Chords for Heartbreaker Benmont Tench on Sculpting Keyboard Sounds | Reverb Interview

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[C] _ _ [F] I grew up on piano, like my parents had a [G] baby grand, but pretty quickly I wanted a
different keyboard [Gm] that was more with the times, and [A] so I got a Farfisa, which [Eb] I played
for a long [G] time and when I first sat in with Tom and Mike at Mud Crutch, that's what I played.
I got [Cm] a Wurlitzer [Bb] probably in 71, and I got a Marshall [A] 100 [C] watt stack, and I think I only
ever used the stack once or twice because it was just too much.
That's what I played in Mud Crutch at the beginning, because through the Marshall, the
Wurlitzer [Cm] _
[C] sounded like a rhythm guitar, or it could. _ _
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_ _ _ [Am] I did a record [A] with Ryan Adams a few years ago, and it was just called Ryan Adams, of all things.
[E] We did it at his studio, Pax Am, which is a great studio, and there wasn't room for
a [B] Hammond, so I brought my Vox Continental, [E] and I brought a little battery-powered Casio,
and Ryan said, try this.
The Casio and the Vox [Am] Continental through Leslie, [Bb] and through a memory man that Ryan
said try this, and then he gave me the memory [A] man, and I'd been using his [E] electric mistress
on the track at the same time, so I just started getting a few effects like that.
Before that I'd used [Bb] fuzz pedals.
I've got a Hammond that I had for 10 years [E] or more before I knew that it had an effects
loop, and I did a record for the Cult, and my Hammond has a solid state Leslie that I
use a lot of the time, and it's very clean, and they said, it sounds great, can you get
it dirty, and I said, well, this is all it does, and they said, well, you have an effects
loop, and I'm like, you're kidding.
And they said, we have a fuzz pedal, and I said, oh really, and they threw the fuzz pedal
on, and it sounded like, not like John Lord, because nothing does, but it had that deep
purple thing going on, and I was off to the races, but I never wanted to be overtaken
by the effects, and Campbell's [C] the same way, because [E] Campbell, he'll use effects, and he
uses them really well, but you give Mike a guitar, and he's a genius with tone, and he
[F] knows all the abs and all the guitar [Am] combinations, all the guitars that we use up there aren't
for show, but if you just give Campbell a guitar, and he plays, he sounds like Mike,
you know, the sound's in the [B] player, and I never [Bb] want these to get in the way of it,
but damn, they're really fun, and [Am] sometimes they just throw something onto [E] whatever you're
doing that lets you sing [F] more. _ _ _
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[B] Synthesizers I have never liked, I [Ab] hear people do great things with them, and I can't make
them do that.
Now, Michael, sit down at a synthesizer and write, You Got Lucky, I'll sit down at a synthesizer,
and it's, it's, You Got Ugly, it's just not good.
[A] I don't understand [E] synthesizers, and I don't have a lot of fun or patience going, _ here's
how I get a sound.
There's so much you can do with a piano that [A] I haven't, I haven't even scratched the surface.
There's so much [Bb] you can do with drawbars that I haven't even scratched the surface, and
once you get into [E] these things, I know that, you know, Brian Eno, Patrick Leonard, all
these cats, they all know how and get a pleasure from sculpting sounds, going, oh, you can
do this, and I look into it, and [Am] my brain freezes.
It does not _ intrigue me at all, but if you [E] listen to Booker, you listen to Matthew Fisher
on White or Shade of Pale, [A] you listen to that kind of stuff, then you've got, there's a
timelessness to a hand, [E] there's a timelessness to a Whirlisser, and they were all novelties
at some point, but they've lasted, and generally, a synth sound will define a decade or will
be defined by it.
You look at that English thing that came along that had this certain kind of sound, or the,
you know, do you think I'm sexy kind of thing, it's all, it's all like locked into an era,
and it evokes an era.
[A] And to me, _ I [E] don't really like clever, I like smart, but I [Gm] don't like clever, and I don't
[E] like gimmicky, because it sounds like it [A] comes from the head, not the heart.
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