INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Last May, a serendipitous twist in Justin’s serpentine career took place when his fan letter to industrial music icon Trent Reznor (following Reznor’s free online release of The Slip) resulted in an invite to join Nine Inch Nails. That it happened the very week Meldal-Johnsen and Beck decided to suspend their longtime working relationship is oddly fitting for a bass man who’s among the busiest in the business. “In the next five months, I’ll be home a total of four weeks,” says Justin of his busy schedule with the band. “We’re closing down shop and going on tour, and I’m ready. I’m completely thrilled.”
How did you come to leave your gig as Beck’s musical director and join Nine Inch Nails?
I downloaded The Slip the day it came out, and I got so excited about it I decided to write to Trent. I wrote something along the lines of, “Hey Trent—I’m Justin, bass player for Beck, and I just wanted to let you know as a peer that I’m really digging how lean and focused the album is. I like it. Thanks for the free record.”
A few days later, Beck told me he needed to restructure his band to make it more lo-fi than what we’d been doing. I was like, “That’s great. Do your thing.” A couple days later I got a call from Jim Guerinot, Trent’s manager, who asked, “Are you at all interested in being in a big rock band?” Then Trent called and said, “I’ve been hearing about you for years, and you come really highly recommended. I think we should meet.” After meeting, he e-mailed me a list of songs to learn, and I came in to audition. I rocked out, and they were stoked. Trent asked, “Who wants Justin in the band?” and they all raised their hands. We talked some logistics and we were done. A few days later, I was digging into a 65- song repertoire.
From a playing perspective, what’s it like being part of such a huge production?
I can’t even tell you. It turns up the volume on your whole emotional landscape. I’m like a wide-eyed kid. I’m 38 years old, but the novelty of this kind of thing has not worn off. When everybody on board is contributing to the same goal, it creates an almost military mentality. That’s what I like most about touring. I like exciting large groups of people, and I like working in an army.
What makes you the right guy for this gig?
Trent is looking to achieve a new level of musical flexibility in his band. We’re going to be rendering material he’s never done, and the savvy he needs spans from sensitive arco upright bass to synth programs and larger sound design. Trent needs musicianship, but he also needs breadth with that musicianship. He doesn’t just need a great rock bass player; he needs something broader, and that’s what I bring. Another thing is more basic—a clear, drug-free persona, because that’s the way he rolls. We’re all grown men in our 30s, and we want to do this really well. We’re pros, you know? Punctuality, preparedness, a direct understanding of the human-to-gear interface— he needs all that.
How did you approach designing your bass sounds in this new setting?
Trent would give me a daily assignment of three or four songs to learn. I would go home, chart them, and play them until I didn’t need the chart anymore. I would think of the tone and make notes on the chart of what I might want to drum up with pedals and amps. Then I’d come in and dial up sounds. Trent would occasionally make comments like, “That should sound zingier,” or “brighter,” or “dirtier,” and in minutes I’d have a whole different sound for him. I’d take digital photos of the settings to keep track.
You’re playing challenging material from the instrumental Nine Inch Nails release, Ghosts I–IV.
There are some songs we think are transcendent and interesting, and others that might not go over that great because they are dramatic in a way that might be too subtle for the audience. It’s a grand experiment, and it’s what gives us a lot of drive for this tour. When we started busting it out in rehearsal, we realized we could essentially do modern chamber music in a way that could blow some minds. I’m playing upright bass, electric bass, mandolin, electric guitar, a Guild acoustic bass guitar, and keyboards. It’s kind of a new frontier, and—sink or swim—we’re excited about it. Part of me gleefully goes into this with the idea of subjecting the audiences to our will: “Excuse us a second, but we feel really strongly about this. Dig what we’re about to do, and enjoy the light show that goes with it, because it will be profound.”
On a note-to-note level, how much freedom is there for you in Nine Inch Nails?
Not a lot. In Nine Inch Nails, the bass parts are bass parts. But as the days go on, I’m adding my own personal inflection, and Trent welcomes that. It just needs to be done with taste and discretion.
How would you characterize the musical personality you express?
Gratuitous glissandos, very fast end-of-bar fills—fleeting 16th- and 32nd-note figures that propel you into the next section. Palm muting, and the occasional random step on an abrasive pedal. That’s how I would say I add my thing. I’m also changing the feel in some of the Nails tracks. Sometimes I like being super laid back, and other times I like being very stiff-armed and propulsive, on top of the beat. The songs require both approaches. I’m trying to push the envelope to give them a broader range, and Trent’s into it. Trent is a funky singer and player with a punk-rock mindset. I’m trying to accentuate that range.
