Finneas on why he’s released a signature Fender guitar
For Finneas O’Connell, his journey to being a Grammy and Oscar winning songwriter and producer, and playing guitar in front of tens of thousands started at a Green Day concert when he was just 11 years old. Finneas, like many young fans that night, managed to secure a precious souvenir from the stage that would inadvertently kick-start his entire musical journey.
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“I got some picks, and I think they were maybe Mike Dirnt’s bass picks?” the 27-year-old chuckles. “But, I remember holding these picks that had come straight from these rock gods. And at 11, they were like deities to me! And I remember walking out into the parking lot of the Forum in LA, and I remember holding these picks and thinking, ‘Now all I’ve got to do is learn how to play the guitar!’ And, I did!”
The legend of how Finneas and his sister Billie Eilish crafted her era-defining debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? from their bedroom is well told by now, but while that album is primarily associated with moody synths and electronic beats, Finneas the guitar player wants to set the record straight that Billie’s early music was created purely on a laptop.
“To debunk that a little bit, there’s always been a lot of guitar on Billie’s stuff,” he insists. “There’s guitar on a bunch of that debut EP [2017’s Don’t Smile At Me]. And then Billie’s first album has I Love You, which is acoustic. We like guitar!”
Finneas playing his Limited Edition Fender Acoustasonic Telecaster. Image: Press
There’s no doubt that they were working with a limited palette however. Finneas’ Green Day light bulb moment had led to him forming a band, The Slightlys, which made it big enough to get a Warped Tour slot, and was building his career as a solo artist when he started working at home with his sister.
“Everything has always been kind of necessity, right?” he explains. “So Billie’s first EP and album, I had like an electric guitar, and I had an acoustic guitar. And then I remember, on Billie’s album – her first album – we made a song called All The Good Girls Go To Hell. And I needed an electric bass, so I had to go buy an electric bass! It’s always been that way. Then I had that Fender Mustang electric bass, and what I had for years was that bass, and it’s still one of the only basses I play. So it’s always been this kind of thing where I like having the one thing that I use, and using it as much as I can.”
While Finneas may have graduated to a more professional set-up now – as befits a guy who won a Grammy for producer of the year when he was barely 23 years old – he remains defiantly unsnobby about gear, and still finds a very high-level use for his old stuff.
“I’ve been setting up Billie’s recording studio for her so she can do home production without me, because she’s very good at it!” he explains. “And it’s funny, I’ve been giving her, like, the bare minimum of stuff, just so that she learns it all. Y’know what I mean? I’m like ‘Listen, I could give you all the stuff that I use now, but it took me years to even have a use for it. And, if I give you this basic thing, it’ll make sense to you right away.’”
Image: Press
Sonic Highway
While he admits he has some “nice” guitars now, he still keeps things small and considered. It’s reflective of a utilitarian mindset that has informed his first ever signature instrument – the new Fender Finneas Acoustasonic Telecaster. Available in limited-run US-made version (with onboard body pickup) and a non-limited Mexico-made variety, it’s Fender’s first signature Acoustasonic model. Fender’s hybrid electric-acoustic instrument continues to be polarising nearly five years after its first launch, but Finneas has been one of the platform’s most visible advocates from the start – and in typical style it was borne from a desire to solve a problem as Finneas and Billie went from playing in their bedrooms to selling out stadiums.
“I remember very vividly getting handed that guitar in 2019, when they’d kind of just started to be sold,” he recalls of his first encounter with an Acoustasonic. “We had an issue. We were having feedback on stage. We were starting to play bigger venues, and the acoustic guitar I was playing was feeding back! And we were having to do that thing where you put the rubber thing in the soundhole of the guitar, and that sounds crappy! And I was looking for a solution. And Fender was like, ‘We have this new instrument, and it sounds really great, and there’s no feedback…’ And so I immediately was a real early adopter of it.”
The world is still full of Acoustasonic-sceptics of course – it’s a thing that still provokes a remarkably strong emotion even half a decade after it launched.
“Anything new feels bizarre,” Finneas accepts. “Like, we all remember seeing that guitar that had self-tuning pegs [the much-maligned Gibson Robot – Ed]? We were all like, ‘…Oh’. And then a couple years later they’re like, ‘Yeah, we gave up on all that!’ So when something’s new, people have that feeling of, ‘Is this gonna last? What’s its use? How effective is it?’ And I respect that. I think there’s a kind of a cynicism that’s well-founded. But for me, the Acoustasonic just solved a problem. I was like, ‘I have a problem. This solves that problem. I’m gonna use it!’”
Image: Press
Out Of The Box
While very much in the real world, the sounds on the Finneas Acoustasonic – which adds a chorus effect option, as well as a clean electric and small- and large-bodied acoustic tones – are designed to give a new user the same instant gratification that plugin presets do inside the box.
“Absolutely!” he enthuses. “I mean, we’re in the preset generation, right? It’s like, if you’re a kid like I was, and you have a synth plugin on your computer, right? You open it and there’s a sound, and you’re going, like, click, click, click, click, click, through all these synth presets, and then you’re customising it.
