DEVIN
TOWNSEND INTERVIEW
Over my many years
as a music journalist, I've had the pleasure of interviewing Canadian multi-instrumentalist/producer/recording
artist Devin Townsend several times. And it's been through those conversations
that I've come to realise that there are as many different sides to Townsend's
personalities as there are varied musical projects that emerge from him.
The
last time I spoke to Townsend, he was busy promoting his newest release 'Ziltoid
The Omniscient'; a typically Townsend-like off-the-wall conceptual album based
around an all-knowing fourth dimensional character known as Ziltoid, who travels
to Earth in search of the ultimate cup of coffee. Although quite pleased with
the reception from the press in regards to the release, it was clear at the time
that Townsend was not his usual self. Instead of sounding enthusiastic, Townsend
sounded tired. And any attempt to talk about the future only brought out feelings
of confusion and concern, with Townsend clearly unsure of what the future would
hold in store in the musical sense, apart from being completely different from
what he was doing now, and something that was probably likely to alienate those
who saw him purely as the front man for Strapping Young Lad and nothing else.
Although
laying low for almost all of 2008 (although his name would pop up from time to
time as a production/mixing credit on other artist's albums), it was in early
2009 that Townsend finally announced his return to music, with plans to release
four albums sometime over the next couple of years, and each focussing on a different
side to his musical personality. True to his word, Townsend unveiled 'Ki' (his
first album of new material in two years) in May 2009, followed closely by 'Addicted'
six months later.
Apart from releasing new music, Townsend
has also announced his return to the stage after a lengthy three year break. Included
on his tour itinerary is a long overdue visit to Australian shores.
Two
and a half years ago (the last time we spoke), Townsend sounded positively burnt
out and lacking direction in life. Today, calling down the line from his headquarters
at 'Studio D', Townsend is very much a changed man. The enthusiastic Townsend
of old is back, and the troubles of the past seem long behind him, even though
he's found himself apologising humbly for completely forgetting to call after
getting distracted by something newly unearthed on his Pro-Tools software.
Having
been forgiven, we got straight down to business, and I couldn't help but ask,
was Townsend's time away a purposeful self-imposed exile? And what prompted him
to take such a desperate measure?
"My time away from doing
music, or being in the spotlight was absolutely intentional. And looking back,
I would say that the journey was very intriguing. What happened was toward the
end of Strapping Young Lad, I became very aware of the fact that my reasons for
doing music were not guided by a financial thing, a fame thing, or the ability
to tour and play shows. It was something completely different altogether. And
what I really needed was to reconnect with what it was that inspired me and brought
me to the table as a musician in the first place. Strapping Young Lad was a very
beautiful and honest representation of who I was in my early twenties. The energy
of Strapping Young Lad was so typically heavy, and so aggressive, that it started
to become less of a cathartic and less of an artistic representation of myself,
and more like paint by numbers and felt more like a job to me. Painting by numbers
to something that you were no longer connected to made me feel like I was becoming
a poser. And I started to feel that what Strapping Young Lad meant for me was
being bastardised by the fact that I continued to do it, past the point where
it represented something that I could honestly relate to. At the end of Ozzfest
and the Download festival in the U.K. (August 2006), I remember thinking that
when Strapping Young Lad started, what was so beautiful about it was that it was
'Fuck Everything!' It was a middle finger to everything and everybody in the industry.
And it was during Ozzfest that we were telling the audience to fuck off or whatever,
and I found that people were into it. It was becoming such a commodity. The irony
of that was that as a person, I am the complete reverse of that. I soon figured
out that metal was almost becoming a parody of something. The reason I liked metal
in the first place was because it was a way to utilise heavy sonic characteristics
in a production and guitar tone sense that most forms of music can't do. You could
really hammer home heavy emotions. But when that starts to become more of a commodity,
and simply a way to pay the bills, I needed to start to get away from it all,
and figure out who I was. I wanted a connection with what I had chosen to invest
my identity in. And the result of that was three years of soul searching in a
lot of ways. The conclusion that I eventually came to was that, number one, I
love music. Number two, I'm a very heavy artist, in terms that I love heavy music,
and that my ideas are heavy. And number three, I love performing for people. I'm
very proud and lucky to do it. I miss performing."
The
three years Townsend spent soul searching were far from easy, but as he explains,
when the vices he once held dear were cast aside, the questions didn't quite seem
so difficult to answer.
In the beginning, I was absolutely
prepared to never do this again. All I knew was that I had to find myself as a
person and an artist outside of Strapping Young Lad, and also without drugs. My
old self was coming up with questions such as, 'What if my artistic creativity
and my ability to do what I do is tied to marijuana use that without it, I'm incapable
of doing it? What if my whole personality, or my whole persona, is a by-product
of something that is external? And if that's the case, then really, are you really
that good?' So I really needed to figure things out. And that when I came to the
conclusion that if I'm really no good without drugs, then I'll be happy to make
furniture for the rest of my life. I likened it to doing something while you're
under the control from something external from you. If that something is something
that you're aware of, and you have the ability to stop, and you don't, ultimately
you're going to become a representative of something you don't fully understand.
