Here’s Weak & Powerless, which aired on Jimmy’s show. The Audio Perv has a clip of Imagine that played during the credits. After those two songs, the band also performed Passive (with some alternate lyrics), and Judith.

The band could be heard soundchecking in the lot throughout the evening, performing Weak And Powerless and Imagine, over and over, obviously wanting to sound their best climbing out of their hiatus directly onto a live national broadcast. Oddly enough, or perhaps obviously enough, the two “bonus” songs that followed were the highlights, and the band seemed to have a little less pressure on their shoulders as they viciously lunged in.

The first verse of Passive featured a nod to new dad Trent Reznor (thanks Anon & commenters). We dug up a recording for you, so hear for yourself:

Trent just had a baby
the doctor tells me
I just can’t believe it
Ever the optimistic one
I’m sure of his ability
to become a wonderful daddy

We’re looking forward to seeing the band return to the big stage next month. See you there.

P.S. Check out this awesome photo of Maynard with The Shatner that Chris McLaughlin (a PR dude who was there with the latter) took backstage.

As some of you know, we’ve got a bit of history with this band, and to make a long self-indulgent story short, we wouldn’t be here without them. They were the first great band that Johnny and I discovered together and got behind with all our strength. We’re delighted to have them back, to say the least.

Mastermind Billy Howerdel called in yesterday to give us what might be the most in-depth interview on record to date, discussing the prospect of new music from APC, what we can all expect on this upcoming tour, and their controversial third album eMOTIVe, released after that final tour date, before the 2004 US Presidential election, and just before the band dropped out of sight.

I won’t ask you to pick a favorite lineup, that would just be wrong. But over the years, how have the lineup changes affected the overall personality of the group?

There’s definitely a different chemistry and a different emotional conversation that goes on throughout the tours… It’s mostly on the road, because that’s when you really get into… you know, you’re living in a sardine can with a bunch of other humans and you’re trying to figure out how to survive that.

It’s always been pretty easy, as far as I’m concerned, as far as the lineups we’ve had, we’ve always been lucky to have great players but good friends who are not just there for business but because they want to be. And so you’re picking the people just as much for their personality as for their playing abilities.

It seemed like on the tours with James and Jeordie, there were a lot more shenanigans going on, with the crazy covers after the shows and toy helicopter accidents…

I don’t know if you’d call that fun (laughs)…

Was it Jeordie and James, were they the dynamic comedic duo?

No, it was Josh and Jeordie, they were like Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, total pranksters running around.

James and I would usually be out doing boring stuff in town, sightseeing. We both toured for so many years and never did the stuff you’re supposed to do in those towns. Like, ‘you know what, let’s go to…’

The pretzel museum?

We called everything “shady square.” Like the place where everyone’s trying to sell you drugs but there’s actually like the monument you’re supposed to go see in the middle of the Eastern Bloc country.

It was fun though, it was an awesome tour in 2004. Our longest tour, for sure. I don’t know if you looked back, but in 2000 and 2001, we toured for a total of eight months. In 2003 and ‘04 we toured for almost a straight year. So we got to find ourselves, so to speak, a little bit more, and we definitely evolved a lot as a live touring band. I think it helped in a lot of ways, not just as players but in figuring out who you know, who you are and what your tolerances are. When you’re on the road for that long, it’s kind of like going into a monastery and becoming a monk or something… Except you get to have sex, that’s the difference.

So what are you guys doing right now? I figure you’re somewhere rehearsing, well, every song you’ve ever recorded.

Yeah. Josh and Matt McJunkins (our new bass player) and I, I think we’ve played together three times, Josh and Matt have gotten together once or twice by themselves to run through it. They’ve gotten through both the first and second record, they’ve gone through Mer De Noms and Thirteenth Step.

I’m still working on… this really ridiculous, daunting task of re-doing every guitar sound I’ve ever had, mine and James’ and the bass sound. I’m concentrating on mine right now, like taking my old guitar rig, and getting rid of it, and starting from scratch with this new effects processor I got. It’s smaller, and doesn’t break every 20 to 30 minutes while playing. My rig was so complicated and flaky. I always had really good techs that would know how to deal with it as it went down, but you know, it was a pain in the ass. I never knew if every night would be the same, and so I’m looking forward to it working every night.

It looked like NASA Mission Control.

Yeah, it was ridiculous. But it was to make it easier. And honestly, it would be a lot easier if I just [used it] now, but I’m just like, ‘I’m taking the task…’ With Ashes Divide I started using this new thing, and I just said, ‘OK, I’m just going to go there and take the time.’

