“The headline (half cut off here) says “Metal Fatigue” and was very much where my head was at the time.
It was the period after “Ceremony” where the band had a proper change of direction and as the main musical writer, I felt it necessary to ‘un learn’ some of the stuff I had gotten into previously… to allow me to explore other sounds and approaches.
From 1983 to 1992 we have been on a proper (Cliche alert) roller coaster, and this was really our first break for a re-think and re-set.
By the “Ceremony” tour I had gotten about as good a lead guitar player as I could …. lots of shows over 6/7 years will do that to ya! But unfortunately, I felt we had reached a creative dead end on that album. That said, the tour for the album was epic fun, loads of arenas, big time charlie stuff and I really loved it at the time hahaha.
For the “The Cult” 1994 album, that this interview promotes, I’d changed my methods in order to move forwards and hopefully stay relevant. Basically, I used many different guitars and amps and tried to not layer the sound and be more simplistic and hopefully
more intimate to match the lyrics that Ian was writing at the time.
I think it worked and we made a decent album in those challenging (post grunge) times.
Finally the words “I’m a really moronic guitar player - and you can quote me on that” was just me using a large dollop of self deprecating humour 😉”
Billy – April 2026