Mark Morton
by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer
Summer festivals are a great way to catch up with musicians for a face-to-face chat. A festival run for many bands means getting into a relaxed holiday mood, so usually those conversations turn out better than any other interviews. But while some cats kick back to an extent where they end up asking you more questions that you ask them, some remain unaffected by the festival atmosphere and keep their composed demeanour.
One such musician is Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who this writer caught up with back in June at Graspop Metal Meeting, one of the biggest European heavy music festivals which take place every June in the Belgian town of Dessel.
Morton seems cool, calm and somehow reserved, as we sit down backstage for our chat just a few hours after the band’s set on the main stage on the festival’s second day. But he is still willing to talk candidly about his love for his instrument, his attitude to fame, and, most importantly, the band’s latest album Wrath, which has been seen by many as a radical departure from Lamb of God’s earlier sound.
Hardrock Haven: I watched your set.
Mark Morton: Yeah?
HRH: It was amazing!
MM: Thank you very much.
HRH: I think it was the best set of the day, but I’m still waiting for Satch.
MM: Yeah, right. I’m looking forward to that myself.
HRH: Do you prefer to play outdoors or indoors?
MM: I typically prefer to play indoors, to be honest. I tend to like the smaller shows. They have a little more direct interaction with the crowds, and typically, it sounds better, but there is a cool energy in a festival like this as well.
HRH: What elements do you think need to coincide for a great live show to happen?
MM: I think it relies a lot on the audience, really. I mean, the band is only one part of the show. Without the audience, it’s just the band playing by itself. But when the audience is high energy and really interacts well with the band, sometimes you get the kind of dynamic, that synergy, I guess, among the band, I guess. And I think we had a little bit of that going on today, so it sort of starts expanding on itself from there.
HRH: Do you have a favorite part of the world to play in?
MM: Anywhere close to home because I like being home with my family. But outside of that, I really like Australia. I think Australia is a really beautiful part of the word, and I enjoy being there.
HRH: I’d like to talk a bit about the latest album.
MM: OK.
HRH: Do you think enough time has passed for you to take an objective look at it or are you still very much attached to it? How long in general does it take for you to detach yourself from your work?
MM: Yeah, that’s a pretty good question. I don’t know. Yeah, I haven’t spent a lot of time listening to it since we made the record. Once we get all the mixes through and everything, I don’t spend a lot of time listening to my own music. But I think I’ve got a pretty good feel as to where it sits in the scheme of things. I think it was the right record for us to make at this time. It was definitely a response to Sacrament, the record before it. We took a very different approach sound-wise.
HRH: And songwriting-wise as well.
MM: Yeah. The big thing that stands out for me songwriting-wise is that we have incorporated some more melodic guitars and acoustic guitars, clean sounds and that kind of thing. There is a little bit more dynamic on that level. But the way we wrote the songs, the objectives we had while writing the songs never really change. We just try different things within that context.
HRH: But the album still sounds very different from your previous work. And you once have said in an interview that you never stay at one place musically for very long. What’s behind that? Do you get bored with your musical achievements or have you set out to cover as much musical ground as possible from the very start?
MM: I think, as musicians, we are constantly striving to keep ourselves interested, keep ourselves challenged.
HRH: Keep yourselves entertained?
MM: Yeah, exactly. We never write songs or albums trying to achieve anything with the fan base or to tap into some new audience. We just write the stuff we want to hear and we want to play. And, as musicians, we try to keep ourselves challenged, keep ourselves entertained.
HRH: Do you ever listen back to a song you wrote or a guitar part and feel that you have learned something new about yourself, some new aspect to your character?
MM: Yeah. There are some times when you can take your head out of it for long enough just to listen to yourself objectively. And I don’t mind saying it, sometimes I hear some stuff that we did and I’m like, wow, it’s really cool. That’s what you hope for.
HRH: How do song melodies come to you? Do you have to isolate yourself or do they come to you as you go about your daily business?