Describe your connection with Nine Inch Nails drummer Josh Friese.
I love playing with Josh. He’s on the beat, but he’s not too tidy—he’s what I’d call metronomic with soul. Other drummers I’ve done time with, like James Gadson, Joey Waronker, or Victor Indrizzo, tend to be more elastic with their pocket, and more laid back. But Josh has anything you need. There’s a lot of material where we are playing things a little more junkyard, on the edge of falling apart. It needs to sound like it’s disintegrating, not like it’s being played by guys who make a lot of studio records. I love that.
You’re also singing on a lot of songs.
Back when I first started with Beck, he asked me, “Do you sing?” I said no, and he said, “Good. Here’s the parts.” With nearly everything I’ve done since then, there’s always been vocals. I’m not a great singer, but I enjoy trying. In Nine Inch Nails there are a lot of odd times or oblique phrases in the bass, and singing over them has been a real pat-your-head, rub-your-tummy thing. It’s a beast, but it’s nothing people haven’t done before. It’s a big rock tour—there you go.
Did you play on Beck’s latest album, Modern Guilt?
We did a bunch of recordings that I don’t expect made the record. Beck played a lot of the bass himself, and so did [producer] Danger Mouse. I was actually out of town while that was going down, so I missed my opportunity to be there. It sucks, because I’ve been on every Beck record since Odelay. But there was a very tight time frame for tracking bass and drums, and Beck’s got everything he needs as far as bass is concerned. Trent is the same way. He announced from the start, “Sometimes I’ll just grab the bass.” I don’t really care about that stuff. I’m not a traditionalist.
How do you view the state of the music industry and your place in it?
Record sales are abysmal, labels are contracting if not closing, and no one’s signing any big advances anymore; things are in a poor state. But I’ve been doing better each year, probably by the virtue of my love for playing. There are bass players by the thousands who can play circles around me. They can read better, they can play more articulately, and they have more riffs at their disposal. I’ve just been able to see that things like timing, taste, and communication skills factor in. The dude with the brand-new 6-string piece of furniture is not going to get the gig when the guy with the junky Harmony bass is more fun to hang out with. I have a forum on talkbass.com, and I get asked all the time, “How do you get gigs?” It’s really a matter of your presence on the scene and having done something you can hang your hat on.
How do you balance your reputation as an idiosyncratic innovator with the need to get steady studio work?
Someone might hear some recordings I’ve done and go, “I can’t tell that’s Justin Meldal- Johnsen. That has no character on its own.” That’s fine. I don’t need everything I do to have my personal mark on it. Sometimes it’s really satisfying to be transparent and disappear in the music; I’m still learning to play whole-notes correctly. Try sitting and playing whole-notes with a metronome on 80 BPM. After a while, you start to psyche yourself out on where you’re starting and stopping the beat. That’s the kind of stuff I trip out on during sessions.
Do you ever find it difficult to stay motivated?
I feel like I’m always having a renaissance. I get to do cool gigs, but even when I do a record that’s kinda jive, I take something away from it. In sessions where you’re called to play dom, domdom, dom, dom-dom, you start asking yourself, What can I take from this and what can I give? I can take how to push and pull the beat in a new way. There are players younger than I who seem burnt out, and I am shocked. When you make a living holding a piece of wood with four metal wires strapped to it that you get to pluck—sometimes at a very basic level—how are you not thrilled to get up every morning?
What’s the best way for bassists to increase their prospects of getting gigs?
If you’re not a multi-instrumentalist, you’re limiting yourself profoundly. I don’t know many bass guys who aren’t called upon to play keybass now and then. It’s enormously beneficial for bass players to pick up guitar and get behind a drum set. First and foremost, it expands your compositional ability. Just knowing you have some control over other instruments makes you a better songwriter. It allows you to understand the concepts of arrangement. You learn more about harmony, and what serves songs.
The music business is changing, and it’s very competitive. I can’t see traditionalists lasting as long as someone who has more arrows in their quiver. I spend a lot of time learning how to program beats and software synths, how to engineer and produce, and how to write string parts. It helps me make a living.
What are the skills needed to be a musical director?
