CHRIS FRANCIS
Questions asked by Jon Wilde, added to Rock Realms 25th October 2010.
Chris Francis was the guitarist with top UK rock band Ten for a number of years. He's now a solo artist and has a new album out under the "Scratched Matinee" moniker, entitled "Notes From The Incurable".
Read on...
Hi Chris, thanks for taking a moment to answer these questions. Hope you are well?
Chris: You’re very welcome, sir. I am well, thanks. We have a new son here and he’s doing really well, and everyone’s just great.
Do you come from a musical family?
Chris: Hell no.
Can you remember what first made you pick up a guitar, and how soon did you realize you had a skill for playing it?
Chris: Well, I have this very obsessive personality, so if I become interested in something I’ll throw myself completely into it (and talk about nothing else, and piss everyone off). When I was around fourteen years old I was obsessed by American wrestling, so I had posters of oiled-up dudes in speedo-type things and handle-bar moustaches all over my walls. My parents? Probably concerned, I’d say!
I was convinced for a while I would become a wrestler, or 'I enjoyed the fantasy' is probably more accurate. But when I turned fifteen and I discovered my love of rock music. Hulk Hogan moved over for Eddie Van Halen, but the fantasy element was what I needed and it just took on a different picture.
It was 1992 and Guns N’ Roses and Metallica were seemingly the biggest bands on Earth, and there was the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert at Wembley - which I watched live on TV - and Wayne’s World was everywhere, and it seemed like it was a very exciting time for rock music and it certainly had a big effect on me. Little did I know at the time that kind of rock was actually in its death throes. But, the obvious way to try to emulate my new heroes was to play the electric guitar, while everyone thought it was just my latest craze, destined to be short-lived.
Anyway, so before long I begged my Dad to buy me a cheap electric guitar when I was sixteen and I learned to play by hassling the guitar kids at school and just playing a lot. It was certainly within the first year that I started to think that I had an aptitude for it. As a teenager I was very much into escapism and spending a lot of time in my room, trying to be in my own world. Guitar playing, or learning any instrument for that matter, is really good for that. Anyway, started a school band – called ‘Way Cool Junior’ after the Ratt song - and we played for our peers, who were forced to watch us play Poison and Kiss songs (this would’ve been about ’94!). We did not convert any Smashing Pumpkins fans, let’s put it that way.
You won Guitarist Magazine’s Guitarist Of The Year in 2000. What difference did the accolade make to your career, and how did you actually go about putting yourself forwards and winning?
Chris: Well, it didn’t make much difference to my career, as far as I’m aware. If it had a positive effect it’s that it gave me the confidence to carry on, and the confidence to make my first album. I’m pretty needy and pathetic; If I don’t get regular injections of affirmation and praise I start to feel sorry for myself and wonder whether I should even continue in music or not (after a while of doing that I’ll usually just realise that no one would give a rat’s arse whether I carried on or not and that I should continue doing it for my own reasons - and because it has value to me - or stop whining and go and do something else - Yes, I am fun to be married to).
Anyway, so the point is that I probably would’ve continued anyway, but progress was expedited by my winning of the contest (which probably saved me a couple of cycles of self-pity followed by outrageous optimism). But I tried to kind of break into the British guitar scene, but either I wasn’t welcome (doubtful), I didn’t try hard enough (far more likely), I wasn’t good enough (again, doubtful) or I didn’t want into their stupid gang really anyway (no, I definitely did). Anyway, I don’t think I was cut out for the virtuoso game; I lack the discipline. I find the repetition of practicing (which back in the day provided the almost meditative escapism I needed) drives me crazy, and the reason I don’t play my instrumentals anymore is that I get in such a bad mood practicing them over and over that I’m in danger of being divorced.
What did happen a little bit was that it went to my head: I remember that I needed a little guitar part from the manufacturer around that time and the guy on the phone said that they only supplied dealerships and he couldn’t sell it to me directly. I then proceeded to give him the whole “Ah, maybe if I told you who I am?” deal. I wish I could walk through a time portal and smack me for that one. Anyway, quite rightly he told me to eff off. As far as how I went about it, I just sent in my entry in ‘99 for the first time and got to the finals, which I didn’t win. Did the same in 2000 and I did. Anything that’s actually happened in my career so far (TEN stuff or endorsements or whatever) didn’t come as a result of my winning the contest or (unless I wouldn’t have carried on with music had I not won, which is unlikely). It’s just something to do for the fun of it, but if I thought my new award was going to mean that the phone would start ringing I would soon find out otherwise.
