Interview de Matt Wachter

Life seems to be getting progressively busier for bassist Matt Wachter. During his time in 30 Seconds To Mars, it wasn’t uncommon for his band to fly to China for a video shoot or even tour 11 months out of the year. Wachter’s decision to leave 30 Seconds To Mars was partly influenced by his desire to spend more time with his family, but as fate would have it, the year ahead doesn’t seem to be easing up on the activity. His latest role as bass player in Angels & Airwaves (UG Profile) is taking him in even more directions, with much more than just music on the horizon.

Although Wachter officially joined Angels & Airwaves back in April, he immediately began writing his own bass parts for the band’s latest release I-Empire, which is slated for a Nov. 6 release in the US. With intricate arrangements and an atmospheric sound, I-Empire comes across as almost an epic undertaking in itself, but the band has been simultaneously working on a string of other projects. Along with planning a touring schedule for the coming year, the quartet also has a documentary and a completely separate full-length film in the works. While some may think there is almost a grandiose feel to all of Angels & Airwaves’ projects, Wachter was quick to mention in a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar that he and his bandmates still feel very much like punk rockers at heart.

UG: When you joined Angels & Airwaves back in April, was the band already in the process of writing I-Empire?

Matt: I’ve been telling everyone that I came in at the halfway point, but the rest of the band insists that I came in before that. I guess it’s my word against theirs! I would say it was a little bit before the halfway point. They write and record at basically the same time, so I jumped on board. I kind of got right in the mix pretty quickly.

Did you have a hand in the core songwriting?

No, Tom does the majority of all the writing, with varying degrees of how flushed out all the ideas are. He kind of bounces them around, and we’re basically his sounding board for ideas. As far as how specifically the bass goes, he laid out the scratch tracks for all of the songs, like a general idea for the bass lines. He was just like, “Make them better. If you have any ideas, try them out. Anything that’s going to make the song better, go for it.” Not that I wasn’t expecting it, but I wasn’t expecting that! It’s a very difficult thing. I didn’t want to disrupt the balance or the way things worked, so I tread very lightly in a new situation or new environment.

Would you work out the bass parts by yourself and then bring them into a session?

For me personally, I would work on parts by myself. Adam, our drummer, was always nearby. If I felt something wasn’t working, I could kind of run it by him and see what he thought. It was just weird because a lot of the stuff that I was recording, everything was already recorded – the drums, guitars. So in a lot of the songs, bass was the last thing to go down. In that respect, I kind of had my work cut out for me. Everything that Atom was doing, I could just listen to over and over again. I could work my parts around his or weave them together.

"The record cover was painted by Drew Struzan, who actually did all the Star Wars posters in the 70s."
Was the recording process somewhat different from your experience with 30 Seconds To Mars?

You know, it’s not very different. We kind of worked in a very similar manner. It wasn’t that much of a departure.

Considering that Angels & Airwaves has a very distinct sound, did you change up your equipment at all?

Yeah. I started using Fender basses, whereas in my last band I was using G&L. I had always used a Fender in the studio. I was just using the G&L live, but then it switched over to Fender. I have just been using Fender Jazz basses in the studio and live now. That was the biggest change. Other than that, I’m still using through Ampeg cabinets and heads.

What is it about the Fender that stands out to you?

To tell you the truth, it’s kind of like a no-brainer. You just plug it in, turn up all the knobs all the way up, and that’s it. You don’t have to fuck with it. You just plug it in and you play it. It’s not like, “Oh, what does this knob do? What does this switch do? Oh, if I hit it, it’s going to fuck everything up.” You just plug it in and you play it. It sounds awesome.

It sounds like you prefer things to be pretty straightforward. Have you ever been a gearhead?

It’s funny, too, because I’m kind of a walking contradiction. I am kind of a gearhead. I love getting new pedals and seeing what they do, but I still lose my patience pretty quickly with things. So if you turn something on and don’t hear a difference, it’s like, “What the fuck does it do?” I like things with big, drastic changes.

How different is it working with Tom in comparison to Jared?

It is different, and not to say that I didn’t have creative freedom in 30 Seconds To Mars. When A Beautiful Lie came down to my bass, everybody left the studio and said, “Go for it.” I said, “Wow, okay.” In 2 or 3 days, all the bass was done and that was it. Obviously with the synth and all that stuff, that was a little different.

