A few weeks ago, I interviewed Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria. The following is my whole Q&A transcript that I used to write a story on. Since I left a couple of things out of the story, I figured it would be fun to share everything.
Since The Afterman is a double album, were
there any double albums that you really clung to when you were younger, whether
it was The Wall or Use Your Illusion?
For me, it would definitely be The Wall for sure. My second concert happened to be Pink Floyd on
the Division Bell tour in ’94. That
sort of opened my mind up in terms of music and how it can accompany a visual.
It was an amazing live show. It was probably one of those moments that defined
what I wanted to do. In exploring Pink Floyd’s catalog, I stumbled across The Wall and with its cinematic
counterpart [for] the tour. I never saw any of the tour, obviously, but I
acquired bootlegs and saw how that played out. Actually I was fortunate to see
Roger [Waters] at Madison
Square Garden
not too long ago. Overall, the way the cinematic counterpart works with the
music, it had a lasting effect on me.
Were there any other
records? I definitely heard about The
Wall when I was in high school, but the first double album that I connected
to was Mellon Collie and the Infinite
Sadness.
Well, hell yeah! For sure! That’s our era of rock and roll,
you know? I remember when I got that record. I was painting and it was
Halloween. I think that record had just come out. I was doing these murals
across Nyack with the high school. I tried to make it a point to get that
record so I could listen to it all day. For me, that never had a concept that
worked. I felt like that was a collection of songs. I don’t know if there was a
thread that went through it nearly as it did with The Wall.
The Smashing Pumpkins
recorded somewhere between 50 and 60 songs for that collection.
For Mellon Collie?
Yeah!
See, that’s the difference between whatever The Wall had become and what Mellon Collie is. The way The Wall seems to be arranged, some of
those songs are a minute and a half. It feels like it works as a whole. You
know, like you’re missing out if you don’t listen to the entire thing. Whereas Mellon Collie feels like they had 60
songs and they broke it down like that. I think that’s what makes The Wall so important and will probably
stand the test of time.
With The Afterman, was there a set number of
songs that you wanted on the record? Or were there a few songs that didn’t make
the record?
There was definitely a set number. I kept writing. See, the
thing with The Afterman – and this
sort of goes against my whole Wall
thing – there was no concept when I wrote this material. I started writing this
material about two years ago. It was really just a reflection of what I was
experiencing in that time. And it wasn’t until after I finished it and saw the
material as a whole that I was able to construct the concept around those
emotions. In a way, it’s sort of like a journey in that time for me, but it’s
also what gave birth to the journey in The
Afterman. So, I mean it’s definitely not The Wall, obviously. But it’s Coheed’s, if that makes any
sense.
Absolutely! When I
saw you at C2E2 last year, you were listening to some music that I assumed you
had recorded yourself earlier that day. You let Chondra listen to it. I think
you let Blaze listen to it. You were very excited about it. Is that some kind
of daily process with writing material?
Yeah! Pretty much. I’ll just catalog things that really work
and just kind of have them. Before the band got into the studio, I had a
version of the double record already arranged and outlined, but in a demo
version. And we sort of made that available with the deluxe edition. Usually,
whenever inspiration strikes, not to sound completely like a cliché. Really, it
does mean a lot. Whenever something presents itself is when I’ll work on it. But
I don’t want to hammer something to death just for the sake of not wasting the
time. If it’s not working, I just discard it.
I saw you guys open
for Iron Maiden last year.
Oh, cool!
Yes, it was awesome.
That whole Iron Maiden show was incredible as well. You’ve toured with Soundgarden
as well. Where I’m going with this is, are there any bands out there that you
love to tour with?
Yeah, definitely. Who? At the moment, I think if Jane’s
Addiction is still touring, I would love to tour with Jane’s Addiction.
That’d be an
interesting bill!
That was one of those bands for me growing up. Before
Coheed, the band that I was in, that was one of our big inspirations. That
would be cool.
On a related note
with that Iron Maiden tour, was the “Heaven & Hell” cover ever properly
recorded? If it was, could it ever see the light of day?
No, we never recorded it. Maybe, at some point.
I couldn’t help
notice how the crowd responded to it when you started singing. There was
definitely a large percentage that knew “Welcome Home” and “Here We Are
Juggernaut.” But then when you played “Heaven & Hell,” people started to
really perk up. Was that a common
thing?
I think so, yeah! It’s certainly something that people knew.
A lot of the audience didn’t know who Coheed was. I think we wanted to have
some kind of familiarity. So “Heaven & Hell” made sense. It’s funny, when
we did the Heaven & Hell tour, with [Ronnie James] Dio fronting [Black]
Sabbath, we did “The Trooper” as a cover. We thought it’d be cool to flip-flop
it.
Any chance that The Afterman could be done live, like
how the first four records were done with that “Never Ender” batch of shows?
I think so, yeah. I mean, at the moment, the “Never Ender”
concert series is broken down into two parts. Well, now because of The Afterman, there is the Coheed and Cambria story which is Year of the Black Rainbow to Good
Apollo to No World for Tomorrow,
and now there’s the Afterman story.
It’s definitely something I could see happening in the future. Breaking it into
the two and then doing The Afterman.
I could definitely
see people flying from around the world to go see that.
Ah, hell yes! That’s nice of you to say.
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