You were then guitarist in TEN for a number of years. Did you feel you had made it as a rock star? What was it like touring Japan etc.?
Chris: Yes, I thought it was the start of something real, after Guitarist Of The Year. I thought, wow! Ok, this is actual music industry rock n’ roll stuff. I was really intimidated by pretty much everything about it, but winning the quite well publicised guitar gig in TEN was another very helpful confidence boost. Touring Japan was great fun, though I found it stressful and I wasn’t physically fit enough to perform for one and a half hours on a stage with all the hot lights and everything (just one of the big eye-openers the experience gave me). But it was great for the constantly sought-after fantasy stuff I mentioned before; I was being flown across the world, interviewed and put up in fancy hotels and being asked for my autograph all the time. I liked this. Japan is such a great country to visit as well. I really hope to go back, especially as a musician
Anyway, I was certainly a little out of my depth with the live shows and balancing playing all these songs - that were new to me - well with putting on a proper rock performance to help perpetuate the need for audiences to view performers as some kind of mythical heroes (another of the eye-openers). However, I think I did a lot of growing in that area; I joined the band in January 2002 and by the Summer I felt I had certainly grown as a player, but more crucially as a performer. I started to feel at home on the stage, and got a bit of a swagger on and started posing like a big fat rock n’ roll poser (in my mind, anyway). It was marvelous fun. AND THEN THE LIVE SHOWS DRIED UP! However, I stayed in the band because there was always the promise of lots of recording and I was thrilled by the idea of being heard on proper rock albums in Japan and elsewhere, and maybe those recordings meaning to people what my favourite albums meant to me. It was a good way to chart my development as a guitarist too and I think making the seven or so albums I did with Gary shaped my playing in ways that a lot of touring wouldn’t have (for better or for worse, I don’t know). I certainly stayed a little too long. I just didn’t feel like there was any forward motion in my career for quite a while towards the end.
So anyway, like winning GOTY, I thought joining TEN was “strap-in ‘cause here we go!”-time for my career, and I wanted to get a reputation as an up and coming great rock guitarist, but I don’t know if it really happened.
Are you still in contact with the band? Have you had any input in the new TEN album that’s coming out on Frontiers Records?
Chris: The last time I saw Gary and John was at my wedding three years ago. I’ve spoken to them a couple of times since, but not for a couple of years now. I’d certainly like to catch up with the chaps somewhere down the line, especially Paul who I’ve not seen for years. New album input? No I left the band two or three years ago now.
What are the best pieces of advice you can give to anyone looking to get better on the guitar – apart from the obvious ‘practice lots’...or is that really the most important thing by far?
Chris: Learn the riffs and solos of your favourite players by ear. Try to learn them note-for-note; this way you’ll get an insight into how they think, which is probably the most important influence you can take from them. People say this will breed unoriginality, but those people speak from the arse. How did you learn to talk? By hearing your parents and those around you doing it, right? And do you now say all the same things as those people, or do you use language to express your own thoughts? The latter, hopefully.
Well, it’s the same with guitar-playing. All the great rock players did it this way. (And practice your tits off too).
Before we talk about your latest work, can you give us a brief rundown of some of the other cool albums and tours you have been a part of?
Chris: ‘Brief’ is the only kind of run-down I can offer here actually, so that works out well: I have played sessions on independent - as well as commercially released – albums for other artists, played guitar for a collection of library music for TV and film etc. I’ve made two solo albums - which I’ve never toured - the TEN stuff you know about, and I toured for a baffling while as a musician for a children's’ theatre production in 2007. Oh sorry, you said “cool”.
How did the Scratched Matinee album come about? Is this a solo album in disguise, or an actual long-term band project?
Chris: Well, I knew I didn’t want to do any more instrumental albums. I felt as though I’d achieved all I’d ever wanted to with that stuff (artistically, that is, not commercially!) and I had grown weary of the whole guitar scene, in which I felt people cared more about what strings you use or what brand of cables you were into than actual music and creativity, emotion and the human connections that all music is supposed to be about (however, that may just have all been the bitter whinings of the unappreciated ego).