But in doing that… It’s been interesting because now I’m going back to the stems and the original files from the recordings, and hearing everything in its raw form, unmixed, all separated out. And it gave me a new-found appreciation for the stuff, and honestly I’m pretty proud of it.

After you make a record, you release it, you let it go, and it becomes… Whatever, the Universe’s. It doesn’t quite belong to you anymore, so to speak. But going back and looking at the outtakes and the fuck-ups, and all the things that you do in the recording process, it’s like this audible time machine, where you can go back and it’s like ‘wow, I can still smell the coffee brewing as I fucked up this line in this song.’ It just has that kind of cool… rummaging through your high school yearbook kind of feel to it.

This tour means a lot to us in a lot of different ways, but in that kind of way, having to dig everything up again and feel it, is getting me back into the mood of A Perfect Circle.

What are the chances that we’ll hear a new song?

If you asked me last week, I would have said 70%… If you ask me this week, I’m going to say 60%.

I don’t know. I’ve given stuff to Maynard, he’s writing to it. When he gives me something back, I’ll write to it more. And here we are, we’re getting close to a month away from the first show.

So I mean, if it’s going to be irresponsibly terrible, then we won’t. But if it’s somewhat doable, then we’ll premiere it… I doubt it’s going to be recorded or released, but maybe it is, I don’t know.

We have every intention of playing a [new] song or two on this tour, but the reason for doing this tour is to revisit these old records, kind of exercise them, and remind everybody, like ‘remember us?’ And we don’t even know what to expect from the fan reaction. Will people even remember on a large scale, who we were? But the appetite seems… awesome.

I feel like there are a lot of new fans that have collected during the downtime in the past five years.

Maybe we underestimate the power of the internet.

To go back, and just to grill you a little bit more… Over the past five years I know you guys have been passing music back and forth, and you’ve said we may or may not hear something new on this tour, but are there any songs that ever got completed or even close to completed that might be lying around somewhere?

Not in the past few years… There are some things I’ve been working on… Some become Ashes Divide songs, and some are kind of held tight in hopes to become A Perfect Circle. I don’t have some great formula for as to what’s going to go where other than… Like I had one pinned for APC that I thought for sure Maynard would go for, and then he responded to the one that I thought for sure that he wouldn’t, that I wasn’t even going to give him. You just never know.

So we’ll see. Out of what I’ve recorded as demos and scratchings from the past four years or so or three years, I’m as curious as you are to see what becomes APC songs. (laughs)

You see yourself throwing in any new covers? Or old covers even?

If we’ve played it live, we plan on playing it. If we have played it live in the past, we plan on playing it now, that’s part of the deal with this tour.

Are you bringing any support acts out with you?

No. It’s just going to be ‘an evening with’ us.

Has Maynard unpacked his wigs yet?

I don’t know. You’ll know when I know, probably.

I think we’ll all know. When we smell them, after five years… Right?

I think they’ve been in a hermetically sealed trophy case.

Your last tour dates, back in 2004, were months before YouTube even appeared on the internet. Which completely bottles my mind. But has the band talked about your collective stance on bootlegging? Back then, Todd would run around tackling tapers and smashing tapes…

You mean, as far as now, it’s unstoppable?

Well, I don’t know, is it? I mean how does Maynard feel about it, and how do you feel?

Honestly, I haven’t thought that much about it. I mean I think that the bootleg recordings that get out are only going to be at a certain level, and we have every intention of releasing something, hopefully as an official release pretty soon. So that will… We’ll be in competition with the bootleggers I guess. (laughs)

I don’t know… Whatever. Today is today, and you’ve gotta deal with what it is. You’ve been to shows, right? The reason you go to shows is for that experience, but if you hear a recording of it, sometimes it’s easy to dismiss it. Even someone like me, who cares, and I go to a show, and I’m re-reminded of why I go and love live music and why I support it. And then I get out there and play, and same thing, I get psyched that people come…

But I’ll find myself hearing something [bootlegged] from somebody and go, ‘eh, I don’t know if that sounds that great, I don’t know if I need to go see ‘em, I’ve maybe heard enough…’ And it sucks, because here I am, cutting myself from possibly the greatest live experience I’ve ever heard. Maybe they just had a bad night or maybe it’s just some dude’s shitty Nokia phone wasn’t good enough to pick up the nuance in what you worked so hard to put out there.

