When Oklahoma City alt-rock oddballs The Flaming Lips put out their debut LP, Hear It Is, in 1986, it's unlikely that anyone involved would've imagined they'd be a major, GRAMMY-winning act releasing their 16th studio album 34 years later. And when lead singer Wayne Coyne first performed in his space bubble at Coachella 2004, there's no way he could've known that, 16 years later, said spherical orbs would look a lot less silly during an unprecedented health pandemic. But the lived experience of 2020 isn't really what any of us had on our vision boards—and yet here we are.

If anyone is primed to help guide us safely to the end of this absurd year, our bets are on Coyne and the Flaming Lips. Luckily, their latest technicolored dreamscape, American Head, drops tomorrow, Sept. 11. Its 13 tracks are a trip through the band's latest alternate universe, specifically a fantastical daydream imagining a "lost" Tom Petty album he and his band might have made after a wild drug detour in Oklahoma in the '70s. "Space Cowboy" Kacey Musgraves and frequent collaborator Particle Kid help add extra doses of magic to the story and bring it to life. As the Lips music so often does—with shimmer and effortlessness, nonetheless—tales of bad trips, longing, death and escape take on a playful, effervescent and even comforting tone.

Ahead of the new album, we caught up with the loveable frontman, who takes us deep into the wild daydream that inspired it, the creative process and recruiting Musgraves, who offers haunting vocals on three tracks. He also talks collaborating with Miley Cyrus, accidently predicting 2020 would be the year of the space bubble and the "wonderful" creative chaos he now hears on Clouds Taste Metallic. Read on for more, and enjoy the ride!

I want to start with American Head. In the press release, you talk about the vision you and Steven Drozd had that sort of sparked the album, where you imagined Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on this mythical drug trip that involved your older brothers in Tulsa in the '70s. It's hard to not giggle as I say this-

I'm wearing a Tom Petty concert shirt right now. Well, before they were Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, they traveled from Gainesville, Florida, trying to make their way out to L.A., but the producer sort of halted them and said, "Hey, meet me in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Let's do a little bit of recording there before." I suppose it was his idea, before they got corrupted by all the drugs and wild women in L.A., or something like that. But what he didn't know is that my older brothers, especially in 1973, 1974, were dealing all kinds of crazy drugs and knew all kinds of crazy drug dealers and bikers and freaks. They could have easily ran into my older brothers if they spent a couple of weeks in Tulsa recording way back then.           

Now, there's no proof of this. This is all speculation turned alternative-history-fantasy, but it did get my mind going. I mean the dilemma is if I ask my oldest brother who's 68 or something now, he would want to help me. If he thought it would be better if he met Tom Petty, he would be very much like, "Yeah, I think I did. It was great." So I never really confronted him about it because I know he would want to help me no matter what the cause was, and the truth would get to be second to helping me.

But it did help Steven and I gravitate towards an identity—a sound, a mood and a feeling and all that—that we know is a fantasy. But even if you create it yourself, some sort of direction to go in is always helpful. I mean, whenever I work with people where I'm not the director, I always say, "Tell me what to do. I'll gladly do whatever you tell me to do, because it helps me." So we kind of do that with ourselves, give ourselves a goal, a direction and see how that works.

And so, once you had that fantasy daydream vision, how did that develop into the album and the different storylines in the songs?

Well, I mean, you got to have songs. Without songs, we're all just kind of floating around in the process. We a couple of these songs, including "Mother I've Taken LSD" and "Dinosaurs On the Mountain," that were already in a longing kind of nostalgic vein, which we do a lot. I think we were just looking for some excuse to do more of that, which is always a bummer. You don't know if you should you be reinventing every molecular thing, reinventing the wheel every time, or just get a good vibe going and try to capture eight or nine of these feelings within this vibe. That's our greatest dilemma, when you don't know which way to go.

I think once we got this idea that we would be making this "lost" Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album, that let us feel like, "Oh, it's going to be an album. It's going to be like eight or nine songs in this vein." And we ever really tried to sound like Tom Petty, but in a mode of singer/songwriter with ordinary backing group, great songwriting, so that would be our idea for this record. It would be more singer/songwriter with cool ensemble behind him, which we're really not. Steven and I oftentimes are just the two of us recording and just making everything up. Rarely is there really an ensemble playing and recording. I mean, we do that sometimes, but not very often, so it's just us sort of making up a scenario.

The album opens with "Will You Return / When You Come Down"—how do you feel like this track sets the tone for the rest of the album? And was this one of the first songs you worked on?

I think we were waiting on like a song like this to happen. Steven's had that little refrain that starts the song for a couple of years now. We knew there was some magic in it, so we didn't want to mess with that, but we thought, "We have to turn this into a song. What are we going to do here?" We just kept waiting and waiting until we knew what we could sing about.

I think what helped is that Steven and I've been doing this podcast called "The Sorcerer's Orphan" for a couple of years now. We try to tackle one song per episode, which is about 45 minutes, and we want to fill it up with cool stuff. We talk about stuff like, "What did you mean by that? Why did you do this? And why would you do that?" Since it's just the two of us, we would talk about in-depth things that we probably know a little bit about, but wouldn't have gotten as far.

He could say something like, "Well, I was playing with my dad, and I remember when my mother died." In casual conversation, you don't keep going but in the show I'd ask, "Well, man, how did you feel about that? And how could you just continue the next day?" Or something of that ilk. And you get deeper and deeper into it, because you're looking for something to put into the podcast. I think the byproduct of that is that we really started to figure out a lot of why we are so much alike and why we like each other and why our songwriting works.

I think all that was leading up to us being able to do an album where we talked about the way we feel about it. On "Will You Return / When You Come Down"—Steven wouldn't say this—but for me it feels like he is in a sense talking to his dead relatives. I don't think he really is. We don't really write songs like that. But I interpret it as him somehow having a little bit of survivor's guilt in the same way that I do, about when people died, and when things would happen to my brothers and their friends when I was younger. Steven and I didn't want to be like our brothers—even though we were really exactly like them—because we wanted to pursue doing music and art, and life. We didn't really want to just take drugs and go to jail. I mean, that's what scared us.

For the longest time we wouldn't admit that or write a song about that or even want to think that. But now that we're both older, there's a way of sort of admitting that about ourselves or being proud of it or ashamed of it or whatever it is. We thought, "Well, if we try to put it into a song, no matter what it is that you're saying, that always makes it kind of beautiful." I think that's one of the things that art does for the person that's creating it. You sort of set your things into this beautiful thing.

 "We thought, 'Well, if we try to put it into a song, no matter what it is that you're saying, that always makes it kind of beautiful.'"

I think in that way, we were hoping for just a really great, emotional, melodic, rollicking kind of song. And this was towards the very end of [working on] the record. We'd already done a lot of songs. 13 songs on an album is a lot of songs for us. And we had all this stuff up and running, and we just got lucky. And then this two-hour session we did with an engineer here at my house was just blammo. We put that together in just a couple of hours. And when we presented it to Dave Fridmann, our [long-time] finishing producer guy, he was just like, "Oh, man, this sums it all up." You don't really know that until someone outside listens to it.

I think that's what we were trying to do. We wanted something that was simple, but carried emotion and carried some epic-ness and some secret story to it. But doesn't every songwriter? Everybody that writes anything says, "I hope what we write is f***ing cool and not stupid, like I think I am." And that was one part of American Head. We were determined to somehow say this thing.