The long term goal of that is - What do you want out of life? And for me, I just
want to be happy man. I want the people around me to be happy. I want to make
people happy, I want to perform well, play my guitar, and I want to go to the
beach, and I want to have a good life. No matter how big the shows are, or how
much you think something is completely in your control, or just how much you are
aware of the ramifications of doing what it is your doing to yourself, if you're
not happy doing what you do, ultimately you're going to be successful at something
you don't necessarily enjoy doing. So in the past three years, what I've come
to the conclusion of is - Do you want to do this? Is this something that you are
made to do, and can't live without? And even without the drugs, you are that.
And the conclusion I came to is - Hell yeah! I found myself just itching to do
this. I not only want to do this, but I also want to clarify what I was unable
to articulate this before in the past."
Despite making
his mind up to continue making music, Townsend admits that unless mind, body and
soul are working together in unison, the music made will always lack the heart.
"Well
basically, in the first year and a half of my three years away was spent between
quitting smoking and quitting the band. I didn't do anything else. I did try writing
some music, but every time I would pick up the guitar, all I could come up with
were really shitty blues licks. I remember thinking, 'Man! Maybe I lost it!' It
was around this time that I went up to this native retreat thing way up north,
because I just needed some peace and quiet for a couple of days. At the end of
it, I was talking to this lady counsellor there, and I was telling her about how
much I love heavy music. In fact, it really can't be heavy enough. And I'm not
talking in a brutal death metal kind of heavy way, but more about the intensity
behind the music. It can't be intense or heavy enough for me. Anyway, I told her
about how I was capable of writing music like that, but that I was afraid to do
that. And she asked me why? I said, 'Well, because I'm afraid that the external
forces that kind of contributed to me and my artistic processes still ultimately
control everything that I do'. And she asked, 'Well you're not on drugs anymore
are you?' I said no, and that I hadn't been for years. And that's when she said,
'Well what I think is that you're afraid of your processes. Every time you pick
up your guitar, it's so tied to your potential, that in a way you're not only
afraid of failure, but you're also afraid of succeeding. So why don't you just
write. Don't worry if one day if you want to write a pop or a country song, and
on another day you feel like writing a thrash metal or death metal song. Don't
worry about it, and just write it. Document it, and see where it takes you'. So
I went back home, and I started writing. And what came out of me was quite literally
reams of material. Some of it was poppy like 'Bend It Like Bender!', some of it
was epic like 'Supercrush!', and then some of it was mellow like 'Terminal'. And
some of it, which you'll hear on my next album 'Deconstruction', was so, in my
opinion, fascinatingly heavy. I think the people who think that the end of Strapping
Young Lad meant the end of my heavier sound will simply go 'Wow!' Not only is
it brutal, but I don't think I could have made 'Deconstruction' when I was stoned.
I think I would have been too afraid of it. So that artistic freedom has allowed
me to care less about those who don't understand this, or care less whether some
people like one album over another one of mine. I don't care if someone is religiously
inclined and find they can identify with a particular song, and consider me the
devil when listening to another one of my albums! (Laughs) It's the duality of
humanity that I'm interested in, or our ability to be both things at the same
time. I'm no longer trying to represent both, but more trying to observe both.
And it's that observational headspace that's allowed me to distance myself from
having to represent either one sound or another. When I cleared my head and remained
sober, I was able to presently exactly who I am without any kind of questions.
I also didn't second guess anything I was doing, because that only led me to become
paranoid about my own output in the past. But I found without having to restrict
myself to one particular sound of direction, I had written close to sixty songs.
Admittedly, only forty of them are what I would consider great. And so, I decided
as opposed to compiling a concept piece in an 'Operation: Mindcrime' (Queensrÿche)
kind of way, I decided to split the concept over four albums. I didn't want the
listener struggling to pay attention to the songs while sifting through mountains
of dialogue, because that inevitably takes away from the experience. So each album
unto itself is just an album, but when all four albums are put together, there's
a thread that ties them altogether conceptually."
A lot
of Townsend's last three years has been about the letting go of many things. But
if there's one important thing that Townsend's removed, it's the limits he once
placed on his music.
"Well that's the whole thing there.
There was a definite separation between Strapping Young Lad and my solo stuff
in the past, and as a consequence, neither of them got the full meal deal. Strapping
Young Lad was so wound up being Strapping Young Lad, that the band couldn't be
considered Strapping Young Lad unless it was brutal, paranoid, painful or ironic.
So there were definite limitations there, and I didn't even know that they were
there. And then you have the Devin Townsend stuff. And because Strapping Young
Lad was the cornerstone in terms of the heavy stuff, a lot of the Devin Townsend
stuff fell short for me simply because it wasn't heavy enough. So when I was able
to sit back and say 'Fuck both of them!', I was then able to follow through with
'Fuck the limitations!'. Of course, both entities mean an immense amount to me,
and I'm proud of all those albums. But if I feel like making it brutal, I'll make
it brutal. Hell, I'll make it more brutal than Strapping Young Lad could ever
be. However, if I feel like making it mellow, it'll be as mellow as any Ocean
Machine song you think of. If I feel like writing morose music, I'll write morose
music. I don't worry about how it'll fits in anywhere. Ultimately, that's the
way I want to be. I remember when I first got together with my current manager
(Mike Mowery), and he was just confused. He was like, 'You have this kind of multi-headed
hybrid thing that you do. If you could just commit to one of those, we could head
in a direction that could be more commercially viable!' But my response was that
I didn't want to be just one thing. I want to do everything. So the goal during
all this time, and only something that I've discovered over the last three years,
is that you can do everything. You just have to find a way to make it all work
together.