So for those reasons certainly, but also for the reason that I was no longer a teenager or a young buck; I had just turned thirty and the guitar pyrotechnics and hero-worship oriented wizardry of guys like Steve Vai didn’t appeal to me as they had when I was a Wrestlemania-addled, excitable, idol-seeking teenage fan-boy. So I conceived the new album project while walking along the beach with my wife shortly after we’d got married.
I was listening to a lot of modern rock for the first time. If you’re going to continue your love affair with rock music there’s going to be a point at which you start listening to musicians who are younger than you are. Maybe for many that’s not an issue but it felt strange for me, being that I (as most fans) started out as a teenager looking up to these kind of father figures that were rock stars (albeit father figures of dubious qualification). Anyway I overcame the weirdness there and I just loved My Chemical Romance, The Used, Jimmy Eat World, Alkaline Trio, Taking Back Sunday and Blue October, and I was for the first time really excited by the idea of doing a whole vocal rock album: one that was not aimed at any particular audience.
If the new influences that were exciting me so much took over, then great; if my classic rock and melodic rock past was creatively dominant, then great! The important thing was that I was excited again, and inspired, and it’s from there that creative energy comes. I had recently suffered with depression and had been medicated for that, and so getting off the pills and coming out of that misery and getting married was also a very intoxicatingly positive wave to ride into new creativity.
So...yes it is a solo album in disguise I suppose, but I wanted the option of building a band around it, and it took me two years to come up with the band name Scratched Matinée, and so it seemed natural to put out the album under that name. The name, to me, seemed exactly what I wanted as a representation of my current and future creativity; it’s theatrical, but damaged (much like this first album). It was a name under which I knew I could release anything, from dark stuff to feel-good rock n’ roll or funk or anything I may want to. So I think I’ll stick with it. It would be great to make it a band. It’s on my to-do list.
Who if anyone else was involved in the recording?
Chris: Originally I made the whole album myself, with nobody else’s input in any way, but my vocals are horrible. I’ve got a musical ear so the pitch isn’t much of a problem; it’s a tone thing, and I had to be honest with myself: I was not born with a singing future, which really is a pain in the arse because it would be great to be entirely self-sufficient (control-freak much?!)...but I’m always going to need to use singers.
After a search for my vocalist here in England didn’t yield the right man for whatever reason (though the standard and amount of talent on show were really high) I used a session guy in America, named Phil (yes, just ‘Phil’). Maybe it’s a ‘Cher’ type of thing. Anyway, it didn’t seem right to this Englishman so I credited his vocals to ‘Phil Philsworth’ on the CD cover. I’m so funny.) I worked him hard and made sure I got what I wanted, and it sounds fantastic. He did almost all of the vocals but I also contributed some backing vocals and there are some female vocals from another session singer, named Racquel, on one of the tracks. Apart from that, all of the instrumentation was either performed or arranged and sequenced in Pro-Tools by me, and it was motherf*cking exhausting.
It was always a big production I was going for from the start, and I won’t be in any hurry to take on such a load in the future.
When did you start work on the “Notes From The Incurable” release, and how quickly did the album come together?
Chris: I started writing it straight away after I had the inspiration to make the record. That was in October and I had a few of the songs written by Christmas. Then I had some serious computer - and other gear – problems, and as such was unable to record for a few months, but that was fine because I just carried on writing. I ended up with enough material for two albums, but they really were clearly two separate records; There were two sets of thematically linked songs, and each set seemed to have a cohesive character in a way, though I don’t really consider either to be a concept album as such.
So when I got the studio up and running again I just went back and started recording the ‘first’ album. The songs came very quickly in their basic essences, but I then worked very hard on treating them with very much laboured arrangements, possibly because I needed that obsession in my life at the time. The whole thing from beach-walk to mastering took two years and nine months (but, of course, I wrote a whole second album in that time too).
Did you know what sort of sound you wanted the album to have right from the off, or was there a lot of experimentation and mind changing along the way?