So we’ve struggled with it back and forth, but you can only drive yourself so crazy. So I’ve decided to drive myself crazy by reprogramming sounds, rather than worrying about bootlegs.

To get back to that idea of an official release, back in 2004, there was this idea of a full-length live DVD on the table, aside from aMOTION. Did you mean you’re going to go through with that in the near future?

Possibly. It almost came about. But I want to see what goes on with this tour first. We’d like to see if maybe a show or two or more could be something that’s interesting enough to release. So we’ll see. We might have it where it’s an exclusive thing you can walk out with from the show that night. Or maybe not, I don’t know. We’ve got to see how it feels in late October.

But yeah, we have some really great recordings from the past, audio and video, and there were some HD video shoots that we did that would be great to release someday. Maybe it’s now, maybe it’s later on, I don’t know.

And you’re taping these upcoming shows?

Yeah. The plans are definitely to record them in some kind of way. Even if it’s just for our archive- it always seems like it’s just for our archival purposes, but yeah, there might be something with that a little bit later.

When you guys started playing Passive [originally created through the abandoned "Tapeworm" project] live, as Vacant, Trent Reznor said “I have to admit I find it mildly irritating for [it] to debut in this fashion before feeling it has been properly realized…” Did you guys ever straighten that out?

I don’t know, that was under my… Over or under my radar, whichever way you want to look at that. (audibly shrugging) No? I don’t know. (laughs)

Was that just between him and Maynard, or something that the people made more of, or what?

I don’t know, I don’t hang out with Trent, I’ve seen him socially only two or three or four times since that tour, but if it’s never come up. If it came up to somebody else, I don’t know about it.

That song started out, I believe as Danny Lohner’s brainchild and it went from there. I could be wrong, but that’s what I’ve been told.

So okay, it wasn’t a big South Coast vs. West Coast thing.

Nah. I mean shit. Or maybe it’s bigger. Maybe he’s really pissed and he’s sabotaging me. Maybe that’s why Ashes Divide didn’t sell as much. (laughs)

It pays to live on the desert side of the country. Shows in Phoenix (Marquee Theatre), Los Angeles (Avalon), Seattle (Showbox at The Market) and San Francisco (The Fillmore) will be three-night stops with each night featuring one of A Perfect Circle’s three albums in its entirety (Mer De Noms, Thirteenth Step and the hotly contested “album” eMOTIVe).  Las Vegas (The Pearl) will be a two-night outing for the band, who will play both Mer de Noms and Thirteenth Step in their entirety.

The new Perfect Circle lineup is as follows: Maynard Keenan, Billy Howerdel, Josh Freese, James Iha and Matt McJunkins (Ashes Divide / Puscifer). They’re scheduled to make their televised return with a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Oct. 27.

A Perfect Circle have sold four million records in the U.S., which means they’re an unparalleled force of total market domination in the industry. Just kidding – but theirs is an inspired collection of musical chemistry that we’re thrilled to see returning. After the band announced their indefinite hiatus in 2005, Keenan returned his focus to Tool, also launching the multimedia project Puscifer and further developing his burgeoning Arizona vineyards.  Howerdel went on to form Ashes Divide, who released their debut album, Keep Telling Myself It’s Alright, in 2008.

No, this doesn’t mean the end of Tool. What it means is that we’ll once again be able to witness a stellar collection of musicians taking some hard left turns for the sake of making hot musical monkey love.

Here’s a little sonic refresher course.

The Outsider by A Perfect Circle:

The Hollow:

Don’t miss it.

UPDATE: Details!

Dates:

11/04: Marquee Theatre, Tempe, AZ (Mer De Noms)
11/05: Marquee Theatre, Tempe, AZ (Thirteenth Step)
11/06: Marquee Theatre, Tempe, AZ (eMOTIVe)

11/08: Avalon, Los Angeles, CA (Mer De Noms)
11/09: Avalon, Los Angeles, CA (Thirteenth Step)
11/10: Avalon, Los Angeles, CA (eMOTIVe)

11/12: Showbox at the Market, Seattle, WA (Mer De Noms)
11/13: Showbox at the Market, Seattle, WA (Thirteenth Step)
11/14: Showbox at the Market, Seattle, WA (eMOTIVe)

11/16: The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA (Mer De Noms)
11/17: The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA (Thirteenth Step)
11/18: The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA (eMOTIVe)

11/20: The Pearl, Las Vegas, NV (Mer De Noms)
11/21: The Pearl, Las Vegas, NV (Thirteenth Step)

On Sale:

Tempe, Los Angeles and Seattle: This Friday, 09/24 at 10 AM PST
Las Vegas: This Friday, 09/24 at 12 PM PST
San Francisco: This Sunday, 09/26 at 10 AM PST

There is a 2 ticket limit per show.

