#EverTuneTV Episode 010: Steve Stevens

#EverTuneTV welcomes Steve Stevens, guitarist, songwriter, right-hand man to the great Billy Idol, Grammy Award winner and all around badass.

In this candid conversation, Steve discusses the art of creating memorable guitar parts, the influence of classic rock legends, and translating complex studio arrangements to live performances. He also talks about EverTune’s role in his latest recordings and performances at major events like the Ozzy induction and the Super Bowl. Excerpted from EverTune TV Episode 101 with Matt Blackett.

❯❯❯ Time Stamps ❮❮❮
00:03 Intro
00:39 The relationship between a great singer and a great guitarist
03:42 Philosophy on creating memorable guitar parts
05:55 "White Wedding" and the power of the intro
07:02 Influences for song structure (Beatles, Sones, Kinks), melody, lyrics, and arrangement
08:43 How guitar parts can drive an arrangement
10:04 How Jimmy Page and others informed SS's crafting and layering of guitar parts
13:26 Translating studio layers into a live performance
15:01 Creating the middle section to "Eyes Without a Face"
19:31 Using EverTune on The Cage EP
23:52 Using EverTune for the Ozzy induction, the Super Bowl, and outdoor festivals
25:56 What's next, new record, working with Billy Idol, etc

❯❯❯ Steve Stevens online ❮❮❮
➜ Main Website
stevestevensguitar.com
➜ Social Media
facebook.com/stevestevensofficial
instagram.com/stevestevens
youtube.com/channel/UCoGEp_hwl9M20ynUmVSd4cQ

❯❯❯ Related Videos ❮❮❮

❯❯❯ Interview Transcript ❮❮❮

Matt (00:03) Hey everyone, welcome back to #EverTuneTV. I am your host, Matt Blackett, and today is a good day on #EverTuneTV, because I'm joined by Steve Stevens. Guitarist, songwriter, right hand man to the great Billy Idol, Grammy Award winner and all around badass. Is that pretty much it? Did I cover everything there Steve? Steve (00:27) Yeah, how much do I owe you for that? Matt (00:29) Well, thank you [...] Steve (00:30) That's pretty glowing. Yeah. Great. Matt (00:31) Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to #EverTuneTV. Steve (00:34) Yeah. My pleasure.

Matt (00:36) All right, let's jump into this thing here. Matt (00:39) There's just something about the combination of a great singer and a great guitarist. I'm thinking about Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Brian May and Freddie Mercury. You and Billy have always had that kind of chemistry in my mind. What can you say about that? The whole guitarist-singer thing, and what advice would you give to a guitarist who really wants to support a singer? Steve (01:11) Well, I think in the case of Billy and myself, I was never waiting for three minutes [...] for my moment of glory, for the solo. I think because I grew up in an era where it was band guys, even dating back to the first time I saw the Elvis 68 Comeback Special. I was with my aunt and [...] it's big event, you know, my aunt, my mom, and they were all swooning over Elvis, and me and my dad are going “yeah, but what about that guitar player, man?” [...] “I want to be that guy.” And that's a blueprint that kind of [...] dark, mysterious guy behind the singer. Steve (01:57) But I'm really comfortable in that role. As you mentioned, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, I've always wanted to contribute to the sum of the parts rather than [...] I don’t know, I just never had the desire to be a frontman. It's never been my thing. Steve (02:23) So, I'm a band guy. I love the whole process of it. From songwriting to rehearsing, and being the foil on stage, it's just always been something that I understood. And also, I'm as interested in what the lyric is saying as I am and in what guitar sound I should have, because that's my blueprint. That's my roadmap. What am I trying to say? And I'm trying to take life's experiences, channel that through the guitar into what the end result should be. And I think that's why I've lasted for over 40 years with Billy because I don't have my own agenda and I love the process of of creating music together. Matt (03:23) I think that's exactly right. And that's a great answer. And like a lot of these guitarists we're talking about, you're all very supportive of the tune. You're very supportive of the singer and yet you all create parts that are super memorable. And you've certainly done that. Like on some of your most famous tunes, the very first thing we hear is guitar, right?