“And to think of a guitar in that way is an exciting way to think about it. Like, ‘Here’s my electric, dial it in’ then ‘There’s the phaser… Here’s an acoustic. Turn this knob – there’s chorus. Here’s a different model of acoustic…’ It’s a sweet way to navigate having an instrument. Especially the kind of body pickups that are on the American-made one.
“I was at a couple of Ed Sheeran’s first shows in America. Like these tiny shows in LA, when his whole bag was doing loop pedal stuff! He would just smack his guitar, and it would have this big kick-style boom on his guitar. And not to rip off Ed Sheeran, but I love that quality of acoustic guitar through a body pickup. And so we built that into this guitar, and you can just really thwack the guitar and it really booms! Which is really cool to me.”
Another facet of the Acoustasonic that appealed to Finneas is that it’s a guitar that, by its nature, is designed to sound good whether you’re going into an amp or direct. As someone who loves going direct, this is even more key for the Finneas Acoustasonic.
“That’s a good example of where I’m maybe slightly looking out for myself as well as other people,” he admits. “I have a decade of trying to produce music under my belt. I have a studio. I have a lot of software and hardware. So, it’s like I could plug any instrument to a signal chain of mine and get something cool out of it. But I like the idea that a kid can buy this guitar and have a chorus sound on their guitar without buying a chorus pedal, or without even understanding a chorus plug-in? That’s so dope! And it made me want to work harder at the sounds themselves. Also, if the thing sounds good without anything on it, that’s awesome, but then when you run it through some software, it’s gonna sound even better, right? Like, everybody wins.”
Deluxe Version
As someone who used very basic gear to produce some of the most popular tracks of the century, it was important for Finneas that the Mexico-made affordable version of the guitar was just as useful a creative tool. Asides from the Cappuccino Fade finish and lack of body sensor, the two instruments are identical bar their factory of origin.
“It was super important that that version wasn’t hobbled at all. It was really important to me that that version had all the highlights of the other version. I love the way that the limited edition USA one looks with the white wraparound, but the Player model looks great with that cool Cappuccino Fade. You can think of the limited edition as like the ‘Deluxe’ version of an album – it’s got some bonus tracks! But the Player version has all the effects that I use the most.”
From the ground up, it’s a very different kind of signature guitar for a very different kind of guitar player – but that’s very much part of the appeal. It’s authentically Finneas’ instrument, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“If I’m doing a signature of anything, I would like it to be something I feel kind of qualified to represent,” he says. “Like I’m really not the best guitarist. But I think the two things that I feel really accomplished at are producing and songwriting/performing. And this, to me, has just been such an incredibly useful utility for me. And I can kind of put my money where my mouth is and be like, ‘No, I use it like this, and I use it like this.’ And I kind of like thinking of this as a piece of technology, rather than, like, ‘I’m a virtuoso guitarist, and this guitar, like, listen to me just shred.’ You know what I mean?
“I feel like I have history with this. I feel like I have an attachment to it – I was right there using it right when it came out, and I still am using it. I think you’re a cynical person if you’re making something that isn’t for you, that’s for other people to make money? I want to make a product that I wish existed, right? Having a signature model of this guitar, with these effects built in, that looks dope… whoever’s name is on the back of the headstock, I’d want that model. If somebody sent that to me, I’d be like, this is sick!”
Image: Press
Guitar Hero
But of course, it does have his name on it – and having an instrument that’s precision-engineered for his needs is already starting to yield benefits.
“I hadn’t done a lot with the Acoustasonic in the studio before we started making this model,” he reveals. “But I really feel like we kind of tapped into something more beneficial for studio use. I already felt like it was a great live instrument, but I feel like this model is kind of a step up in terms of studio potential, whether it’s the effects or it’s just the actual sound of the modelling, I think this is a better studio instrument than the versions I’d had prior.”
You can see the fruits of that coming across in Finneas’ forthcoming solo album, For Cryin’ Out Loud! – it presents a much more guitar-forward version of Finneas than we’ve ever seen before, and it’s no coincidence.
“Part of that is having this guitar,” he confirms. “But part of that is just like, that’s the trip I’ve been on. I would, I think, like nine of the ten songs on this album, I would consider guitar like the lead instrument, and then the other song, piano is the lead instrument, but even then there’s still guitar on it, you know?”
Like man modern musicians and producers, Finneas is a multi-talented musician as comfortable with a synth or a keyboard as he is a suite of plugins, but you’ll notice that whenever he has the opportunity to pick up a guitar in a live setting – whether it’s headlining Glastonbury a few years back, or playing the Olympics closing ceremony last month – he seems to take it enthusiastically. Despite what people might say, you see, the power of a guitar remains undimmed.
“Y’know I just happened to be doing this interview the other day with Hans Zimmer,” he explains. “And Hans was talking about touring, playing live – and Hans plays everything and can conduct! And I was like, ‘Yeah, but whenever I see footage of you playing a concert, you’re just always shredding!’ and he was, like, ‘Playing guitar is the most fun’ – and it really is true! It’s like, it’s just, it is five or six times more fun to play a guitar or a bass than it is to sit and play a keyboard on stage. Like it’s so fun!”
Find out more about the Finneas Acoustasonic Telecaster at fender.com
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