Do you know the documentary maker Ken Burns? We love everything he does, and he is the quintessential American documentary maker. We thought, "If Ken Burns approached us about making a documentary about The Flaming Lips—which he's not—what would that music sort of sound like?" Because his take on the American past and the American life or whatever, it's almost religious sounding, even though it's really not. It's based in some kind of gospel vibe, but it is epic and biblical without being religious. And so, it's a hard vibe to catch accidentally. You kind of have to be in a mode. For me, those strings that kind of erupt out of the guitar solo at the end of "Will You Return / When You Come Down," is that epic American life that though it's gone, lives on forever.

What was the flow of working on the songs for the album?

For us, we still think of albums as being the first song to the last song. For me, I almost always listen to the first song, all the way through an album. It's like making a movie or anything, you want the beginning to be really, really great and special, so people don't just shut it off. You want a good 15, 16 minutes of, "Man, I'm into that."

So, even though "Will You Return / When You Come Down" was almost the last song that we came up with, it ended up being the first [on the album]. And then the second song ["Watching the Lightbugs Glow"] is a track that we wrote knowing that Kacey Musgraves was going to be the voice of it. Once she agreed to do a couple of tracks on the album, we made this track figuring the night that we got together we'd have a few things prepared. If the first thing went well, we'd get to the second thing and maybe third thing. So that would've been the third song we did with her.

I think Steven wrote it in the tone of what Kacey's voice would do and he was right. When she was doing it, you could hear her little inflections. And Steven and I looked at her, "Man, that's exactly what we were hoping would happen—in a good way."

So you put these things together just because you want the listener to kind of be like, "Oh, man, that's easy listening." I always say, I want it to be easy for people to feel what's going on and not make it too difficult, especially when we're singing songs about your mother being dead or your brother dying of a drug overdose.

For me, it's not a story at all if it's not warm and loving and regretful and mournful. I mean, no one wants to hear a story about people they don't care about. So once you start caring and loving people, the music sometimes is so comforting as though it allows you to tell any deep, horrible story that you can or want to, and you feel like you're in good hands.

Swaddling them with the sound, so the story is not so hard.

I wish I'd said swaddling. Yeah, exactly that.

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I feel that. I want to talk more about Kacey's contributions to the album because, like you said, they just fit so well. I love her backing vocals on "Watching the Lightbugs Glow" and "Flowers Of Neptune 6," where she sounds kind of like an alien goddess. What was it like working with her on this project and how did the collaboration happen?

We knew that she was a fan and we were looking for an excuse to approach her. You never really know what people are like or will say. You always fear the worst. She covered our song, "Do You Realize" at her Bonnaroo show last summer. I had a lot of people text me that were there and said, "Hey, she just did your song. It was great. I can't believe it." Once she did that, we thought, "Well, we could probably approach her and at least she would be nice about it." But you kind of have to come up with the songs to present to her. You have to work in this void of, "I hope this all works."

The first one we did with her was "Flowers Of Neptune 6," which she really liked. We already knew we were going to do that one. After, that's when we made "Watching the Lightbugs Glow." And then out of just sheer dumb luck and timing, the "God and the Policeman" track happened right before we went to see her. It was very short before we added Kacey into it as a duet. We elongated the song, and Steven did another Kacey-type of demo so she could hear it. She immediately loved it, like, "That's the one." I said, "If it goes well, we'll try to get to other ones." And she agreed.

You're trying to make it as easy as possible for someone to do something really great. The way we approach it is we have the song and all the parts, and you can do a stylistic thing that you want with them, but you don't have to worry about making up something. All you got to do is show up and as long as the recording equipment works, it's probably going to be pretty good.

It was quite magical when she did it. I always worry that's not going to happen. Even when it's happening, I can't quite get out of the mode of worrying that it's not going to happen, up until the point where people have it in their hands.

But there were moments when she was doing it, I felt quite good about it. Like, "Oh, man, we really did it." She was really the only person we were trying to get. I mean, there's lots of people that we love, don't get me wrong, but for this particular album, she was the only one. I think if we wouldn't have gotten her, we probably wouldn't have anybody on it. What a great moment of luck.

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Listening to the album, her voice fits so naturally with it. It's a collaboration where you go, "Wait, have you guys worked together before?"

We've done lots of collaborations with people, but none, I don't think, that were as crafted for that other person. Obviously, we've worked with Miley Cyrus, and a lot of those songs were written for her. I don't think she knew that we were writing them for her. In this way, Kacey knew in advance, "Here's what we're going to do."

With Miley, a lot of times we would have the stuff and she would record for 20 minutes in between a bunch of other weird shit she's doing. And that would be the song. You don't really know what's going to happen. I think with Miley, we always thought, "Well, this is fine, but we'll get another couple of sessions out of her." And then the next time we'd get together, we'd do something completely different, and it would go another way. We always sort of felt like, "Well, one of these days we'll get all this stuff together and it'll be great." Before we could do that, it [2015's Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz] was all put out, which I love. I think that's the great fun about working with other people, they have their own trip.

But with Kacey, the song was pretty much finished, we just needed to get her on it. So that felt really good. She's real normal and sweet and easy and all that. Miley is normal and sweet and easy, but we were recording most of her singing at her house. By the time we would all show up, a lot of times—I mean, it's quite a long time ago now, but back in 2014—there would be a raging pool party going, and you'd have to remind her at 4:00 a.m., "We still have to do the singing, because two of these guys are flying out in an hour, and we have to get this done." It would be fun, but it would be a bit of a challenge.

In the music video for "Will You Return / When We Come Down" you guys are performing in the same room but separated by filmy dividers, and then in "Dinosaurs on the Mountain," you're performing in your bubbles. It's wild how it feels very 2020 now.

Well, that was what we wanted. The one where we're separated, part of that we just did because we knew there were going to be a few more people there than usual, and we did really want to be safe. Derek [Brown], our guitar player/keyboard player, he's got three young girls. And his wife paints people's faces, so she's always out in the public, warily, with masks and taking precaution. We're always trying to be aware of everybody's situation, because not everybody is in lockdown as much as [my wife] Katie and I are. We've always been kind of in lockdown at our house.

For the second video, it was more like, "Well, we're going to do this anyway." [The bubbles] ended up looking really marvelous in the video, so we sort of exaggerated it. I made a kind of a commentary cartoon where I drew the Flaming Lips in 2019 and I'm the only one in the space bubble on stage, and the Flaming Lips 2020, with everybody on stage and in the audience in a space bubble. I drew this on the very first day of the lockdown here, I think it was March 15th.

I just drew it like, "Isn't this funny?" Not really funny, but not thinking this will become true or anything. And little while after that, the guy who books musicians on the Stephen Colbert show got ahold of me. We were talking about doing at-home concerts, which none of us really knew what those were. They were still sort of conceptualizing it and he hinted that they wanted to see if I could do this space bubble performance like that [cartoon]. I said, "I do want to do that, but you have to help me because I need more of the space bubbles."

In the beginning, I don't think any of us thought it was going to last more than a month or something, really. That was my feeling. Pete and I, the talent buyer, conceded that if the bubbles take too long to get in, this thing will be over and it won't really be relevant. It aired at the beginning of June, which, by now, seems like kind of the beginning of the whole thing, even though we thought it would be over by then. It's happened in real-time. There was no plan. None of it was opportunistic. It was just, "Well, let's start to do this and see."