Chris: Oh I was very clear. The whole mission of the album was to imagine it first, then make it. I think a lot of great records are probably made by experimentation and letting the music guide the way, but for this project I wanted to visualise it as clearly as possible before even beginning; thinking perhaps more like a film director than a musician.
So with this in mind, when I had written a new song that I liked - probably a verse and chorus of harmony and melody with no lyrics, on an acoustic guitar - I would then lock myself in a room with no musical instruments, just a pencil and pad, and try to imagine the final produced version of that song in my mind. I was all inspired by that scene in the film ‘Amadeus’ towards the end where he’s dictating his new composition to Salieri, and he’s just hearing it all in his head.
I would write down descriptions of all this instrumentation and layering and what-have-you (it was all descriptive; I wasn’t writing score here!) and, the way I saw it, it was my future-self’s problem to actually bring it about in reality.
How would you describe the sound of the album, and what other bands would you perhaps compare it to?
Chris: Well, it’s quite dark but with a kind of ‘wink’ to it. Some of my friends fancy that it’s prog, but I really don’t think so. It’s got a kind of modern rock sound, I think. It’s got some of that punkiness you get with, say, My Chemical Romance, but I still play guitar the way I always have, really – just thinking about it differently. It’s got some classic Queen, Aerosmith and Beatles influences, I’d say. I also try to draw from the wonderful song-writing of Jellyfish. There’s a little Megadeth in there maybe, a little Guns N’ Roses, some Bon Jovi. Phil Philsworth’s voice at times sounds a little like that of Kip Winger, so there’s that in there too. There was that Harem Scarem album ‘Voice of Reason’, which I’ve always loved, and I think some of that came through here in the song-writing. Alkaline Trio, Enuff Z’ Nuff, HIM maybe? Def Leppard certainly.
It’s quite ostentatious and overblown in places, just because that’s so much fun, and lots of people hate you for being a little camp, and those people need to be antagonised as much as possible.
How did the writing and recording process work? How would a typical song be created?
Chris: Well, almost always the same way: If I feel that I have what amounts to a verse and a chorus, with maybe a pre-chorus type of section, then I have a new song on the go. There are never any lyrics until quite far along. To me, the essence of a song – musically - is in the harmony and melody that comprise its verse and chorus. So all the first rough recordings of the embryos that go on to be finished songs are generally under a minute, generally recorded into the mic of a small cassette recorder, mobile phone or web-cam, and generally feature me with an acoustic guitar (no matter how heavy the material in question is) strumming and singing gobbledygook pseudo-words over the top to indicate the melody lines. I’ll then file it along with all the other hundred or so such embryos I have, then – and here’s the important bit – forget it. That way, when I return to review all of my ideas weeks later I’ll instantly know whether each one is any good or not.
The ones that excite me get bumped up to a different folder, and then I’ll start developing those ideas in the way I mentioned earlier.
Where do you look for your lyrical and musical writing inspirations?
Chris: Well, when I first started writing the project I was rather trepidacious about tackling some of the experiences I’d recently been through. I’d never really written lyrics before – well, not seriously anyway – and so I wanted to find a way in, and that way was through fiction. The first songs I wrote lyrically were ‘Those Long Winter Evenings...’ – about a man who murders his wife in the heat of a marital fracas and immures her in their basement, then (feeling the pangs of regret) decides to release her from her tomb so they can have one last romantic dalliance (yeah, effed up I know!). It was kind of a tribute to (or “unintentional affront to” would probably be more accurate) the works of Edgar Allen Poe.
And then I wrote ‘BZ’, which was inspired by the film ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and also allowed me to theatrically live out my childhood action-war-movie type of fantasies and have some fun. It’s the most metal song on the record, and war always makes great subject matter for metal songs. It’s kind of imbued with all the conspiracy theory stuff that the film was based on, but just for the fun of it (I subscribe to precisely zero conspiracy theories. I’ll leave those to that fruitcake from Muse).
That song ‘BZ’ actually features some of my favourite lyrics; there’s a scenario where all Hell’s breaking loose - and we’re in first person mode here - with the narrator being in the throes of hallucination and psychosis; so the lyrics are supposed to evoke a kind of macabre psychedelic animation type of thing, where images of things are morphing into new things every which way, etc. It was bloody challenging to write.
