Interview: Noise Rock Duo Lightning Bolt

Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson first formed Lightning Bolt at the Rhode Island School of Design back in 1994, and have been propelled along a seven album career spanning more than two decades. Their mix of free-form metal, noise, punk, and distorted vocals has evolved after their first self-titled debut on LOAD Records in 1999, and coupled with their raw live performances they became fully cemented into noise rock folklore.

Renowned for setting up their live shows in unusual places such as alleys or carparks, right in the faces of their often overwhelmed audience, Lightning Bolt developed a core base of die-hard fans – many of whom cameo’ed in the documentary about their life on the road The Power Of Salads.

Taking inspiration from everything from Sun Ra and Captain Beefheart to Philip Glass and nursery rhymes, they have developed their own musical vocabulary, often distrupting their own sound with pedals and loop stations. In this excerpt from their recent interview with RBMA Radio, the duo talk about their origins and inspirations.

What was Providence like in the ’90s?

Brian Chippendale

Providence in the 90's was good beaches, great seafood, blue skies... I don’t know. Beautiful thunderstorms, flooded streets, blood running from the rooftops, sun-scorched people, people on fire in the streets. Very inspiring.

OK, I will get serious about it. We came out of the art school there, the Rhode Island School of Design, and in the mid-’90s we got a big warehouse that we called Fort Thunder. I felt like there was a collision between the musical stuff and the weirder, artier stuff that was happening in the city. There was a cross-pollination. When it all intertwined, it got really rich and exciting. There was an edge to it all too. There were a lot of vicious bands like Arab On Radar and Six Finger Satellite.

Brian Gibson

Lazy Eye.

Brian Chippendale

Brian Gibson’s favorite, Lazy Eye.

Brian Gibson

I liked Lazy Eye.

Brian Chippendale

Who had two seven inches... fizzled out. Was it a Lazy Eye show where all the shit broke and it was just the drummer playing drums and then someone turned the mics up super loud and it was just feedback and drums?

Brian Gibson

I didn’t see that one.

Brian Chippendale

That was an awesome show ... inspired me.

You mentioned Fort Thunder. Can you talk a bit about what Fort Thunder was for those who don’t know?

Brian Chippendale

Fort Thunder was a warehouse that me and a couple of friends rented back in 95 and went until 2001. There were like a dozen people living in there. It was about 7,000 square feet of just, like, junk people had pulled in off the street for us. We became a destination spot for people’s weird garbage, and we would organize it and staple it to the walls and build weird rooms out of it. It was kind of an installation, but also a place to have shows and wrestling matches. At the bottom of the river where all the shit piles up? It was that. Then we got kicked out and they tore it down.

What is it now?

Brian Chippendale

It’s a parking lot for a Staples that went out of business. It was cool when they tore it down ... because we had put papers all over the walls and just drawn on everything, and I remember when they tore it down we were watching all the papers blow out into the city. It felt like we’d released the energy, and it was spreading like a virus. It had been freed.

At what point did you start making music together? Was there a decision to be a two-piece or was it just out of necessity?

Brian Gibson

When we started, we weren’t thinking about being a two piece. We actually played with a lot of different people in the beginning. I remember when I first came to RISD, I had a friend who was a senior, and I was asking him about people to play with at school. He was like, “You have to play with Brian Chippendale, he’s the best drummer in Providence.” I can’t remember how I actually ended up finding you or how we first talked. I remember seeing you play once at a party at... it might have been the Fuzzy Door or something?

Brian Chippendale

Oh man, this is ancient history.

Brian Gibson

You were just playing by yourself, upstairs in this room. I remember there was a party going on downstairs and you could hear this rumbling happening upstairs.

Brian Chippendale

There’s a fucking party going on, and I’m up in the attic playing drums.

Brian Gibson

You were up in the attic playing drums, and there were like two people in the room and they both were plugging their ears, sitting on the floor. You were just playing these tribal drum beats.

Brian Chippendale

I almost remember that.

Brian Gibson

I don’t even think I talked to you then, but I was like, “Oh yeah, he’s a really good drummer.” We played for a little while, and then at some point you went to Texas. And then you came back and I ran into you, and you were playing funk drums with some bass player.

Brian Chippendale

I was playing funk drums?

