APPETITE FOR DISCUSSION
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SoulMonster
APPETITE FOR DISCUSSION
Welcome to Appetite for Discussion -- a Guns N' Roses fan forum!

Please feel free to look around the forum as a guest, I hope you will find something of interest. If you want to join the discussions or contribute in other ways then you need to become a member. We especially welcome anyone who wants to share documents for our archive or would be interested in translating or transcribing articles and interviews.

Registering is free and easy.

Cheers!
SoulMonster

Buckethead

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Buckethead Empty Buckethead

Post by Soulmonster Fri 13 Aug 2010 - 19:36

Buckethead NeWborder_zpsk3uwcgt1
BUCKETHEAD (BRIAN CARROLL)
Buckethead Bucketheadgnr

Real names/sseudonyms/former names:
Brian Patrick Carroll.

Date of birth:
May 13, 1969.

Band position:
Lead guitar.

Time with Guns N' Roses:
2000-2004.

Shows with the band:
{BUCKETHEADSHOWS}
Biography:
Brian Patrick Carroll (born May 13, 1969), known professionally as Buckethead, is an American guitarist and multi-instrumentalist who has worked within many genres of music. He has released 264 studio albums, four special releases and one EP. He has also performed on more than 50 other albums by other artists. His music spans such diverse areas as progressive metal, funk, blues, jazz, bluegrass, ambient, and avant-garde music.

Buckethead is famous for wearing a KFC bucket on his head, emblazoned with an orange bumper sticker reading FUNERAL in capital black block letters, and an expressionless plain white mask, which, according to Buckethead, was inspired by his seeing Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. At one point, he changed to a plain white bucket that no longer bore the KFC logo, but subsequently reverted to his trademark KFC bucket. He also incorporates nunchaku and robot dancing into his stage performances.

As an instrumentalist, Buckethead has received critical acclaim for his electric guitar playing, and is considered one of today's more innovative guitarists. He has been voted number 8 on a list in GuitarOne magazine of the "Top 10 Fastest Guitar Shredders of All Time" as well as being included in Guitar World's lists of the "25 all-time weirdest guitarists" and the "50 fastest guitarists of all time". He performs primarily as a solo artist, though he has collaborated extensively with a wide variety of high-profile artists such as Bill Laswell, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Iggy Pop, Les Claypool, Serj Tankian, Bill Moseley, Mike Patton, Viggo Mortensen, That 1 Guy, Bassnectar, and was a member of Guns N' Roses from 2000 to 2004. Buckethead has also written and performed music for major motion pictures, including: Saw II, Ghosts of Mars, Beverly Hills Ninja, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Last Action Hero, and contributed lead guitar to the track "Firebird" featured on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie soundtrack.(From Wikipedia, updated August 2016)

Quote:
Robin: In my absence they were looking to replace me and Josh Freese, the drummer at the time, had brought Buckethead in to essentially fill the slot I had left. They really liked him but he's kind of a stunt guitar player. He does a very specific thing and he has a real genius sensibility about him. But he rarely plays the same thing twice ever and when you're trying to cruise through "Nightrain" that just makes it a little (laughs) too different. So they needed someone to anchor the songs. They kept Buckethead to do what Buckethead does and they needed someone else to play alongside. [Ultimate Guitar, January 2014]

technically amazing[Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette, November 2002].

I don't think there is a better guitar-band out there at the moment. How are you going to top Buckethead and Robin Finck? Playing with those guys has been the zenith of my career

The band has been put in an untenable position by guitarist Buckethead and his untimely departure. During his tenure with the band Buckethead has been inconsistent and erratic in both his behavior and commitment - despite being under contract - creating uncertainty and confusion and making it virtually impossible to move forward with recording, rehearsals and live plans with confidence. His transient lifestyle has made it impossible for even his closest friends to have nearly any form of communication with him whatsoever. Last time I talked to Bucket, he called to tell me he had bought a bootleg DVD off eBay and how proud he was to be in Guns and how impressed he was with everyone's performance. Then, in February we got word from Brain that Bucket had called him and said he was back in Guns!? Apparently, according to Bucket he had been "Gone" but had turned himself around and was really excited to do Rio-Lisbon and a European tour. Somewhere in the following month things changed once again. According to those who have actually spoken with Buckethead it appears his plans were to secure a recording contract with Sanctuary Records which I encouraged my management to make available to him, quit GN'R and to use his involvement in the upcoming Guns release to immediately promote his individual efforts...Nice guy! (...) There is not a member of this camp that is not hurt, upset and ultimately disappointed by this event, and more to the point - if not this individual, certainly this individual's choices. Regardless of anyone's opinions of me and what I may or may not deserve, clearly the fans, individuals in this band, management, crew and our support group do not deserve this type of treatment. We as a whole, definitely feel that we afforded Bucket every accommodation perhaps so much so that it may be that we or more precisely, I may have done Guns a disservice and unintentionally allowed Guns to be put in this position. (...) I would also like to express my gratitude to those who chose to embrace Buckethead's role in Guns and support our new line up. We greatly appreciate Bucket's contributions and remain open to "discussions" as there are obviously several issues to resolve [Guns N' Roses Not Able to Perform at Rock in Rio [press release], Sanctuary Records Group, 2004]

