By: Rick Landers
Photos courtesy of Billy Morrison.
British-born guitarist, Billy Morrison recently decamped and made his way to Billy Idol’s band for an extensive globetrotting gig that’s carried him to Russia, Greece, Switzerland, England and Eastern Europe. That’s not to say that’s he’s not continuing his work with Camp Freddy and Circus Diablo, two groups that he’s worked with for several years.
Many of our readers will remember Billy’s work as bassist for The Cult, but that was some time ago, and since then Morrison has more than earned his stripes as a six-string guitarist that earned him a distinction of having his own Gibson Billy Morrison Signature Les Paul that hit Gibson’s product list in 2011.
Morrison’s talents have been enjoyed by his fans in rock ‘n’ roll settings, as well as his radio work on the Camp Freddy Radio show, with his rock cohorts, Dave Navarro and Donovan Leitch. The show closed its doors in 2008, but since that time Billy’s been pushing forward with his music, motorcycles, acting and any number of personal adventures.
One of his more recent gigs was guest starring as a tattooist in the hit Showtime television series, Californication, on a program that gave a nod to the late great Warren Zevon with its title, “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” and which aired in February 2011. His earlier film work has included performances in two 2009 features, The Heart is a Drum Machine and The Perfect Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Guitar International caught up with Billy to talk about his music, Billy Idol, his film work and the new Gibson Les Paul that features his name on the unique white headstock.
Billy Morrison and His Les Paul
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Rick Landers: How have you been?
Billy Morrison: I’ve been good. I’ve been incredibly busy.
Rick: The last time I spoke with you, you were running at full speed with Camp Freddy and doing some cycling and swimming with sharks. How about giving us a rundown of the outside activities that you’ve been doing in order to keep your adrenalin going?
Billy Morrison: Absolutely. Well, I guess I’ve always held acting as something I really enjoyed doing. I look at it as the antithesis of music, because when I listen to a record, I’m examining the snare sound and I’m thinking about how I would’ve done it differently and all the rest of it. Whereas when I watch a movie, I just dig the story and the action. So acting for me is something that is peculiarly enjoyable and so far it’s going really well.
Recently, I was the guest star on Californication, which was pretty fucking cool. [Rick Laughing] I’ve watched that show since episode one, so I was a big fan. To get to do a scene with David Duchovny and Rob Lowe was really cool.
Rick: Your first acting deal, wasn’t your character called Sweaty Steve?
Billy Morrison: Oh, yeah. I’ve done a fair bit now. I’ve done a few movies and a couple of TV things. I’ve been a drug dealer, a zombie, a detective and a tattooist. I’m not trying to be Brad Pitt here. I’m just trying to enjoy myself. I take it seriously. I try and do the best I can.
Rick: Being with Billy Idol for the last year, I know that he’s been in some films too. Did you two talk about your insights into doing movies or lessons learned?
Billy Morrison: Not once.
Rick: Really? [Both Laughing]
Billy Morrison: I think musicians trying to be actors is something that secretly…we keep it to ourselves. Because, there are a lot of musicians who have done a lot of cameos in a lot of things and for some reason, it never gets discussed. I love it. I think that film and TV is something that is a natural progression for a guy that spent 20 years acting on a stage.
Rick: I think you’d be great in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Billy Morrison: Yeah, whoever’s directing that, you need to send them an E-mail!
Rick: [Laughing] That’s a good idea.
Billy Morrison: The acting continues. I love it. Obviously last year was pretty much all Billy Idol. The tour was very extensive. The rehearsals were very extensive. We went all around the world. It was an amazing experience. It’s definitely solidified my place as a guitar player because I was reading an interview that you did with me a couple of years ago and it started off with bassist Billy Morrison. And you have no idea how much I’ve struggled. I’ve only ever played bass in one band and that was The Cult. I started when I was 11 years old playing guitar.
All the bands I had in England, I was the guitar player. I’ve always been a guitar player. So I feel that the Billy Idol tour helped straighten that out, if you like. Obviously, I can play bass and I did it professionally in The Cult, but that was the one and only time I did that. I did that purely because that band is fucking awesome. Who wouldn’t say “Yes” to that?
