It always makes for fascinating viewing when musicians interview one another, but what happens when you put two of the most outlandish figures in the game in a room together? Better still, what happens if one of them has to speak through their electric guitar?
Well, that’s what Reverb has organised for its newest YouTube video, which brings funk and bass legend Bootsy Collins together with his “psycho” friend Buckethead – of Guns N’ Roses fame – for a fever dream conversation that’s “part interview, part jam, and 100% pure creative chemistry”.
It’s a conversation that has to be seen to be believed. A Buckethead interview is rare in itself, but to see him reflect on his long-standing partnership with Collins – and respond through riffs – is a sight to behold.
For instance, when asked about how they met, Collins remembers, “It’s funny, I don’t know how he got my address, but he sent me a videotape of him sitting in a room in a bed just jamming his head off. I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ Then it came to me. He’s a goner, a total psycho. I’ve got to meet him.”
The voiceless Buckethead, meanwhile, responds to the question of, ‘What were your first impressions of Collins?’ by playing an almost oompah-like rhythm fingerstyle melody.
“It was kinda sideways,” Collins, playing the role of translator, jumps in to explain.
After Buckethead’s less-than-conventional introduction, Collins manned the desk on his debut studio album, Bucketheadland, in 1992, marking the beginning of a fruitful and perpetually colorful relationship.
“Oh man, it was mindblowing because we just did it on the spot,” Collins says of the experience. “I had no idea what we were going to do, you know? I was hoping he’d do some of the stuff he was doing on the video.
“We cut it in about a week. We recorded a whole lot of songs. Once we got the total Buckethead ride, we were finished.”
Their work together turned the head of producer Bill Laswell, who placed the pair in a supergroup, Praxis, with drummer Brain (Guns N’ Roses, Primus, Serj Tankian) and keyboardist Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic, Talking Heads).
‘Speaking’ of what his time in the band was like, Buckethead plays a haunting suspended chord and drums his fingers against his signature Les Paul’s killswitch, with signal crackles only adding to the weirdness of his musicality as he then begins to arpeggiate the chord shape.
“He was kinda stunned at first,” Collins translates. “But once we all got together, and Bill said, ‘Y’all ready?’ Bucket would start a jam, and we’d all just fall in. The first thing we had against us was that we didn’t know what we were gonna do. We’d never played with each other player. Bill got it out of us, and we followed Bucket.”
Buckethead continued to impress his bass-playing friend since, and over 30 years on, they still don’t have a plan of attack when they come to make music together.
“The good thing about it is when we hook up, we never know what the heck we’re doing,” Collins concludes. “We had a conversation about maybe that’s a good thing not to know, as opposed to having everything pre-arranged. We don’t really work like that. It always feels so good.”
Speaking of his collaborations with Buckethead, Serj Tankian said, “He’d call me at four in the morning and leave a 15-minute guitar solo on my voicemail,” while John 5 has said the guitarist's love of a Killswitch inspired him to bestow his Ghost Telecaster with one.
Meanwhile, Collins, who started his musical journey on electric guitar, has revealed the one reason why he switched.
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