The Beauty Of Not Fitting In
Page Hamilton talks about Helmet, being at the center of a major label bidding war, touring with David Bowie, and flaunting his magenta-colored heavy metal guitar at CBGB’s
In 1991, I taught guitar lessons at Pastore’s Music in Union City, New Jersey, about one mile west of New York. One of my students was convinced that my taste in music was tired and old—I was 23 at the time, he was 19, but your perspective is different when you’re young—and he gave me tickets to see Faith No More at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan. The opening act was Helmet.
Faith No More was great, but I was psyched to see Helmet. The rumor, at that time, was that Helmet had signed with Interscope Records—and that their deal included a one million dollar advance, which was unheard of—and I wanted to check them out. I don’t remember much from that show, except that Helmet was really good, and that Faith No More covered the Commodores’, “Easy.”
Helmet’s frontman is Page Hamilton—over the years, he’s their only consistent member—and despite his band’s aggressive, proto-nu metal aesthetic, has a musical background that’s varied and deep. He paid his dues as part of New York’s No Wave, guitar-centric avant-garde as a member of Glenn Branca’s ensemble—he also played with the Band of Susans and Rhys Chatham—and he did that while earning a masters degree studying straight-ahead jazz at the Manhattan School of Music. In the mid-90’s, he began his career creating music for film, initially generating Branca-esque guitarscapes for composer Elliot Goldenthal, and more recently composing original scores for movies like Chicago Cab, Skyhook, the Phoenix Rises, and Convergence. He toured as a member of David Bowie’s band, replacing guitarist Reeves Gabrels for the Hours tour, and, in 2006 after an eight-year hiatus, resurrected Helmet.
Hamilton’s resume is thick, and speaking with him is a treat. We talked about Helmet’s early days playing grimy New York clubs, the bidding war surrounding Helmet’s signing with Interscope—yes, I asked about the advance—his stint with Bowie, working on films, and why his magenta ESP Horizon guitar is the embodiment of punk.
I saw you at the Roseland Ballroom in the early ‘90s opening for Faith No More.
I remember that show. Helmet played there again the year after—we played there a couple of times—but that was the first tour we ever did with a, quote, “major label band.” I was skeptical. I thought, “Faith No More, really, they’re on MTV [laughs].” They turned out to be great dudes. Mike Patton and I are still friendly.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in Portland, Oregon. My mom and dad moved down to Medford when I was three or four or five—something like that—I went to New York in 1985 to go to the Manhattan School of Music.
Who did you study with there?
Jack Wilkins was my teacher.
He’s a monster guitarist.
He’s a monster—and kind of an ass—but I love him. He really exposed me to a different way of teaching and thinking. He’s funny. He has so much technical facility—and it seems to come so easy for him—that sometimes he wasn’t as patient. He’d say, “What was that? That was awful. What are you doing [laughs]?”
How did you hook up with Glenn Branca and people like that?
When I was about to finish school, I got the Village Voice, which was free back then, and started auditioning for everything. I met some nice people and I met some idiots. It made me realize what I wanted to do. I found the Band of Susans. I auditioned and thought, “This is interesting. This is something I want to do.” They had the guitar alt tuned—I think it was tuned with all the strings to E—and they started talking about Glenn and Rhys Chatham. I ended up playing with both of them. I auditioned for Glenn around the same time I auditioned for Band of Susans. I wasn’t even in Band of Susans for a year. We did a couple of tours with Rapeman, and Dinosaur Jr in Europe and the U.S. But when I brought some songs in for the record, they didn’t want them. Robert was cool about it [Band of Susans’ guitarist and vocalist Robert Poss]. He said, “These are cool, but they are not right for our band.” That’s why I formed Helmet. But Robert was a huge influence on me, and so was Glenn.
Did Helmet get its start playing around New York City?