Click to Check out the Billy Morrison Les Paul at Musician’s Friend
Rick: Plus now you’ve got a six-string Signature model.
Billy Morrison: Yeah, I guess that doesn’t happen to a bass player. [Rick Laughing] So, yeah, I have, and I have to say, walking into NAMM this year was…I wasn’t quite ready for the strength of feeling that I had seeing it hanging there.
I’ve been working on that thing for about three years with Gibson and we have a long history. It’s well documented, I only play Gibson guitars. I absolutely adore them and I think that every great guitarist that’s influenced me played a Les Paul. My relationship with Gibson is longstanding and I guess I’ve gone through this process of not quite believing that they’re doing a Billy Morrison guitar. I say to everyone, I’m very aware of who I am and who I’m not. I’m a rhythm guitar player for one, and most Signature models are the shredders, the guys who put one foot on the monitor and rip a solo out, and I have nothing but admiration for those guys. I just didn’t expect to get my own guitar, but sure enough it’s out there.
Rick: How did that come about? Who contacted you or did you contact them?
Billy Morrison: I’ve always stayed close to Gibson. Anything that they asked me to do, I would do because it’s a mutual love and admiration that we have and I’ve done demos for Gibson on that old digital guitar, that first one. I will go out of my way to do anything that Gibson needs from an artist. Can you go and do this video and show people how this guitar works? Yeah, sure. So, I always go down for NAMM and am photographed playing the guitar. The way it started is I mocked up the guitar that I played last year on the Billy Idol tour, had a very specific paint job. I did that in Photoshop.
I took it down to NAMM about three years ago and I showed it to Henry, the president of the company. I just printed it out and said, “This would look cool,” and he looked up at me and said, “Well, I think that’s the Billy Morrison Signature guitar. Don’t you?” [Rick Laughing] And I had to call my day-to-day person at Gibson. I had to call them the next day and say, “Was he being serious?” and they said, “Absolutely. That was the green light.” Since then we’ve gone through a number of transitions, not in the least the fact that the guitar that’s actually coming out doesn’t have that paint job.
Rick: Yeah, it’s a cream color, right?
Billy Morrison: Yeah. The one that I played last year, they built it for me. There’s only one, so I might have been foolish taking it on the road, but it’s such a gorgeous guitar. It’s my daily driver. They built that for me to my exact specification. Originally I wanted that paint job on my retail model, the guitar that goes in the stores. Unfortunately, what it took to do that paint job, if you saw it up close, it’s extremely detailed and it’s hand done. And what that would have done and they gave me the option is I could have had it, but it would have put the guitar about $8,000 retail.
Again, I come back to the fact that I’m not Slash and I’m not Jimmy Page, nowhere near, and I don’t want my guitar in that same price bracket because it’s just not right. I wanted a guitar in the normal price range for a good Gibson guitar so that a kid who maybe doesn’t know who I am or isn’t a fan of what I’ve done will still look at it and go, “That’s a really killer guitar,” and buy it.
Billy Morrison
Rick: And still be able to afford it.
Billy Morrison: Yeah. Because the guys that are buying $10,000 Signatures, they’re pretty much fans of the person whose guitar it is.
Rick: Right. Is this a limited run?
Billy Morrison: It is right now. I don’t know how many they’re making. I didn’t ask. It’s in a contract somewhere. The one thing they did for me that I’ve always wanted to do is a matching white headstock. If you look at Gibson’s guitars, there are very few guitars that don’t have the classic black headstock with white pearl inlay. If I told you the process we had to go through to get authorization to change that, it would shock you. That’s one of the reasons the guitar took so long.
Rick: What other nuances or characteristics are on the guitar? I think you got Seymour Duncan’s, right?
Billy Morrison: Oh, yeah. All the guitars I play have Seymour’s in them. I either use a JB/59 combo or I’ve recently been throwing in a pickup called a Custom 5 which is slightly less output. The guitars I used on tour last year were either the JB/59 combo, which is pretty much my go to sound. It’s a Marshall and a Les Paul with that. I also used the Custom 5 equipped guitars for slightly less gain. It’s more responsive on the volume roller on a Custom 5.
