GW Not a lot of real estate there.
VAI No. And in fact, if you look at the master, there are so many [tape edits]. That was because I had to mix little individual pieces of each song one at a time. And that was because I had so many different things on each track. You’d hear a guitar part, followed by a bass, and then maybe a backing vocal…all on one track! That was the only way to fit everything onto the eight tracks I had. So when it came time to mix, I would have to take the verse for “Little Green Men,” for example, mix it over to two-track and then go back and mix the B section separately, because all the settings for the B section would be completely different from the verse because there were completely different instruments on the tracks. And there was no [console] automation. None of that. So I’d mix each section separately down to two-track and then edit the two-track sections together. If you look at the master tape for the entire record there are hundreds and hundreds of edits. It took forever.
But the biggest education was learning how to place things within the stereo spectrum and the frequency spectrum: panning and EQ. It’s almost like a Rubik’s Cube. You can’t put certain sounds in the same place as a cymbal, because it’s the same frequency and if you put that over there it’s gonna cause phase cancellation. Realizing that stuff had a big effect on me. I had this big stereo UREI EQ and that’s where I learned where frequencies were. I realized, If you take 10 kilohertz and move it over here, that’s what 10k sounds like. This is what 1.2k sounds like, and this is what 100Hz sounds like. So if you listen to Flex-Able, it’s very well distributed EQwise. And that really helped me later on when I went in to make Passion & Warfare, because that record was a lot more dense: bigger guitars that were hogging the stereo spectrum. You put that on top of the biggest drum sound ever and it can be a disaster if things aren’t placed exactly right. So if I hadn’t spent all that time mixing Flex-Able, Passion & Warfare would have just been a mess.
GW It sounds like the guitar’s going through an envelope follower on a few tunes from Flex-Able, like “Lovers Are Crazy” and “Call It Sleep.” Is that one of the old Electro-Harmonix Dr. Qs?
VAI It was a Mu-Tron Bi-Phase. I bought a box of gear from somebody at a garage sale, and it had a Mu-Tron Bi-Phase and something else by Mu-Tron, along with one of those Maestro phasers, which I loved. There were also a couple of other little stomp boxes that I just put everything through.
GW Along with introducing a lot of your signature sounds and guitar techniques, Flex-Able also introduced the element of mysticism that’s in a lot of your work. “Salamanders in the Sun” is dedicated to the Hindu deity Saraswati, who looks after all of us poor musicians and writers. And the name of the record label you created to release Flex-Able is Akashic Records, which is another reference to mystical tradition. The Akashic record is the repository of our past life information, kind of the karmic fingerprint file.
VAI Oh, everything I did back then was a reference to mysticism and metaphysics! Through my whole life, I’ve always been a seeker. And the recording of Flex-Able marked a kind of turning point for me. Because right before then, when I was 20 and living on Fairfax, I went through a really dark depression. I don’t know why really. It happens to people. But it was a very, very dark night of the soul. And right around that time I started going to a great metaphysical bookstore in West Hollywood called the Bodhi Tree. I used to live in there! I would go in there and read all kinds of stuff. I’m a very practical person. I can only understand things that make sense to me. From a very early age, I understood that science is limited by human intelligence. I grew up as a Catholic, but all of that didn’t make sense to me at all. But when I was exposed to the Bodhi Tree and all these different Eastern and mystical philosophies, there were these core principles that started to emerge. And those were the things that started to make sense to me and pull me out of this black hole. And when I moved to Sylmar, built the studio and started Flex-Able, that was really the awakening of my leaving behind that very dark state of mind. And that’s reflected on the album too. That’s why, when I listen to it, I just hear a young man going through a cathartic mental change in life. But I’d like to emphasize that now I feel deeply in my heart that I’m a completely happy and fulfilled person.
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