Anyway, so after a little while I managed to strap on a pair and actually address some of the shit that had been ailing me. I mentioned the depression previously and, well, it wasn’t just a chemical imbalance that arbitrarily came about (though I am chemically predisposed to anxiety, certainly); it came from some harassment and persecution that was brought on my wife and me, to be frank. So when I found the courage to actually write about my feelings there the album gained a new and very valuable dimension. Songs like ‘Theatre Insane’ and ‘Last Respects’ were born of this reckless emotional nudity. Most of the songs are stories though.
It is mostly a fictional theatrical ride through my imagination. I was much of the time trying to create the musical and lyrical equivalent of Tim Burton films, which seem to have a unique touch when it comes to the macabre; almost innocent but lurid and dark – humorous too.
There’s a lot of psychosis in there also, because that’s fun (well, except for those who actually suffer from it). There’s a little commentary in some of the songs too. For example the song ‘Horror Show’ is ostensibly a character song, whose protagonist is the proprietor of a sort of Victorian freak show (“Roll up and bring one and all to the new rubberneck ball...”), but the whole song is actually a metaphor for much of the dark and deeply unpleasant content on the internet; Porn and gore sites and all that garbage.
There’s some commentary on the death penalty in ‘Summer Days’, which is a kind of mini tragedy. In ‘Ward 19’ the story of an old woman being held in custody at a psychiatric hospital, because she is a danger to herself, is juxtaposed with her past as a munitions factory worker in World War 2 as a kind of study of the value of human life. ‘Mr Spencer’ is about psychosis (and is a pretty distasteful treatment of the subject, if I’m honest) and it follows a classic kind of multiple-personality situation, and is wantonly bizarre.
‘New Moon Monday’ is a surreptitiously dark little number, which tells a story that requires a little detective work on the part of the listener to discern. It was my take, lyrically, on those dark Police songs like ‘I can’t Stand Losing’ or ‘Every Breath You Take’. ‘The Artist’s Bride’ is a little tragedy again: A bit of an emo fairytale of sorts; one of my favourites, certainly. ‘Mother Medicine’ is rather a departure from the rest of the album, and is about a situation where somebody chooses their abuser, and even craves them.
‘The Scarlet Ice’ is another gothic tale of a guy murdering his lover (no way, I do not have issues with female figures in my past, bordering on the homicidal. No way; you’re wrong about that.) Anyway, so my lyrical inspirations come from my experiences and the anger they engender, my imagination (which can’t help but be informed by the fiction that surrounds us all in books and films and songs and other wonderful human things), and things that piss me off from an ideological view-point get the pen moving as well.
Do you do anything special or unusual in the studio to get your sound?
Chris: I don’t think so. I have definitely recorded my best guitar tones to date on this new album though. I am a big believer in ‘miking up’ the guitar amp and “shifting that air”, as they say. This will always give better tones than plugging directly into the computer. I used a little mini, almost toy, Marshall amp to get some feedback guitar at one point in ‘Last Respects’. I tried to recreate the sound of tap-dancing in the breakdown for ’Mr Spencer’ by drumming with some pencils on a table. There was a lot of percussion stuff being shaken here, there and everywhere. I used some reverse reverb effects, for example on ‘Those Long Winter Evenings...’, I played around a lot with the vocals to create little call and response type effects that can sound a little like delay tricks, but are actually all created by copying and pasting certain phrases and then applying filters and effects to them in their new tracks.
I used some sound effects from the sound fx library people, especially in ‘BZ’; there’s a lot of battling going on at various points there. I actually (rather shamefully) stole the audio from a video taken at someone’s funeral that I found on YouTube for the song ‘The Artist’s Bride’ – a bit wrong that, I guess; But not as wrong as standing at someone’s funeral holding a fricking camcorder!!
I used a talk-box on ‘Horror Show’ too, which came out really well. I don’t think any of the above counts as special or unusual though necessarily.
What’s your favourite track on the album, and is it the sound of the song or the memories behind it that make you love it?