What was important to me, I play standards, not customs. I do have a few customs, but I like the way a standard feels. I like the way it plays. The neck profile is very important to me. The one on my guitar is just gorgeous. It’s based on a ’60s classic Goldtop. But, we decided the color of the guitar is called antique white. It’s not alpine white and it’s not the Steve Jones white. So what we did is bind the guitar on the top with custom binding. I think it’s seven-ply binding, the three black lines. So it’s bound like a custom. It has the trapezoid inlays. It’s bound on the headstock, but it is a standard and the weight was very important.
I kept going backwards and forwards with prototypes that were too heavy. I didn’t want it hugely chambered. With those pickups in, if you plug into a high gain amp, it just won’t stop whistling. They nailed it. They really know that the guitar that was at NAMM, that was the first one I saw properly, absolutely nailed it. The weight is fantastic. The neck profile is perfect and it looks fantastic. I’ve got a Tone Pro bridge on it. The new machine heads, the locking Grovers. And I went for another thing that took a little bit of time to figure out, the gold frets. I like 6100, the jumbo fret.
Rick: Big ones, yeah.
Billy Morrison: We have gold frets on it, as well.
Rick: When you collaborated with Gibson, did you go to Nashville or was it mostly by phone and email?
Billy Morrison: No, we did it all by phone. Everyone there, they’re just amazing. They really are. We had numerous conference calls that lasted an hour. They would send me something. I’d look at it. We’d get a conference call going. I’d tell them what I liked, what I didn’t like. I like Photoshop so I was able to mock a bunch of stuff up and send it to them and Frank Johns would ring me up and go, “We can’t do that!” [Both Laughing] And lo and behold, they would do it.
Frank, I think, his title is Product Manager, not sure. He’s been my go to guy and he has listened to me. I’m very detail-oriented and he sat there and listened to me and we really got this thing where I wanted it.
Billy Morrison
Rick: And the case, I understand, is it the interior that has the British flag?
Billy Morrison: No, it’s the exterior. The case was his idea. When we realized we couldn’t do the kind of fucked up Union Jack paint job that I’ve actually got on my number one guitar, he said, “Well, we could do the same thing on the case,” and he sent me a case. It looks amazing. It’s got the same color antique white. It’s an approximation of a messed up Union Jack.
Rick: I haven’t seen anything like that before, so it seems like if somebody’s carrying one around, they know.
Billy Morrison: Absolutely. It’s got Billy Morrison written in big letters down the side of it, so they’ll definitely know what it is. The thing that struck me at NAMM is that 90 percent of the guitars hanging on the wall were somebody’s. And mine was in the middle of it and your eye is…that’s how it’s gonna look in Guitar Center or Sam Ash. My eye was immediately drawn to my guitar because it’s all white.
Rick: Yeah, especially the white headstock. That’s pretty unusual.
Billy Morrison: It stands out and we did the inlays in black pearl, not just solid black. It’s the opposite of the white pearlite that they use. They found black pearlite for me.
Rick: Are you continuing with Idol as a touring member?
Billy Morrison: Oh yeah. Absolutely. We were writing songs last year while we were on the road. I know that Billy is doing his book or something right now and he’s not on the road right now, but there’s a new album that will eventually surface.
Rick: You say he’s writing a book?
Billy Morrison: Yeah. You’d have to ask Billy about that. I know that we were all blasted after that last tour, so he’s taking some well-deserved time off the road and doing his book. We wrote six or seven songs together during that tour, but we played every night. We actually wrote them up as a band.
Rick: You’ve got a new three track EP out now, right?
Billy Morrison: Those were actually tracks…I got the chance to go, and I’m actually bound by contract not to tell you whose studio it is, but I went to a very special studio in the Hills in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. I worked on, because we had the opportunity to go there, myself and Patrick Cornell, who’s a singer-songwriter friend of mine who lives in Nashville.
Billy Morrison
Rick: Yeah, he was with Diablo, wasn’t he?
