A lot has been said over the years about the origins of the Crossover sound. No one seems to agree in this never ending debate but one thing is for sure, you can always count on C.O.C. to make an appearance in that conversation. From the raw Hardcore Punk of their 1984 debut Eye For An Eye to the more Metal-oriented Technocracy to the dirty Southern/Sabbath combo of the Keenan-fronted eras, they’ve been mixing genres and keeping things heavy since day one. Guitarist Woody Weatherman, the only member to have lived through all incarnations of the band, sat down with us at Heavy Montreal to discuss his influences.
C.O.C.’s latest record, No Cross No Crown, is out on Nuclear Blast Entertainment.
What are some of your favorite albums of all time?
I’m one of these old school guys so I’m a giant fan of all the classics that probably you hear like a million times. When I was a kid, Are You Experienced? was one of the first actual pieces of vinyl that I owned. Of course, HENDRIX is who I tried to be like, when I was a kid, you know? Like, “how does he get the squealing and the wiggles and the vibrato and the noise and all that shit?” Giant inspiration. Of course, all those early SABBATH records man. Master of Reality was a big influence on me.
Was that your definite favorite?
Probably. I mean, just as far as evolvement of where Corrosion came from and my playing and all that stuff. Everybody says Sabbath but really, it WAS. I was a kid. Everybody has their favorites. Mine are probably Master and Volume Four. It’s hard to choose. I like the later more experimental shit, like Never Say Die and the Dio shit is untouchable, man, I love it all. They never did any bad shit, I don’t think. So that’s a giant for me. And THIN LIZZY, of course. You can probably hear it in some of the COC stuff, we’re all big Lizzy fans. ZZ TOP. The first three ZZ Top records laid a lot of groundwork for the band and for myself as a kid because my dad had those records so growing up, I was listening to all that shit. *Humming a ZZ Top lick*
A lot of the stuff that I’m spouting out, you still hear within the COC stuff because it’s not just me, you know, Mike, our bass player and Pepper also, we share a lot of the same thoughts on that stuff. I could sit here and rattle off some more obscure shit, like those early ALICE COOPER records. So good. He’s going off the rails, going insane.
Did you get to see him during his prime?
Yes, I did. One time that I saw him, way back, they were out with MOTÖRHEAD. Me and our old bass player, Phil Swisher, who was on the Blind record, we all went down and Motörhead was playing. At the time, you couldn’t smoke weed or cigarettes or anything in this Coliseum. Well, we busted off when Motörhead got finished. We thought we were being sneaky and we went way up to the top of the Coliseum. We fired up a joint and before we took two puffs, here comes an undercover cop. Grabs it, takes us down to the jail at the holding cell. We totally missed Alice Cooper. We can hear him, we can see him coming on stage and we were getting hauled off to the fucking holding cell. We saw Motörhead but missed Alice Cooper, it was bullshit. We spent the night in jail for having a joint! We still talk about that shit. They let us out of jail at six the next morning and we had to take a Greyhound bus home because all our friends were gone, they thought we just left or something, they didn’t know where we were. We didn’t have cell phones or anything back then. You can’t call him and go “we’re going to jail”. That was a fucking good time. Of course, I’ve seen him recently, we’ve done some of these fests where they’ve been at, which is one of the cool things about these festivals like Heavy Montreal, you get to see a lot of band, a lot of friends. Today we’re backstage, we’re just seeing the CLUTCH guys and FU MANCHU guys and all our buds. We don’t get to see each other that much if we’re not touring together so it’s nice.
Is there any of them that you plan on going and watch their set today?
Oh, hell yeah. Well, of course SLAYER! I’m stoked about that. I’ll go see SLASH, I like his band. The Clutch guys, of course, we do a lot of traveling together all the time. Fu Manchu, we’ve been traveling together a lot through the years, so I’ll go see all those guys.
What would be the one band that you toured with that impressed you the most? One that you had to watch their set, night after night?