But I have to say, it is true, it is absolutely safe in that way. Once you get in the bubble, there is a lot of air in there. It's not like you get trapped and you're going to suffocate. We've done plenty of tests with three people in those bubbles for an hour, and plenty of air. It does get kind of hot and stinky. [Laughs.] There's no way anybody could know those things about it except for us because we're the only ones that do it. All of that was absurd to us too. As it would happen, it would start to be like, "This is really going to happen. This is really absurd and really true."

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How has the quarantine affected the band? Especially as you're about to release an album and, like you said, having to figure out at-home shows and that sort of thing?

In the beginning, this record was supposed to come out in May or June. When this happened in March, luckily, it wasn't really up to us. Some of the pressing plants and those sorts of things shut down even before we shut down, and we already knew that's going to be a delay, and we accepted that. And in the beginning, we didn't really want to promote anything. We felt embarrassed to be like, "Hey, look at us. We have a record. I know your grandmother's dying, but…" We didn't do any of that. We hated that.

Then after a couple of months, we would begin to look at things that weren't just the news. We would start to watch stuff on Netflix or whatever and be very glad there was some ridiculous entertainment that took you in another way, and then you can go back to the news. We were also very glad about there being really great emotional things. We didn't want to just be swept away in some stupid fantasy. We liked that there was cool shit happening still. So by the end of May into June, we were glad we had something to do, and that we can do the way the Flaming Lips have always worked for the past almost 20 years. We record at our house. We go to New York when Dave produces us as a finishing thing. We just spent a lot of time there. But a lot of it, we're doing here at our house and we make videos and all that sort of stuff here anyway. A lot of it's always been done with just a few people, never with big productions. All of that was all still pretty easy, and none of us got sick. We would meet and shoot videos, or I'd shoot a video by myself with just one or two crew guys. All that was pretty normal.

And at the beginning of the pandemic—I don't like to say it because it's horrible for everybody—we were relieved that we didn't have anywhere to go. No one wanted us to go anywhere, there weren't any shows to go to, or art openings or birthday parties to go to. Which we're very usually open to, we say yes to everything and we almost always regret it. We end up on a Saturday night going to two birthday parties, an art opening, a concert, then someone's throwing a party later that night. We just do too much. I think for the first time, during the beginning of the pandemic, we realized the value of time. You have to have the time to do things because otherwise there's just flashes coming at you, and you're doing the best you can. For us, that was great. I have a painting studio here and the recording studio. All of these things I can just do and not really feel like I have to make time for it. Although, in the beginning, you didn't know if you're going to look outside and there's going to be bodies piling up in the street. But after a while, it didn't seem like it was going to be that way.

[Without COVID-19] we would still be traveling all around the world playing shows even now, from March to Halloween, playing festivals all summer. And though it's fun and amazing, and you make tons of friends and have great times and make tons of money, it's a mile a minute. There's never even time to think about anything. Katie and I have been very glad to be with our little boy. He turned a year old in June. So for us, it's been amazing. But there's plenty of people out there that don't have any work and their family is sick, and it's horrible.

It's definitely been a moment to slow down, which is not standard for most American lifestyles, to just be at home and chilling.

Yeah. I don't know if we realized that we were fast. You do spend a lot of times at sound checks and airports. It's not dead time. To me, everything you do can be amazing if it can be done with love. But you do get tired and you only have so much energy and there's only so many hours in the day. We were glad to be going to sleep at 9:00 at night. It was wonderful.

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Do you miss performing live? Obviously, the band is super loved for your shows and that energy and colorfulness you bring on stage. Do you feel like there is a space or a void when you're not sharing your music in that way?

Well, the answer is no. But if everybody else was doing it and we weren't, I think would feel like, "Man, I want to be part of this thing." The reason we're not doing it relieves us from any of that, because it's like, "Well, we can't do it, and it would make people sick, and it's just not right." But none of us are those type of performers that get up at a party and sing and dance. We're not performers, really. I know we perform. And we love what we do! In our minds, we're doing a very specific thing. We're providing this moment for Flaming Lips fans that we get to sing these songs to them while doing some crazy, absurd, over-the top-shit. It's not like I want to go and perform at a club downtown. We just don't have that desire. We love doing our thing, and we love doing it with our audience. But, no.

We're introverts. We like making art and we love the isolation of that. I think we've made the Flaming Lips shows not necessarily even about us. We've made it about the lights and the unicorns and the space bubble and, "Come join us, it'll be great!" We would never say, "Come watch us and look at us." I know it is the same thing, but for us, we're going out there and presenting a big show. We're not presenting us as the show. To me, that would be the difference between being Rihanna or being the Flaming Lips. She's like, "I'm Rihanna. They're coming to watch me." And I'd be like, " I'm Wayne in the Flaming Lips. They're coming to listen to the Flaming Lips while we do crazy shit." It's not about me.

We just don't have that confidence or that sort of extrovert vibe. I know it could look like that, and that's why I don't really worry about it, because they can really look to be exactly the same thing. We never get done with a show and go, "Motherf***ers, yeah!" We're just so relieved that it went well, nobody got hurt, and it just seemed like everybody loved it. I mean, it's a wonderful relief that they sang along with us and they loved the songs and it worked. It's like when the plane lands after you've flown to Australia for 18 hours; "Yes! We didn't crash and we didn't suffocate or get diarrhea."

The seventh Flaming Lips album, Clouds Taste Metallic, turns 25 in September. What do you hear and feel now when you listen back to that album?

Well, I think we celebrated it at 10 years and 20, so, I mean, we've revisited it. And we love all of our records. We never are like, "Ugh, let's not talk about that." We love all of them. And especially that time, as we had our crazy guitarist Ronald Jones, that's really probably the peak of his stuff he did. Steven and I made great efforts to have him really shine on that album. I mean, we thought he was going to shine on all of our albums after that, we didn't know he was going to leave. But Ronald was very shy—I mean, we're introverts, but he was absolutely an introvert.

When we say that we like our music, I am a part of it, but a lot of it's not me, anyway. A lot of it is the group and the other players and songwriters. I'm not saying, "I love me!" I'm just saying I love that whole thing that happened, and Dave Fridmann's production, and all that.

The album really does end a period of the Flaming Lips. It's the marker that says, "We used to be a rock group." We all played guitars and they were loud and rockin'. We loved that but we were looking for a way out. We had been doing that since 1982, so by then, it was a long, long time. And I think we were relieved that it wasn't all that successful, because it led us to sort of say, "Well, let's do something else." As soon as Ronald left, Steven and I started just to go full throttle this other way, into making more music that wasn't just loud guitars and stuff. Which we probably would have done anyway. I think Ronald would have loved that.

But at the time, he had a really great, creative surge, and we were very encouraging and wanting that. So that record, to me, is us being a great, great songwriting group and a great recording group for him, to play his crazy shit over. I'll always be grateful for that because no one plays like him. No one's mind was like his. And he doesn't do recordings on his own. He's such a freak. The only way he would record would be if some determined, driven person like me says, "Well, we're going to do this." Because it would be a lot of stops and starts and all that.

So for me, it's wonderful. I love that record. It's got great songs, but it's mostly got Steven and Ronald—their playing is just, man, it still blows our minds. Part of us, after that, we didn't even really want to continue to play guitars because Ronald became the sound. He became the guitar player. And once he left, it was just kind of such a loss of character that we were like, "Well, we'll just do something else."

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And what space was the band in when you were working on Clouds Taste Metallic?

