Heavy Metal Machine

ATN: Well, yeah, there's those ... There's the uncertainty of love on "Stand Inside Your Love" and then there seems to be the uncertainty of a more ... professional manner, like on "Heavy Metal Machine." There's some lines there where you seem to be doubting yourself. "If I were dead, would my records sell?"

Corgan: That's a game I'm playing.

ATN: What's the game?

Corgan: As an artist, you wish you could put earmuffs over somebody's ears, and blinders over somebody's eyes, and put them into a room, and reveal to them, and have them see whatever you've created without preconception, cultural influence. You'd really like to know the true reaction. And in my case it seems to be harder and harder to create that, because of whatever corpse I'm dragging behind me that has my name on it.

-3/00 ATN

----

Corgan and Iha used this same "C tuning" on the Black Sabbath inspired Heavy Metal Machine. FIGURE 1 shows the song's repeated intro/verse riff, as demonstraded by Corgan. Notice ow he uses finger slides to smoothly shift his hand up the neck and connect the notes. "I like having the slides in there," corgan says as he demonstrates the riff "They give the part a sinewy type of sound."

Also included in FIGURE 1 is James Iha's lead melody, which enters at 0:11 on the recording. The scooping and diving sounds heard at the begining and ending of this phrase are produced using a DigiTech Whammy Pedal. "I have it set so that when i rock the pedal forward, it dumps the pitch down two octaves," Iha explains. For those who don't own a Whammy Pedal, these glissando effects can be closely replicated by using a conventional whammy bar (preferably a Floyd Rose-type) or by sliding the fretting figer up the string to the first note and down from the last note of the phrase.

For the song's pre-chorus (0:47), Billy and James strum the unusual chord voicings shown in FIGURE 2. Notice in this progression how the open B and high E notes are employed as common tones, while the lower, fretted notes change with each chord. At the chorus (1:02), the guitarists switch to the more conventional 1st- and 2nd-position chord grips shown in FIGURES 3A and B.

The sliding sounds heard during the outro of "Heavy Metal Machine" (beginning at 5:07) were created by Corgan the "old-fashioned" way. "That's me sliding my hand up and down the neck," he confirms. "My fingers almost bled. It hurt like hell, but it was worth it to get that sound." When playing this part, be sure to make the slides nice and long, but don't press your finger down on the string too hard-- we dont want you to draw blood!

GW - 4/2000