Buckethead going away is the best thing that could've happened to the band. It's gonna be great. I won't get too far into that, because I don't really like slamming people or getting into people's personalities or anything like that. It's a really good thing [This tastes like pretzels - the Tommy Stinson interview, Here Today... Gone To Hell!, 2004]

I really have no idea why he decided to leave, but it didn't come out of left field because he's always come and gone. Even when I do see him, I don't know what he thinks [MTV, June 2004]

Brain, talking about Buckethead leaving: Pretty bad... He's my friend so it was very hard... I felt like I was losing a friend more then a band mate [ManetsBR interview, July 2010]

Being asked if he'd like to beat the crap out of Buckethead: No. I don’t see any reason why I would. At this point I have a hard time even accepting Buckethead is real. I’ve never met him [Slash Answers Your Questions, Guitar World June 2004 Issue]

Bucket's Bucket, you know, and he's kinda been in the same trip he's been before he was in, with us, and now he's out, he's kinda in a world of his own [Eddie Trunk interview, 2006]

He's the best! A true psycho. We never talk or think about what we are doing. Our motto when we play together is "Don't think... Feeeeel [By Steve Sun-Angell, November 2008]

I have no issues with Bucket. It's hard to tell what was real or not in things we were told by Merck. He's more than welcome to tour with us in some form or other provided we're both interested at the time and come to some type of reasonable terms. Personally I have a blast w/Bucket on tour and get a big kick out of the guy. A lot of feelings were hurt on this side of the fence in how things went down and unfortunately others used our silence and the public's not knowing for their own purposes at both Bucket's and our expense [htgth.com, December 12, 2008]

I'm pro Disney[land]. Go about once a year or so. Went w/Bucket a lot [chinesedemocracy.com, December 13, 2008]

Just recently hooked up with bucket again for that disk we did. He's awesome!!!!!!! [NewGNROldGnr interview with Brain, July 2010]

When we brought Bumblefoot in it was trying to find someone that would fill the void when Buckethead left. That is a very difficult task because there are not many people that do that type of thing [Citybeat.com, December 2011]

Buckethead and Paul Tobias are truly awesome [Facebook, January 2012]

I set Guns N' Roses up with Buckethead. We could do a whole separate podcast on Buckethead, man. [...] The other day, I was working with a band in the studio, talking about Buckethead, and I go, "You know dude, I've known Buckethead for 20 years". They were online and they were showing me pictures, "Is this him?". All these different pictures of guys. And, "No, no, no, no." They finally found an ad that he had posted, like when he was 16, [...] with a picture of him, but you can hardly see his face, and he was 16, so it hardly looks like him. But every photo it was like, "No, that's not him, that's a tall guy with long hair, and that's a tall guy with long hair, but not Buckethead". When I finally re-tracked him down -- I hadn't talked to him for five years -- the joke I had with Axl is that no matter who you mentioned that I knew, it became an ongoing joke, he'd go, "Yes, so my first girlfriend, Linda, that I met back in Indiana when I was 14", and I'd go, "Oh yeah, I know Linda!". It got that weird almost, so he, "Yeah, sure kid, you know everybody". When Robin Finck left to rejoin Nine Inch Nails, we were looking for a guitar player, had auditioned a few people, and weren't really sure what we would do, and one day I walked into the studio and Axl goes,  "Buckethead! Do you know him?" And I go, "I've known him since 1991, man!" And he's like, "I knew you'd know him! How do we get hold of him?" "Last I talked to him he was hanging up in San Francisco with the Primus crew. Let me call my buddy Dave, the manager of Primus, Dave Leftwood (?)." So I called Dave and the first thing I asked was, "Do you think Buckethead would be into this, he's such a quirky, weird, artiste?" And Dave goes, "Yeah, I think he is tired of the starving artist routine, I think he is ready to make a living". It's funny, but when I talked to Buckethead on the phone the first time [...something about Buckethead asking Josh about not referring to him as 'Brian'] All his friends call him Buckethead. [...] The first time I met him [...] in 1990 or 1991, my friend Warren calls me, "Dude you have to come own and meet this guy, he's a freak, he's incredible, lightning fast, this weird funk-slap style, he's like completely outshining Flea" [...] "He really wants to meet you, he is really impressed that you used to play drums at Disneyland!". Because he is a Disneyland freak. [...] My dad conducted the Disneyland band when I was a kid, [...] and he still does this [...]. And Buckethead was like, "Oh my god!" When I was a kid I played my first gig for three years in a cover band every weekend, at Disneyland, when I was 12 till I was 15, so Buckethead knew that, Warren had told him that, and he was like "Oh my god, my dream is to work at Disneyland" [...] So I didn't see Buckethead for years until I connected with him for the Guns N' Roses thing. [...] He is such a trip, man. He kinda jammed with Guns N' Rsoes 2 or 3 times before he got the job. He played and got a call back and came again. [...] To the audition he came without the stuff [mask and bucket] on. A longs story's short, he was really nervous one night, and I told my dad, "Dad, you should really come up and meet some of the guys tonight [...]". My dad had got in a car accident a few months prior to that, and Axl sent this really nice...kinda as a nice gesture and as a joke -- 'cause he is a funny dude -- he sent this nice, like giant, expensive skateboard and signed it, and made some joke about maybe you should try riding this for a while [...]. So I was like, "Dad, come up and meet Axl and meet Buckethead, he is such huge Disney freak." And Buckethead knew my dad was Mr. Disney. So that night, Buckethead was up there, and we were going to do some more playing, "Man, I am really nervous, I'm really nervous about playing tonight," and I go, "Dude, you are all good, you basically got the gig. You wouldn't be asked to come down the fourth time." "No, no, not so much that! Your dad is there!" [PodOmatic, April 2013].