Oh, wow. MAIDEN. We did a tour with them, we played here in Montreal. This is like ’93, we did a whole North American thing with them. They were awesome. I mean, so many. All kind of shit but METALLICA, even though we were on tour with him for like nine months, I still had to watch them every night because it was good! They had a great show.
What have you been listening to the most lately?
A lot of ZZ Top. Of course! *Haha* Almost every day, before we’re going on, we listen to that. Maybe some JOHNNY WINTER? STEVIE RAY. A lot of the Texas guys with the guitars, you know? We love it. We just can’t get away from it.
What would be some of the other memorable shows that you’ve seen in your life?
One of the most impressionable ones was, we did a short run with the RAMONES in like ’87-’88 or something like that. It was the only time that I’ve ever toured with a band or met a band where I was like a fanboy. Like, “whoa, hey Joey, how are you man? I love your music!” *Haha* I’d never done that before but I did it with the Ramones. I totally fanboyed out. I had seen them before we toured with them, maybe two or three years before that, but I mean, I was just such a big Ramones fan. So I got a taste of what it’s like to be a big fan and go crazy when you meet somebody and it was kind of cool.
But playing those shows with the Ramones was fantastic because they were just like you would think. Those characters that you’d seen in Rock and Roll High School, that was them. They were really like that. They were sitting backstage and Joey had a cooler with a jug of milk in it. He was drinking and I was like, “what the fuck!?” *Hahaha* They were just like they were supposed to be, you know, they were the fucking Ramones.
Can you name three songs that you would consider perfect and just tell us a bit about what makes them so special to you?
When I think of perfect songs, I think of songs off of like, Dark Side of the Moon or something. You know, Pink Floyd, that’s kind of Rock perfection. The guitar playing, the song writing, the lyrics, the mix, the flow. Pink Floyd is perfect, almost all of it.
Even more so Dark Side of the Moon then The Wall or Wish You Were Here?
Yeah, Dark Side because it just really is perfection. Of course, the earlier stuff too, Arnold lane and shit like that. Or even Animals. It’s so weird but it’s still so well done. The guitar playing is so phenomenal. There’s a lot of other bands that are fucking amazing, but they’re not perfect like Pink Floyd.
Do you have any sort of hidden gem? Something where everybody is about this one album, or song but to you, it’s all about that other, more obscure thing?
God. I mean, most of the stuff’s already been so done and chatted about and talk about. For instance, THIN LIZZY, what does everybody want to hear? They want to hear Boys are back in town, or whatever but I’m like Johnny The Fox! Johnny the fox meets Jimmy the weed. I like to get down a little more, down into the depths. Thin Lizzy is one of those bands you know, I mean, the Jailbreak record, that’s pretty close to perfection. Everything on that fucking record is stellar. From the slower shit to the more rocking and all the guitar harmonies.
Do you have any unpopular music opinion that you’d like to defend? Maybe something you’ve been trying to make people realize, THIS is it!
For the longest time, we’ve always been ZZ TOP fans, since day one. We’d be like, “yeah, ZZ Top, check it out!” and people would be like, “what are you talking about?” Because all they’re thinking about is, Sharp dressed man, or She’s got legs or something. Which I think is cool, too but they don’t, they never heard the other shit, but now everybody knows ZZ Top.
Do you have any favorite lyrics? Can be a song, a line or just the general work of a lyricist?
Pepper (note: Keenan, C.O.C’s singer), he’s so good at lyrical content, he’ll touch on subjects without it being too obvious of what he’s talking about. He and Mike Dean, our bass player, they concoct a vast majority of the lyrics and stuff. I mean, I’m just kind of sitting back strumming on the guitar. I think it’s important to touch on the subject you want without being so obvious what it is, so it can mean different things possibly to me than what it means to you or you. Because sometimes you can date yourself. You hear some people singing about things and you can almost guess what year that song was written. One thing we’ve been doing, really since day one, is to try to make records that don’t date themselves, that can last for a long time without feeling like they’re washed up or yesterday’s news, you know?
What’s the first thing that strikes you when you listen to new music?
