BR: I gotcha. Well, that leads me to my next question. When I first listened to the next song, “Is It Done”, I thought you’d hauled out the Jazzmaster for the lead. But the more I listened, I wasn’t so sure just what you were playing. Were you playing the acoustic through some effects?
JM: Yeah. It’s all acoustic on the record … just sometimes it’s through a fuzz box or something.
BR: Cool. So was that the old Martin?
JM: No … I think it was a Gibson. A Gibson CF-100E.
[“Can’t go wrong with gear questions,” I remind myself.]
BR: Do you remember what you used for effects pedals to get that tone?
JM: (long pause) I think I was playing through this Tonebender copy that this guy Jim Roth from Built To Spill made for me.
BR: It’s a great sound. So you must’ve plugged in for that?
JM: Yeah, through the fuzz and into an amp, plus a microphone on the guitar so you had a clean part of it, too.
BR: Ah. And what were you using for an amp?
JM: I think an old Vox that I had.
[Actually, J said a model number, but the connection was sort of lousy at that point and I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to make him repeat anything … I felt enough like Laurence Olivier picking away at Dustin Hoffman’s teeth in Marathon Man to begin with. No matter, though: things were about to take a turn for the better. The following is the moment where I exposed myself for the total bonehead that I am – but made J Mascis laugh.]
BR: And who’s doing the female background vocals on “Is It Done”?
JM: (long pause, then a giggle) It’s – (he actually laughs) – it’s a guy.
[We both lose it at that point. It was the best part of the whole interview.]
JM: Oh, man … (laughs some more) That’s Ben from Band of Horses.
BR: I think … I think I should leave that in the interview, don’t you?
JM: Yeah. (chuckles)
[My courage bolstered, I forge ahead with the icebreaker card I was unsure about playing.]
BR: Look, I need to admit something to you before we go any further … I feel like I should tell you this.
JM: Uhhh …
[I take that as a sound of encouragement.]
BR: So, in 1975 – my junior year in high school – I bought an old, beat-to-shit Fender Jazzmaster. I had the pickups out of it once and I remember a date from 1963 penciled on the underside of one of them.
JM: (long pause) Oh.
BR: And the whole thing is, I had no idea what the guitar was capable of doing back then. I remember I put the slider switch on the lead setting, turned the volume and the tone knobs wide-open and then taped everything in place with electrical tape. I used to flail my arm around a lot and I was always knocking knobs off or hitting switches.
JM: (slight grunt of humor) Yeah?
BR: Anyway, I got rid of that old Jazzmaster a few years later. And I guess I didn’t think about it for a while until I started listening to you. I’ll probably go to my grave wondering where that guitar is.
JM: Yeah. (long pause, then a little chuckle)
BR: I don’t know if you have any guitars like that …
JM: (road noise) Mmm.
[I wait, but that’s it.]
BR: But, yeah, I guess that’s something I’ll always regret.
JM: Oh … really?
BR: Sure – I wish I still had it, you know?
JM: Um … (pause) How much was it back in ’75?
(“Wow,” I think. “J’s asking me a question.”)
BR: Around a hundred bucks, as I remember.
JM: (long pause) Yeah.
BR: Who knows – might’ve been owned by a neighbor of yours prior to that. They’d painted it and apparently stood it up on the Boston Globe to dry. There was a chunk of the sports page still stuck to the body.
JM: Really?
[And this was like a curious, almost spontaneous “Really?” I mean, like, right there.]
BR: Yeah, I think it began life as a kind of ugly brown and they painted it an even uglier brown.
JM: Oh.
BR: Anyway, that’s that. You being one of the kings of the Jazzmaster, I felt like I should own up to that before we went any further.
JM: All right.
[It should be noted that J said “All right” in a very absolving manner. I felt better at this point. I knew we might not have much more in-depth conversation ahead of us, but J Mascis had pardoned me for my Jazzmaster sin with an “All right.”]
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