uncommon for guitar parts to be Pro Tooled
out of recognition or replaced entirely without warning. Riggs’ guitar parts may have
been layered with Danny Lohner’s—there are
even some rhythm guitar parts that I ended
up playing in the choruses of “Dragula.”
The in-house guitar rig consisted of a Diezel
VH- 4, a Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier, and a
Marshall 2550 Silver Jubilee head through
various vintage Marshall 4x12s. The main
tracking guitar was a Les Paul standard with a
P- 94 pickup in the bridge position. All in all,
the guitars got mashed together to function.
They certainly weren’t played with the precision of Zombie’s current guitarist, John 5, but
they did have a vibe.
the computer. He maxed out the then-state-of-the-art Power Mac 9600 and ran a full-blown Pro Tools TDM system that required
constant maintenance. We would joke that
you’d spend more time behind the recording gear than in front of the screen. While
Zombie explored the prospect of severing
ties with White Zombie, he and Humphrey
brought in players like Tommy Lee, Danny
Lohner, and Mike Riggs to play what couldn’t
be looped, sampled, or chopped into place
with Pro Tools. While “Dragula” and most of
the other tracks on this album were the result
of a sincere effort to get a big, pro-sounding
record, what actually happened was more of
a makeshift, unique sound arrived at through
experimentation rather than pure expertise. I
remember other audio professionals telling us
we couldn’t make a record on Pro Tools and
that the Chop Shop was an unsuitable mix
environment. Hellbilly was tracked entirely
in Pro Tools (transferred to 3348 digital tape
only for archive) and some of the final mixes
were even done in the box. It seemed we all
had a lot to prove with this record as we were
all transitioning from one position to another.
“Dragula” consists of combined drum loop elements supplemented with kick and snare samples, layers of heavy rhythm and high, droning
guitars, electric bass infused with synth bass,
Polyfusion modular synth (Humphrey’s specialty)
and Zombie’s stacked vocals.
How to Make a Monster
Over the last 12 years, recording digitally has
become the standard and technology has
caught up with the demands of high track-count sessions. Taking this trip down memory
lane really did highlight the significant progression in DAW recording systems, but all
these advances don’t necessarily guarantee a
more compelling result. Today, most engineers
would turn their nose up at the rig that created Hellbilly Deluxe, and even I initially had
apprehension over revisiting the tracks. But I
realized you have to view recordings as more
of a snapshot in time for which there should
be no apologies. “Dragula” was one such still
frame, and I’m pleased to be able to format
this song and others like it into a piece of software that allows everyone to view that picture
from a slightly different angle.
The Chop Shop was an anomaly in the
Hollywood Hills just minutes away from the
heart of the Sunset Strip, but isolated enough
to be able to make as much noise as we
could produce. We converted the garage
into the tracking room and ran audio cables
through the floors and pretty much every wall
in the house (even concrete cinder blocks)
in order to have makeshift reverb chambers,
remote amp cabinets, and mic tie lines on
all three levels. I can’t say that we always
knew precisely what we were doing, but it all
seemed to make enough sense at the time.
Incidentally, Zombie was always a good sport
through all construction, deconstruction, and
experimentation at the Chop Shop—even
when we made him sing “Dragula” in a stairwell storage closet.
To see/hear how you can play along to (with
tab) and make new mixes of “Dragula” and
other songs from the original multi-track mas-
ters, check out www.jammit.com
Digging Through the Ditches
To say that Hellbilly was constructed unconventionally is an understatement. There were no
basic tracks. Zombie and Humphrey “wrote”
the songs from recycled riffs and loops and
then built upon them through trial and error.
Axes of Evil
The guitars on Hellbilly were, like most other
elements on this record, a melting pot of
“whatever works” in the mix. Nothing was
sacred. The integrity of any particular musical performance was ignored and subject
to radical editing and processing. It wasn’t
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