A very limited number of VIP packages will be available for each show. The two types of VIP packages are: 1. Wine tasting, meet & greet and ticket to the show; 2. Meet & greet and ticket to the show. These packages will also be on-sale at the times listed above.

A Perfect Circle performs on Jimmy Kimmel Live on October 27th.

Tonight, Howerdel performed with his band Ashes Divide at The Viper Room in Hollywood, on the stage that A Perfect Circle was originally debuted on August 15th, 1999. After the set, the third of a four-night June residency, which featured a guest appearance by Keenan, we tracked down Howerdel for the good word.

The possibilities of a full album and tour are both still very much up in the air. However, Howerdel told us on the record that they’re working on “something” that should be out this year.

In case you missed it, Keenan and Howerdel shared a stage on Monday as well, performing Bohemian Rhapsody together at E3 aiding promotional efforts for the forthcoming Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock:

We’ll have photos from the Ashes Divide show online for you shortly. UPDATES: Here you go! Also, here’s video of Maynard performing The Prey with Ashes Divide, courtesy of The Viper Insider:

Thanks to InsaneFameNYC for the E3 video clip.

Antiquiet: When did you start writing songs for Ashes Divide?
Billy Howerdel: I started writing Stripped Away when I was on tour with A Perfect Circle. It was one of the heavier songs, it was something I was playing at soundchecks a bunch. Most of ‘em are new though, for the most part. I think there are three or four songs that are pre-2004, but they weren’t fully fleshed out or anything.

Antiquiet: In an interview you did during the last APC tour you mentioned a new song you were working on that you were calling Army, because it was kind of a ripoff of Army Of Me by Björk -did that ever materialize into anything?
Billy Howerdel: Yeah. (laughs)

Antiquiet: What was it?
Billy Howerdel: You’ll have to hear the whole record and let me know what you think.

Antiquiet: How much of yourself did you put into the lyrics?
Billy Howerdel: If there’s a story to a song, a lot of times I took something that might be emotionally charging me, and what I would say, or if there’s a misunderstanding and someone had the wrong idea behind your intentions, I kind of ran with that. Even if it was in a sarcastic way, just running with that theme. I wrote Enemies from the point of view of a friend of mine that I haven’t talked to in twenty years, what that guy would think coming back seeing old friends of his and not letting them let go of the past. There’s kind of a recurring theme of people never letting you change. You get a couple fresh starts in life, and one of ‘em is graduating high school, moving on going to college or whatever you’re going to do. You can change your name if you want to, cut your hair, but if you go back and revisit those old places, the past doesn’t forget about you. You can have some shit resurface that you thought you’d lived down. I pretty much wrote it from the story of Frankenstein, as well as this guy that I grew up with. (laughs) But every line in that song is a conversation that I’ve had with somebody else.
It’s hard to explain, but the songs aren’t always so simplified that you can say “this song is about this fight I had with this person,” or whatever. There was a very complex formula that came together for most of the songs. Not intentionally, that’s just the way that it went. I had never written lyrics before, and I don’t read. I’ve never read a book in my life. In high school I squeaked by with cliff’s notes or if I could find a book on tape or something. I just never read. But I do listen to books on tape quite a bit now, as well as talk radio (laughs). One of the key things about Maynard and most of the singers or lyricists I know is to read constantly. I just didn’t have that luxury or base to draw from. I had to approach it in a different way.
I took a couple acting classes, and I think good actors are pretending to be honest as hard as they possibly can. And that’s kind of how I approached this, like writing about an extremely painful situation my best friend’s going through, but injecting everything that I feel about my current situation. Somewhere those two met.

Antiquiet: What’s behind the title of the album?
Billy Howerdel: Recurring themes. The Stone certainly deals with it, but it’s that approach of using denial as a tool to work through something, whether it be somebody dying and helping yourself lessen the blow. Sometimes you have to experience that denial to come with a particular moment in a situation, but staying in a perpetual state of denial can leave you without the ability to evolve in any kind of way. I think a lot of recurring themes on this record are dealing with that, just trying to figure out how to move forward without imploding.