Part of Townsend's rediscovery process was the realisation
that performing onstage was something that he missed too. And after more than
three years away, Townsend made the return to the stage in January alongside Between
The Buried And Me, Cynic and Scale The Summit for a month long U.S. tour.
"You
can call it fate, free will or whatever, not that I really have an opinion on
those views, but basically if you want to look at it from fatalism point of view,
that tour has been like boot camp. All the demons, the problems and the fears
of the past were so relentless from the first day. But after the first couple
of days, I was like, 'Who am I out here? Am I the mellow, shoe-gazing type of
dude? Or am I the crazy dude? Or am I that intense angry kind of guy?' I realised
towards the end of the tour that I'm like all of that, much in the same way that
I'm all of the different aspects of the music. Some parts are like meant to be
shoe-gazing, some of it's meant to be demonic and some is meant to be angelic.
As a performer, I really enjoy performing those different parts, and that tour
was the best possible situation for me to kind of work a lot of that out. I also
found that not playing Strapping Young Lad material really did allow me to shine
the spotlight on my other work too. I understand the fans disappointment about
not playing Strapping Young Lad material, but it's purely out of respect to the
band (Being guitarist Jed Simon, bassist Byron Stroud and drummer Gene Hoglan).
But in making that decision, I found that some people came to the shows with their
arms crossed, and by the end of it, thinking that the show was absolutely brutal.
So in this current incarnation of what I do, this is my opportunity to present
a very profound interpretation of who I am as a person. And as a result, it's
resonating very heavily with me. Not like an age specific type of resonance, but
an overall resonance. I find myself being able to present and play music like
I have never been able to do before. And I think what seems to be happening is
that people of finding out that they never knew that this kind of music could
have that kind of impact. I saw the look on people's faces who bought Ocean Machine
thirteen years ago, hearing 'Funeral' or 'Life' again as if it were the first
time they had ever heard it. That really had an impact on me, and I believe it
provided the audience with a very real experience as well."
Now
with the tour well and truly finished, Townsend has set his sights on his upcoming
tour of Australia. And despite living half a world away, and having to put up
with a rather annoying echo with every line uttered from Townsend's mouth, you
can't help but notice the excitement in his voice when the tour is brought up.
"After
finishing up with the U.S. tour, I was like, 'Right! Let's get down to Australia!
Like now!' I really can't wait to get back down there. But we've had to wait a
little bit, but I'm sure it'll be worth the wait, both for me and the people coming
to the shows. What we'll be bringing this time around is something that I hope
represents all of my many different musical styles together in a cohesive manner
under the one show. I think people typically expect the soul element of my personality
in my shows. Songs such as 'Deadhead' and 'Earth Day' are a huge part of our personality.
But if I were to play songs just like that, then it would be incomplete, much
in the same way The Devin Townsend Band was, in that it doesn't have the juxtaposition
of the brutality that makes that thing that much more interesting. But when you
look back into my back catalogue, and in particular an album like 'Ziltoid The
Omniscient', songs like 'Colour Your World', 'Planet Smasher' and 'By Your Command'
really work on a crushing and brutal level. When I started delving into the set
list for the tour, I started to realise that I have a wealth of brutal material,
but with the added bonus of a big chorus in there. So when I put the set together,
I really wanted it to be colourful. I wanted it to range from the quietest of
the quiet, right through to anything as brutal as anything I did with Strapping
Young Lad. And that is what I want to represent with this Australian tour. I don't
want to just represent 'Hippy Dev'. I want it to be a bit of 'Hippy Dev', 'Demonic
Dev', 'Crazy Dev' and 'Mellow Dev'. I want it to be a show. I want it to be almost
orchestral-like in nature, in a sense that it can take you from place to place,
but hopefully without that kind of pretence that comes along with that, because
the whole idea is that it's supposed to be fun. We're lucky to do this, and I'm
extremely lucky to be doing this. I want it to be awesome. Not just for myself,
but also for the audience. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be able to come
back, and in some cases, welcomed back to tour. And I'm not going to let that
go by this time. I'm very fortunate to do this. I don't want there to be a separation
between myself and the audience. I want us all to enjoy this experience together.
I have more energy now than I ever did before too. So feel incredibly grateful
and incredibly honoured to play to fans once again."
I
would like to thank Devin Townsend for his generous time and Andrew Haug at Century
Media Records for making the interview possible.
For more information
on Devin Townsend, check out - http://www.hevydevy.com
©
Justin Donnelly - justindonnelly@ozemail.com.au