I love Buckethead, but one of the funniest things about him is his love for Disneyland. [...] When I first met him, I go, "So Warren says you like Disneyland, you go there often", "Yeah", "When was the last time you went there?", "I went there on Monday." It was, like, two days ago. [...] "You know what I do there sometimes, man, I've recorded my own versions of the soundtracks to certain rides with me playing guitar and I go in there with my own walkman or whatever and when I go to the "Haunted Mansion" I listen to me playing the 'Haunted Mansion', and when I go to 'Pirates of the Caribbean' I listen to me playing 'Pirates of the Caribbean'". And I am like, "Shit, man," sitting there, trying not to crack up, "That's cool!" And I go, "What do you do on 'Space Mountain', man?" I was trying to trip him up because there is no music on 'Space Mountain'. "Ah, there's no themes off that ride so it's just me going off, man, it's just me soloing." [Laughter] He's the best, I love him. [PodOmatic, April 2013].

Last time I saw Bucket was in 99, he told me he really dug my Hands album & asked if I'd sing on his music, gave me his #... called a few times, never answered - then heard he had joined GNR, aaaaah. [...] [Shackler's Revenge] was already written when I joined [GN'R], and Bucket had already left, so unfortunately we never got to make music 'together' ;)Hopefully we can some day Smile[REDDIT AMA, December 2013].

Buckethead NeWborder_zpsk3uwcgt1
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Post by Blackstar Sun 29 Mar 2020 - 5:21

An interview with Buckethead in Guitar Player, November 1996:
Destroy All Monsters
Buckethead's Robotic Revenge


by James Rotondi

Thunder and lightning rip through the foyer of the Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, flashing a terrible light on the domed ceiling and the corpse that dangles from it on the end of a noose. Everyone present lets out a bloodcurdling scream - almost everyone that is. A six-foot-plus, long-haired, guitar-wielding robot wearing a white mask and a fried chicken bucket on his head - Buckethead - alone stands unfazed. But then he's probably been on this ride at least 500 times, mostly at night, when he can slip past the guards and enter the mansion undetected to sit in with the Haunted Mansion house band. (Buckethead claims their invisible pianist taught him how to play Chopin's "Funeral March.") From Haunted Mansion to Pirates of the Caribbean, Buckethead likes weird places and strange people. Maybe that's why his virtuosic post-metal psycho-shred has been tapped by eccentric collaborators from Bootsy Collins to John Zorn to Bill Laswell to Jonas Heilborg to Iggy Pop. Or maybe they're just really scared of Buckethead and will do anything he tells them to.

On this particular day, it's Buckethead's alter ego, mild-mannered Brian Carroll, who roams the dark corridors of the Haunted Mansion. Like Peter Parker to Spider Man or Bruce Banner to the Hulk, Carroll is the flipside of this freakish creation. A likable, guileless, extremely self effacing 27-year-old, Carroll molded his childhood fascination with hardcore movies, martial arts, Michael Jackson, Disneyland and heavy metal guitar into a playing style and onstage persona that shatters the stereotype of the babesnaggin' guitar-jock cool guy with the same force that it explodes the harmonic and textural possibilities of speed guitar. Like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, he's on a super-hero's mission not to harm, but to help. He dreams of constructing his own version of Disneyland for the children of the world - Bucketheadland.

With two new records on the shelves - jungle beat driven The Day of the Robot on Sub-Metal and Giant Robot on NTT [2633 Lincoln Blvd., Suite 405, Santa Monica, CA 90406] - plus an album with Jazz drummer Tony Williams featuring Ornette Coleman and Pharoah Sanders, an upcoming project with fellow guitar virtuoso Shawn Lane and an all-Disney theme for Zorn's Avant label. Buckethead is poised at the guillotine edge of progressive rock guitar. Inspired by forward-thinking buddies like Laswell, Praxis drummer Brain and the DJ outfit Invisible Scratch Pickles, he's genetically mutating metal guitar into bizarre hybrids with hip hop, jungle and ambient music. Sprawling metropolis and thatched villages beware. The time has come to destroy all monsters.