I’m listening to how the instruments play against each other. Lyrics, of course, play a big part too. How they sound and whatnot. But for me, I mean, I’m always guitar. What’s the guitar doing? Because I want to hear that. Those are the things that impressed me when I listen to music.
Would you say it’s guitar that makes or breaks a band? Or is there something else to it?
Sometimes, sometimes. Not always. Sometimes it’s drums…you know, John Bonham. But it’s got to be a combination, because you can have the greatest drummer or the greatest guitarist in the world, or the greatest vocalist, but if they don’t mesh with everybody else, it doesn’t work. It’s always got to be a team. Teamwork, man!
Is there any band that you always wanted to see live but never got a chance to?
Believe it or not…No, I take that back. I was gonna say AC/DC, but I did see them once. I did. It was not very early on. Let me see if there’s another band. I’ve seen it all. I mean, PINK FLOYD at Yankee Stadium, you know? Oh, I got one. Sadly, I never got to see STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN, God rest his soul. He died way too early and I never got to see him. I’m a giant fan. I’m jealous of Pepper because he lives in New Orleans and he got the chance to see him on a riverboat, on the river.
Is there any classic or universally acclaimed artist that you missed out on when they first came out and discovered way later? Any artist that you didn’t like at first and learned to appreciate over time?
Yeah, it’s happened to me, man. I can’t think of one right now. I’m usually really open to shit, you know? I went through a period where VAN HALEN kind of bothered me a little bit but I got over that. Now I’m like a giant Van Halen fan but I had a short period there where everybody was like, “Van Halen man! Come on!” and I didn’t really groove it. It didn’t strike me. I didn’t go in deep enough. And now I’m a giant fan. But I’ll admit, even though Eddie has become a big influence on me for his playing, early on, it didn’t strike me right off the bat. Which is weird. It’s party Rock and I mostly like that.
What would you say is the most perfect sequence of three records released in a row?
Well, that’s gonna go to the first five SABBATH records. That’s probably everybody’s standard answer but the first five Sabbath records are the best.
Well, I’ll put on the spot then and force you to select only three of them!
*Hahaha* Oh, my Lord. I already admitted to Volume Four and Master, of course…
Now is it Sabotage or Paranoid?
I’m gonna go Sabotage just cause it’s more reaching out. Everybody knows Paranoid and the first one is great, but we’ve all heard it so much.
Plus, you just can’t fuck with the opening riff of Symptoms of the universe.
Pfff, come on! It’s so heavy! Iommi invented Heavy Metal. Come on, he did. He invented this shit. There might have been a couple bands they tried to call Heavy Metal before that, but Iommi man.
Talking about riffs, what would you say are some of the heaviest riffs of all time?
Oh, I mean, they mostly belong to Iommi. But really, coming from the background I came from, there was this band called DISCHARGE and it was a big influence. I think that Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing is not technically the heaviest record but it just sounds so brutal. At the time, for me, it was like “this is fucking heavy!” There’s like, 29 guitar tracks all doing the same thing. They just stacked up one after the other. So Discharge.
Is there any up and coming bands that you’d like to recommend?
Yeah, somebody we’re on tour with right now -we’ve taken them out a few times- I got two names I’ll give you, both bands are from Texas, believe it or not. THE MOTHERSHIP from Dallas, straight ahead kind of Rock and Roll with a little heavier riffy edge to it. Great band, people should check them out. The more Rock party kind of shit. Then the QUAKER CITY NIGHT HAWKS from Fort Worth, very different. If all your fans are Metal fans, maybe they grab onto it, but if they’re open to more Rock and a little more openness to it, Quaker City Night Hawks, check them out. They’re leaning maybe a little more towards the Country side of things, but not really. I mean, it’s Rock. Little bit of Psychedelic in there. That’s cool. The tour right now is LO-PAN, QUAKER CITY, CROWBAR and then us and Quaker are going over for a Crowbar/COC audience so that means something, right? It sounds good. Something different.
No Comments