MM: Either or, sometimes I just sit, pick up the guitar and the song will write itself; it’s just comes out. And then sometimes you’ve got a nagging melody or an idea in your head for months, and it takes a long time for you to put it together. There is no rhyme or reason. I wrote the song “Redneck” in two hours one morning before going to band practice. “Walk with Me in Hell:” I worked on that for two years before we actually put it together. They are all different, they all come together differently.
HRH: You play blues and country on the side as well.
MM: Little bit, yeah.
HRH: Do you ever see that incorporated into the main band?
MM: I think I infuse little elements of that here and there, yeah. I think it’s probably part of my style. But at the end of the day, we are a metal band. There is only so much of that they will let me get away with.
HRH: Your childhood heroes included Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons. Is there anyone else you admired when you were growing up?
MM: Sure, yeah. All those classic-rock guitar heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton. I’m a big fan of Peter Green, an older British blues player.
HRH: From Fleetwood Mac.
MM: Yeah, exactly.
HRH: What about Jeremy Spencer?
MM: I’m not familiar with him.
HRH: He played in the same band with Peter Green, but he played slide guitar.
MM: Oh, OK, OK!
HRH: One of the first British slide guitar players on par with Brian Jones.
MM: Ah, you see, you know more than me about it! (Laughs). I’ll have to check him out. And then there are more modern guitar players that I’m really into like Luther Dickinson.
HRH: What do you make of the changes that are happening in the music industry right now? The way fans are recruited, the way the bands relate to their fans? A part of the recording process of your latest album was made available to view online. Did you feel pressured to do that?
MM: No, I think from my perspective my goals don’t change. They are just to write cool songs that interact with ourselves first and then hopefully with our audience. I’m glad I’m not in the business of trying to sell records. I’m glad I’m not a record company because they are the ones who are really confused as to what to do about file sharing, downloading and all that kind of stuff. You know, if we were sitting here 15 years ago, I’d probably be selling a lot more records.
HRH: You’d be rich.
MM: But as it stands, it’s not the nature of the industry anymore, and you have to find other ways to keep yourself going. And we do. I’m not complaining. I make a very comfortable living playing my guitar and selling tickets and t-shirts, and I’m lucky to be able to do that. The music industry is changing; technology has made it very simple for people to get music for free. That’s not going to go away. You can’t legislate it away, you can’t do anything about it, so you just have to keep moving forward doing your thing.
HRH: I have a strange question for you. You don’t have to answer it if you don’t like it. Do you ever play for yourself? Not for practice, not for anybody else, but for yourself?
MM: Yeah! Absolutely! All the time! I’m a guitar player. I didn’t pick up the guitar because I wanted play at a festival in Belgium or to hang out with groupies in Japan. That wasn’t why I started playing the guitar. I started playing the guitar because I love the instrument, I love the sound that it makes, and I love the feeling I get when I’m playing it. That’s all I ever wanted to do. All this shit just came, and it’s cool, but it wasn’t my objective, it wasn’t my motivation, so yeah, I play guitar a lot.
HRH: Is it difficult for a professional musician to retain this kind of personal relationship with the instrument?
MM: Not for me, not for me. To me, all this stuff is sometimes difficult. Playing guitar is the easy part. I get paid to be away from my family and to do interviews all day long. The guitar playing I do for free, do you know what I mean? That’s easy for me.
HRH: I have one last question and it’s a bit goofy. I hope you don’t mind. If you were given an answer to any question in the universe, what would you ask?
MM: I don’t know! That’s a bit too existential for me! (Laughs).
HRH: OK! Can I replace that with something else?
MM: Sure!
HRH: If you were to write a letter to yourself that would travel back in time, what would you write?
MM: I think I’d remind myself to take things a little less seriously than I used to. I think I used to get a little bit uptight about every little detail and every little thing. The older you get and the more of the world you see, the more you just let it be.