Yeah, we auditioned at CBGB’s, and we were postering. I went into CBs with a demo—I saved bartending tips and we recorded “Born Annoying,” “Rumble,” “Shirley MacLaine,” and “Geisha to Go,” those four songs—I spelled Helmet with an umlaut over the M, which was a suggestion from one of my bar customers at the Levee, where I was a bartender. I went to CBs with a tape, and there was Louise with her completely bored look, and Hilly Kristal was sitting there, too, and she said, “I might listen to it eventually, but if you want to get a gig, audition.” I said, “When’s the next date?” She said it was either Sunday or Monday, and she put us in. We did it, and Tommy Victor and Mike Kirkland from Prong were working. Tommy was doing front of house, and Mike was doing the door, and they wrote in the book, “Book this band.” We ended up playing there every month. The first gig we did was at a place in Brooklyn called Lauderbacks, and I was a nervous wreck. We hooked up with AmRep (Amphetamine Reptile Records), and Haze (Tom Hazelmyer) put out “Born Annoying” and “Rumble.” Shannon Selberg from the Cows had fallen through a barn or something, and broken both his arms, and Peter Davis—he booked all the AmRep bands—asked if we would do those shows. We said, “Yes.”
How did you get from AmRep to signing with a major? The rumor I heard was that there was a bidding war and that you ended up getting a massive advance. Was that true?
Yeah, it was very strange. We had gone to Europe with five AmRep bands: Helmet, Tar, and Surgery, plus God Bullies was the headliner, and Halo of Flies—Tom Hazelmyer’s band—opened every night. We rotated the three middle bands. We went to Europe, and noticed that we were selling five times the merch as everyone else on the tour. We got back and all hell broke loose. All these idiots wearing ripped jeans and Doc Martens—geeks at record labels trying to relate to us—people giving you blank checks. I thought to myself, “These people are full of shit.” It turned into this ridiculous feeding frenzy, because at the same time that we were building our following, Nirvana exploded. I think Nevermind came out in ’91. At that point, we’d been together two years, and really built something by playing shows. But because this big bidding war broke out, we had the option of saying, “We want three records guaranteed, and creative control,” which we got. That meant that the label could make suggestions, but at the end of the day, it was my call. That was important to us.
Those were the days when MTV ruled the world. How did that work?
I remember our manager saying, “You guys have a buzz clip,” and I was like, “Which is what??” A buzz clip means MTV is pounding the airwaves with your video. “In the Meantime” was the first song we released [after “Unsung,” which was initially released as a 7-inch by AmRep], and then “Give It” was the next song after that. “Give It” starts in 5/4 and it is a weird swing thing. I never understood how it got as big as it did. People said some rude things like, “Helmet is a marketing concept. They have short hair.” I was like, “No, we were idiots.” Henry had dreadlocks when he joined the band, but when you’re in a van and driving around the country, it is much less hassle to just shave your head. I didn’t ask him to cut his hair. He cut it. We wore shorts because it was hot on stage, and took our shirts off because it was hot. But people will believe what they want to believe. I understand, people want their rock stars to be rock stars. I had this thing, “We’re musicians.” With records, you drop the needle and listen to the music. With videos, it became this visual thing. I love Bowie and T Rex, but they wrote great music first. The fashion thing was secondary.
You played with Bowie, too, how did you get that gig?
I was going through a shitty time. I had just left my wife and I was crashing at my manager’s place. My wife had the house in Woodstock and the apartment in New York. I was tearing it up and being an idiot. I got a call at my manager’s apartment. “David Bowie is trying to reach you.” I had been out all night being really bad, and I got home at three in the afternoon. I hadn’t slept. They said, “David wants to talk to you.” He called me at five o’clock. He was really gracious, and asked me to come down to the studio the next day. He said, “What time do you get up? Be honest.” I said, “I can usually rally by noon.” He said, “Can you get up a little earlier?” I got my ass up. It was fun. We went in the studio, talked about stuff, and he gave me a pile of songs to learn. I learned 30 songs in two weeks. I had to cover all those years of guitar tones, from Ronson to Reeves.
You had to figure that out yourself?
Yeah. At that point, I asked my wife if I could have the apartment, and she graciously let me have it. It was Chinese food takeout box trails and ashtrays—I was smoking like an idiot at the time—and drinking. I started working on the material and then got together with him. I had met him two years earlier at a festival in Germany. He was really nice, and said he was a fan, which I didn’t believe. But he laughed. He said that we go way back.
He was probably doing Tin Machine when Helmet started.
Reeves Gabrels had been with him for 13 years I think.
Was Reeves in the band when you were with Bowie?