Well, the previous record came out in 1993, but it wasn't really successful until 1994 and 1995. So we had played lots and lots of shows. Back then, we would play a couple of hundred shows a year. And they would not be glamorous, easy shows. There'd be a lot of struggles and a lot of stress. And Ronald didn't like that. Steven and I were quite used to all that by then, but he didn't like that very much, and you could tell. I felt bad for him because I was like, "We kind of have to do this. This is how we're going to be able to be successful and do what we want." But I could tell it was wearing him out. We kept thinking it would stop, anyway, and we'd have time.

And it really didn't stop, and so we started to make the record, Clouds Taste Metallic, while we're still playing and playing and playing. I could tell that was hard on him, but I didn't really think about it that much. You're kind of caught up in your own thing and you're just going out and doing it. We didn't really sit down with psychiatrists and see how each other were doing. And a lot of what was happening to us was great. People were liking us. We were playing great shows, coming up with some great songs.

So [Clouds Taste Metallic] is all that. I think people sometimes make their best records when there is a little bit of chaos going on. That's why I'm always making so many things. I kind of like the energy of, "It's just another f***ing thing. Let's do it. Who cares?" I think everything gets a little bit ruined if it's too important, in music and art, anyway. It's not that way if it's your baby's brain surgery. Stop everything. Do that. But making music and dumb art, it's better that it's just a flow of you believing in something.

We loved it. But I do think it would have been frustrating if we didn't move on from that. In that time, Steven was just the drummer. And we talked about it a lot, he didn't want to just be the drummer. He wanted to sing. He wanted to play guitar. And I would just say, "We should just f***ing do it. Let's change the way the group is." And then when Ronald left, it was all these things that we thought about, suddenly, we were free to do them. Free to do whatever. And so it was exhilarating.

So when I listen to the record now, I hear all that. I don't really even feel like it's a group breaking apart. The Flaming Lips have gone on—25 years later, we're still here. I never think about that much. There are times when I think maybe this would be the last record that we get to make where get to have Dave Fridmann or Steven or whatever. But I wasn't thinking that then. I thought, "Oh, we're just getting started."

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In the pantheon of rock guitar gods, Slash ranks high on the list of legends. Many fans have passionately discussed his work — but if you ask him how he views his evolution over the last four decades, he doesn't offer a detailed analysis.

"As a person, I live very much in the moment, not too far in the past and not very far in the future either," Slash asserts. "So it's hard for me to really look at everything I'm doing in the bigger scheme of things."

While his latest endeavor — his new studio album, Orgy Of The Damned — may seem different to many who know him as the shredding guitarist in Guns N' Roses, Slash's Snakepit, Velvet Revolver, and his four albums with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, it's a prime example of his living-in-the-moment ethos. And, perhaps most importantly to Slash, it goes back to what has always been at the heart of his playing: the blues.

Orgy Of The Damned strips back much of the heavier side of his playing for a 12-track homage to the songs and artists that have long inspired him. And he recruited several of his rock cohorts — the likes of AC/DC's Brian Johnson, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, Gary Clark Jr., Iggy Pop, Beth Hart, and Dorothy, among others — to jam on vintage blues tunes with him, from "Hoochie Coochie Man" to "Born Under A Bad Sign."

But don't be skeptical of his current venture — there's plenty of fire in these interpretations; they just have a different energy than his harder rocking material. The album also includes one new Slash original, the majestic instrumental "Metal Chestnut," a nice showcase for his tastefully melodic and expressive playing.

The initial seed for the project was planted with the guitarist's late '90s group Slash's Blues Ball, which jammed on genre classics. Those live, spontaneous collaborations appealed to him, so when he had a small open window to get something done recently, he jumped at the chance to finally make a full-on blues album.

Released May 17, Orgy Of The Damned serves as an authentic bridge from his musical roots to his many hard rock endeavors. It also sees a full-circle moment: two Blues Ball bandmates, bassist Johnny Griparic and keyboardist Teddy Andreadis, helped lay down the basic tracks. Further seizing on his blues exploration, Slash will be headlining his own touring blues festival called S.E.R.P.E.N.T. in July and August, with support acts including the Warren Haynes Band, Keb' Mo', ZZ Ward, and Eric Gales.

Part of what has kept Slash's career so intriguing is the diversity he embraces. While many heavy rockers stay in their lane, Slash has always traveled down other roads. And though most of his Orgy Of The Damned guests are more in his world, he's collaborated with the likes of Michael Jackson, Carole King and Ray Charles — further proof that he's one of rock's genre-bending greats.

Below, Slash discusses some of the most memorable collabs from Orgy Of The Damned, as well as from his wide-spanning career.

I was just listening to "Living For The City," which is my favorite track on the album.

Wow, that's awesome. That was the track that I knew was going to be the most left of center for the average person, but that was my favorite song when [Stevie Wonder's 1973 album] Innervisions came out when I was, like, 9 years old. I loved that song. This record's origins go back to a blues band that I put together back in the '90s.

Slash's Blues Ball.

Right. We used to play "Superstition," that Stevie Wonder song. I did not want to record that [for Orgy Of The Damned], but I still wanted to do a Stevie Wonder song. So it gave me the opportunity to do "Living For The City," which is probably the most complicated of all the songs to learn. I thought we did a pretty good job, and Tash [Neal] sang it great. I'm glad you dig it because you're probably the first person that's actually singled that song out.

With the Blues Ball, you performed Hoyt Axton's "The Pusher" and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads," and they surface here. Isn't it amazing it took this long to record a collection like this?

[Blues Ball] was a fun thrown-together thing that we did when I [was in, I] guess you call it, a transitional period. I'd left Guns N' Roses [in 1996], and it was right before I put together a second incarnation of Snakepit.

I'd been doing a lot of jamming with a lot of blues guys. I'd known Teddy [Andreadis] for a while and been jamming with him at The Baked Potato for years prior to this. So during this period, I got together with Ted and Johnny [Griparic], and we started with this Blues Ball thing. We started touring around the country with it, and then even made it to Europe. It was just fun.

Then Snakepit happened, and then Velvet Revolver. These were more or less serious bands that I was involved in. Blues Ball was really just for the fun of it, so it didn't really take precedence. But all these years later, I was on tour with Guns N' Roses, and we had a three-week break or whatever it was. I thought, I want to make that f—ing record now.

It had been stewing in the back of my mind subconsciously. So I called Teddy and Johnny, and I said, Hey, let's go in the studio and just put together a set and go and record it. We got an old set list from 1998, picked some songs from an app, picked some other songs that I've always wanted to do that I haven't gotten a chance to do.

Then I had the idea of getting Tash Neal involved, because this guy is just an amazing singer/guitar player that I had worked with in a blues thing a couple years prior to that. So we had the nucleus of this band.

Then I thought, Let's bring in a bunch of guest singers to do this. I don't want to try to do a traditional blues record, because I think that's going to just sound corny. So I definitely wanted this to be more eclectic than that, and more of, like, Slash's take on these certain songs, as opposed to it being, like, "blues." It was very off-the-cuff and very loose.

It's refreshing to hear Brian Johnson singing in his lower register on "Killing Floor" like he did in the '70s with Geordie, before he got into AC/DC. Were you expecting him to sound like that?

You know, I didn't know what he was gonna sing it like. He was so enthusiastic about doing a Howlin' Wolf cover.

I think he was one of the first calls that I made, and it was really encouraging the way that he reacted to the idea of the song. So I went to a studio in Florida. We'd already recorded all the music, and he just fell into it in that register.