Billy Morrison: He did a little time in Circus Diablo, yes. I’ve known him for a while. We co-wrote three songs. We actually co-wrote more than that, but I decided when I got off the road from when the tour was coming to a close. I like making music, so I decided to put those three tracks out as a solo EP. So, I decided to put those tracks out as a solo EP, like a stop gap. I’m actually in the studio right now recording more material. No idea if it’s gonna get released. I do what musicians do, which is write music.
Rick: Yeah. What about film work? Any coming your way?
Billy Morrison: Yeah, there’s some stuff. Again, with film it’s really not advisable to talk about it before it airs. [Laughing]
Rick: Sure. Well things change, plus you don’t want your luck to run out by talking about it.
Billy Morrison: Exactly. There’s definitely more balls in the air for me than I’ve ever had in many different arenas. Camp Freddy is still…we’re approaching our tenth anniversary, which freaks me out, I must say.
Rick: It sounds to me that if you were gonna give like a young musician some type of advice, it sounds like you would say, ‘Don’t focus just on one specific area, but broaden your career.’
Billy Morrison: I wouldn’t give that as advice. That’s just me. I have found myself to be a very broad, let’s use the word ‘artist’, even though I hate it. I’m a very broad artist and I find that I don’t like sitting around at all. So someone might come off of a world tour like I did and sit around for six months. I can’t do that. Within three days of being back off the road, I’m writing screenplays. I’m creating television shows. I’m acting. I’m recording more music myself.
I don’t think that I would advise people to do that. If you find yourself creatively stifled, my advice to anyone, any young kids starting to play an instrument is, ‘Don’t listen to anyone else.’ Don’t listen to the people who tell you, “Why are you doing that? You’re never gonna get anywhere.” Don’t listen to them. I’ve never had a lesson in my life, and for better or worse, I have a career in music. I’m not the world’s greatest guitar player, but I’m certainly not the worst. That’s purely tenacity. That’s purely getting up every morning and wanting it badly; enough to put the footwork in.
Rick: How do you manage the business aspects of all this or does your wife do that? She’s a lawyer, right?
Billy Morrison: My wife actually does my contracts, but I think some of the people that I work with in business would probably say it’s annoying that I know as much as I do. [Rick Laughing] Musicians, by stereotype, are meant to be the guys that get told where to be, what time and look pretty, and I’m not that guy. My questions when you tell me that are: How much am I getting paid? Why am I getting paid that much? What are the commissions? What is the breakdown of the costs? I’ve been doing it a long time and it’s part of my nature. I like to know the business. And it helps me in other areas. It helps me get taken seriously when I’m sitting in a meeting.
Rick: Sure. Any thoughts about writing a mid-career book?
Billy Morrison: You know what’s funny is my manager mentioned it to me. Look, I have to say, and I don’t mean to sound self-effacing, or unduly humble, but I have mixed opinions about that. On the one side, I’m a guy that came from…sixteen years ago, I was 100 percent homeless. I was pushing a shopping cart down Hollywood Boulevard. I’d had a heroin habit for 14 years. Most known musicians that have had that got well known first, then used the money they earned to get the drug habit and I did it the other way around. I’d done nothing. Everything I’ve done has been since I stopped doing that. So, I have mixed feelings about a book. On the one hand, I have a pretty killer story. I’ve been through an awful lot. I’ve been from being homeless to flying on private planes to go and play with whomever.
Rick: And you’ve had a VIP tour of the White House.
Billy Morrison: And going to the White House. And on the other hand my head tells me, who the fuck wants to read about me?
Rick: But, I think in a book that you would write, you could talk about things that could help other people. Not so much about the drug thing…
Billy Morrison: What you’re saying is I’m gonna do a self-help book. [Both Laughing]
Rick: Well, I’m thinking more about business.
Billy Morrison: You know what? You are right and for a man like me that has fingers in many pies, it’s obvious that at some point, I will do a book. I just feel like there’s so much more that’s happening imminently. There’s some TV happening this year for me that’s gonna change a lot of things. I’m sure once Billy’s new album is finished, there’s gonna be a big tour. And I feel that, while I love writing, and my wife and I write screenplays and TV shows…while I love writing and it’s something I could really get stuck into, I don’t want to do it before its time. Timing is everything.