The suburban room where Carroll grew up near Los Angeles (about a half-hour from Disneyland) says it all: Bruce Lee, Michael Jackson and Leatherface posters adorn the walls. On the ample bookshelf, words on Paganini, Slonimsky and Glenn Gould are slipped between magic books, martial arts material and slasher flick cornpendiums. Robot toys with laser eyes stare from every corner, and there's a futuristic rack of CD's boasting titles from hip hoppers the Wu-Tang Chan, techno/trip hop buddies Chemical Brothers, Yngwie's Rising Force, and the sound tracks to Godzilla and War of the Gargantuans. It's clear that visual stimulation is every bit as important to Buckethead's guitar playing as the music he listens to and the theory he's absorbed.

Onstage with Praxis - with Brain and bassist Laswell - or with his band Giant Robot, Buckethead moves with robotic precision, but he imagines pictures in his head as he plays. "It's just more fun that way," he explains, fiddling nervously with a Giant Robot doll. "For the most part, I think in terms of amusement park rides and monster and robot movies. I'll watch a movie without the sound and I'll play to the picture. I would watch the death scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre where Leatherface slams the steel door, and a low, creepy drone comes in. I would use that drone to solo over, the sound of that guy's death. I guess that's kind of bad, but I was into it. The whole scene is so vicious and powerful, it gives me a certain feeling. When I put myself in that position, I like to tape what I'm playing and feeling, because of what it brings out in me."

As a kid, Brian's mom nicknamed him "Boo" because of his obsession with monsters and robots, and he took karate lessons from the age of ten. By the time he was 13 he'd picked up guitar under the spell of Angus Young and Randy Rhoads whose classic "Crazy Train" riff and 32nd-note-pull-off runs are echoed on Bucketheadland's "Park Theme." (The Japan-only release is available through Avant/Disc Union, 2-13-1 Iidabashi Chlyoda-Ku, Tokyo 102, Japan, or direct from Buckethead.) "I was really into sports, but I liked guitar because it was something you could do all by yourself," he recalls. Yngwie Malmsteen's early recordings, some of them available only as Japanese imports - like many of Buckethead's albums - were a major revelation. "When Yngwie came out he was totally in your face; you could tell he just wanted to destroy," Carroll raves. "It's so dramatic, and that aspect of it was as cool as the speed. Plenty of people play fast, but they don't set it up like he does. Like the way 'Far Beyond the Sun' builds and builds until there's a break, and then the guitar rips into it - the payoff is so great. Yngwie had that fire, and even now I'm trying to use that to motivate me. The fact that he hasn't changed is pretty rad too. He doesn't care what people think and I admire that."

Sitting across from Buckethead as he fires off four fingered diminished-scale tapping licks at breakneck speed is humbling. But he makes it look incredibly easy, as if technical wizardry were second nature. It's partly the result of keen observation. "I can usually understand what someone's doing pretty quickly," he nods. "In martial arts, I can see why Bruce Lee was so much better than everyone else, because of the way he moved his body. It was in the way he held his arms, and all those little details. When I saw Yngwie or Paul Gilbert or Shawn Lane, I could see quickly how they did it, even though it took a lot of time to actually play it. I looked at Shawn Lane's hands to see how he picks, because technically I've never seen anybody more efficient. Of course the real ideas are in his head. When he plays he's always looking out into space, because he's going for the sound. But I still had to ask myself, 'What is he doing to get that sound!'"

Back at Disneyland, the Rolling Thunder roller coaster is suddenly pitched into the darkness as it flies through a miniature mountain range, and it's occupants - mostly teenage girls - let out a communal shriek that subsides for a moment when the car reemerges into daylight. Relief turns to horror, however, when they notice that Buckethead, seated in the front car, has zipped his jacket up over his head and is waving his arms in the air as if the tunnel has just decapitated him.

Reunited with terra firma moments later, Buckethead draws a parallel between high-speed roller coasters and his own careening 32nd-note phrases. It's an apt analogy. Buck's peaks and troughs come from his weirdo scale forms and note choices, including minor seconds. Surely Leatherface didn't teach him that. "I got a lot of mileage from Slonimsky's Melodic Patterns," he says of the late musicologist's classic text. "There's a lot of really disjointed stuff in there, like far-apart intervals and octave displacement [the transposition of certain notes in a phrase or chromatic line an octave above or below their normal scale position]. There's also a section on quadratonal arpeggious - that sounded pretty crazy."

In addition to Slonimsky, lessons with Mr. Big's Paul Gilbert and classical guitar studies sharpened Buckethead's technique, right-hand/left-hand independence and theory chops. He's also picked up a thing or two from country instructional books by G.I.T.'s Steve Trovato, and he's plundered Danny Gatton and Albert Lee videos to learn, uh, chicken picking. These days, though, he says he's more inclined to leave the books at home and trust his ears. "I just love the sound the hammering stuff makes," he insists. "It isn't about using four fingers on both hands. That's just the technique I use to get there. It's not even that tough to do technically, but the way it sounds is so bizarre. When Shawn Lane plays fast, it's like a swarm of notes; it really creates a texture." Suddenly, Buckethead's face drops and he goes quiet. "Captain Eo," he gasps, as we approach Disneyland's 3-D theater. "Huge influence."

