{"id":2977,"date":"2011-08-02T01:26:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T08:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=2977"},"modified":"2011-08-02T01:26:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T08:26:37","slug":"deftones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/deftones\/","title":{"rendered":"DEFTONES"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

DEFTONES<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A brutal accident threatened their future, but brought them closer<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n

On Nov. 4, 2008, Deftones bass\u00a0player Chi Cheng was involved in a car crash that left him comatose. The group shelved its just-completed album, Eros<\/em>, and pondered its future. \u201cWe took some time off to figure out what we were going to do,\u201d says drummer Abe Cunningham. \u201cWhat should we do? Should we end it? Everybody had all these different thoughts. After a couple of months away we just said, \u2018You know what? Let\u2019s do what we do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What Deftones do, and what they have done since the group\u2019s formation 22 years ago in Sacramento, Calif., is rock. So they contacted former Quicksand bass player Sergio Vega, a longtime friend of the band, to fill in for Cheng. They shelved the Eros<\/em> album in deference to Cheng, and started from scratch with producer Nick Raskulinecz at Los Angeles studio The Pass. The result is Diamond Eyes<\/em>, a hard-hitting and surprisingly positive new album. \u201cChi\u2019s accident brought things into focus and made us evaluate what was important,\u201d Cunningham says. \u201cWe looked around and saw the four of us still here as dear friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheng remains in a minimally conscious state (his condition is updated at oneloveforchi.com), but his bandmates remain optimistic that he may one day be able to rejoin the band. In the meantime, Cunningham, frontman Chino Moreno, guitarist Stephen Carpenter and keyboardist Frank Delgado have found fresh inspiration in Vega\u2019s presence, and a renewed sense of purpose in their own determination to survive. We spoke with Cunningham during tour rehearsals in Burbank about his band\u2019s tragic recent past and increasingly bright future.<\/p>\n

As the drummer, was it particularly important you work well with Sergio?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been playing with Chi for 22 years, but really I always played off Stephen, our guitarist. I always had Stephen cranked in my monitor. Normally you\u2019d think of the bass locking with the drums, but Stephen was just always so consistent. Sergio is a very different player. For the first time I feel like we really have a traditional rhythm section. Nothing against Chi\u2014we had our thing too, which was great, and hopefully we will again. But it\u2019s cool playing with a different person. I look into Sergio\u2019s eyes and we just lock in. It feels great, man. I\u2019ve never had that, and now I do.<\/p>\n

How does the band\u2019s songwriting usually work? <\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s rarely any complete material brought in. It\u2019s all pretty much done on the\u00a0spot\u2014just a jam, hashing it out the\u00a0old-fashioned way. Sometimes things come quick, sometimes they don\u2019t. We\u2019d set those things aside, and maybe they come to life later on, or maybe never.<\/p>\n

Do all the band members have much input into the lyrics?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s pretty much Chino\u2019s thing. He\u2019s definitely got a unique style with what he brings and how he does it. There\u2019s times when he\u2019s frustrated, and he\u2019s certainly open to ideas. I think we all influence what he does, just because we all spend so much time together. But that\u2019s his department.<\/p>\n

How was the recording process? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a joy to do this time around. I\u00a0think everyone\u2019s perspective has changed, primarily due to Chi\u2019s accident. We rented a small rehearsal place and had a great schedule going on. We have a studio up in Sacramento, where we\u2019re from, and [in the past] startup would be around 7 p.m.\u2014but in reality it would creep from 7:30 to 8 to 9, and by the time everyone got there we\u2019d go until 4 in the morning. The next day you\u2019re shot. We repeated that cycle for the last 15 years, and it was broken. So we came down here and got together with Nick, rented a spot and went from 1 to 8 every day, so we could still have the mornings and the evenings. We had some very productive time. We got everything written in about two months, went into the studio and whipped it out. It was the first time we\u2019ve had everything written before going into the studio since our first record. Every record since then has\u00a0been predominantly written in the\u00a0studio\u2014which can be great, but if you\u2019re not gelling or things aren\u2019t working it can be a tedious and expensive process.<\/p>\n

What kind of drum setup did you bring into the studio?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I put together kind of a Frankenstein kit from all these different things that sounded\u00a0good. There was my trusty Tama kit. I\u2019ve been with Tama for over 10 years, and\u00a0they\u2019re just great people. And Nick had done a Rush record a couple of years back\u00a0[Snakes & Arrows<\/em>, 2007], and when that was done [Rush drummer] Neil Peart had a DW kit sent to his house as a gift. We used a kick, a rack and a floor tom from the Neil kit\u2014whatever sounded great. We just use what sounds good. Who cares what it looks like?<\/p>\n

How is Chi doing? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Chino and I went and visited him a couple of weeks ago, actually. He\u2019s at home now in Stockton, Calif. His mom and sister are taking care of him. He has a feeding tube that goes into his stomach, and that\u2019s sustaining him. He\u2019s just there. It\u2019s a really puzzling, fucked-up situation. It\u2019s been about a year and a half and it\u2019s still just \u2026 I have no words. It\u2019s insane, man. But he\u2019s making slow progress, and who knows? We just keep sending all our love and good energy his way.<\/p>\n

It must suck to have to talk about such a painful topic so often. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s fine. It needs to be brought up,\u00a0and people need to be aware of him. Chi\u00a0had a traumatic brain injury, and it\u2019s pretty\u00a0heavy stuff. But it\u2019s good to talk about it.<\/p>\n

How has the band stayed together for so long? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I have not a clue. I don\u2019t know what the hell we\u2019ve done. I know we\u2019ve done some good things, and we\u2019ve done a lot of damage. We\u2019ve taken a step forward and immediately\u00a0taken 29 steps back. It\u2019s just part of the process. We certainly don\u2019t know everything, but we\u2019re learning every day and everything we know we\u2019ve learned together. We\u2019ve seen the world many times over\u2014and been able to do it as a band of brothers. Just like brothers we fight and bicker, but that\u2019s just shit that happens to anyone in life. We started out on our friendship.We were buddies, and we figured out how to write a song, for whatever it was worth.<\/p>\n

What are your hopes for the future? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Given the things that we\u2019ve gone through, I think that right now is a great, great time. We\u2019re really appreciating each other. It sounds corny, but we\u2019re firing on all pistons and it feels great. It\u2019s taken a long time. We\u2019ve had a pretty brutal past few years, and from this point on we\u2019re just taking it as it comes. We\u2019re still able to do it, and I think we\u2019re doing it better than we ever have. It\u2019s a great feeling.<\/p>\n

\u2013Chris Neal<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DEFTONES A brutal accident threatened their future, but brought them closer On Nov. 4, 2008, Deftones bass\u00a0player Chi Cheng was involved in a car crash that left him comatose. The group shelved its just-completed album, Eros, and pondered its future. \u201cWe took some time off to figure out what we were going to do,\u201d says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[2267,70,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2979,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977\/revisions\/2979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}