troubles with the band and getting a divorce.”
But the title Saturday Night Wrist (which refers to the drunken practise of falling asleep on your hand until it goes dead rather than cashing your chips in or having one off the wrist) paradoxically refers to the new, less serious attitude among the band.
“I didn’t necessarily think that all the angst should go into the music. If anything I thought that the music should be the exact opposite: an escape from all this trouble,” says Chino.
But the process was traumatic and one that partially played out in public. After two years’ worth of writing and recording, the vocals were still not complete as Chino left to start on his Team Sleep side project, and it seemed like the Deftones were dead in the water. Veteran producer Bob Ezrin (Kiss/Pink Floyd) flounced and declared that the singer was unprepared and lazy and had “run out on his band”. The imposing singer wasn’t slow to snap back at the man they privately dubbed ‘Old Man Winter’, by publicly saying the experience had not been “fun” and that if Ezrin didn’t have anything nice to say, “maybe he shouldn’t say anything at all”.
The band skirt around the subject for a while, but Stephen eventually admits: “Look, we’re lazy bastards. It is true.” And DJ Frank Delgado adds: “He was a pain to be with, you know. And the second he sensed any bad feeling from our camp he went straight to the press but Chino was quick to respond himself. We’ve all talked to him since and it’s cool. It’s Bob Ezrin. He’s superb.”
A poor turn out in the amphitheatre means the band doesn’t achieve escape velocity, but if Stephen seemed relaxed and happy on the bus he looks berserk lost behind a propeller blade of wildly rotating hair. If Chino seemed melancholy and detached earlier, he is focused and passionate now. His eyes are screwed shut with the effort, hunched over screaming at the crowd in front of him. He is shrouded in steam rising from his back and for a second he looks like he is on fire, like he has wings of smoke. The rest of the are equally ablaze.
It’s hard to compare this to the group that nearly split after abandoned recording the vocals. Even he admits: “In my mind I was thinking that this could be the last record we ever made… people would be saying to me, ‘What’s with the Deftones?’ And I would say, ‘I just don’t know.’
“Eventually, thinking the worst, I just called them one day and said, ‘Do you guys actually want to do this any more?’ and they were ready to ask me the same thing. They thought I wanted to leave it. Once that was out in the open we were free to make a great record and that’s when all the talk of it ending went away.”
The next day in Cleveland the sun blisters off the skyscrapers at the other end of the city. The end of the city that contains all the shops and bars and the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame on East 9th Street. The end of the city we’re not visiting. Where we are is a patchwork of vacant lots and rotting steel mills, all rusted iron and cancerous concrete. There is a huge stage constructed in all of this post-industrial detritus, situated next to a river that was so polluted in the early 70s that it often set on fire. Talk about smoke on the water.
For the band’s photo shoot, we venture over to a deceased iron drop bridge that straddles the river. Under the arches below, some unhappy soul has created the Temple Of Lost Love. It is a shrine to someone’s ex (or possibly dead) girlfriend. Hundreds of personal items have been glued to the wall in the massive pattern of a heart: a hairbrush, cassettes, shards of a mirror. Scraps of love letters flutter in the wind and behind a jagged piece of mirror is a Polaroid of a couple in happier days. One tiny piece of graffito reads: ‘There is inevitability everywhere you look. All good things end here.’ Bassist Chi Cheng says what everyone else is wondering: “Christ, I wonder if the poor bastard hung himself here.”
The mood lightens as we head back towards the makeshift venue, and if last night’s gig was good, tonight’s show is superlative. Chino dives into the crowd and has a hell of a time disentangling himself to get back onto the stage; the band glisten, twitch and thrash, satiating old fans and converting new ones as they go. After the show he tells us he’s had such a good time he’s just about to go back on stage and help Korn out with a few numbers.
Afterwards, it’s back to the band’s hotel where they plan to cut loose tonight because they have the day off tomorrow. Beer loosens tongues and all the gig horror stories start pouring out along with the liquor. “I went to fucking hit Steph with my bass once to knock him out, “ Chi drawls. “But it was before we had wireless so I’m charging at him screaming but I’m plugged in so the bass rig falls over and nearly crushes me. My murderous plan backfired.”
Chino recalls a gig in Scotland where a fan nearly killed him through sheer joy: “I got totally choked out by some dude who was so happy to see me that he got me in a headlock and started squeezing. He was grinning his head off but I was reaching out for Chi, [puts on squeaky voice] ‘Save me!’ Then Chi stops playing his bass points at me and goes ‘Look dude, you’re getting choked out’. My face was all purple and shit and I was like, ‘I know.’”
“But the thing is, I’m the stationary target, “ Abe adds. “So on some nights people would be throwing stuff on stage, you know, bras, panties, bottles of piss, bricks, cinder blocks, burning cars. And everyone else can run and duck so the rest of them encourage it. So once I had to sit there and BANG! – take a big piece of concrete on the head.”
“The stage got fucked to pieces that night,” Chi recalls. “There were craters in it and everything. And do you know what the best bit is? Creed had to play after us.”
They all crack up laughing and it’s clear that apart from the odd little fi ssure here or there, the Deftones are a unit once more. “Crikey mate,” Eddie shouts out. “I fancy a stingray. Anyone want to join me?” And Metal Hammer’s liver cringes involuntarily.
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 159, September 2006. Deftones bassist Chi Cheng passed away in 2013