He's not kidding. Two-thirds of the way through the film, for which the audience views stunning effects through 3-D glasses, Michael Jackson's singing and dancing - the biggest influence on Buckethead's stage moves - has turned all but a handful of the bad space guys into orange-clad, love-happy dance fiends. Only the Medusa-meets-Siouxie Sioux evil queen, played by Anjelica Huston, remains to be converted to the light. Buckethead gets fidgety. "This is the best part," he whispers, as the theme music goes into a robotic drum-machine-and-bass breakdown that Jackson moonwalks to with killer finesse. The groove uses exactly the kind of heavily syncopated breakbeat and funk bass line Buckethead exploited on his early Japanese releases, and the outer-space funk vibe is straight-up Bootsy Collins (the legendary P-Funk bassist and Buckethead's frequent collaborator and intergalactic mentor). After getting a copy of one of Buckethead's homemade videos, Bootsy, with fellow P-Funk vet Bernie Worrell on keys, became part of the first Praxis ensemble, which included Brain and DJ Afrika Baby Nam. The group debuted with the Laswell-produced Axiom album, 1992's Transmutation. Later, Bootsy produced Buckethead's first solo album.

In '94 Buckethead recorded Dreamatorium [Subharmonic, 180 Varick St., New York, NY 10014] under the name Death Cube K (an anagram for "Buckethead" coined by Keyboard magazine editor Tom "Doc" Darter). The album was a dark, quasi-ambient duet with Laswell that highlighted his cinematic flair, clean-toned melancholy and improvisational sensitivity. "I practice a lot, but when I'm improvising I don't have to think about any of that," Buckethead explains. "In basketball, you shoot 50 baskets in practice so that in the game, it's instant. As long as you have the control, you can just do it - bam." Before Dreamatorium, he appeared on 1993's Octave of the Holy Innocents [Day Eight US, 532 LaGuardia Place #421, New York, NY 10003] with jazz bassist Jonas Hellborg and drummer Michael Shrieve. There his clean tone has a plucky quality that fits in nicely with the album's dry, crisp grooves. He's also appeard on Henry Kaiser's Hope You Like Our New Direction [Reckless], Anton Fier's Dreamspeed [Avant], Bootsy's Zillatron, Will Ackerman's The Opening of Doors [Windham Hill], Derek Bailey and John Zorn's Company 91 [Incus], the Axiom Funkcronomicon collection, Jon Hassell's Dressing for Pleasure [Warner Bros.], and the soundtrack to The Last Action Hero. "I listen more and hear things a lot better because of being around all these incredible people," Buckethead nods. "That education is the best. It's insane, really."

When it comes to piloting a rocket ship or roller coaster, Buckethead is untouchable, but admittedly he's no expert on gear, and his take on guitar stores is succinct: "It's like a slaughterhouse in there, with all those guitar carcasses hanging around. You could do a jig in there." If pressed, he'll 'fess up to prizing an '80s Ibanez X-Series Flying V-style ax with a Schaller floating tremolo and custom egg-yolk-colored double-coils (one white, one yellow) designed by Steve Blucher at DiMarzio. He often plays a blue ESP M2 Strat-shaped custom with a Floyd Rose, but he complains that the guitar is too small for his tall frame. (At a recent show in San Fransisco with Mike Keneally, he accidentally snapped the headstock off the ESP after dropping it in frustration.) On several Laswell projects, he experimented with a '59 Les Paul Custom. He generally uses .009 D'Addario nickel-wrap strings.

While his phrasing is unmistakable, a truly personal, distinctive tone has always eluded Buckethead. Possibly his best recorded sound was on Praxis's Metatron, on which Axiom house guitarist Nicky Skopelitis hooked him up with a Wells 17 1/2-watt head designed by gear wizard Matt Wells. The Wells amp wired through a Harry Kolbe 4x12 cab produced a full, bright tone that was particularly effective on Buck's Eddie Hazel-ish auto-filtered clean chords and psychedelic shred-blues passages. It also tracked his hyperspeed leads and trill-punctuated chunk rhythms equally well. But Buckethead, a fan of solid-state gear's even response and good tracking, is just as likely to turn up at a gig with a Peavey Reknown combo. He also records with VHT Pittbull 50-watt heads, and for a recent "buckethead & Friends" show at Manhattan's Wetlands he rented two Mesa Dual Rectifier full stacks and ran them stereo. "That sounded soooo gnarly," he gushes. "I was freaking out." Then again, the devastating tones on Sacrifist were recorded direct through a Zoom multi-effector. Go figure.

For all those nightmarish, chandelier-smashing swirls, Buckethead plays his characteristic tapping flourish through a Roland SE-50 multi-effector set to harmonize the part in four ascending half-step voices above pitch, essentially forming a cluster above or below each note. Apart from that, his effects are limited to a ProCo Rat, and Alesis MidiVerb II for echo, occasional wah and a recently acquired Lexicon JamMan for looping. "I think in loops a lot now," he says, "because of rap and dance music. Sometimes instead of using a harmonizer, I'll take one of those tapped things and record it four times, moving it up a half-step each time. You can get some really dense harmony that way."