Brian Gibson

There was some bass player playing slap bass and you were playing, like, these funk beats. I know you weren’t having fun, but you were really good.

Brian Chippendale

We need to erase that from the tape. I think that was some [art] opening and they were like, “Hey man, play the drums.” Some dude was playing funk baselines, and I was supporting him with dance-able beats.

Brian Gibson

I remember being like, “Oh, shit. Brian’s back. Maybe we could play again.”

Brian Chippendale

Yeah, yeah. Maybe he can play funk drums with me.

Brian Gibson

We played a little at the end of my freshman year and then I went home. I remember getting pretty psyched about playing more, but I had this like tiny little Hartke combo amp, which I think I blew up. I went back to Burlington, Vermont, where I grew up, and I worked as a line cook and I remember saving up money to get a SWR 4x10. I think I wrote you a letter with a drawing of it.

Brian Chippendale

Good God.

Brian Gibson

Like, “I got a new amp!” I was so psyched.

Brian Chippendale

I was like, “I’m getting in the car and driving to Texas.”

Brian Gibson

Yeah, I’m not sure when we played again after that. I remember saving up to buy new speakers and stuff after freshman year.

When you started writing music together, how did that work between you? How has it developed over the years?

Brian Chippendale

Nothing has changed.

Brian Gibson

In the beginning, I was so quiet when Brian would play. All I could really hear was noise and textures and stuff. We would record it and it sounded kind of cool. In the room, when we would practice, I would have to literally bang on all of my strings to just play along with him.

Brian Chippendale

My drums were really loud.

Brian Gibson

Our early stuff was pretty textural and noisy, but we were both into that.

Brian Chippendale

Yeah, rhythmic.

Brian Gibson

I think I would have rather heard some melodies, but I couldn’t really make that happen until I got better equipment, which took a few years actually. Some of that early stuff sounded cool.

Brian Chippendale

We’ve always just jammed. There’s very few songs that came in from outside of jamming. Every once and a while someone will have a riff idea or some little thing or I’ll have a little beat that I made up. For the most part, though, it’s just us playing music together, freely, and then taping stuff and then listening back and finding stuff. It’s all pretty freeform in its origin.

We never even had a conversation about what kind of music we wanted to make. We just sort of sat down and I played drums and he played bass, and at the end of the day we were like, “That was awesome!” It’s been the same ever since. There was no real design – and there remains no real design. Although, after a while, we’ve done it so much that a design has come into place just through the nature of our limitations and the instruments. There’s really never been a mission statement or a whole lot of outside influence on what we do. If you put us in a room together, this is what we make using these instruments.

How does it work putting it on to record?

Brian Chippendale

It usually solidifies into pretty serious songs by the time it gets on the record. We usually record after we tour. Some songs linger for a few years. On the new record we have songs that go back five years, because it’s taken us five years to make the record. Those songs are pretty set in stone. There’s a few pieces on the record that are built out of improvisations in the studio, just now as we were doing it. We try and have a little bit of both.

For the most part, the records are pretty song-oriented, even though some people maybe don’t realize that (or can’t tell). On some of the old records I’ve had people say, “Wow, it’s amazing you guys are playing songs now.” I’m like, “I don’t know man, we’ve been playing songs from the beginning.” We’ve been playing them the same way. Maybe it’s like a cleaner recording now and you can kind of tell that it’s a song? I’m not sure.

Brian Gibson

We definitely improvise a lot when we practice. We don’t like the uncertainty of improvising live that much. We’ve tried that a few times, but it’s only a handful of times that we’ve really done a whole show. There’s something about the audience not knowing what to expect... I like that in theory, but when you’re doing it, it’s kind of uncomfortable. I think it’s comfortable for us to prepare something that we know the audience is going to respond to. It is a weird thing, because I think both of us like improvisation more than playing songs, at least when we’re practicing.

Brian Chippendale

Yeah, it’s two different beasts. It’s the Lightning Bolt at home and the Lightning Bolt that goes out and plays shows. We’ve had eras where we play a show and it’s completely improvised and we don’t play any songs. I think that works really well in Providence and some places around there that we go to more often.

