“Dead Mexican in my Headphones”
Phil Lewis from L.A. Guns…
“I like a dead Mexican in my headphones and I’m ready to go.”
I interview rock guys two, three times a week. I use voice recognition software to transcribe these interviews. Works like this: I tape the phone conversation, then take the tape and speak my questions and their answers into a headset and voila, it’s a transcribed text file. It doesn’t always come out as planned though. Fun game: Repeat the wrongness out loud and you might be able to figure out what the guy actually said. Here are some of the more memorable miscues. More than a few of these gems ring truer than the actual words spoken…
by Martin Popoff
illustration by Félix LaFlamme
Rush’s Alex Lifeson on Neil Peart’s bicycling…
“He really enjoys his private time. And cycling for him, he would get on his bike and rhino 50 or 60 miles out and ride back. Nobody but him.”
Kim Mitchell on Akimbo Alogo’s “Rumour Has It”…
“That was a bastard to record. We had to get that song in three cakes, and those three cakes would be done over the course of like three or four hours. You can’t go like, okay, let’s do it again right now. The witches kill him.”
Rush’s Neil Peart, on “Cold Fire”…
“‘Cold Fire,’ to me, is one of my most satisfying songs, musically and lyrically, although it’s stuck at the second to last track. Obviously, nobody else shared my high pinion outfit (laughs).”
Rush’s Geddy Lee on talking on-stage…
“When I talk, I feel totally at ease. There’s the occasional time where you’re in a general admission situation and people are shopping too much and you have to talk about calming everybody down.”