There’s a name for us Clutch fans: ‘Gearheads’. not so much fans, as disciples – devotees, believers, if you will. Obsessives, even. If Clutch had started a cult instead of a band in ’91 then make no mistake, there’d be an awful lot of crazies holed up in Maryland, West Virginia, waiting for the mothership to beam them up. They’re that good. Indeed, with two decades of music and nine studio albums, not including compilations and rarities, it’s no stretch to put them among the company of the greatest rock’n’roll bands of our time. Really, they’re that good.
Like all the true greats, whatever their influences, from hardcore to blues and beyond, there is something about Clutch that puts them in a genre of one, often copied, never bettered. Moreover, they’ve managed to retain that pre-internet mystique, the stuff that builds urban legend and fills websites: “What does that lyric mean? Where can I find that secret track?”
The geek element that draws record collectors like moths. It doesn’t hurt that frontman Neil Fallon, the son of a military father, is a lyrical genius. He’s what Bill Hicks would have called “a reader”; a lot of sci-fi, but keenly aware of politics, too smart for regular rock’n’roll and with the onstage aura of some snakehandling, backwoods, hellfire and damnation preacher. Oh yes, there would be a lot of us holed up in West Virginia, armed to the teeth and looking up at the night sky: “Tell us when, oh wise and heavily bearded one!” It’s probably a good thing they formed a band, though it may not have been wise to inflict an unrepentant Gearhead upon Mr Fallon for over an hour, with questions to spare.
“We were in grade school together, then we went to high school together,” begins Neil on the 20-year lineup that’s completed by guitarist Tim Sult, bass player Dan Maines and drummer Jean-Paul Gaster. “We had different manifestations of rock bands: one week we’d be into metal and the next it was hardcore, so we’d rename the band and redraw the logo. The music we were listening to was hard to get; you had to pursue bands like Minor Threat, even though we only lived 30 miles from DC. And that was not the popular music at our school – neither was Slayer! It was very much a minority of people into metal, punk rock and hardcore. In 1991 the band was called Glut Trip and they had a different singer, this guy named Roger, and he couldn’t make a show, so I got asked to fill in, only because I’d jammed with them a year prior in high school.” By October 1991, the band, thankfully having changed their name to Clutch, put out their first record, a barbarically heavy four-track EP, on 7-inch vinyl, titled Pitchfork, on Inner Journey Records. Immediately, they stood out from the pack.
“We wrote those four songs in a couple of days. That was the first time I’d ever been in a recording studio,” recalls Neil. “The sounds you hear on the 7-inch is a lot of Prong, Bad Brains, Cro-Mags, maybe not obviously, but that’s what we were listening to. We were very into noise bands, labels like Amphetamine Reptile, and we were huge fans of Swans.”
Another EP followed in ’92, the colossal Passive Restraints on Earache. They had been getting interest from several labels including ATCO, East/West and some majors, and had no idea which way to go. Earache, being from England, was seen as ‘exotic’ and meant they’d be labelmates with Godflesh, who they loved.
“It was a very confusing time for us, as far as what a good business move would be,” admits Neil. “We just figured they [Earache] must know more about this kind of music. Thankfully it was just a one-off deal.” Ironically for a band so drama-free, (just one lineup change when keyboard player Mick Schauer joined in 2005 and left in 2008, with no ill feelings) the one thing they’ve continuously had a problem with is labels. Their debut album, Transnational Speedway League, on East/West in 1993, was no exception: while Beavis and Butt-head were going righteously nuts over the video for A Shogun Named Marcus, the label had no clue what to do with them.
“That was always the case with us and labels,” agrees Neil. “Our exposure on mainstream media was always through a back channel, never through a topdown, ‘this is gonna be the band we push’ scenario. All those labels were signing bands like it was going out of style: they were dropping hair bands and signing punk bands, grunge bands, and everything in between, and we were one of those bands. Their hopes were that we were gonna be multi-platinum, and obviously that didn’t work out and we got dropped. We just scratched our heads and went, ‘What were they thinking in the first place?’
“In hindsight, we were all babes in the woods, going to these high-rise offices with multi-platinum records on the walls. As much as we considered ourselves down to earth and well grounded, it does confuse you. But getting validation from [Beavis And Butt-head creator] Mike Judge was much more gratifying and effective, because it showed that people do like this band even though your [sales] may not be reflecting a meteoric rise to fame and fortune.”
Written in two phases between New York and San Francisco’s Razor’s Edge studio, (“because that’s where the Melvins were recording, and we were huge fans”), Transnational Speedway League, the primal hardcore root of the band, remains a classic; so heavy and intense that urban myth insists they had to stop playing Binge And Purge because audiences would kick the crap out of each other.
“With any urban myth there’s an element of truth with a lot of exaggeration wrapped around it,” allows Neil. “It became one of those things where people wanted to hear it because we weren’t playing it. I think, because there’s a huge barrage of curse words at the end of it, it’s seen as a moshpit classic, and I can recollect that the day I wrote those lyrics was the day we recorded them. I hadn’t written anything for it and finally I locked myself in the bathroom of the hotel and wrote the lyrics up until 20 minutes before tracking. I think that’s how my frustration with the song manifested itself, but we always knew that we weren’t the kind of band that got off on seeing violence in the pit. Maybe I was trying to reflect angry bands because I liked that music, but I ran out of that juice really quickly and I realised that I couldn’t fake it. It’s exhausting! I think we realised that heavy doesn’t necessarily equate to angry, you can still have a good time while you’re doing it.” From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/getting-validation-from-beavis-and-butt-head-was-much-more-gratifying-it-showed-that-people-do-like-this-band-even-if-your-sales-may-not-reflect-fame-and-fortune-how-stoner-rock-enigmas-clutch-became-metals-favourite-weirdbeards
