From 'Guitar for the practicing musician' magazine 1991 or early 1992:
"By his own admission, this time Jim was going beyond his established role in the band - his requisite heavy guitar riffs - but just as there's more to Mike than funk, Jim's talents stretch beyond power chords. "I was trying to enhance the songs," he explains," he explains. "I was trying to add another dimension. Sometimes it was more melodic, sometimes it was other things." He maintains that the parts that ended up on the record were nearly identical to those original parts after all. "It really pissed me off," he says. "I don't think the difference between the parts they wanted me to play and the parts I played was enough of a difference to affect our careers. It seems like they wind up the bass player and the drummer. For example, after we did the demo tape, management said, 'I hope nobody's buying any houses!' And they knew we were," he laughs. "People get worried about what other people think. I think it makes the band more conservative. They start worrying about writing radio songs and that kind of ****. We're in a position where we ought to do the wildest **** we can." The Sabbathy "Jizzlobber," a songs Jim wrote almost entirely by himself, is both the heaviest thing on Angel Dust and one of the strangest.
Jim grew up in Hayward, California, a quiet little town occasionally livened up by the sound of roaring motorcycles. It wasn't any wonder that the guitarist was attracted early on to heavy metal. The first record he ever bought was Black Sabbath's debut, and the first thing he learned to play was the riff in "Iron Man." His first guitar was a Japanese-made Epiphone, which he played through a Yamaha 50-watt amplifier. Later, he graduated to a Fender Stratocaster and Marshall amp, the definitive metal set-up ever since Hendrix reached for the skies. A child of the 70's, Jim has fond memories of 8-track tapes by Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and UFO. Newer guitar players like Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen have had next to no affect on Jim. He admits that the last album he bought was Bridge of Sighs by Robin Trower. ??Martin's influences aren't always apparent in the diverse sound of Faith No More, but traces of Jimmy Page can be heard on the new track, "Be Aggressive." Jim's own more aggressive use of his wah-wah pedal on both "Be Aggressive" and "Crack Hitler" provides even more of a throwback to the 70's. You can hear it on The Real Thing as well, but it's not as blatant," he says. "I'm using it as a filter. It lends a certain effect to the harmonics." ??Indeed, the wah-wah pedal has become Jim's secret weapon. "On some of the other songs I'm using it too, but not in such a 70's fashion. I just have it wide open and it gives a whole different sound."
His current favourite guitar is a 1979 Flying V that's been broken three times. He's also got another Flying V that he uses as a backup and a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. A longtime Marshall man, Jim switched to a Mesa/Boogie amplifier last year when the tubes went out and he couldn't get the sound he wanted out of the replacements. "It's good, because you can dial it in any way you want," he says. "It's got a graphic EQ with a hundred knobs on it. I usually like to keep things simple. With my old Marshall, I'd just turn up all the knobs and it'd sound great." ??Martin takes a similarly old-fashioned view towards effects, relying on his Morley Power Way Fuzz. His guitar sound was established years ago, almost by accident, and it isn't likely to change that much. Occasionally, he'll experiment with compressor, delay or vibrato units. He also relies on his whammy bar, especially in live performance where he gets more of an opportunity to solo. "After I got my Strat, I got really used to the whammy bar," says Jim. "Every guitar I got after that had a whammy bar on it. I don't use it all that much, but I like to have it there."
Due to the versatility of Faith No More's music, Jim requires different guitars for different songs. He uses a Les Paul on "Be Aggressive," and a Strat on "RV" to get a country twang. Those who think of Jim as the ultimate heavy metal guitarist may be surprised to learn that he also play banjo and mandolin. In fact, one song which prominently features his mandolin playing nearly made it onto Angel Dust. Close but no cigar. ??Jim's role as lead guitarist has expanded on the new album, oddly enough because it was the only way he could fit into the songs his compatriots were coming up with. "A lot of the songs had nothing to do with me," he says. "I though they sounded better without me playing." ??Martin's lead playing was a key ingredient to the band'*****, "Epic," but he gets very little room to stretch out in Faith No More. "That happened in the studio as well. I was just noodling around on the demo and there was one little part at the beginning of the solo that grabbed me. Sometimes that's all it takes."
On "Be Aggressive," Jim takes a rare extended break. "I was surprised that I was allowed to go on as long as I did," he says. "The band doesn't really like guitar solos that much. It was a part of the song where it really belonged, but that hadn't stopped the band from chopping a guitar solo apart in the past."
Normally, Jim prefers to work out his parts well in advance, as on the first album's "Introduce Yourself," where he constructed a dual guitar solo in the manner of Thin Lizzy, playing both parts himself. This time out, the opportunity to play a solo came as a surprise, so he came up with three impromptu takes that were edited together. ??Jim relationship with the rest of the guys in Faith No More is best described as adversarial. His parts for the new record, as on all the others, were written separately an grafted onto the songs. "My songwriting procedure is: I get together with my friends, party for a while, drink a bunch of beers, jam and have fun, and I record it," he explains. "I then go back and listen to the tape, pick riffs out that would be good for songs. Very little of what I write is actually appropriate for Faith No More. When I write a song for the band, I write most, if not all, the parts. Mike Patton writes the lyrics - he's pretty good at doing what he does. I have to tell everyone else what to play. They're very open to what I have to tell them. I like it when they write stuff to my songs. When it works out, it's great, but they don't really know how to write songs from a guitar point of view; they're used to writing songs from a bass, drums and keyboard point of view." ??Established groups like Van Halen are known for never setting foot in the studio at the same time, but the at least put up a facade of brotherhood; after all, two of the are brother. Jim, a loner by nature, probably would do things his way even if it wasn't for the arguments. "I rehearsed very little with the band," he says. "I feel like I can do a lot better on my own with the tape. When I'm here with the band, I'm pretty much there for their sake. I don't feel like I should ask the band to play songs over and over again so that I can figure out what the hell I'm going to play. That's where some of the problems came in, because I was figuring out stuff on my own and they weren't hearing it, so when I came in and played it, they weren't used to it".
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Dissatisfied with the guitar sound on Faith No More's first two albums, Jim did his research for The Real Thing. "I sat in Rick Rubin's studio while he was recording Wolfsbane. There's certain aspects of the sound that he gets that I like. I talked to James Hetfield to see how he got his guitar sounds. Most of what they do is mike placement. What I learned from these folks is that you keep experimenting with things until you get what you like. Matt Wallace never paid much attention to getting a good guitar sound - he stuck the mikes on there and that was it." ??Jim credits the improved sound on the new album to continued movement down this path: "Matt liked to record drums in a big room with a lot of ambient mikes. This time we recorded them in a drier, more controllable way, with a lot of close-miking. I think that had a lot to do with it. You can hear the drums a lot better without having to really crank them up. If you think about it, a lot of records you listen to today, the kick drum sounds like a snap. On this one, you can hear the bass drum more." ?