With Tom, it’s just different. All of us in the band come from very, very, very similar backgrounds. We all grew up listening to punk, playing in punk bands. So we kind of speak the same language. If he says to me, “Oh, I want this to sound like Fugazi” – I know instantly what he’s talking about and I can nail it. It just makes sense to me.

Did you think that you would have ended up in a punk band? Angels & Airwaves doesn’t really incorporate too much punk into the music.

It’s not, but at the same time it is. We still feel very much like a punk band, but we’re not playing punk music so to speak.

"I kind of got right in the mix pretty quickly."
Do you ever bust out a punk tune when the band plays live?

Oh, yeah. We actually talked about putting a Descendants’ cover on the new record that was like a secret track! It just came down to we really didn’t have the time to do it. Whenever we’re just sitting around, somebody will just start playing a punk song and then we all kind of join in. It’s fun.

I love the Star Wars motif that is going on with I-Empire, particularly with its movie trailer on your website. Were you involved in all of that?

Not really. All of that stuff was kind of well under way when I joined the band. The record cover was painted by a guy named Drew Struzan, who actually did all the Star Wars posters in the 70s. He painted all the movie posters for like Blade Runner, and he still does posters to this day, like for Harry Potter. That was kind of the focal point for the direction of the art, and it branched out from there. Tom got in contact with Drew and got him to do the painting. As far as everything else goes, the documentary has been in the works for the past few years.

There’s also another feature-length movie that we’ve been working on, which probably won’t be released until fall of next year. That’s something that we all definitely have had a vested interest in and have been involved with the creative process of that. You can only do so many things at one time, and we definitely like to push that and see how far we can take it. Tom, especially, likes to see how many things he likes to do at once and what his breaking point is. It’s kind of an ongoing thing.

What can we expect from the movie that you’re releasing next year?

It’s kind of changing as we go. The original idea started out with us wanting to do a vignette for each song on the record. It was just going to be set to music. Then we were like, “You know what? This is going to be really fucking boring. It’s going to be like 10 music videos back to back.” So we just kept saying to ourselves, “What do we want to see?” So now it’s turning into still the same vignette for each song, but it’s interwoven into this storyline with dialogue. It’s hard to sum it up because there are so many different aspects to it. We have this young director and cinematographer who is young, ambitious. He lets nothing get in his way and he’s just amazing. He’s running the show right now.

Are you used to being in a band that has so much going on?

Absolutely. 30 Seconds To Mars was very similar in the respect that there was so much going on. 30 Seconds To Mars is one of the hardest-working bands out there. Whether you’re going to China to do a video or going to Iceland, they’re very much always thinking outside of the box. That’s what attracted me to Angels & Airwaves. They kind of had the same mentality.

"I like things with big, drastic changes."
Was the split with 30 Seconds To Mars amicable?

Yeah. We’re all adults now and it’s not like we’re 17 years old anymore. Tom has a family and has kids, and I was at the point in my life where I wanted to spend more time with family and not be on the road 11 months out of the year. This was much more conducive to that. I can spend time with my family and still play music. I was like, “This is a win-win situation.”

When you listen to I-Empire, is there a particular song that stands out to you?

The very first song on the album is “Call To Arms,” and it’s exactly what the title says. It’s like a battle cry. It’s so triumphant. It sounds like the beginning of a battle or a war, in a positive way. I think it just sets the tone for the record.

Were you in the band during the first stages of writing “Call To Arms”?

It was still kind of in its infancy. There was a good portion of it recorded. Guitars were all recorded, keyboard was all recorded. The only thing that wasn’t really laid down was the drums. Again, it’s kind of weird to say that because drums are usually the first thing to get laid down in music. But again, the way we do things is specific to each song. If a song idea spawns a keyboard line, we’ll lay the keyboard line down real quick and then put the drums in later.

Do you consider yourself as much of a keyboardist as a guitar player?

Not so much these days. It’s still something that I love to do. I was classically trained as kid. It’s not necessarily like riding a bike! I’m so afraid to jump back on it, but I still have, for a lack of a better word, chops. So I’m trying to get that back up because we want to incorporate a lot of that into the live show. It’s something that I’m actively getting back on the horse.

Will you be announcing more tour dates in the coming months?

Yeah. It’s kind of weird. We’re still in negotiating phases, which is kind of weird to say. Usually everything would be solidified at this point. It’s basically that the music industry is on unstable ground at the moment. We’re trying to think of new and interesting ways to present the live show, in ways that you haven’t seen before. We’re definitely ambitious little fuckers!

Rien de très intéressant

tant mieux parceque j'avais la flemme de lire XD