I think he was more or less trying to keep it in the same feel and in the same sort of tone as the original, which was great. I always say this — because it happened for like two seconds, he sang a bit in the upper register — but it definitely sounded like AC/DC doing a cover of Howlin' Wolf. We're not AC/DC, but he felt more comfortable doing it in the register that Howlin' Wolf did. I just thought it sounded really great.

You chose to have Demi Lovato sing "Papa Was A Rolling Stone." Why did you pick her?

We used to do "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" back in Snakepit, actually, and Johnny played bass. We had this guy named Rod Jackson, who was the singer, and he was incredible. He did a great f—ing interpretation of the Temptations singing it.

When it came to doing it for this record, I wanted to have something different, and the idea of having a young girl's voice telling the story of talking to her mom to find out about her infamous late father, just made sense to me. And Demi was the first person that I thought of. She's got such a great, soulful voice, but it's also got a certain kind of youth to it.

When I told her about it, she reacted like Brian did: "Wow, I would love to do that." There's some deeper meaning about the song to her and her personal life or her experience. We went to the studio, and she just belted it out. It was a lot of fun to do it with her, with that kind of zeal.

You collaborate with Chris Stapleton on Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well" by Peter Green. I'm assuming the original version of that song inspired "Double Talkin' Jive" by GN'R?

It did not, but now that you mention it, because of the classical interlude thing at the end... Is that what you're talking about? I never thought about it.

I mean the overall vibe of the song.

"Oh Well" was a song that I didn't hear until I was about 12 years old. It was on KMET, a local radio station in LA. I didn't even know there was a Fleetwood Mac before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. I always loved that song, and I think it probably had a big influence on me without me even really realizing it. So no, it didn't have a direct influence on "Double Talkin' Jive," but I get it now that you bring it up.

Was there something new that you learned in making this album? Were your collaborators surprised by their own performances?

I think Gary Clark is just this really f—ing wonderful guitar player. When I got "Crossroads," the idea originally was "Crossroads Blues," which is the original Robert Johnson version. And I called Gary and said, "Would you want to play with me on this thing?"

He and I only just met, so I didn't know what his response was going to be. But apparently, he was a big Guns N' Roses fan — I get the idea, anyway. We changed it to the Cream version just because I needed to have something that was a little bit more upbeat. So when we got together and played, we solo-ed it off each other.

When I listen back to it, his playing is just so f—ing smooth, natural, and tasty. There was a lot of that going on throughout the making of the whole record — acclimating to the song and to the feel of it, just in the moment.

I think that's all an accumulation of stuff that I've learned over the years. The record probably would be way different if I did it 20 years ago, so I don't know what that evolution is. But it does exist. The growth thing — God help us if you don't have it.

You've collaborated with a lot of people over the years — Michael Jackson, Carole King, Lemmy, B.B. King, Fergie. Were there any particular moments that were daunting or really challenging? And was there any collaboration that produced something you didn't expect?

All those are a great example of the growth thing, because that's how you really grow as a musician. Learning how to adapt to playing with other people, and playing with people who are better than you — that really helps you blossom as a player.

Playing with Carole King [in 1993] was a really educational experience because she taught me a lot about something that I thought that I did naturally, but she helped me to fine tune it, which was soloing within the context of the song. [It was] really just a couple of words that she said to me during this take that stuck with me. I can't remember exactly what they were, but it was something having to do with making room for the vocal. It was really in passing, but it was important knowledge.

The session that really was the hardest one that I ever did was [when] I was working with Ray Charles before he passed away. I played on his "God Bless America [Again]" record [on 2002's Ray Charles Sings for America], just doing my thing. It was no big deal. But he asked me to play some standards for the biopic on him [2004's Ray], and he thought that I could just sit in with his band playing all these Ray Charles standards.

That was something that they gave me the chord charts for, and it was over my head. It was all these chord changes. I wasn't familiar with the music, and most of it was either a jazz or bebop kind of a thing, and it wasn't my natural feel.

I remember taking the chord charts home, those kinds you get in a f—ing songbook. They're all kinds of versions of chords that wouldn't be the version that you would play.

That was one of those really tough sessions that I really learned when I got in over my head with something. But a lot of the other ones I fall into more naturally because I have a feel for it.

That's how those marriages happen in the first place — you have this common interest of a song, so you just feel comfortable doing it because it's in your wheelhouse, even though it's a different kind of music than what everybody's familiar with you doing. You find that you can play and be yourself in a lot of different styles. Some are a little bit challenging, but it's fun.

Are there any people you'd like to collaborate with? Or any styles of music you'd like to explore?

When you say styles, I don't really have a wish list for that. Things just happen. I was just working with this composer, Bear McCreary. We did a song on this epic record that's basically a soundtrack for this whole graphic novel thing, and the compositions are very intense. He's very particular about feel, and about the way each one of these parts has to be played, and so on. That was a little bit challenging. We're going to go do it live at some point coming up.

There's people that I would love to play with, but it's really not like that. It's just whatever opportunities present themselves. It's not like there's a lot of forethought as to who you get to play with, or seeking people out. Except for when you're doing a record where you have people come in and sing on your record, and you have to call them up and beg and plead — "Will you come and do this?"

But I always say Stevie Wonder. I think everybody would like to play with Stevie Wonder at some point.

Incubus On Revisiting Morning View & Finding Rejuvenation By Looking To The Past

At the 2003 GRAMMYs, a 25-year-old John Mayer stood on stage at Madison Square Garden, his first golden gramophone in hand. "I just want to say this is very, very fast, and I promise to catch up," he said with a touch of incredulity.

In the two decades that have followed his first GRAMMY triumph, it's safe to say that Mayer, now 46, has caught up. Not only has the freewheeling guitarist and singer/songwriter won six more GRAMMYs — he has also demonstrated his versatility across eight studio albums and countless cross-genre collaborations, including his acclaimed role in The Grateful Dead offshoot, Dead & Company. But the true testaments to his artistic range lie simply within the music. 

Over the years, Mayer's dynamism has led him to work deftly and convincingly within a wide variety of genres, from jazz to pop to Americana. The result: an elastic and well-rounded repertoire that elevates 2003's "Bigger Than My Body" from hit single to self-fulfilling prophecy. 

From March 2023 to March 2024, Mayer took his protean catalog on the road for his Solo Tour, which saw him play sold-out arenas around the world, mostly acoustic, completely alone. The international effort harkened back to Mayer's early career days, when standing alone on stage, guitar in hand, was the rule rather than the exception. Just after his second Solo leg last November, Mayer added radio programming and curation to his resume via the launch of his Sirius XM channel, Life with John Mayer. Fittingly, XM bills the channel (No. 14) as one notably "defined not by genre, but by the time of day, as well as the day of the week."

Mayer's next venture sees him linking back up with Dead & Company, for a 24-show residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas from May 16 to July 13. In honor of his latest move, GRAMMY.com explores the scope of Mayer's musical genius by revisiting 10 essential songs that demonstrate the breadth of his range, from the very beginning of his discography.

"Your Body Is A Wonderland," Room For Squares (2001)

The second single from Mayer's debut album, "Your Body Is A Wonderland" became an almost instant radio favorite like its predecessor, "No Such Thing," earning Mayer his second consecutive No. 1 on Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay chart. The song's hooky pop structure provided an affable introduction to Mayer's lyrical skill by way of smart, suggestive simile and metaphor ("One mile to every inch of/ Your skin like porcelain/ One pair of candy lips and/ Your bubblegum tongue") ahead of Room For Squares' release later that June. The breathy hit netted Mayer his first career GRAMMY Award, for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, at the 45th Annual GRAMMY Awards in 2003.

