“Tripled and quadrupled guitars? Let’s keep it f**king real a little bit”: Mudvayne frontman slams bands who use backing tracks live
Mudvayne frontman Chad Gray has taken aim at bands who lean on backing and click tracks on stage, arguing that pre-recorded guitars and vocals drain the spontaneity from a live show.
In an interview with Metal Hammer, Gray says Mudvayne have never played to a click, and while he doesn’t call out any specific bands, he does singles out stacked guitars and layered backing vocals as his main gripes.
READ MORE: “If you can’t play your s**t, then why the f**k are you onstage?”: Mudvayne frontman Chad Gray voices opposition to live backing tracks
He says bands that sound exactly like their studio records because of backing tracks need to “keep it f**king real a little bit”.
His argument centres first on tempo. Without a click, he explains, a band drifts naturally, giving live music a sense of movement and life not achievable if using a click or backing tracks on a rigid musical grid.
“When you’re live, there’s an actual push and a pull that happens,” Gray says. “Say you’re playing a mellow verse and a heavy chorus is coming – by the third or fourth measure of that verse, the tempo naturally starts to speed up right before the chorus hits.
“It slowly slides into what’s coming. That builds anticipation and excitement for the crowd because they know what’s coming, and then bam! that shit hits.
“When you’ve got a click, you can’t create momentum because you’ve got a bunch of backing tracks running along with you.”
Gray isn’t calling for a blanket ban on backing tracks, though. He doesn’t expect a band with an orchestral bridge to tour with a full orchestra. His issue is with stacked guitars and backing vocals, elements which a band could already play or sing themselves.
This orchestral exception echoes a line drawn by Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor, who admitted to using orchestral tracks while performing some tracks from Stone Sour’s 2012/2013 double album House of Gold & Bones. He wasn’t a fan of the experience, though.
“Obviously, all the guitars were real, the drums were real, vocals were real, bass was real, but we used track for some of the orchestral stuff and some of the connector pieces,” he said. “‘Cause we were playing some of the stuff that would connect. And being a slave to that felt so stifling that I was like losing my… I was, like, ‘We’ve gotta get off this fucking shit.’”
Wolfgang Van Halen took a comparable stance that year, arguing that backing tracks should be kept to a minimum live and that he never does anything in the studio that he can’t do live.
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