Soundchecking in Dublin by Dave & Wendy

Last time Guitar Techniques talked to Dominic Miller, he was preparing for the '96/'97 Sting world tour in a rehearsal room in South London - blowing the dust from his gear and trying out some new equipment ready for a mammoth round-the-globe outing which would keep him away from home for nearly eighteen months. Now the band is well past the midway point - more than nine months of touring routine that goes something like; gig, hotel, plane, hotel, sound-check, gig, hotel, plane... ad infinitum. It's tough on the band members and road crew and tougher still on the equipment that travels with them.

The Mercury Falling tour has been an exacting one even by today's standards, with a schedule which has left the band with precious little free time. As an example, the band broke off from the European leg of the tour to fly back to London last June for the Fleadh in Finsbury Park. They arrived on the Thursday evening, spent Friday rehearsing and playing on Channel 4's TFI Friday, did the Fleadh on Saturday and flew out to Brunei to play the Sultan's birthday party with Elton John on the Sunday morning and then resumed the European jaunt later in the week. And that was just one weekend.

Since then, it's been over to the United States, Canada and Japan and now back to the UK for several nights at London's Albert Hall. Backstage, you could be anywhere in the world; the type of hustle and bustle that precedes a rock gig is pretty much universal. There are flight cases, road crew, security, wives, families and so on. But amidst all this, Dominic is calm and relaxed - even when we whizz him on stage for a record-time photo shoot!

Back in the dressing room, we start by asking if anything has changed in his set-up, gear-wise.

"Not really," he replies, thoughtfully. "Everything you saw me with then, I have now. I haven't actually added any bits of gear except for the big red Korg pedal on my board. That's the only thing that's really changed. "I still have a choice of all these guitars. When we last talked I was trying to choose between the Fernandes and my old Strat - and at the time I was stuck on the Fender. I started off the tour using that, but I had a lot of problems with noise; there are so many radio frequencies going on - everybody's on a radio. I have two on me; one is a light thing which I wear on my shoulder so that the lights can automatically follow me around and I have a radio on the guitar. The old Strat, which incidentally turns out to be a '61 and not a '62 like we thought it was, isn't really too compatible with that kind of system."

The '61 Strat, which was given to Dominic after a session in the States, seemed to be louder than the Fernandes - despite the latter having active pickups...

"Well, it is in some ways. In other situations, it isn't! I think it's got a lot to do with tone, actually. In some rooms it's really loud and in other places it just isn't. But the reason I use the Fernandes for about 80% of the show is that everywhere we go, it's consistent. So it's really adaptable to any room; I can hit frequencies on that guitar that I can't necessarily with the Strat. "When you're playing a Strat, you're playing a Strat, you know? It's the ultimate Sex God guitar! It's just an amazing sound - and when I end up playing a Strat I play slightly differently as well, because I play to the guitar. The Fernandes is much less personal, really, it's just functional. The pickups really work, the intonation is really good on the guitar, the locking trem device works and I don't get much noise. It just depends how I feel; the Strat is always ready and so if I fancy a change, I'll just turn round to Phil (Phil Docherty, Dominics guitar tech) and just change it. No big deal."

So it's not a case of using a particular guitar for a particular song?

"Not necessarily. If I go out of tune, I change guitar! I have a P-Project electric which I've tuned down and I use that for a couple of songs. Then, of course. there's the nylon-string guitar, I still use that."

Any changes with amplification?

"On this tour. I've taken both my Boogie system and my Trace Elliot system just because I could - we've got the space! So if one rig breaks down we have the facility to swap them instantly. It's a pit stop of less than twelve seconds! You just move the mikes to the other speaker's so both amps are on standby during the gigs. Recently I've been using the Boogies more because of the variety of buildings we've been playing in - especially in South-East Asia, Vietnam and so on. Some of these halls are like nothing you've ever been in! But right now, the Boogies are the flavour of the month; and it's a sound that I've recorded with and I know it so well.

Dominic is rightly proud of his 'low-tech' pedal board, which comprises, for the most part, Boss stomp-boxes for chorus, compression and so on, plus wah and volume pedals. What does he use the most?

"The compressor I keep on most of the time. But that is something I'd probably only do with Sting, because there are certain sounds I like to get with him. It's that glassy, panoramic sound - so I keep it on most of the time, except when I'm playing funky rhythm parts, then maybe I'll turn it off. The other effects change all the time; I turn the chorus on and off... But I suppose the pedal I use most of the time is the volume pedal. That's your control. Some guitarists play with the volume on the guitar a lot and I think that's pretty good, too, because it changes the sound of the guitar completely. I haven't really got into that - I'd like to and I've started doing that more, actually. "That's where the old Strat comes into its own because if you turn that down on the guitar, it changes the tone dramatically. If you're on a grunge sound on the dirty channel of the amp and you turn it down, it suddenly sounds really sweet, more like a Vox, almost. Speaking of Vox, we used a pair of them for TFI Friday and, hell! Just a guitar, a compressor and the amp reverb and what a sound!"

Sting has used some irregular time signatures on his last couple of albums - 7/8, 5/4 and so on. Do these present any problems, either live or in the studio?