Chris: My favourite is ‘Summer Days’ I think. It’s just got a big emotive infectious quality and I really love the guitar riff, played on acoustic guitar. Musically it was one of those things that just fell out of the sky pretty much fully-formed (the lyrics were written and re-written over and over, as with most of the songs on the album). If I had a record deal, I’m sure it would be the single. It’s got some unusual lyrics to it too, and as I said earlier, there’s some commentary tied up in what is effectively a rather opaque story that takes the form of a letter written from death row to the condemned man’s lover, by whom he’s been abandoned.
Do you enjoy the whole studio/creative experience, or do you prefer getting up on the live stage?
Chris: I have to say that I’ve always preferred the studio. It’s such a creative place. I do understand the thrill of playing live, but I don’t think I’ve ever been happy with one of my live performances. It’s a control thing, I think; I like the feeling of being in control that comes from knowing that by the time anyone hears this thing it will be a perfect and accurate representation of my intentions.
Of course, people who work hard at their live performance and practice a lot achieve much that same feeling of control too. I guess I’ve never honed that area of musicianship enough. I will, though: It’s unfinished business.
Interestingly I had my own band, the Chris Francis band, for a while back in 2003 and I was in TEN at the same time. The preparation involved in the live appearances of each was hugely different. In TEN we were always under-rehearsed, and I hated that feeling leading up to a show. It was just the way things were with the band. It wasn’t really a one-for-all-and-all-for-one vibe because we were a group of musicians playing the material of one man, effectively working as his backing band. Now, this can work if the success is there (and there are countless examples of that) but when times are getting harder, certainly nobody is getting paid for rehearsals, and then not for travel either, and then you’re investing your own money in continuing to do the thing; this does not make for well prepared guys who’ve put in the overtime on their homework.
Of course, it should’ve been the standards I set for myself that made me do the work, but the discipline was the problem again. Of course, after the first few shows of a tour it almost doesn’t matter how well the band has rehearsed; it should just fall into place, but if you’re playing one show a year (as we were after the first year I had joined) it’s just depressing coming off that stage each time. Anyway, my point was that the Chris Francis Band were, if anything, over-rehearsed; we all lived in the same area and just spent months practicing several times a week, and I was convinced the live shows were way better than those I’d done in TEN as a result. But, reviewing the tapes now, in CFB we certainly knew what we were doing with every beat and every note, but the TEN shows really had something that my own band lacked. They were somehow much better (I’m talking about when we were still playing fairly regularly back in 2002, and I think the GODS 2002 show was the best we’d done during my tenure, for sure).
So I’m still learning about live playing, and I must dance with this most fickle mistress properly some time soon. But the studio is a world of art and creation; a place of solace where one can bring into reality anything that one’s nutty little brain can conceive – How wonderful is that!
Do you have many guitars in your collection, and what are favourite models?
Chris: I have down-sized the collection to just four instruments: A 1990’s fixed-bridge Peavey Wolfgang, a Warmoth custom superstrat dealy - that I based loosely on the Washburn Nuno Bettencourt guitars, a Lakewood acoustic, and a bass guitar (I just had to check the head-stock – it’s an SSD or an SDS or something. I bought it on Ebay).
The Peavey is the one I used for most of what you hear on the album. It has a great warm sound and really comfortable neck. I love the sound of my acoustic guitar too, and I never hear another that I like as much. Obviously all the bass was done on my only bass (which is active and through-neck, and sounds great, by the way. Apparently the company who made it was started by the Steinberger guy), and all the acoustic was done on the Lakewood. I also borrowed an Epiphone ‘Dot’ from one of my students. That was used on ‘Ward 19’, ‘Mr Spencer’ and I think some stuff on ‘New Moon Monday’ too. It’s a semi-acoustic jazz-box type of thing, you know? A very different sound to the solid bodied guitars.
Any question you love being asked that I’ve missed? If so, what’s the answer?
Chris: You’ve asked me some lovely questions, thank you – but most considerate of you to check.
What are you up to once you’ve finished answering these questions?
Chris: I’m going to go and change my son, as I fancy he’s just fouled himself.
Anything else you would like to mention?
Chris: It’s been a pleasure to so narcissistically indulge myself with these questions. I wonder if anyone made it to the end....?
Thanks again to Chris for his time. Check out his websites (see below) for more info about his latest and older releases.
http://www.myspace.com/scratchedmatinee
http://www.myspace.com/studsnsisters
