How do you go about getting the loud sound you want?
As a band we are probably louder now out front than we used to be because we’re quieter on stage - before it would have been a nightmare to mix because we were so loud on stage, we had so many black boxes, so many amps, so much everything - we thought it was great, but a bitch to mix. I now take almost all the bottom end out of my rig and then just turn it up, and have the natural bottom end of the guitar - that way you don’t screw with
the kick drum on stage or the front of house bottom end boxes and it gives the sound engineer so much more bottom end to play with because he doesn’t have to deal with a whole lot from me on stage.
I’ve gone simple with my stage gear - I’ve got an EQ section on my amp, but I just bypass it now and use the standard amp tone controls. I’m happy with the way my basses sound and I try and use more what comes from the guitar.

What are the main characteristics you like to hear in a bass guitar?
Warmth and cut. The two things at either end of the scale. I only take the bass off live for controlability, but in the studio I like to whack in a fair bit as I’m in a controlled environment. I like to hear the wood of a bass and I like to hear the ‘waggle’ of the left hand, like you hear your vibrato and your hear the tone when you’re pushing hard.

What are your current basses?
I use G&L - I have four and they’re a great bass. The one I use now I call the ‘freak’. I think its an old prototype model, its mahogany and its a cross between a Pbass, Jazz and a bit of a Musicman thrown in. They’ve got two humbuckers in ‘em, I call them motherbuckers.(laughs all round). The guitar can be passive, active and active with treble boost - so you can, by using the passive mode with pick-up splitters (another little switch from which I can change from humbuckers to single coil) I can get a P or jazz bass sound or with active with treble boost I can get a sort of Musicman sound. The neck feels like a cross between a P and a jazz. I can’t say enough good things about the G&L’s - I think they’re great to play and they work so well in a live environment, you don’t have to take five basses to a gig.  

You’re endorsed by G & L Guitars - how did that come about?
It came about through Karl Lindbom at the Bass Player in Annandale (NSW). He’s been a great friend and supporter throughout my career. Anyway, I used to go down to the shop when I was at a loose end and drink
coffee, smoke cigarettes and talk and play bass. Karl was always recommending new strings, amps, guitars, etc, and one day he gave me ‘the Freak’  (Paul’s prototype G & L) and said here go and try this out.  So I went out the back, came back and said this is a cracker and bought it on the spot. Prior to that Iíd been using a ‘67 Jazz, ‘61 Precision , an original Musicman and a ‘67 Jazz fretless. I’m not a particularly technical player, I  really dig in, so they were getting a bit road weary. They still recorded well, so I took them off the road, and at Karl’s suggestion
started talking to Paul Payton at Payton and Son who distribute G & L. From there I have struck up an excellent relationship with G & L and have been using them now for  four years. They are a magnificent guitar.

What does your rig consist of?
Ampeg SVTII Head with 8 x 10 cabinet. You can’t go wrong with it - it suits every situation. If you do a very big gig I just get another cabinet and put it on the other side of the drummer. This is what I used to do, but not any more because that was ridiculously loud (laughs).  But then again I had guitarists around me with heaps of boxes, so hey, I had to compete. Poor old Dave (Jet’s singer) I used to think. It’s a wonder heís got any voice left, which he fortunately has, with all the noise he had to contend with. He gets pretty loud, but it’s hard for singers in a rock band.

What else makes the Screaming Jets loud and clear? 
Well Grant uses two 1967 100watt Marshall Vintage Tweed cabs, with two 50watt Marshall 900 series heads, with an old Ibanez TS9 tube screamer, and an Ibanez Chorus and flanger. His guitars are three Les Pauls, two customs
and a gold top standard, 69, 72 & 85, he uses Maton acoustics exclusively - they are great guitars, and he uses a Strat as well. Izzy, our other guitar player, uses an old 60s TV Marshall cabinet - it’s an old elongated four speaker cab that’s nearly as long as the 8 x 10 I use - it’s very funky. He drives that with a 100watt Marshall 900 head, with an Ibanez tube screamer, a wah and a chorus. 65 Strat, 72 Tele and a 72 Les Paul Standard. Rosey, our drummer
uses a Pearl drum kit. Pearl and Paiste cymbals. And David uses any microphone he’s given - well I might add. The sound’s in him and not the mic.
As well as Paul’s amp set up described earlier, he uses four and five string G&L’s. We ask him when does he reach for the five-string.  The extra bottom note takes you somewhere else. The octave below say the normal D or
B, when you hit it on the fifth string, the sound just goes wide and leaves this great musical space. It depends a bit on the stage, but sometimes the lowest B can disappear a bit, but in a good room with the bottom end wound off the amp itís so fat and so cool. On my four string a use a hip shot machine head too, so I can get down to a lower D I like it so much.