Matt (03:47) I'm thinking about Rebel Yell and White Wedding in particular. Those are super ear catching riffs and they’ve become iconic. So when you were doing that, did you have any idea at the time that those riffs would be so permanently linked to you? I mean, one second in the whole world knows it’s you. Steve (04:10) Well, that was [...] we always called it “The Flag”. We had the song structure, and when I say we, I have to include our producer Keith Forsey who worked intrinsically with Billy and myself on all those classic records. So we'd have the song: gotta have a great chorus, gotta have a great verse, bridge, guitar solo -- if it's needed, IF it’s needed -- and then we had to have the flag, which was [...] You know, we came from the days of FM radio and the guy [...] needed a bit of music, because the DJ was going to introduce the song. And we always looked at it as like “we have to let them know the cavalry's coming” or something, and that always required a guitar figure. Sometimes a figure that had nothing to do with the rest of the song. That's in the case of Rebel Yell. It was a guitar figure. It was actually a guitar exercise that I had from listening to fingerstyle guitar players like John Fahey, Leo Kottke, as unrelated as that would seem. So we'd stick that on. And in the case of White Wedding, just a little harmonic, 16th note, guitar figure. It's just an identifiable little signature. It's like your logo and your little calling card at the front end of the song. So we said “Yeah, we need a flag”, you know, at the front end of the song.

Matt (05:55) Yeah. Well, the White Wedding one is it's just an amazing one, because a lot of guitarists, myself included, stumbled upon that. Like, “I wonder what would happen if I just drag my finger down the string when I'm picking it” and you realize, “oh, all these harmonics jump out and everything”, and it's like one of the coolest things ever. But you kind of got there first, right? You sort of own that thing now. And so, I have to hand it to you for that one man, that is your lick. And, yeah, we all salute you for that. Matt (06:25) So that that is the power of the intro. You know what I mean? Like you're talking about “You need a great chorus”. I think you need a great bridge in a lot of songs as well. But if you don't get them with the intro, sometimes people will never make it as far as the bridge. Isn't that right? Steve (06:43) Yeah. And usually if the intro is really hip, it'll end up becoming the bridge. As certainly, as the structural key to Rebel Yell. The intro, which is only about eight bars, ends up being the the preface to the guitar solo. Matt (07:02) That's right.

Steve (07:02) So, I think, Billy and I spent a lot of time just listening to our favorite records, whether it was The Doors or The Beatles. We always refer back to The Beatles. We both grew up in that era of hearing those early Beatles records and they were kings of song structure and melody. So we'd always refer to that stuff and kind of apply it. Whether it was to a ballad or melody, obviously, melody is key, lyric is key to tell your story, and arrangement, and we both learned as we were doing it, because we didn't always have the answer. But we were always [...] You know, we’d work on a song. Let's say we sat down to write a song and we didn't have a part or whatever. We’d each go home and listen to classic records or something, and you'd go “oh, you know what The [Rolling] Stones did when they were doing Satisfaction” or something like this, or “The Kinks, you know what they did? Maybe we should try something like that.” I mean, that's the great thing about music. It's an endless well of [...] whether it's classical or punk rock or whatever, all you gotta do is just listen to things as examples and it's all there. It's like going into the most incredible library in the world and being able to pick up a book and find a great chapter.

Matt (08:42) Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that about arrangements, because that was something I wanted to talk to you about. You always have very clever guitar arrangements, and it sounds to me like you'll make subtle changes to what you're doing with the guitars almost constantly throughout a song. And so one example I thought I was in Dancing With Myself it sounds to me like you're playing that main lick initially, like on the top three strings for kind of a bigger sound, but then just on the top two strings and other points in the tune for a skinnier sound with that. So is that indeed what's going on with how you play that main riff? Steve (09:22) Well, I have to give full props to [...] I didn't play on that song. That was actually a Generation X song. But I do know, from what I know, it's about 3 or 4 guitar players on there. The most identifiable one is Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols. And I remember when I met Steve, getting my pointers from him. And it's funny because we've had him come up and guest on that song and the minute he gets up and plays that with us, it sounds like the record. And it's it's a simple guitar part, but it goes to show how each player has an identifiable approach. So all props to the other guys who were there for that.