"No, its not a problem at all. I've never had a problem with time signatures because it's always been in my nature to play music like that. In fact, I prefer it!"

When the band is in the studio, how much freedom does Sting allow where coming up with a guitar part is concerned?

"A lot of freedom. Basically, our role is to come up with the parts and his is to edit them. So I'll come up with a variety of ideas and we'll be jamming and he'll say, 'I like that...' A classic example is on I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying from Mercury Falling; I was just screwing around with a guitar figure and he said, 'Yeah - do that all the time.' So it was his idea to keep it going constantly whereas, at the time, it was just a little burst of energy. So the cleverness of Sting is to find that energy and make it work in the song. It's an awkward part to play, but it fits in with the song and it seemed right to him. Live, we have a lot more freedom than on the record because he has the same line-up. So we come up with our own characters and if he doesn't like what you're playing he'll turn round and give you the death stare! Then you know something wasn't working. But you're free to do what you want until he does that. So the whole point really is to take it as far as you can without freaking him out and I wouldn't want it any other way. The great thing about playing live with Sting is that there isn't a great amount of praise within this band; if I've had a good night and I feel that I've played really well and played some good stuff, he doesn't turn around to me and say, 'Nice one, Dom...' It's only when things go wrong that he says anything - and he never forgets. I like it that way. Some bands are so precious like that and tell each other, 'Oh, you played so well..' but we're not really like that.

So there tends to be a fair amount of experimentation on stage every night?

"We've been on tour for so long that the only way to survive is to have a go! There are certain songs where I like to stick to the format because it works - like with Police songs. I don't really see the need to change the riff in Roxanne or Every Breath You Take because it sounds right. So I'm paying tribute to the way it was done, you know? I'm not trying to put my own personality into it necessarily, because I wasn't in that band. So why should I start to say, 'Well, this is me playing Police songs. Listen to me!' But when we're playing songs that I've actually recorded with Sting, I've got more licence. In fact the most freedom I ever had on a Sting record was on Soul Cages. He didn't know me then, so I had the chance to let myself be known and how I wanted to interpret his tunes."

What is the role that Dominic has defined for himself within Sting's band?

"I don't play lead. Playing rhythm guitar or accompanying music is my trip; that's what I enjoy, I get more satisfaction from playing a suspended chord in the middle of a verse than I do from playing an amazing solo. The guitar hero is sort of dead, in a way. I'm sort of on the end of all that; I'm playing with Sting and we're part of that generation of big-time touring acts that go around the world. But its changing rapidly."

So, after nine months on the road what are Dominic's impressions about touring?

"Touring is hard, but it's very rewarding. If you do anything for a long time, every day, you'll get used to it. Its very monotonous; the travelling, hotels, the whole thing. It's with very bizarre sometimes; I have four children and that's one of the things that that makes it very hard. I've got hundreds of road stories, obviously, but I don't think you want to hear them..." Its interesting that, whatever level of gig you're playing, the problems remain consistent; the musicians have to get themselves to the gig, set up gear, remain in such a state that they can cope with putting on a performance of some sort...

So the job doesn't change whether it's playing in a local pub, or playing the Albert Hall. Or does it?

"That's a very significant point, because I believe that every gig has equal value. Whether you're playing in a wine bar with a drum machine, or if you're playing Wembley Stadium, it's still a day at the office. It's a learning experience and in many ways you could learn more from the former than the latter! One thing a lot of people probably don't realise is that playing a big gig to a large crowd is far easier than playing in a pub. With a big venue, everybody is on your side and they want things to happen. So you can play less - in fact I'd say the bigger the show, the less you play, as a rule of thumb. And it's easy, if you let it be. I find playing small gigs really hard because you're so close to everyone and you're exposed and your weaknesses are exposed, too. And yet, it's much more rewarding."

Dominic is no stranger to playing smaller venues as he worked to promote his solo album First Touch before the current tour took off. Has the album been well received?

"I think I've sold about six thousand - a lot of them through the Internet, but I've got a distributor in Germany and Japan now. I've sold more than I thought I would. It's something I needed to do and I'm glad that I did it. "Something I've been thinking about recently is that hundreds of years ago, there were no records, no radio or anything and if you wrote music, the chances are you wouldn't get to hear it performed. But they still did it and it's always fascinated me how that now, with the explosion of media and communication in the last century, we can do all this. Anyone can make a record in their house. But in the old days, people would still do it regardless of whether they were going to get paid or not and I find that really inspiring. That's the basis on which I did my record; I was just going to do it and whatever happened to it happened. Just having a few comments about it from a few people has made it worthwhile."

Is there going to be another solo project?

"Yeah, but I don't know how I'm going to follow it up. Maybe more electric stuff, but its just impossible to tell at the moment. I'm going to do it in a far more grown-up fashion, that's for sure. Dealing with the business angle of the distributors and licensees and lawyers - I'm dealing with different companies in different territories and I'd rather have it under one roof. And the only way you can do that is to sign to a corporation; a label. So I'm going to have to succumb to that. But First Touch was just something I had to do and I'm glad that I did it."

© Guitarist | April 1997

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