When you’re rolling into London for the first time in five years, there’s just this tremendous urge to give people some recognizable stuff. It’s something we wrestle with. Our identity. Are you a rock band? Are you a freeform band? We’re very much a rock band. We’re a rock band. The songs are in place. But while we play them, I personally feel like I’m fighting with them sometimes, trying to pull them left and right. Beat at the edges of them, just to make sure it’s the same song but it’s not quite in the same form as last night.

You’ve always been known for ignoring the stage, and instead playing on the floor.

Brian Gibson

Yeah, it didn’t seem that crazy at all when we started it. I mean we were playing in a person’s kitchen or a basement or something like that. There weren’t that many situations where we were choosing deliberately to play on the floor when it would have been advisable to play on the stage.

Brian Chippendale

I remember having quite a few arguments with sound guys in various clubs. “Why don’t you want to play on the stage?” And we’re like, “I don’t know, because the stage sucks and the room is going to be empty and everyone’s hanging out on this side, so we’re just going to come play on this side.” In the beginning, it was really fun. One show we set up in front of the door, blocking the door to get out of the club.

Brian Gibson

Horrible fire hazard, yeah.

Brian Chippendale

It was fine. It was raining that day. There have been a few drawbacks along the way that have made us able to consider the stage as an okay place to play. I remember playing a show in Providence, where people were in different rooms. We set up our stuff in one room and a friend’s band was playing in the other room, and all these kids were just standing around our stuff waiting for us to play with their backs to the other band. It was kind of like, “Oh, man, this is not working anymore.” I felt wounded to think that people who were psyched about us would just turn their back on a friend’s band to anticipate where we were going to be. That was, for me, the first little glitch in the armor of what we were doing. That, and short girls who can’t see a goddamn thing.

One of the things I was curious about was influences. It’s been mentioned that Philip Glass is one of them, right?

Brian Gibson

In media, certain things get spread very quickly. I don’t know... Philip Glass is probably on our Wikipedia page somewhere. He is maybe someone I mentioned once back in 2001 as an influence. I have tons of influences.

I think maybe around the Ride the Skies period, there are some songs where I was playing these arpeggios, and I remember being kind of psyched about some Philip Glass compositions that I had heard that were just these arpeggios over and over again. I think there’s a couple songs where I was thinking about that, but every one of our songs has different influences and different ideas.

Brian Chippendale

We squashed the Philip Glass out of our sound years ago.

Brian Gibson

Yeah, Philip Glass is a piece. He’s definitely in there, but he’s not something I listen to anymore. A lot of my biggest influences you’d probably never hear in the songs. Something like Captain Beefheart. There was a period where I was really into them for a few years. What I really like about him is that he had his own vocabulary, so to be influenced by that, to rip him off or use some of his ideas just seems like the worst thing you could do. All the things I’m most influenced by are people who came up with their own vocabulary and their own way of playing and were outside of genres that I’m familiar with.

Brian Chippendale

Yeah, it’s more of a conceptual influence than a specific sound influence. It’s the same with Sun Ra. I just like the looseness and off-kilterness of it. At times, he got really hypnotic and repetitive. That was a big influence on me, just getting deeply lost in his stuff. But the influence is more conceptual, because we can’t mimic the sound of those bands anyway.

Brian Gibson

I think both of us, for different reasons, want our songs to go deep into one idea. We want to get more comfortable with repetition. There’s a certain kind of anxiousness that comes across when you change too much, like we’re trying to prove something. We should be comfortable with just rocking and doing something repetitively, and maybe have subtle shifts that happen in the composition, but not taking 90 degree turns. For me, I listen to a lot of Krautrock and I’ll just be listening to stuff that just does something for a really long time and that’s the kind of thing I really love to listen to.

Brian Chippendale

Which is pretty Philip Glass, too.

Brian Gibson

Yeah, it’s pretty Philip Glass.

Brian Chippendale

It just comes back to Philip Glass.

Brian Gibson

Yeah. But some of that stuff is a little busy for me. Those arpeggios are almost like challenges... It’s challenging to listen to. Some of the Krautrock stuff is enjoyable to listen to for a long time. Not that the goal is ever to be just something that is enjoyable to listen to... But that’s maybe the thing we don’t do well, so I always want us to go a little further into something I would enjoy listening to. There’s something really exciting about being challenging to listen to. I feel like we don’t have a problem being challenging. We have a problem being palatable. That’s the bigger unexplored territory for us.