Matt (10:04) Sure. Okay, well then to the larger point on that of just changing things up, introducing different colors and different sort of weight to guitar parts throughout an arrangement, talk a little bit about what you will do throughout the course of a song, just to maintain the listeners’ interests. Steve (10:26) I think early on, from the time I was 17, I was in a cover band and we played the same Tri-State Area club circuit that Twisted Sister was known for. But what that did was I would have to study these records and a lot of a lot of time there was Led Zeppelin or Jethro Tull or whatever. And I learned that one of the things amazing about Jimmy Page is his guitar part never was a double of the bass, and I always knew when I listen to some music, it always seemed a little bit one dimensional when the guitar and the bass were doing the same thing. So finding an independent guitar part, that came from a lot of different sources. Steve (11:15) Billy and I used to love to go see [...] there’s a two man band around New York called Suicide. Alan Vega was the singer, and Marty Rev was the keyboardist. And Marty would do these kind of syncopated keyboard parts, and I used that as a kind of an idea in the second verse -- great example of it -- second verse of White Wedding, that syncopated guitar part that comes on. You're building the song “Okay, let's add another part” as it's going. You've already established your first verse and your first chorus. And I was replicating what Marty Rev was doing, on a guitar. So I always took to the guitar as being [...] you know, those Zeppelin records, great example. The sum of the parts is so much bigger. The chordal stuff that Page was doing, it made the song so much bigger. Steve (12:19) Every part was kind of like the [...] almost like if you looked at an analog watch and you had some gears which were moving twice the speed as the other gears. So I aways looked at like the drum kick and the groove was the big gear and then the gear next to it, the medium sized one, was the bass part. Then I was couple of the little gears moving around it coming and going and all of my favorite guitar players and influences really were guys who painted with the guitar. I was never like an Eric Clapton, or an Eddie Van Halen who were really, they were so brilliant at their technique and their style that all they needed was one guitar part. I was more from the arrangement point of a Jimmy Page, or even a Steve Howe from Yes, who would start a song with an acoustic guitar and then a ragtime guitar and then some jazz guitar, and then [...] to me, that was [...] I just gravitated towards that approach.

Matt (13:26) Yeah, that's really interesting because all those guys that you mentioned who have that sort of approach, they would do these brilliant layers in the studio and then somehow come up with a part live that made you instantly recognize the song. Steve (13:42) That’s the trick. Matt (13:42) They still sound exactly like themselves. Steve (13:43) That’s the trick. Matt (13:43) There's no way Brian May can play all his parts live, and yet, man it sounds like a Queen record. It sounds like Brian May when he does it, which is, that's the greatest trick. So I guess you would have to do that as well. Lay down three different parts in the studio and then pick one of them, or an amalgamation of those parts, to play live. Steve (14:03) Yes. Yeah. And I think I realized, in the last, certainly the last 15 years, we have a second guitarist in Billy's band, because I reached the point where I was playing, oh, you know, for 25 years, the same guitar part. And I thought, “wouldn't it be great to have another foil so I could do some of the overdubs, so I could do some of the parts that I never played live?” Matt (14:30) Yeah. Steve (14:31) And again, I really love working with the second guitar player. It's good fun. Matt (14:38) Yeah, and I've seen you guys and you play really well off one another, and your tones complement each other really well. Steve (14:46) Agreed, agreed. Matt (14:47) That can be tricky when you're the guy who's used to filling up all the space there, to suddenly have to share space with another guitar that's occupying pretty much the same sonic spectrum. Steve (14:58) Right. Exactly. Yeah. You got to work at it.

Matt (15:01) All right. Well, on the subject of guitar tones, I want to talk to you about what is probably my favorite guitar tone and one of my favorite guitar parts that you did, and that's the middle section in Eyes Without a Face. It's so cool. It's basically like a song within a song, so just talk me through that. How did that part come about, and what was the signal chain to get those massive tones? Steve (15:27) So, one of the things we always did with our music, we knew that we were going to have dance remixes done of the songs. So we would allocate 32 bars, sometimes more, in the middle of the song, which was basically a groove, a stripped down section. We didn't quite know what we were going to do in that section, but we knew we needed that for a dance remix where we were going to hand off, the multi-track to someone who was going to take everything and kind of muck it up and we'd love we'd love those extended dance remixes because they sounded great, because you only had one song on a vinyl, which was the size of a 33, so the grooves were really wide. Hearing our music being played in clubs and even Studio 54, we used to go in Manhattan to hear our dance mixes. So in the case of Eyes Without a Face, we knew we needed a section that possibly was going to be for a dance remix person. But the other thing was that Billy Idol had never had a ballad before, a quote unquote ballad. And I said “somewhere in this song there's got to be some rock guitar” and I think Billy and Keith said “okay, have at it!” And they kind of left me to come up with something in this middle section which had no relationship to the rest of the song, other than the fact it was still in the same key. That spawned Billy to do this semi rap thing and our bass player Steve Webster, at the time, to come up with the bass thing. So we were all kind of spitballing, but the main thing was we had to have a bit of rock and roll in this in the song, and luckily it worked. Steve (17:27) So the guitar sound was essentially, by then, I think, I was recording primarily with a late 60s Marshall. It had no master volume in it, Celestion speaker cabinet [...] and Dave Whitman was our engineer on that. He was the, actually, staff engineer at Electric Lady Studios, but he was so good with guitars and produced a lot of KISS records and worked on the Zeppelin Song Remains the Same, even did some Mahavishnu Orchestra stuff. So I think all the other elements of the song, because in that song it's a Linn drum. So we needed a guitar that was a bit more punky and we didn't want the same kind of heavy guitar sound as some of the other songs. So we ended up with this kind of honky [...] it just worked, we were very lucky in getting parts that worked. Matt (18:37) It works amazingly well. And it's, as I say, you know, to my ears, it just sounds massive. So a non-master volume Marshall. I'm assuming wide open, but would you use anything to like goose the front end of it or anything to get [...] because there's a lot of gain on it. Steve (18:55) Yeah. A simple Boss EQ, you know the six band white pedal that's been around for 50, 60 years. That was my go to, to push the front end. And also, you could get a nice little curve and that one certainly we pushed the mids up and kind of got that snarling tone out of it, but yeah, that was a pedal that I used all the time. Matt (19:22) Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that's a great way to clobber the front end of a non-master volume amp.