In recent years, Mayer — who penned the song when he was 21 — has chronicled his tenuous relationship with "Your Body is a Wonderland" in his infamous mid-concert banter, playfully critiquing the song's lack of "nuance." Following a perspective shift, Mayer has come to embrace his self-proclaimed "time capsule"; it was a staple of his set lists for his Solo Tour.

"Who Did You Think I Was," TRY! - Live in Concert (2005)

The product of pure synergy and serendipity, the John Mayer Trio assembled after what was intended to be a one-time stint on the NBC telethon, "Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope," in 2005. The benefit appearance lit the creative fuse between Mayer, bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Steve Jordan — who, over the years, have also played alongside the singer on his headline tours.

The John Mayer Trio propelled its eponymous artist from pop territory to a bluesy brand of rock 'n' roll that then demonstrated his talent as a live guitarist to its greatest degree yet. The Trio's first and only release, TRY! - Live in Concert, was recorded at their September 22, 2005 concert at the House of Blues in Chicago. 

Mayer acknowledges his abrupt sonic gear shift on TRY! opener, "Who Did You Think I Was." "Got a brand new blues that I can't explain," he quips, then later asks, "Am I the one who plays the quiet songs/ Or is he the one who turns the ladies on?"

"Gravity," Continuum (2006)

Though "Waiting On the World to Change" was the biggest commercial hit from 2006's Continuum, "Gravity" remains the pièce de résistance of Mayer's magnum opus. Its status as such is routinely reaffirmed by the crowds at Mayer's concerts, whose calls for a live performance of his quintessential soul ballad can compete even with Mayer's mid-show remarks.

The blues-tinged slow burn marries Mayer's inimitable vocal tone with his guitar muscle on a record that strides far beyond the pop and soft rock of his preceding studio albums. Though Continuum builds on the blues direction Mayer ignited with TRY!, it does so with greater depth and technique, translating to a concept album, sonically, that evinces both his breakaway from the genres that launched his career and his skill as a blues guitarist — and "Gravity" is a prime example. 

"I'm very proud of the song," Mayer mused on his Sirius XM station. "It's one of those ones that's gonna go with me through the rest of my life, and I'm happy it's in the sidecar going along with me." 

"Daughters," Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles (2008)

"Daughters" wasn't Mayer's first choice of a single for his sophomore LP, 2003's Heavier Things, but at Columbia Records' behest — "We really want it to go, we think it can be a hit," Mayer recalled of their thoughts — the soft-rock-meets-acoustic effort joined the album rollout. Columbia's suspicions were correct; "Daughters" topped Billboard's Adult Pop Airplay in 2004 — his only No. 1 entry on the chart to date.

But "Daughters" didn't just enjoy heavy radio rotation — it also secured Mayer his first and only GRAMMY win in a General Field Category. The Heavier Things descendant took the title of Song Of The Year at the 47th Annual GRAMMY Awards in 2005, helping Mayer evade music's dreaded "sophomore slump."

While the studio version may be the GRAMMY-winning chart-topper, Mayer's live rendition of "Daughters" during his December 8, 2007 performance at Los Angeles' Nokia Theater for Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles compellingly demonstrated the power of the song — and his acoustic chops.

"Edge of Desire," Battle Studies (2009)

Come 2009, what critics almost unanimously proclaimed to be Mayer's biggest musical success had become his Achilles heel; everyone wanted another Continuum. But as they were to learn, Mayer never repeats himself. Thus came Battle Studies.

Born from a dismantling and transformative breakup, his fourth studio album arguably only becomes fully accessible to listeners after this rite of passage. Mired in introspection and pop rock, Battle Studies broadly engages with elements of pop with a sophistication that distinguishes it from Mayer's earlier traverses in pop and pop-inflected terrain. 

His artistry hits a new apex on "Edge of Desire," a visceral and tightly woven song that remains one of the strongest examples of his mastery of prosody — the agreement between music and lyrics that results in a resonant and memorable listening experience. 

"Born and Raised," Born & Raised (2012)

On the title track of his fifth studio album, Mayer distills growing up (and growing older) into a plaintive reflection on the involuntary, inevitable, and, in the moment, imperceptible phenomenon. He grapples with this vertigo of the soul on a record that, 12 years later, remains among his most barefaced lyrically.

The tinny texture of a harmonica, heard first in the intro, permeates the song, serving as its single most overt indicator of the larger stylistic shift that Born & Raised embodies. The 12-song set embraces elements of Americana, country and folk amid simpler-than-usual chord progressions for Mayer, whose restraint elevates the affective power of the album's lyricism. 

"Born and Raised - Reprise," with which Born & Raised draws to a close, is evidence of Mayer's well-demonstrated dexterity. In its sanguine, folk spirit, the album finale juxtaposes "Born and Raised" both musically and lyrically. "It's nice to say, 'Now I'm born and raised,'" Mayer sings as the last grains of sand in Born & Raised's hourglass fall.

"Wildfire," Paradise Valley (2014)

Even before Paradise Valley hit shelves and digital streaming platforms, the cowboy hat that Mayer dons in the album artwork intimated that the hybrid of Americana, country, and folk he embraced on Born & Raised wasn't going anywhere — at least not for another album. The sunbaked project was a gutsy sidestep even further away from his successful commercial formula, and finds him expanding his stylistic fingerprint across 11 tracks that run the gamut of American roots music.

"Wildfire," the breezy toe-tapper with which Paradise Valley opens, grooves with Jerry Garcia influence. It is therefore unsurprising that many interpret "We can dance with dead/ You can rest your head on my shoulder/ If you want to get older with me," to be a lyrical nod to the Dead. Perhaps uncoincidentally, Mayer's invitation to become a member of Dead & Company came one year after the release of Paradise Valley.

"Shakedown Street," Live at Madison Square Garden (2017)

There is perhaps no better example of Mayer's dynamism than his integration in Dead & Company. The Grateful Dead offshoot, formed in 2015, intersperses Mayer among three surviving members of the band — Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann — as well as two more newcomers, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti. Mayer's off-the-cuff guitar solos and vocal support at Dead & Co's concerts are the keys that have unlocked a new plane of musicianship for Mayer, the solo artist.

This is evident on "Shakedown Street," a staple of The Grateful Dead's – and now, Dead & Company's – set lists. The languid, relaxed number gives Mayer the space to improvise guitar solos and use his vocals in a looser style than how he sings his own productions, all while feeding off the energy of his fellow band members. In addition to being one of The Dead's best-known songs, "Shakedown Street" is also the name of the makeshift bazaar where "Deadheads" socialize and sell wares ranging from grilled cheeses to drink coasters emblazoned with The Grateful Dead logo outside Dead & Company concerts. 

Mayer's long, strange trip with (and within) the jam band has cross-pollinated his and The Grateful Dead's respective fandoms, attracting scores of Dead & Co listeners to his own headline shows, and vice versa. The takeaway: Mayer's involvement with Dead & Company offers a new, comparatively more rugged and improvisational lens through which to view his artistry.