WATCH THE VIDEO FOR THE STONE:

Billy Howerdel: It’s funny, I’m in my studio now, just pacing the floor, and the master switches have been thrown off for like a month and a half now- which has never happened. Not that I can ever remember. I’ve never not had a recording computer going. I’ve only written one part of a song since I finished the album back in November. That’s kind of another first for me- I’m always usually writing something. But there’s just no time for me to do it.

Antiquiet: Is that frustrating?
Billy Howerdel: For me it’s cathartic. It’s always good… people meditate or whatever, but I just like recording. I just look at it as this ever-evolving currency that’s always going, always moving forward. I’m not great at writing under pressure on the fly. I’m good at finishing it under pressure, but I like to have a lot of things in my arsenal of songs to pull from when I’m writing. But on this record it was good to start from scratch, to have enough time to let it grow and breathe. I was starting to plan it out around the idea of APC doing something again, and Tool was finishing their most recent record, so I did start to feel that pressure of time, just from the Tool record coming out. And I finally said you know, I don’t know if we’re going to do anything together again, to be honest. So I just kind of took a deep breath and made the best record I possibly could. This is my full focus. This is all I can see right now.

Antiquiet: Is there a future for A Perfect Circle ?
Billy Howerdel: I don’t know. I would say it’s possible, but it’s more than just saying “Hey, you wanna go jam at the bar tonight?” I mean we could do that, but that’s a big machine to dust the cobwebs off of and start up again. And with Maynard being in Tool and now Puscifer, doing all that, and with me doing this… if those times collide again, it’ll probably be a bit further down the line. But who knows? Anything can happen.

Antiquiet: Those were some great years as a fan, just to see how you guys evolved over time and got to know the songs as they were evolving. It was probably the second or third show you guys ever played, the Key Club show in September of ‘99. I don’t think Maynard had set lyrics or even concrete melodies for most of the songs yet. It was just so raw, and it was really cool to watch as you progressed and got tighter and tighter as time progressed.
Billy Howerdel: Speaking of that show, I’ll give another little prop to Island here. That show at the Key Club was a showcase for Virgin to see us play live. Which is understandable, you kinda want to see what you’re signing ahead of time. But with Island, I never got asked to do any kind of showcase for these guys at all. I’ve never fronted a band. I flew out to New York and met with LA Reid and Steve Bartels, the heads of Island, and they just said “Lay it out for us.” It was strange, it was a weird situation to sell yourself, cause I’m not a good salesman. But it felt like they got it, and it went back to the very beginning for me. I saw Pink Floyd at Giant’s Stadium in New Jersey when I was a kid, and it literally changed my life. Either being a musician or being around that whole vibe of being around music… you can pick and choose what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. I was like “Shit, this is where I want to be. At this venue, right now, with all the people that saved up their money or looked forward to this one moment in time. I’ll be one of those ants running around onstage setting up all the gear if I have to. But I’m gonna be a part of this in some kind of way, and just feed off this positive energy every day of my life.” Everything stems from that for me.

Antiquiet: What advice do you have for a band who has what it takes, but doesn’t really know how to present themselves or handle themselves in the industry?
Billy Howerdel: I mentioned one of my best friends, he works with me, his name’s Dean Sainz, and he’s in a band called Dead Ponies who are struggling. They’ve been playing the Echo and the little clubs all around, and it’s been tough for them to get a following. I’ve got people in my family who are struggling with it. It depends on who you’re trying to write to, do you want to write jingles, or do you want to write esoteric jams? What are you trying to do? How do you want to be seen, and what can you live with? I think everyone’s got their threshold of how much work they want to put into it and how much they want to get back from it. There are just so many variables to apply. For me, it’s all I do. this is my day and night job, it’s my life, and I get scared sometimes thinking that if the industry falls entirely, how do I make a living? How do I support my family when there’s nothing coming from it? You think about those things, especially when you’re starting something new like this. Thinking about those bands, at least I had the benefit of having Maynard believe in me enough to give me a shot by doing A Perfect Circle and getting together that way. He saw something in me, and I didn’t even need to have faith in him, knowing where he’s coming from and how talented he is. But now that I’ve made a name for myself, it’s still a difficult mountain to climb. It’s fuckin’ tough, and it’s probably harder than ever. You can look at it as being easier than ever in that you can get on the internet and self-promote, but there are so many eyeballs, so many streets on there that it’s almost an even wash at this point. Of course having the internet is great, but there’s certainly a nostalgia for the past, going to the local music store… there was a place called Sound Exchange in Wayne, New Jersey where I was growing up, and that was the closest record store to where I grew up and that was like a half hour drive. I just remember going in there though, and they had all the cool memorabilia and you had to dig deep to figure things out. It was all such an unknown, there was a cool excitement to not exactly knowing everything that’s out there, and a greater appreciation for local bands. Now everything’s just spoon-fed to you, you can find anything you want anytime. But you have to do so much to get it out there now, because the internet is now so saturated with new bands vying for attention. I’m trying to promote this band, but my closest friends, some of ‘em don’t even know what I have going on. There’s just so much coming at you. It’s overwhelming.