It's getting late, and Space Mountain, the last ride of the night, beckons. Chowing greasy fries in the shadow of the Matterhorn, a stone's throw from Tomorrowland, Carroll squirms slightly at the thought that he's unmasking Buckethead for this interview. Like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne, Buckethead has always tried to protect his anonymity, though he feels that it's finally time to learn to coexist with the monster. Buckethead, the story goes, was raised in a chicken coop. But Carroll, who first performed in character regularly with his old band the Deli Creeps, remembers a parallel genesis.

"I had just seen Halloween Part IV," he recalls of a dark night in 1989, "and as soon as it was over I went into a store across the street and said, 'Do you have any Michael Myers masks?' They had a white mask, which really wasn't like a Michael Myers mask, but I liked it a lot. That night I was eating chicken out of a bucket that my dad brought home. It wasn't a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket either. It said 'Deli Chicken' on the outside. I was eating it, and I put the mask on and then put the bucket on my head and went to the mirror. I just said, 'Buckethead. That's Buckethead right there.' It was just one of those things. After that, I wanted to be that thing all the time."

The combination of Buckethead the friendly ax murderer with Buckethead the guitar wizard and robotic stage performer was practically instantaneous. "I thought it made sense with the way I play," he explains. "I play all this weird stuff, but if I look just like me, it just isn't going to work. But if I'm, like, this weird freak..." If anything, Carroll feels that becoming Buckethead has allowed him to express himself more freely than he would aas unassuming Brian Carroll. "It opened the door to endless possibilities," he concurs as fireworks erupt in the Tomorrowland sky. "I can work anything into that character and make it totally work: all the things I love in life, like Disney, Giant Robot, Texas Chainsaw. Even though I'm wearing a mask and have a character, it's more real, more about what I'm really like, because I'm too shy to let a lot of things out. Every reason I became Buckethead and am Buckethead has to do with the way I live. It's not because I thought it'd be successful. I never use anything that isn't part of what I really loved as a child or love right now."

You can contact Buckethead and purchase CDs directly by writing to Buckeheadland, Suite 545, 976 W. Foothill Blvd., Claremont, CA 91711, or emailing to buckethdlnd@aol.com.
Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20021213235653/http://www.gnrunlimited.com/articles/gp-11-96.html
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Buckethead Empty Re: Buckethead

Post by Soulmonster Sun 29 Mar 2020 - 5:27

That was interesting. Such a weird fellow.

I was actually watching a show of his yesterday:

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Buckethead Empty Re: Buckethead

Post by Blackstar Sun 29 Mar 2020 - 5:32

Soulmonster wrote:That was interesting. Such a weird fellow.

I was actually watching a show of his yesterday:

I've never watched any of his shows. Maybe I'll check this one later.
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Buckethead Empty Re: Buckethead

Post by Blackstar Sun 29 Mar 2020 - 5:35

Another article in Revelry, November 19, 1999. I guess it was before or around the time he joined GnR, but there's no mention in the interview.
EDIT: It seems that the reference to Buckethead in the February 3, 2000 Rolling Stone article with the Axl interview was a post-interview update and it wasn't mentioned in the interview which was conducted in November 1999.
Folks just call him Buckethead

By Jon Hebert

I've seen my share of weird. A shirtless, tattooed swamp boy with a wireless headset microphone running around the Bayou spouting freestyle rap...Mike Patton of Mr. Bungle suffocating on stage in a rubber burn victim mask for the sake of his profession...thirty year old men decked out as a KISS cover band playing to a crowd of ten Jerry Springer panel rejects...yes indeed, I've seen my share of weird.

But never, I mean never has something come across my desk so absurd yet so eerily dignified as this guy. It's times like this that my brain literally stops itself and asks, "What is this?" and then proceeds to drown in its complexity, until the thing itself is a reflection of your very soul.

Alright, I'll just come out and say the word Buckethead. He's a `90s guitar virtuoso, long rumored to have been Steve Vai, who wears as his costume a Michael Meyers mask (from the movie Halloween) and a Colonel Sanders (from KFC) bucket on his head. The guy is six feet tall, plays guitar like he's ringing a bell and is the alter ego, brainchild if you will, of L.A. resident Brian Carrol. Sorry to blow his cover, but that one fact keeps me grounded in the face of something so incredibly out of this world.

With a discography spanning more years than I'd like to admit I've been in college, Buckethead's first big public display was joining funk-hybrid pioneers Primus onstage during last year's Ozzfest tour. Long a collaborator and fan of Buckethead, Primus' Les Claypool appears on the first video from Buckethead's latest album, "Monsters and Robots."

"Monsters" is a hard concoction of funk, jazz, metal, DJ scratching, spoken word, samples and genre defying beats and rhythms laid down through an all star cast that includes Claypool, funkster Bootsie Collins and famed producer Bill Laswell. The album lacks lyrics in the standard sense, save a spoken word piece delivered by Bootsie, and the albums opening sample of "I can't ever stop working hard" just about says it all for Buckethead's always unique approach to the music world.

