The guitarist, a Meshuggah fan used to taking the lead, who would walk out the studio and threaten to quit. The frontman, a fan of electronic music who was discovering new abilities. They were as close as brothers, and would drive each other just as crazy. We were living our best life at that time.”ĭespite only being in their mid-20s, most of Deftones had known each other for years, stretching back to their schooldays. We had a blast, seriously, hanging out and being young adults in a nice studio making a record that we wanted to make. “We’d have Mimosa Mondays, and then it turned into Mimosa Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays. “I had a little recording set-up in the kitchen, and we’d throw around ideas real quick, and then do a little bit of work, and we drank a lot of champagne,” he smiles. He’d sit in the kitchen with a digital recorder, developing his newfound skills. Far from getting the guitar out of his system, Chino was getting deeper into it.
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Every day they would ride their bikes to the studio, which boasted a lounge area with a kitchen, a huge television and couches, where they would smoke, drink and obsessively play the videogame Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The sleepy fishing city of Sausalito is known for its colourful houseboats, where the band lived together: Chino and Abe, Stephen and Frank, and bassist Chi Cheng in a nearby apartment with his wife and son. We really wanted to experience the ‘record making’.”Įxperience it they did. “As much as we knew we wanted to make a record that was different, we wanted to capture a moment as opposed to going in and knocking it out. “We went into the studio really, really ill-prepared, but I think that was the fun of it too,” remembers Chino. While second album Around The Fur was completed in four months, they had been writing White Pony for six before they even had enough songs to fill the record, and were only two-thirds done before they hit The Plant. The historic studio had previously hosted the rock’n’roll likes of Stevie Wonder, Prince and Santana (“you try to rest your elbows on the studio wall and get a little bit of that mojo!” laughs Abe). That August, they went into The Plant in Sausalito, over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. These guys would just scream like f**king crazy Abe Cunningham Let him get it out of his system, and then we’ll move on.’” He never really told me not to, but I could tell that he was like, ‘Well, whatever. He’s always been the guitar player, so I was treading on his ground a little bit. Although, Stephen wasn’t really too keen on it. “It’s kind of weird that I’m the singer, because one of my least favourite things to do is to express myself through words, and guitar is a great way to express yourself without having to do that. “I was very green to the guitar, but I just loved playing it,” Chino explains in a soft drawl.
When he was absent, Chino would pick up one of Stephen’s guitars and experiment with it – something that would later cause friction. A few times a month, Stephen would make the six-hour drive to jam with them. At the tour’s close, Stephen had moved to Los Angeles, while Chino, Abe and turntablist Frank Delgado stayed home in Sacramento, tinkering with ideas at The Spot. They’d also been trialling new song Korea, a low-down, grinding pit-crusher. “All the while, we would just be testing out new music and drinking beer, and having the time of our lives.”īy this point, Deftones had already begun work on White Pony, and had even displayed the iconic graphic on their backdrop for that year’s Ozzfest, their set sandwiched between Slayer and Rob Zombie. Skating was such a priority that the band even measured how much space they needed to get their road-cases through, and only allowed an extra inch on each side so they could make the ramp as big as possible. ‘The Spot’ was part workspace and part clubhouse, with Iron Maiden posters adorning the walls and a steady stream of friends coming and going, shooting the shit or pulling off shove-its between practice sessions. You might have witnessed Chino doing kickflips, or guitarist Stephen Carpenter trying tricks on his bike. If you’d walked into Deftones’ rehearsal studio in midsummer 1999, you would have seen a 10-foot halfpipe.