Antiquiet: Saturation fatigue.
Billy Howerdel: Right. But back to the label question, LA Reid said something about Radiohead’s decision to do what they did with their last record, and he’s more old-school-minded for sure about the industry, but he’s thinking, ‘if you give it away, noone values it.’ In some respects though, maybe Radiohead should charge more for their records, because it’s better music. (laughs) But I guess that’s the point, to give it your own value. It’s all an experiment right now. But they’re an established artist, and they look like heroes when they’re doing this because they’ve already sold millions of records. You never think about the bands who are struggling to find some way to do their thing with integrity.
The albums I like, I buy ten copies of ’cause I give them to people. Like Cat Power’s You Are Free, I’ve at least bought fifteen copies of that record, because I think it’s one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. Band Of Horses, same thing. I’ve bought so many copies of their records just because I think they should be paid more. If I’m really into something, I want everyone to know about it. Band of Horses and Cat Power, they might be outside the realm of what my music is, but it’s what drives me to create.

What propelled me on [A Perfect Circle's] Mer De Noms… was… I’m not a huge Radiohead fan, but I’m a huge fan of OK Computer. So OK Computer and Fiona Apple’s Tidal were the records that drove Mer De Noms for me. That’s what made it happen for me. For Thirteenth Step it was Interpol’s first record and You Are Free. I love Interpol, I think they’ve ripped off things and put them back together in a great way. I mean that’s what I do, that’s why we did that medley (a live mix of The Cure’s Lovesong and Ozzy Osbourne’s Diary Of A Madman, a staple of early APC shows). To me, as a musician, I am a product of Ozzy Osbourne’s first two records and the Cure from 1984 on down. And the medley was Maynard’s idea, he’s the one that… I mean we both kinda came up with it, but I didn’t think he was really into The Cure. He’d be poking fun at me because I like the Smiths, but he was a closet Morrissey fan. I exposed him. But the common love of some stuff was where we met, like he was into the Cocteau Twins too and all that, so it made things easier.

Antiquiet: Did you ever record a studio version of the song?
Billy Howerdel: We started to. I think I still have everyone’s parts but mine and Maynard’s. I remember I had Josh and Paz and Troy play their parts separately and I just never got around to it. I can probably remember what I played, but you know.

Antiquiet: Are there any Perfect Circle songs that haven’t seen the light of day?
Billy Howerdel: No, nothing that was fleshed out. There were some things that we started messing with… we were gonna do an Elton John cover on the first record. One of the first things Maynard and I talked about was doing a cover, and we were gonna do like Your Song or Daniel or something like that right off the bat. But then we decided to do the Ozzy medley.

Antiquiet: I also heard you did some programming on the new Guns ‘N’ Roses record.
Billy Howerdel: Yeah, but the programming stuff I did, I’m sure it’ll never see the light of day. But I was there for two and a half years, and it was a long process… the way that I produce or engineer, the bar that was raised for me was set by the professionals I worked with in that whole Guns ‘N’ Roses experience. I got to be around a lot of people that knew what they were doing and I got to kind of absorb that and see the kinds of tricks they use. But I’ve always felt weird looking over someone’s shoulder, and I rarely ask questions. People hit me up on MySpace with technical questions, and I’ll answer ‘em sometimes, and I’ll give away everything that I do, cause I was always so timid about asking. I’ll usually answer to kids who are struggling or don’t really know what they’re doing, to try and steer them in the right direction. ‘Cause I always think, if I had something like that as a kid I’d be so much further along.

But ten years ago, it seemed like the new GNR record was almost done. It sounded really good. If you took a time machine and would’ve told me then that ten years later in 2008 the record still wasn’t out, I’d have laughed at you. I say that because Axl has a lot to offer, he’s really talented and there was a lot of great stuff there. It’s a shame that it hasn’t come out yet, there should’ve been four records out by now. But you know, it’ll come eventually.