"You're Gonna Live Forever in Me," The Search for Everything (2017)

"You're Gonna Live Forever in Me" evokes the sense of walking in, unexpected and undetected, to one of Mayer's writing sessions, watching him sing the freshly-penned piano ballad. This is owed to the song's abstract lyricism, the sentiment of which is deeply personal and universally accessible — a juxtaposition that's not often easy to achieve in songwriting. (Take, for example, "A great big bang and dinosaurs/ Fiery raining meteors/ It all ends unfortunately/ But you're gonna live forever in me.") But the studio version of "You're Gonna Live Forever in Me" also happens to be the original vocal take, adding to the feeling that Mayer is fully engrossed in a moment of poignant reflection mediated by music.

"I sat at the piano for hours teaching myself how the song might go. I sang it that night, and that was it…I couldn't sing the vocals again if I tried," Mayer recalled in a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone. 

Mayer's lilted, Randy Newman-esque singing on the track finds him unintentionally but impactfully adopting a vocal technique distinctive from anything he's ever done before.

"Wild Blue," Sob Rock (2021)

Buoyed by a honeyed hook and slick production from No I.D., "New Light" was the unequivocal commercial standout of Sob Rock, a soft-grooving pastiche of '80s influence. Though the catchy pop-informed number finds Mayer stylistically diversifying by working with "The Godfather of Chicago Hip-Hop" (whose credits include Kanye West, JAY-Z, and Common, to name just a few), a look beyond the Sob Rock frontrunner reveals evidence of more sonic experimentation on the album.

Cue "Wild Blue." In its hushed, double-tracked vocals, the song plays like a love letter to JJ Cale. Mayer's whispery vocal emulation of the rock musician yields another new, but still polished, strain of John Mayer sound. 

With hints of the '70s embedded within its taut production, "Wild Blue" is a beatific semi-departure from its parent album's '80s DNA. Together, they evince Mayer's ability to work not only across genres but also across sounds from different decades in music — further proof that his artistic range is both broad and timeless.

A Beginner’s Guide To The Grateful Dead: 5 Ways To Get Into The Legendary Jam Band

By 2001, alt-rock heroes Incubus were on the verge of something big. Their third album, 1999's Make Yourself, was a crossover hit, thanks to singles "Stellar," "Pardon Me" and "Drive," all of which were on constant rotation on alt-rock radio and MTV. To capitalize on the momentum and record a follow-up, the band rented a beachside mansion on Morning View Drive in Malibu instead of recording in a traditional studio.

For a little over four weeks, the band lived together in that beachside mansion, working on songs day and night, creating what would become their best-selling record, 2001's Morning View. As frontman Brandon Boyd remembers, the carefree setup helped Incubus create without any pressure to match Make Yourself: "For whatever reason, I never felt like we had to come up with something better or else it'd all be over. It was just fun and exciting."

The result was an album that moved them further away from the heavy nu-metal sound of their earlier records and leaning into their new mainstream appeal. Morning View debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 2, kickstarting a trend that would continue with each of the band's preceding albums landing in the top 5 on the all-genre albums chart. By evolving their sound on Morning View, Incubus found connection with a wider audience and changed the trajectory of the band.

Twenty-three years after Morning View was originally released, Incubus are commemorating the album with a U.S. tour and a re-recorded version titled Morning View XXIII, out now. While bands tend to celebrate anniversaries with deluxe reissues and remasters, Incubus uniquely decided to rerecord the album in order to capture these songs as they are now — that is, fully evolved and gracefully aged.

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Recorded in the same mansion on Morning View Drive in Malibu with Boyd on vocals, Michael Einziger on guitars, Jose Pasillas on drums, Chris Kilmore on turntables and keys, and newbie Nicole Row on bass, Morning View XXIII sees the band stepping back into the snapshot of an album and paying homage their most successful recordings. These are not remixes or carbon copies; these recordings are a representation of wizened alt-rock veterans Incubus are now. As a result, it has rejuvenated the band: "There's this feeling of, 'Oh wow, there's still a lot of life in this,'" Boyd adds.

Mostly, Morning View XIII remains faithful to the original, with subtle differences throughout. Others you'll notice, like the extended swelling intro in album stand-out "Nice to Know You," or the heavy riff return in "Circles." Overall, the band sounds as youthful as they ever have, excited to pay respect to an album that shaped both them and their fans.

Ahead of XXIII's release, GRAMMY.com caught up with Boyd and Einziger over Zoom to talk more about the project, the album anniversary, and tapping into that exuberant energy to pave the way forward into the band's next era.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

First of all, welcome back to the U.S., I know you've been out of the country for a while. And you guys just played "Kimmel" and sounded fantastic. What's it like being Incubus in 2024?

Brandon Boyd: It's a trip. There's this feeling that we've been… I don't know if the right word is reinvigorated… I think it's probably a number of factors that we have to include. But the one that feels the most appropriate to mention is the fact that Nicole Row joined our band. It started as her filling in for Ben Kenny on Ben's suggestion, and fast forward to a few months later and she's become an actual member of the band.

It's just been so much fun getting to know her, but also getting to know her through the lens of being on stage together and traveling and playing shows all over the world. She's a phenomenal player, and she's a wonderful presence and personality. And it seems like our longtime listeners have fully accepted her and welcomed her into the fold with open arms.

Mike Einziger: I couldn't agree more. It's kind of a combination of things for me, but definitely Nicole. Nicole's presence has reinvigorated us in a bunch of different ways. She's a bit younger than us…

Boyd: Just a bit. [Laughs.]

Einziger: …And super talented, fun to play with, and fun to be around. That's having a really great effect on all of us as a collective. But also, as you mentioned, we just got back from five weeks touring in Asia, Australia and New Zealand — these are parts of the world we haven't been to in quite some time, not since the pandemic. And you know, I'm 47 now, and it's pretty crazy to be this age and traveling that far away from our country and city of origin to be playing in front of tens of thousands of people who care about our music.

It's like, the older I get, the more I can't believe and am astonished and appreciative and humbled by the level of enthusiasm for this music that we wrote so long ago. It's just a feeling of appreciation and humility to be in this position to now consider writing new music and keeping the dream alive, as it were.

It sounds like you've tapped into this youthful energy. That's sort of the vibe I've been getting with Morning View XXIII. When you were rerecording this record, did you feel like you wanted to reach back to the kids you were 23 years ago when you originally recorded?

Einziger: It's really interesting because, to be totally honest, I wasn't totally enthused about the idea in the beginning. When we first started talking about it, it kinda seemed like, "Why would we do this?" But we ended up playing Morning View at the Hollywood Bowl here in Los Angeles, and when we played that music in front of people, it felt really different than I imagined it would.

That experience shaped my perspective on the idea of rerecording the music. In a strange way, it was a new experience, but it also [felt] like visiting really old friends. It was just fun. That's really the only way to describe it.

It was so much fun rerecording those songs, being conscious of how we were changing certain aspects but also not really caring at the same time. This is our music. We can do whatever the f— we want with it. People can like or not like it. Whatever. We're gonna have a good time putting this together. To me, it was all about that experience of just enjoying it and reliving that music, and also making it new at the same time.

Boyd: I agree with you 100 percent, Mike. There's one small factor from a selfish point of view that I feel compelled to mention: the songs from Morning View were getting harder and harder for me to perform live over the last 10 years. Part of it was because of the process of aging. We wrote these songs when we were in our 20s, and now we're all in our late 40s trying to perform them [Laughs].

