Interview with Neil Fallon from Clutch.

Written by J.J. Ulizio
Photos by Jason Nelson

On a sun shiny and bleary eyed morning. Specifically 09/16/16 I had the extreme pleasure of sitting down and having a telephone conversation with the lyrical master behind one of my favorite bands of all time. Clutch from Frederick, Maryland. Since their debut album Transnational Speedway League was released in 1993, Clutch has become a mainstay in the live music scene. They earned an extremely loyal fan base through consistent touring since that release and several sequential albums all rabidly consumed by their legion of fans. Neil was a pleasure to talk to as we sat and chatted about various topics, spanning the changes in the music industry, his other projects, touring, and most importantly his lyrics. What you are about to read is the conversation that consumed roughly a half hour of my morning that day along with various cups of coffee and a chain of Marlboros. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed doing it.

JJ Ulizio: First things first, to get the ball rolling how have things been going with you guys? It seems like with the Clutch tours and now the Dunsmuir release you must be a very busy man.

Neil Fallon:  Yeah, I guess I am busy, but that’s a good thing. That’s by design, Dunsmuir was recorded pushing a year and a half ago and it just happened to be released pretty shortly after Psychic Warfare. So it wasn’t as if I turned and burned to do Psychic Warfare after that. It was pretty much sitting in the wings. Most of my busyness has been comprised of touring with the band.

JJ: You seem to have been pretty much on the road constantly, which fits since Clutch has had a strong reputation for being a road band over the years.

Neil: Yeah, that’s what we do.

JJ: According to what I have read online you are having a bit of a small break between tours right now. Obviously you have some press stuff you have to do but are you getting any true days off?

Neil: Yes, we have about a month off, just short of two weeks before we head back out, but I have been spending a lot of time at home doing very un-rock n roll things, like right now I am sitting in the parking lot of a hardware store which is alright by me. It does suck being away from home, but then when we are home we are there 24/7. I don’t have to leave and go to a gig; I can just kick it with my wife and child.

JJ: It’s the little things right?

Neil: Yes exactly.

JJ: It’s been almost a year and relentless touring since the release of Psychic Warfare. Looking back how have things turned out compared to your initial expectations for it that you may have had prior to its release?

Neil: Better than I expected, but having said that I think we made a really good record. I also think we knew we were going to tour on it like we have for any other record we have had in the past 25 years. We have done some other things like headlining the main stage at Leeds. Going to Croatia or Poland for the first time and after 25 years being able to move in that direction is a very gratifying thing to say.

JJ: Since you have been doing this for so long do you get any jitters playing in a new county like that compared to at home or another place you have been?

Neil:  I get jitters every time we play, no matter what, I’ll get jitters the next time we play Columbus, Ohio. That’s a good thing. Not getting stage fright but getting excited to play works in your favor if you channel it the right way. I do think touring can be a bit of a grind but when you go to new places it’s like your first tour again in some ways. I remember when something like going out of state was very exotic. It became less exotic over the years but then once you go to places like Greece or Croatia for that matter you get to the see the world in a very real and meaningful way.

JJ: How would you say the foreign fans are when compared to American fans?

Neil:  You know, one thing I’ve learned is if you put a bunch of people together in a dark room with loud music and feed them beer, in the end everybody ends up exactly the same.

JJ: That makes sense, ha-ha! In your long career from albums like self-titled, Speedway, to Blast Tyrant and up to Psychic Warfare the sound and style has changed with your song writing. What do you attribute to the musical changes that the band has gone through compared to bands like AC/DC & Motörhead who in their long careers, while being awesome, have had very little, if any change to their music and song writing?

Neil: Life, experiences and being students. We’re always trying to learn new things. I take guitar lessons, JP takes drum lessons for example and trying to apply those things and never being satisfied. I would rather take a chance and fail than end up repeating something that wasn’t going to work anyway. Maybe its boredom as well, those examples are great bands and they do their strengths but I think if we had to do 11 versions of our self-titled record I would have gone bat shit crazy.

JJ: You need things to change after so long?

Neil: Yeah, I think any artist has a creative impulse to change. That’s what creativity is in its simplest ways.

JJ: Back in July, I think it was, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dave Bone and among many of the things we talked about, one of the topics that came up was where your lyrics come from.

Neil: He probably knows better than I do.

JJ: HAHAHA! His answer for me, and I rattled off a few song titles I think, especially from the Dunsmuir album, was that he hears them the same way I do. He said you are the only one who could give any insight on where you come from when you are writing or how you get inspired when writing your lyrics.

Neil:  I get them wherever I can. If I hear a phrase out of context I’ll jot it down and it might become a lyric. Ideally a song is a short story in some ways whether it be a narrative or lyric of some sort. My favorite lyrics, outside of myself, is when I hear somebody telling a story and I don’t know exactly what they are talking about and it makes me want to know more. I try to do that when I write. To give enough evidence or characters or action that seems real but at the same time has to be ambiguous and fun. I’m not trying to inject lectures into these lyrics; they’re supposed to be an escape for me as well as the listener.

JJ: I can attest that you have succeeded.

Neil: Well thank you

JJ:  I get that feeling every time, well specifically my personal favorite would be Blast Tyrant, I get that feeling every time I listen to that whole album. Do you approach your lyric writing differently depending on the band you’re writing for whether it be Clutch, The Company Band, or Dunsmuir?