Never one to show his face, or even talk for that matter, Buckethead is rumored to have sprung from the remains of a chicken coop and channels the energy of slain chickens into his music through his KFC headgear. While in his coop, a drive-in theater across the road filled his head with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Japanese sci-fi flicks, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and assorted Godzilla movies. This accounts for his frequent portrayal as a larger than life monster robot romping through skyscrapers in his videos and even in a special edition Buckethead comic book created by "Sandman" cover artist Dave McKean.

Buckethead has worked with everyone from Bernie Worrell to Primus to the speed-funk supergroup Praxis, and his break came after he moved to Los Angeles with his group the Deli Creeps. After becoming somewhat of a cult status on the L.A. club scene, Buckethead was introduced to avante-garde producer John Zorne through Mr. Bungle's Trey Spruance.

Zorn encouraged Buckethead to take part in an improvisation show where musicians were randomly paired and set on their own to jam. In the midst of landing a major label deal, the improv show gave Buckethead a quick change of heart.

"Zorn pulls off his music, does everything he likes to, and he still makes enough money to live and play his music exactly the way he wants. Inside, I knew that was the way I wanted to do things" the masked one says.

After the fest, Buckethead sabotaged his major label deal and opted for anonymity. This would prove to be fruitful in years to come, as he made his way into the mutant speedfunk world of Praxis and the highly acclaimed "Transmutations" album.

Since then his career has been a snowball of finger lickin' good works, including soundtracks to "Mortal Combat" and "Last Action Hero," as well as various Sega video game commercials. He can now be found on the road with Primus, making a stop by the State Palace Theater on Nov. 22, and he has a video on MTV for "The Ballad of Buckethead," complete with chickens and bizzare 3-D animation.

Still I am left with the childlike thought that Buckethead could be someone famous seeking the ultimate level of anonymity. I narrowed down my top choices as to who he might be, and came up with Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), John Frusciante (Red Hot Chilli Peppers), Adrian Belew, Steve Vai (never believe a rumor) and even the ghost of Jimmy Hendrix.

No matter who he is or how he goes about his craft, Buckethead has touched one of society's nerves by taking a firm hold of the mystic and incorporating it into himself. His surreal alter-ego can be seen as a comment on celebrity, the reality of the human condition, or the ultimate portrayal of mankind's ultimate self-possessiveness.

But no matter what, he remains, in a good sense, weird.

Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071014031335/http:/gnrsource.com/articles/1999/11-18revelry.htm


Last edited by Blackstar on Sun 29 Mar 2020 - 6:43; edited 1 time in total
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Buckethead Empty Re: Buckethead

Post by Blackstar Sun 29 Mar 2020 - 5:41

And another one. Alternative Press, February 28, 2000:
United Mutations

By Jason Pettigrew

Buckethead is a weird mofo. The kids love to see him shred while the avant-underground applauds his every metacarpal maneuver on the fretboard. Nobody in recent memory can claim a weirderfan base than this mysterious character under a chicken-bucket hat and plastic kabuki mask.

And mysterious is how he keeps it. At a recent Cleveland show opening for his old friends Primus, the six-stringed samurai stays sequestered backstage, choosing to have his longtime buddy Herbie do the talking for him. "He gets frustrated because he never thinks to say the things he wants to say," says Herbie, a tall guy with long curly hair and huge hands. "It sounds corny, but he really prefers to let his music express his feelings."

Buckethead's weird journey began as a member of Bay Area miscreants the Deli Creeps. The Creeps were buddies with kitchen-sink rockers Mr. Bungle, whose then-producer John Zorn was impressed by B-head's talents. Zorn introduced the guitarist to the avant-improv set focusing around British guitarist Derek Bailey's Company Week festivals. Soon, producer/bassist Bill Laswell got wind of Buckethead's shred aesthetic and enlisted the guitarist to rip it up with funk luminaries Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell on the Praxis album (Transmutation). Bucket's notoriety has expanded ever since, with recordings ranging from indulgent guitar histrionics (Bucketheadland), acoustic purity (Colma), and forboding ambience usually recorded under the name Death Cube K (rearrange the letters, kids).

On his latest release, Monsters And Robots (Higher Octave/Virgin), Buckethead throws down collision-course fusions of metal, free jazz, abstract electronica, scratch-funk and drum & bass percolations. You get the feeling that although he has the moves-as well as the carpal tunnel syndrome-he wants nothing to do with the poodle-metal speed-demon bores on the covers of faded issues of Guitar Player.

"Totally," says Herbie. "He's into exploring new things, but only if he's into it. He just reacts to a style and lets his instinct carry him. He'll hear something, and it'll just click." Herbie looks down at his watch and apologizes. "Dude, I've got to run, he's expecting me."