Matt (19:31) So the latest Billy Idol release is the EP that came out a couple of years ago, The Cage. So now we can get to the EverTune part of this. Did you use EverTune-equipped guitars for the making of that record? Steve (19:48) I did. It's funny because now producers know about EverTune guitars, because a producer gets tired of constantly, after every take, saying “check your tuning, check your tuning, check your tuning”. Because, you know, as you play, it drifts. So it alleviates [...] I know I'm in tune, first of all, it saves a lot of time. And harmonically it's really pleasing. It's auto-tune for the guitar, but it's a mechanical piece of gear. It's not [...] we're not doing anything with software. And I tend not to have very low string action. I like my strings to ring a lot. I'm not soloing that much on a Billy Idol record, so my action is a little bit higher and a guitar players know, as you get up the neck and you pull those strings down closer to the fingerboard, the notes get sharp. Well, they don't with the EverTune, so you're not at the mercy of your string action. It's going to stay in tune everywhere. Steve (21:02) One of the things we did find, though, is when double tracking guitars, you -- on a non-EverTune’d guitar -- you get this kind of swing, almost chorusing. And we kind of found that [with the EverTune guitars] it was almost too in tune. It sounded like one guitar, even though I was doubling it. So I had to adjust for my second take, have it so I could get more swing out of it. Because my first take, it's a rhythm guitar track, so I want my strings locked. I want them in tune. And then the second take, I allow them to swing a little bit more just to get a little stereo kind of separation between them. And that took a couple of sessions before I realized how damn in tune it was. Matt (21:54) And will you physically detune your guitar for the double to get that? Steve (21:59) If need be. Yeah. If we really wanted old school, I would detune it a little bit. Yeah. If we really wanted to swing between the two. Matt (22:09) You know, you could always try what I do, and that's just have lousy time. And so there's always plenty of sway between the two tracks, you know? It's just [...] take it or leave it, but that's free advice here from EverTuneTV. Steve (22:21) We're humans. It should be out of time. Matt (22:27) I discovered a similar thing when I recorded the guitar part against a piano track, and it was a digital piano, so it was perfectly in tune, the way they'll tune a digital piano. And I did my arpeggios way up the neck, because I can on an EverTune guitar, it's all intonated nice. And then I go to listen back and I assumed I forgot to hit record and I looked and no, it was there, but it was so in tune I couldn't hear it at first. Steve (22:52) Yeah. I had the same. Matt (22:53) And so I had had a little bit panic, just a little bit. It was there and I could hear it, but it blew my mind because I've never heard something that in tune with it. Steve (23:02) Yeah. Exactly. And also the the way an EverTune really shits all over everything else, is when you go to drop tunings, anything that's a low C. I mean, trying to do that on a guitar without an EverTune is hard work, but on an EverTune, it's great. Matt (23:33) You have to decide “Am I going to tune to the attack or to the sustain?” Neither is really going to be in tune. Steve (23:40) Yeah. Matt (23:40) And I don't know... I hear a lot of guys who's playing I love, they can get away with it. I can't. On my guitars, it just sounds out of tune. And so I use EverTune guitars for that detuning stuff. Steve (23:50) Same here. Matt (23:52) So you used your EverTune-equipped Knaggs guitar for both the Ozzy induction to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, which happened not too long ago, and also for your Super Bowl performance [...] [with Miley Cyrus] that you guys did. This is a somewhat leading question, but what went into your choice of gear for those two performances? Steve (24:13) Well, the Ozzy thing, we were tuned down to D. So I wanted to make sure that I was, you know, there was about 4 or 5 different guitar players up there, and there's a lot of moving parts in getting that performance together. We had Wolfgang Van Halen and, obviously Zakk Wylde and Andrew Watt, so I was there to be a supportive role. So I had to make sure my guitar was in tune, in a drop D. You know, the whole guitar is down a whole step, so it wasn't even a second guess. I was like, “Yep, that's going to be an EverTune’d guitar.” And whenever I do performances that are outside in cold weather or extreme weather conditions, or TV things where you don't really have the luxury of having your tech tune your guitar. Maybe you're under the gun or whatever. I found the EverTune really useful for that. Also, festival dates [...] Man, it's just a nice feeling to know you're going to get a guitar handed to you that's going to stay in tune for the duration of your set. Whereas sometimes if you're the headliner or you're on your own show, maybe I'll carry ten guitars with me. When I'm on a festival gig, I'll have maybe 2 or 3 guitars. So one of them should be an EverTune. In some cases, they're all EverTunes.