Antiquiet: Where would you like to see yourself in 5-10 years?
Billy Howerdel: I would definitely love to still be doing this. We’ll see if people like Ashes Divide, we’ll see what it forms into. But I fully intend on putting out many more records under this name. I’m looking forward to it. It’s just crazy to imagine May coming around and getting out on tour. I signed with Island in June… it’s funny when you’ve got a record done, the time that it takes once it’s finished until it comes out can be so long. It seems like such a long time ago that I was working every day on these songs, but it’s only been a couple months. There’s just so much going on.

Antiquiet: What do you do to relax?
Billy Howerdel: I play with my son. Get beat up by my son.

A cool little widget featuring an Ashes Divide news feed, as well as the video for The Stone, can be grabbed here:
islanddefjam.com/media/widgets/ashes/ashes.html

Antiquiet: You were in a unique situation with A Perfect Circle, having a built-in fanbase from the get-go with the Maynard freaks and Tool fans. What can people expect from Ashes Divide?
Billy Howerdel: There was built-in fanbase for Tool and it was crazy at first, but we were also playing these tiny clubs and not necessarily selling them out. The internet wasn’t as big as it was, but I remember playing like 300 seat clubs and not selling every ticket. I knew that it was something we had to work for and build up. I knew it then, and I certainly know it now. And I know there’s a lot of work to do to get the word out. I’ve got a lot to do. There is some fanbase there now; there’s been a lot of ultracool responses to the stuff, at least on MySpace. But it all takes hard work.
I think from APC with Maynard, people got something a little different from what they were expecting. And with this, I don’t know if this falls that far from the APC tree. The biggest difference is that it’s gonna be me singing, and that’s sure gonna be offensive to a lot of Maynard fanatics. But it’s however you view it… I literally set out to do something different in the beginning, then I realized, what am I doing? It’s never going to be true if I do it that way. Even if it’s something I love. I mean, I’m super into The Postal Service, but if I try and make a Postal Service record on my first step out and I still have all this inside me, it’s not gonna be genuine. I plan in the future on doing that, but for right now, I really just went back to doing what came naturally, what came from an honest place.

Antiquiet: Approaching the songwriting process for this new project, did you have a particular direction in mind?
Billy Howerdel: I set out to do a few things, and one of the biggest things was to have it maybe not so ominous sounding. I kind of got away from it, some of it is pretty heavy. It’s not Slayer, but it’s not the Beach Boys. I was thinking that it would be really interesting to write everything in major key. There’s a couple things that made it on the record in that way, and I started to think about pulling them off, just to have this all be the same thing, then you just start second guessing all this shit…. it’s really nice to have that break in the record… there’s a couple breaks that are put in the right spot. I did something unique in this record in that I wrote to the sequence. I had a bunch of songs that were going to make it as they were, then I started writing some songs to fit the gaps. Even though there were skeletons or wire frames of them, I was like ok, “Ritual” is gonna be like this because I really want it to fit between these songs. I didn’t want this record to have any filler, no segues, every song is as strong as the one next to it. For me, every song is that way, but obviously that’s a subjective point of view. I feel really good that I got that down. It took me forever to do it, because I was trying to figure out myself as a singer and what this band was gonna be. It wasn’t just like writing a new record with an intact thing. So once I figured out that formula it started to come together quickly. But honestly, it was a struggle and it wasn’t easy to do.
What I set out to do was write faster songs. I really wanted to write faster tempos than I did with APC. If for no other reason than to just try and do something different. Cause I would never approach “Enemies” at 165 beats per minute, you know?

Antiquiet: How did the songwriting differ, knowing that you wouldn’t be showing it to someone else for their input or to add their parts?
Billy Howerdel: Back then, if it was Maynard, there were some things that I wouldn’t present to him. Things he probably wouldn’t be into doing. Hearing them even in their scratch form, I kind of knew what to hand him and what not to. I think on the first Perfect Circle record I handed him thirteen songs and he sang on twelve of them. I think it was just a matter of time for the next one. Where he wanted to go and where I wanted to go differed a little bit on Thirteenth Step, and we came together eventually. At the end of the day we both got exactly what we wanted, but it just took longer to do it. With this, it sounds easier, getting to do whatever you want, but it’s really tough not having a collaborator or someone you trust to bounce ideas off of. It’s certainly more than twice the work.