Later during Primus' set, Buckethead comes out to play "The Story Of Buckethead," a high-octane narrative from the new album written and sung by Primus frontman Les Claypool. I dodge flying bodies in the mosh pit to get close to the stage, and I notice that Monsieur Boo-ket's hands are stunningly huge. The long curly hair under the bucket looks familiar, and it seems that he's wearing Herbie's watch. Then, as though he's made a telepathic connection to what I'm thinking, the song ends and he's off the stage in a nanosecond. Speed kills, but in some crowds it just merely astonishes.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071014031340/http:/gnrsource.com/articles/2000/02-28bh.htm

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Buckethead Empty Re: Buckethead

Post by Blackstar Fri 12 Feb 2021 - 15:26

Interview with Buckethead in Rolling Stone, October 13, 2005:
Buckethead Knows Chicken

Eccentric guitarist teams with System of a Down singer on new album

The anonymous, mostly mute guitarist Buckethead is one of the more over-the-top, mysterious figures in rock. Sporting a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on his head and a white mask over his face, the artist has claimed in his rare interviews (and online biography) that he was raised in a chicken coop by . . . chickens. The birds scratched him so severely that he must forever cover his face. And the KFC bucket, you see, is a kind of homage to all the chickens fried for food, whose souls Buckethead channels whenever he picks up his axe.

So the story goes. What we actually know for certain about the guitarist is the following: Formerly known as Brian Carroll, he started out in the San Francisco metal/funk outfit the Deli Creeps, a local cult success that split up before releasing an album. Beginning with 1992's Bucketheadland, Buckethead went on to release a handful of solo efforts. The KFC man also recorded a track with Bootsy Collins, played several live gigs with Primus and toured with the prog-rock trio's bassist Les Claypool. And, of course, there was his stint as a member of the reformed (if short-lived) Guns n' Roses, beginning in 2000.

And now Buckethead returns, with Enter the Chicken, due October 25th, produced by System of a Down singer Serj Tankian. And unlike his mostly instrumental efforts, this album features guest turns from a diverse bunch, billed as "Buckethead and Friends," including Tankian, spoken-word poet Saul Williams, opera singer Ani Maldjian and Death by Stereo's Efrem Schulz.

Tankian first met the guitarist at Ozzfest in 1999, shortly before Buckethead's four-year stint with Guns n' Roses, and the two hit it off. "We ate Indian food at my coop a couple times. He has always been very fun to be around," Buckethead says, answering questions through his rubber hand-puppet Herbie. "I don't talk so good, but Herbie communicated to him a bunch of stuff." Last year, after hearing demos of Buckethead's latest work, Tankian offered to produce the album and release it through his own Serjical Strike label.

Enter the Chicken was not planned as a vocal album, but as the project evolved Tankian began recruiting artists. One of Buckethead's great thrills was the chance to work with a singer he's admired for years, the Iranian-born, Indian-raised Azam Ali of world music group Vas, who guests on the ethereal "Coma." "She has a disembodied voice I like a lot," he says. Old friend Maximum Bob, Buckethead's former Deli Creeps bandmate, also makes an appearance, on the operatic thrasher "The Hand." "He just went off stunner-style, like only he can do," Buckethead says. "He was scalding in there."

Enter the Chicken closes with an instrumental showcase for Buckethead's own virtuosity. The six-and-a-half-minute "Nottingham Lace" gallops along to some of his most melodic licks. Naturally, his inspiration comes from the barnyard: "When you let the hens have access to the garden, you can get a similar feeling," Buckethead/Herbie says, obscurely. "You just try to keep that feeling inside you. And then when it's time, you can go there, in your mind and in your heart, and just let go, not think."

A Disney Land fan -- he hopes to be buried at the theme park -- Buckethead has often created soundtracks for his own, dream amusement park, Bucketheadland (also the name of his Web site). His tour, dubbed Disney World to Disney Land, will kick off in Orlando October 21st. So how many KFC buckets does he need to take along on the road?

"There are different buckets for different needs, and it depends on the climate," he reveals. "I try to use one the whole time, and this one has lasted many years. For the tour coming up, I might have to retire it to my bucket cemetery. But it is a tough one to let go."

Buckethead tour dates:

10/21: Orlando, FL, Social
10/22: Atlanta, Variety Playhouse
10/23: Asheville, NC, Orange Peel
10/25: Philadelphia, World Cafe Live
10/26: Falls Church, VA, State Theatre
10/27: Towson, MD, Recher Theatre
10/30: Boston, Paradise Rock Club
10/31: Hartford, CT, Webster Theater
11/1: New York, Bowery Ballroom
11/2: Cleveland, Odeon Concert Club
11/3: Cincinnati, 20th Century Theatre
11/4: Detroit, Magic Bag
11/5: Chicago, Metro
11/7: Lawrence, KS, Granada Theater
11/8: Tulsa, OK, Cain's Ballroom
11/10: Denver, Bluebird Theatre
11/11: Boulder, CO, Fox Theatre
11/12: Ft. Collins, CO, Aggie Theatre
11/13: Aspen, CO, Belly Up Tavern
11/15: Salt Lake City, UT, In the Venue
11/18: Flagstaff, AZ, Orpheum Theater
11/20: San Diego, 4th and B
11/21: Los Angeles, El Rey Theatre
11/22: Anaheim, House Of Blues

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