Matt (25:55) Well, that's great. All right, tell me what you’ve got in the pipeline. What's next for you? What's coming out? Steve (26:04) We've just finished a new full-length Billy Idol record, and we're actually mastering it today. And that'll be out next year. First quarter of next year. And then it'll be an extensive tour behind that. And we keep getting presented with unique, cool ways to do performances. We were the first band to play at Hoover Dam. Matt (26:33) Right. Steve (26:35) Which was really, really cool. Not only as [...] I'm a Las Vegas native now and well aware of water conservation. I've been out to Lake Mead, I see the level. So it was great. It's great. We get presented with these crazy things. We played at the top of the Empire State Building, Billy and I. And I think we're looking at other kind of venues to do that next year. So we're going to incorporate that. Billy's got an autobiographical documentary coming out. So we're still reinventing what we do, and that's one of the cool things about technology now, that we still make records the same way we always did. Two guys starting on a couple of acoustic guitars, but the way that we can present the music is endless now. So we're excited about that. Matt (27:39) Yeah, that's super exciting. And for anybody watching this, if you haven't seen a live gig with Billy Idol and Steve Stevens, you need to. It's such a great show. It's great song after great song. And Billy, he is a man of a certain age and that dude is in amazing shape and he hits all of his notes. I just could not be more impressed. Steve (28:03) He works really hard at it. He's very disciplined. Those English guys, they take their rock and roll seriously. And he's one of the greats, man. You know, I wouldn't be with him for over, what is it now [...] 42 years if I wasn't so proud of the guy. And every show is different. It's not scripted. He's just one of the greats, man, and I do not take for granted the ride that we've had together. And I value that. I value the songs, I value the audience. And we love making music and getting on stage. That's really the thing. And we're always talking about records “hey, remember the first time you [...]” He had a great experience. So he comes back to me, and our records are released through Dark Horse, which is George Harrison's label. And I guess Billy was over in England shooting some of the documentary, and he went to George's house and the studio. And he came back and he’s like “I was over there, and I saw the guitar that he used on All Things Must Pass.” And we're still those guys. We're still those kids who got those records. And that has never left our fascination with rock and roll and what we get to contribute. And what a great job, man. We're really [grateful], you know. Matt (29:41) Well, it certainly shows. And it shows on the gig, too. Like you said, you appreciate the audience. He seemed so genuine in his love for the fans and that he really cares. And we shouldn't be surprised at this. But man, you can't say that about everyone throughout history and just the the level of dedication and the pure love that I saw at that last gig of yours that I caught, it was inspiring to me. So I just think that's great. I think it's really cool. Steve (30:11) Yeah. Of all my musical heroes that I've gotten to meet, the ones who have lasted have one thing in common: they still love what they do, and they still love the process of writing and recording. The ones that it just becomes a mortgage payment, it's obvious. They're not my heroes doing it that way. Matt (30:46) Well, I hear you. And I don't get to geek out about gear and about records with them, like I do with you. I don't take that the least bit for granted. So, man, I can't thank you enough for this. This was a blast. I always enjoy talking with you. I always learn something. Let's do this again sometime. Let me know if there's ever anything you need from EverTune, because we are so happy to have you as part of the family. Steve (31:13) Awesome. Thank you for the for the support and making my job a little bit easier. Matt (31:19) We we're here to help. All right Steve, thanks again, man. You take care. Steve (31:23) Okay. All the best to you. Bye bye.