I think it starts with your record collection. When you first start buying records and getting your mind around them, you’re engendering in yourself a complex understanding of the workings of musicians and their dynamics. Having a big musical lexicon is vital. A musical director needs to be able to call out chords and intervals, know everyone’s ranges, and have really good pitch and a strong inner metronome. There’s that half, the musical side. The other half is your people skills. It’s how you’re able to get people on the same train. If a bass player is content to be a Bill Wyman and stand in the shadows, that’s all good. But that’s not a music-director mentality. A musical director gets in people’s faces, but does so with a lot of care and camaraderie, acknowledging what people bring, shining a light on people’s innate talents. With Beck, it was always a band, even if the band changed every year. Everyone always felt like they were a part of something special because they were able to express their own personality.
I remember my junior-high band director telling us, “Clarinets, if you can’t hear the trumpets, you’re too loud. Timpani, if you can’t hear the flutes, you’re too loud.” He instilled in us a sense of responsibility for the whole. I love that moment when you’re playing and you’re reveling in the whole sound, experiencing a sort of telepathic beauty where you aren’t aware of your physical self. It’s metaphysical, it’s telepathic, and it’s cool when you finally cross that threshold and you don’t know what your hands are doing. That’s why we do this. Right now with Nine Inch Nails, it lies more in the realm of the physical— playing things correctly and remembering what should happen with the instrument in your hands and the pedals at your feet. When you cross that line, you can more deeply enjoy the musicians around you.
NAILS FILE
BASSES Two Fender Geddy Lee Jazz Basses with DiMarzio Model 1 pickups, two custom Fender Jaguar Basses with P-Bass pickups, Fender Custom Shop Pino Palladino Signature Precision Bass, Fender American Standard Precision Bass, two Gibson Thunderbird Basses, Guild acoustic bass, King DoubleBass
“I bought three Gibson Thunderbirds— natural sunburst, natural, and Pellham blue—and modified them with new old-stock ’70s pickups, BadAss bridges, bone nuts, and Grover tuners,” says Justin. “They have a twangy-ness that I love—a Rickenbacker-like sprang— and they’re woofy on the very bottom. The American Standard P-Bass has a lively sound and a lot of sustain, and the Jaguar is like a thicker Jazz Bass. For me, the sound of Nine Inch Nails comes from the Jaguar and Geddy Lee basses.”
RIG Palmer ADIG-ST speaker simulator, QSC Audio PLX3402 power amp, Furman PL-Plus power conditioner, Sennheiser wireless, Westone in-ear monitors
“I came into the first rehearsals with two SVT stacks and pedals all over the floor,” says Justin. “Now the pedals are in racks, my SVT sound comes from a preamp, and the cabinets are only for monitors. For Beck’s Midnight Vultures tour, I had a rig like that—I was just using sidefills and subs for monitoring. It worked well, but I like the breathing aspect of amps. This way there are better sightlines to the video walls all around us. Something I might do in the future is run Apple Mainstage—which is a part of Logic—as a hosting environment for plug-ins. You can run your bass into it as a complete softwarebased amp and effects rig. For the ’09 rig, I’d like to start using Reactor as a plug-in to create effects. But now it’s mainly a hardware-based rig.”
EFFECTS Tech 21 SansAmp PSA 1.1, T.C. Electronic G Force, Eventide Mod Factor 2, Line 6 PODxt, Dunlop/Bradshaw Power Distribution Center, Rocktron All-Access MIDI control and Voodoo Lab GCX switcher controlling (pictured clockwise from left): Tech 21 SansAmp VT Bass, Prescription Electronics Depth Charge, Tech 21 SansAmp GT2, Malekko B:Assmaster, Guyatone MD2 Micro Digital Delay, Guyatone Phase Shifter, and Prunes & Custard Harmonic Generated Intermodulator
“It’s all about combinations, layering pedals together. The T.C. G-Force does things like weird delays, peculiar modulations, and pitch-shifting. We also use it as a noise gate. I use the Eventide for modulations, wah, and pitch-shifting, all controlled by a Rocktron Hex expression pedal.”
GUITAR & MANDOLIN Gibson Joan Jett Melody Maker, Gibson Billie Joe Armstrong, Fender Elvis Costello Jaguar, Fender mandolin
SYNTH Novation ReMote 25SL, Apple Xserve-based softsynth rig
STRINGS & SUCH D’Addario nickel roundwounds (.050–.105 on basses, .011–.052 on guitars), Dunlop Tortex picks (80mm for bass, 63mm for guitar)
PROPS
“Jason Faulkner of Jellyfish replaced me as the bass player in Air. He’s sick! Check out ‘Chem Trails’ from the new Beck record—that’s Jason at his best.”
Read what else is on Justin’s playlist at bassplayer.com.
WANNA PLAY?
Check out the March ’07 transcription of Beck’s “Sexx Laws.”