Neil: No, I think every song is sort of its own entity. Like anyone else when I listen to music, well when I get a song its instrumental cause there is no lyrics obviously. So it’s just an exercise of closing one’s eyes and trying to decipher what the mood is that those riffs evoke. Having said that, I guess I’ll just completely contradict myself and say that with Dunsmuir it was more of a metal vibe so I knew maybe I could indulge some of those more metal images that wouldn’t necessarily occur, but I think that had more to do with the music itself than the idea of the band as a whole. It’s just the songs, if that makes any sense at all.

JJ: Yes, yes it does to me. Having been in the music industry as long as you have, what would you say is the biggest change you have noticed? Comparing now to when you were first getting started.

Neil: Well, when we were getting going there was two bands that kind of defined the music business, at least in how we were involved with it, and they were Pantera, and Nirvana. Pantera was a new kind of metal. They weren’t Guns ‘N Roses, Extreme, or any of those bands. Nirvana was a totally new thing, so most major labels signed up any band that remotely resembled those two. For the 90’s we got a lot of tour support and toured our assess off, that was a good thing. Now though, as we all know, selling CD’s is like selling water to the drowning. So that’s a big change. It hasn’t changed for us in that we have always been touring, but when I hear artists moaning about “oh now I have to go out on the road to make money” I kind of just have to chuckle a bit, or a lot. The biggest change now I think is the streaming. I think that’s the biggest factor recently to show that album sales are down 13% from last year. Having said that, I tend to take a broader view in that for tens of thousands of years music has been free. It has only been in the past 60 years that people have figured out how to monetize it. So in a lot of ways it’s kind of a return to normalcy, and the music business had a good run for about a century selling music and we still sell music and want to continue it but I don’t feel like the soul has been ripped out of it, it’s still music. People are always going to want that one way or another either live in concert or on their phone.

JJ: Do you think that, as a whole, as album sales decline that will make touring go up so more artists can make a living off of it? I know you guy’s tour constantly, I mean in general.

Neil: Yea, but it’s hard to say. The music industry, as soon as they realized that album sales are down they started looking at live venues. That’s why you see such investments going into Live Nation, brands, and branding festivals. That’s why when you go to a venue instead of being called CBGBs it’s called the “Home Depot Juke Joint.” They put their fingers in that, and I only say Home Depot because I’m sitting in the Home Depot parking lot right now.  Live music will always be occurring, I don’t know if audiences will generally get bigger because most people are inherently lazy. It’s much easier to sit at home and see something streaming live on the computer. For me nothing can replace, both as a listener and a musician, the high you receive from the unique performance that you can’t experience unless it’s in the flesh.

JJ: I know that feeling. I know exactly what you are saying. There are bands all the time that I hear and I might not necessarily dig their records and you go to the live show and it’s something completely different. They can be an amazing live band and there is nothing like seeing an amazing band just kick ass on stage.

Neil: It’s not as if I have any worries about it. The ease of music, particularly the music we do, I’m 44 and I remember if you wanted to get a underground record you had to drive, and plan to go to the record store that had that kind of record. Now you can do that while sitting and waiting for the bus, on your phone. It’s kind of an embarrassment of riches. It is good, a lot of people have discovered a band like Clutch because of that, but sometimes in a lot of ways I think it can breed complacency to a degree.

JJ: Have you begun throwing down any ideas for new an album yet or have you just been focused on supporting Psychic Warfare?

Neil:  That’s what we’ve been doing and what we will continue to do leading up to January 1^st and then we are going to take off a considerable amount of time at the beginning of the year and buckle down and start writing the next record. We’ve got some riffs, but I think we write best when we drop everything and focus on that task.

JJ: In that time off are you planning on touring at all to support the Dunsmuir album? Dave mentioned the possibility of some festival dates.

Neil: I’m sure we would like to, it’s hard because Brads got Fu Manchu, Vinnie’s got all the things he’s doing, and I’ve got Clutch. To have those stars align is a rare event and I know I’m going to be busy but I would love to play those songs live.

JJ: I’d love to see them and I’m sure a lot of other people would too.  Changing gears a bit, being out of the Pittsburgh area as several of us here are, I am going to be at the gig on October 1^st when you guys are here, I know a lot of times when bands book gigs it is through an agent or on a tour package of some sort. But going to as many shows as I am fortunate to attend I’ve noticed that some bands come through more regularly and more frequently than some others do and I have seen you guys perform here several times in the last few years. Is there anything in particular that you like about it here?

Neil: There are a lot of cities for us to play, so when we book a show and the tour dates go out, usually one of the first things that happens is people complaining “why aren’t you playing in my home town?!” and you can only be in so many places so many times. Pennsylvania, generally speaking has been good for Clutch because that was the first place we played outside of Maryland. We played Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, York, Pittsburgh, and Philly. So there is a longer history for us in Pennsylvania in general.

JJ: That’s all I got for you, thank you for taking the time to talk to me this morning. Do have any parting comments or things you want to plug before I let you go?

Neil: Well, in regards to that show, it’s probably going to be the last time we are going to be in Pittsburgh for quite some time. Because we are going to take off a good part of 2017 to write the record. So get it while you can.

Tour dates and more information on Clutch can be found here.

More information on Dunsmuir can be found here.

And make sure to check out my interview with Dave Bone of Dunsmuir by clicking here.

“X-Ray Visions” By Clutch

“Crawling Chaos” By Dunsmuir

About Author

JJ Ulizio

JJ has been a contributing writer and huge asset to Empire and Empire Extreme since the very begining. He is always digging for new bands and has a true heart and desire to see the bands grow and succeed.

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