And then on a boring physiological human level, I had broken my nose twice as a kid and I learned to sing through one nostril. My other nostril I could never breathe through. I made the decision to have my septum repaired in late 2019. I knew it was gonna take some time for my face to heal completely. The global pandemic forced us to stay home, and I got this really interesting period of time to let my surgery heal and to learn how to breathe and sing out of two nostrils.

By the time we got to the rerecording of this record and I started doing my vocals, I had access to my voice again for the first time in what felt like over 10 years. And so now we're performing these songs again, and it's like somebody gave me back this breath capacity and this space on the inside of my face to access these things. It feels very different now, and I'm feeling invigorated again for sure.

Einziger: So much of musical performance is not thinking about what you're doing. It's more about expressing yourself and not worrying about if what you're playing is hurting you.

Boyd: The music is kind of spilling out of us again like it did when we were in our 20s.

Einziger: We'll just continue to make it harder for ourselves when we get even older, because we constantly are like, "Wow, we wrote all this music that is extra hard for a 40-something to play," and now we'll write music that is extra hard for 60 somethings to play and that'll be challenging in the future… but we'll be lucky if we get there. [Laughs.]

It's so interesting to hear how these songs have grown over the years. Is this something you wanted to capture with Morning View XXIII? What are your thoughts on how these songs have evolved and what time has done for your band?

Einziger: It's interesting because we didn't go into the recording process of rerecording Morning View with this intention that we were going to make new versions of the songs and, like, reimagine them so much as we went in there and just played them how we play them now. There were some things that we changed around a little bit, but it became obvious that there are certain parts of the songs that we play now that are just different than when we were recording them [23 years ago]. Sometimes we had to go back to the original recording and be like, "Oh wow, we actually don't play it like that."

Were there things you wanted to do differently this time around that you didn't or couldn't do in 2001?

Einziger: No, just there were parts that we play now — that I play now, for example — that Brandon would point out to me and he'd be like, "I don't think you play it like that on the recording," and I'd be like, "Of course I did! That's ridiculous. What are you talking about?"

Then we'd go back and listen to it and I'd be like, "Oh yeah, I actually did play it that way." We weren't overly concerned about that. We weren't trying to do this verbatim recitation of what we had done in the past. If we're playing it this way now, that's how we're gonna record it. And we did. It was fun.

So you didn't worry about "tampering" with the songs?

Einziger: Nah, like who f—ing cares! People will say "I wish they didn't change it" and it's like, we didn't change anything. We just made a different recording, but the original version will never go away. It will always be there, unless some cataclysmic event happens and wipes out all humanity. Then we have a bigger problem.

I remember reading something about how you wanted to separate yourselves from the nu-metal scene in 2001. Did you feel a sort of pressure to stand out when you were originally writing for Morning View? Do you care about that anymore?

Einziger: No. That s— makes me laugh when I think about it now. There was all this dumb, macho energy going on. We didn't want to be associated with that energy, but it's not really up to us to decide that anyway. We're expressing ourselves, we're making the music that we make and it's kind of up to everyone else to figure out.

But we ended up touring with a lot of those bands. We spent the whole early part of our career playing the Ozzfests and touring with bands like the Deftones — who I love — and System of a Down, Korn, and it just so happened that we had a lot of audiences in common. And I'm super grateful for that. It was an interesting musical time, and we made a lot of great friends, and we found an audience that we really connected with.

Boyd: I think the part about it that bothered me was more the fact that we didn't have a say in how our band was categorized. One of the things that's so attractive about being in the band — and I felt the same way when we were younger — is that, for better or worse, what we're presenting is coming directly from us. We're not a product of a team of producers and songwriters, which you see is sort of endemic to the music industry.

There's a lot of popular music that comes from think tanks. We're five people that go into a room, put our heads together, and what you hear is the result of that day. And there's something really cool about that. There's true self-authorship. And so when there were labels that were put onto us and associations with other bands, it felt like some of that self-authorship was being taken away.

It would be different if the labels were things that I associated more with. But when I was seeing sort of the terminology and labels that were being used to describe our band, I was like, "What the f—, that's not what we're doing! Ew!" It just felt icky to me.

But I was also — as we all are in our late teens, early 20s — kind of in a self-righteous period of time in my life, so it's very possible I was taking myself and our band a little too seriously. I feel a deep appreciation that anybody listened to what we did in any capacity. Associations be damned.

It doesn't really matter at the end of the day. If people are being exposed to it, then choosing to like it and make it a part of their experience, it doesn't f—ing matter what it's called, you know?

And the music speaks for itself.

Boyd: At the end of the day, yes.

Einziger: I think how I felt about this has evolved over the years. There's a handful of bands that we came up alongside, like Deftones, System of a Down, and Korn — including ourselves — we all somehow found a way to really connect with an audience. All of us are still making music. There's still a vibrant scene.

Why is Morning View special to you? Why do all of this for this particular album?

Boyd: When we were writing and recording this record [in 2001], our band caught a gust of momentum for what felt [like] the first time, where we were collectively like, "Woah, we get to write music as our job." And there was something really exciting and humbling and fun about that.

When we were writing Morning View, our song "Drive" from the record before it [Make Yourself] was climbing the charts really fast and they were playing it on MTV and all over the radio. To even have a whiff of that creative and career momentum at the same time is a real blessing, and I'm so grateful that we got to experience that.

When Morning View came out, the momentum just exploded. So this album means a lot to this band, not only from a career point of view but also just from the way it shot us into a trajectory. It was the record that sent us off into space, so to speak.

Einziger: Yeah, it was a heavy experience for everybody. I had this idea that I didn't want us to make what became Morning View in a recording studio. I wanted us to do it in a house, in a place that wasn't designed to make music. I loved the idea of taking a space that wasn't intended for that purpose and commandeering it into a space where we made music.

I got a lot of push back from our record label and our manager at the time. Nobody wanted us to do that. Nobody thought it was a good idea. It was gonna cost a lot of money to do it and the quickest, safest route from point A to point B was where everyone else wanted us to go. But I was very, very adamant that we not do it that way, and we somehow wrangled enough support to get the funding and find the right place to do it, which was that Morning View house.

Having that confidence and vision to be able to say, "No, f— you, this is how we're going to do it," and then have it be super successful, that was a big lesson to me and for all of us that we need to follow our vision. For better or worse, whatever risk it's going to be, that's how great s— happens. We just dove into it full on and fulfilled that vision.

It felt awesome to have that vision and have the record be successful. It was a fun experience, and I'm just really glad that we did it. It was life-changing for all of us.

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Mastodon's drummer and singer Brann Dailor assures you he did not purchase his shiny golden gramophone at his local shopping mall.

“I won that! I’m telling you. It’s a major award,” he says in the latest episode of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

The metal musician won his first GRAMMY award for Best Metal Performance for Mastodon's “Sultan’s Curse” at the 2018 GRAMMYs.

“‘Sultan’s Curse’ was the jumping-off point for the whole theme of the album,” he explains. “The protagonist is walking alone in the desert, and the elements have been cursed by a Sultan.”

It’s a metaphor for illness — during the creation of the album, the band’s guitarist Bill Kelliher’s mother had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and bassist Troy Sanders’s wife was battling breast cancer.

For the band, the GRAMMY award represented their version of the American Dream and culmination of their career work. Even if Mastodon didn’t win the award, Dailor was happy to be in the room: “We felt like we weren't supposed to be there in the first place! But it's an incredible moment when they actually read your name."

Press play on the video above to learn the complete story behind Brann Dailor's award for Best Metal Performance, and check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

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