What audio system did the Screaming Jet’s go out with this time?
We were using an A & R (Audio & Recording) system. Most of the rig is manufactured and designed by Ian Richardson in Australia. We had four subs a side, which are Aura dual 18” cabinets with 1.2 kilowatts of power per speaker in each cabinet. In the low mids two per side, each with 2 x 15” speakers of 300 Watts power each, and the top boxes are RAC 40’s, a 12” speaker with a 2” compression driver all horn loaded. All the amps are RA 254 quad amps, the monitors are 15” and a horn, pretty simple, and the side fills are more RAC 40’s. The RAC 40 is a 30 degree horizontal dispersion box. It’s really clean and powerful, so much bottom end - as I said I take most of the bottom end off my amp on stage. Itís a great rig. It’s pretty hi tech - Richo sometimes comes out and plugs his laptop in and tunes the thing - I’m pretty computer inept so I can’t give you too much hi-tech info there. (A & R uses Techtronics fast fourier analysers which can analyse individual rooms and get some of the unwanted bumps out)

How do you think the Screaming Jets have evolved over the years?
We’ve sort of come full circle. The first record was brash, loud, even rude in its loudness. We’ve been somewhere in between - I love all the records we’ve done, they’re all snap shots of our life at that stage - the last record was a little more laid back, a few more acoustic treatments, even a country feel with ‘October Grey’ - it even got well received in Tamworth - but the new stuff is more straight ahead, in-your-face and up yours! We said this time, no acoustic guitars, let’s make a rock record! I love rock and pop with venom - I like the way music trends are going at the moment - sort of late 60’s power pop punk - its in-your-face heavy guitar but with melody - but hey it’s as fickle as fashion, it could all change tomorrow.

How do you think your approach to the business has changed?
I guess we’re a little less naive than we were. We weren’t so much naive people, but we were a young band. The music industry is not a really safe place. There’s lots of traps for young players. We’ve been pretty lucky - we’ve been together for ten years this year, we still dig each other as mates and as musical partners, and we still want to keep going on. I think longevity is really important in a band. Longevity gives time for the music to grow with the people that are making it, and grow with the audience that is listening to it. 

Do you continue to build an audience? I notice from the number of private Screaming Jets sites on the internet you have a pretty dedicated fan base...
I think the Screaming Jets fans are the best there is - they’re loyal, they really love the music, they’re really into it. Once people have become fans they’ve stayed with us, and we’ve been picking up younger and different audiences along the way -  we seem to have been able to keep moving forward and not stagnating. I feel really lucky from that aspect. And the internet is great access for everyone - techno fear is not on, I really think we’ve got to embrace it.  There’s great information, and we’ve got fans that are in to the band to the extent that they go to all the trouble of designing comprehensive sites on the band - I mean that’s fantastic.  But the internet is good particularly for  unsigned bands I reckon - it gives them great promo opportunities far wider than ever before. We are trying to move forward all the time, and I guess one disappointing aspect of the industry is the lack of support for new music. It’s frustrating for us to hear stuff we recorded nine years ago getting air-play, whilst we struggle for people to get an opportunity to judge our new stuff. For our industry to prosper there has got to be more support for new Australian music. The whole industry is built on live music; that’s what we do, we’re musicians, we play live - it’s all part of our dream.
There is a lot of support from the smaller community based radio and media, and we try hard to link up with all stations on the way round the tour. They are very much in touch with their local community and is a really
important part of touring.

Tell me about your new recording!
The new record is to be released in November. It’s titled ‘Scam’ and was recorded at Melbourne’s Sing Sing studios with Ross Wilson co-producing with the Jets and one of the new guns in engineering, Kalju Tonuma at the
controls.  Ross Wilson and us was a good combination - Ross has got such a wonderful melodic sense and ‘sense of song’, he was successful in bringing out the melody in our loud music.  We demoed about 25 songs in Newcastle
and did a fair bit of pre production ourselves.  Grant, Dave and myself were the principal writers of this and records past. On this record we have got something that is real punk pop and we’ve achieved a sound that is real
close to what I think the name Screaming Jets is all about.