I replaced Reeves. He went through a rough stretch personally. He was doing things that were un-Reeves like. I’ve seen him since, clean and sober and wonderful. He did some amazing stuff with David. He’s such a cool guy. We did, “I Can’t Read,” which is Tin Machine. That was one of the songs that Reeves wrote with David that we did. There were other things, too. My approach is obviously very different. We did “Always Crashing in the Same Car" from Low. I got into those keyboard sounds, those Moog-Eno-treated things, and played these little two note grooves. I thought with the big band like that, playing those little groovy parts was appropriate. Bowie turned to me at one point, and said, “Wow, that’s cool.” I said, “It’s on the record.” Nobody was playing it, and there were enough chordal instruments. I had little charts for myself at first, but you can’t be on stage at Wembley Stadium and looking at charts. We made it work, and that lineup was for those four months. It was a fill-in thing. Bowie was in transition. I turned him on to David Torn. We were in Copenhagen, and I gave him the Splattercell CD. I think Torn did three records with David after that. I feel very proud of that. Torn is one of my all-time heroes and I think he’s a genius. Steve Blucher from DiMarzio turned me on to him.
What was your entry into film scoring?
Composer Elliot Goldenthal was looking for something different. He was doing the Heat soundtrack and was looking for a Glenn Branca-esque thing. Tim, an A&R guy at Warner Brothers, told Elliot, “I know a guitar player who reads music and played with Branca and Helmet.” Elliot asked me to put together a little guitar ensemble. I brought in three of my buddies from Glenn, Dave Reid, Eric Hubel, and Andy Hawkins, and we had this wall of doom. Elliot called it the Deaf Elk Orchestra, which is now my publishing company. They paid us good money, flew us to L.A., and gave us rental cars and golf carts to drive around the studio lot. It was a really a fun gig. Then somebody came to me about the Chicago Cab play, also called Hellcab. I wrote it when we were on tour. I had the Akai drum machine and a 4-track recorder on the back of the bus. I would fly to New York on a day off. That came out as Chicago Cab, it was a cool movie and a very lo fi score. My wife had a Farfisa organ and I did some harmonica riffs, and guitar. It’s interesting. It’s very raw. Then I didn’t do anything for years. The movie I am working on now, I have a few guys who are more experienced with the orchestral things, and I just add a bunch of guitars to their stuff.
Do you sit there with a ton of pedals and create ambient textures, too?
I have four pedalboards that are wired and I can mix and match. I have my main go-to pedals, and then I have a rack of guitars. I’ll do a thing where I’ll improvise, for example, on a recent cue, I did a whole track where I listened to the orchestral parts a couple of times, and then shaped things in my mind, found spots on the neck, and figured it out. I use the Eventide H9, and I have a couple of those running simultaneously. I have my Page Hamilton signature distortion pedal, which Pro Tone made.
In addition to that signature fuzz, you have a signature guitar with ESP. You’ve been with them for a long time.
Many years. Henry Bogdan, our bass player, was friends with a guy at ESP. They were in Japan, but the U.S. company was above 48th Street Custom Guitars. They probably had about 100 guitars in there and four people working. I went in. I played about four or five guitars pulled off the shelf. Something really appealed to me. The guitars are really well made. The original magenta Horizon custom that became my thing, I could tell it was a really good sounding instrument. It also appealed to me in that it did not blend in with what anybody was doing downtown at the time. At CBGBs, people had the beat up Fender Mustang and cool long hair in your eyes and noisy guitars. This was a reverse headstock magenta-colored guitar with a Floyd Rose. It was an absolute hideous metal guitar, and I really loved that. I thought, “This is a big Fuck You to everyone.” Isn’t that punk? Aren’t you not supposed to have the same costumes and instruments. I loved it.
I developed a relationship with ESP, and as the band started to grow, we talked about a signature model. The signature model was based on a guitar that Paul Reed Smith made for me. They made me one, but I said, “I don’t really like black,” so I did this aluminum leaf on it. ESP did somewhat of a brushed aluminum recreation of that. It’s cool. That guitar I designed, and then Jose, who was the Vice President at the time, came up with the idea to do the relic, the old magenta guitar, that has all the dings and scratches and scars that my guitar had from being smashed and then put back together.
Do you have to go to NAMM?
I did for the first five years that I was in L.A. But I just don’t like it. After doing it for four or five years in a row I said, “This is not for me.” They’re cool about it. I do gear things. I did a cool gear thing for a guy in Chicago. I did a Rig Rundown with Premier Guitar. And I am loyal to the companies that stuck with me. I’ve been with D’Addario forever. Planet Waves—straps strings and all that stuff—Stevie at Fryette, and ESP.