Antiquiet: Endless second guessing is a progress killer.
Billy Howerdel: Right, exactly, and that’s where Danny Lohner comes in. I brought him in about halfway through the process, when I had some things that were done and some things that really weren’t, and he really pushed me to go where I otherwise wouldn’t have gone. There’s a song called “Defamed” which at the time he was really into, and really pushed me to put a real chorus into it. He was always on me, like “God, you’re so weird man, all you need is a verse and a chorus and a verse and a chorus, why do you need all these extra sections?” He’s always trying to get me to simplify. But at the end of the day we always end up seeing eye to eye.

Antiquiet: I heard Josh Freese got involved as well.
Billy Howerdel: Yeah, he played drums on the whole record. My friend Dean Sainz who’s in a band called Dead Ponies played drums on one of the songs, but other than that it’s all Josh.

Antiquiet: Was anyone else involved?
Billy Howerdel: Devo, Maynard’s son, played cello on a track.

Antiquiet: I remember talking to you in the lobby of the Galaxy theater in LA before one of the first Perfect Circle shows, back in ‘99 when you guys were just getting off the ground. You seemed so energized and optimistic at the time, even before the songs had fully evolved into what they became on the first record. Reflecting on that, almost ten years later, is there a similarity in how you feel about this new project?
Billy Howerdel: It’s funny, I remember that day. We were actually interviewing management. It was such an early time in it all. It sort of feels the same. I mean there were things that got heavier with APC as time went on… I mean, as things get bigger, things get more complicated. Things certainly got busy now and over the top frantic. I don’t know how I’m gonna pull it off. I was just talking to someone this morning about it, like, “how the fuck am I gonna get this all together in time?” But there’s that same whirlwind of press and getting a band started, it feels very similar. ‘Cause I don’t even have a band yet. At least I had that, then. But the record’s done, and the artwork’s pretty much done, we just shot the video and that’ll be done in a few days, so it’s kind of coming together. I’m going on a press tour next week, going on radio stations early morning shows where I have to wake up and play acoustic at fuckin 7 o’clock.

Antiquiet: Any full-scale touring plans yet?
Billy Howerdel: Yeah, right now we’re looking at May 7th. That could change, but right now I’m being told it’s May 7th in Florida. I’ll probably ask to go open up for someone in LA somewhere… you know, go to the Echo and see if I can open for whoever’s playing that night.

Antiquiet: What are your thoughts on the future of the recording industry, given the tectonic shifts in technology?
Billy Howerdel: I start thinking about it, and you know, at least right now I’ve just got too much other stuff going on right now to try and reinvent the wheel or think that I’m a record company. If APC was putting out a record today, we could maybe do it ourselves. But I know Maynard’s more into that than I am, seeing as how he put Puscifer out by himself. I think just being a new entity is going to be an uphill battle. I have good friends who have no idea what Ashes Divide is. It’s been a few months now that we’ve been trying to make this machine turn, and it’s gonna take a lot of work. So I think a record company still has a valid place in developing an artist, if they’re interested. And from what I hear, they’re usually not interested or have bad intentions. And I’m not trying to kiss their ass, but I think Island has been kick-ass as far as the attention they’ve paid. I feel like they’re really behind this and I’ve seen them working hard to make this happen rather than just seeing if the shit sticks to the wall. I’ve heard a lot of people complain the other way about record companies though, and I have no doubt that they’re completely valid complaints. And who knows? Things could change. But as of right now it feels like there’s a lot of love there and a lot of interest in seeing where this thing goes.

Antiquiet: I’ve good heard things about Island, but I can’t say as much for Interscope. We did an interview with Josh from Queens Of The Stone Age, and he had some fire for Jimmy Iovine and Interscope.
Billy Howerdel: (laughs) Yeah, I actually read that article and was like, “Whoa, that’s bitey.” He’s not one to flower words anyway, but it’s true. People get fucked. You put everything you’ve got into something, and it just becomes this entire posturing and flexing thing. From a musician’s standpoint, it’s 100% completely and purely emotional. At least that’s where it starts, that’s where it should be. But then you get someone who’s completely financial and thinking with the opposite side of the brain. They might think that they’re doing it for the right reasons, but it usually comes down to money, unfortunately. The record industry model that’s out there is changing. Do you see it as opportunity, or destruction, the end of things?
There are definitely fingers to be pointed, but it’s the real world, and there’s real reasons why people do things.

Come back next week for part 2, where we discuss the future of A Perfect Circle, what Billy learned while working on the Guns ‘N’ Roses record, the influences that drove him through the making of each of his albums, and more.