 Deftones | Until last week, the Deftones' rendition of Sade's "No Ordinary Love" wasn't commercially available anywhere. But for years, Deftones fans have traded the track back and forth via home-burned CDs and various file-sharing sites. Same goes for the "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" and their raging version of Helmet's "Sinatra." |
So for years, bassist Chi Cheng has heard the same question from Deftones devotees: "When are you guys going to release some of these songs on an album?"
"We didn't want our fans to have to go through a lot of channels to get this stuff, and we wanted to make it more accessible for them," Cheng explained. "But at the same time, we wanted to do something special to commemorate that fact that it's been 10 years since the release of Adrenaline," the D-Tones' debut offering. "We started thinking about what we could do [to observe] that, and just start digging into the B-sides.
After sorting through all the stockpiled material, the Deftones finalized the 14 tracks that constitute B-Sides and Rarities, which comes with a companion DVD featuring rare footage of the boys sprinkled in between the band's videos. The album also features acoustic interpretations of the songs "Change (In the House of Flies)" and "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)" as well as a re-imagining of White Pony's "Teenager," inspired by Idiot Pilot's own cover of the track; this version of the song features frontman Chino Moreno and Idiot Pilot vocalist Michael Harris swapping lead vocals throughout. There's also the previously unreleased "Black Moon," which boasts the rhyming puissance of Cypress Hill's B-Real, and a haunting cover of the Cocteau Twins' "Wax and Wane."
Conspicuously absent from the album are several covers the Deftones' live shows have become infamous for: Depeche Mode's "Sweetest Perfection" and "To Have and to Hold," Duran Duran's "Night Boat," S.O.D.'s "Milk" and any of a number of Weezer songs the band covers regularly, including "Say It Ain't So," "In the Garage," "Holiday" and "Tired of Sex."
"We've always done the Weezer stuff live, but we've never recorded it," Cheng said. "We definitely can't bastardize a band we love that much. It would be embarrassing."
Of all the tracks on the disc, Cheng's favorites are the cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man" and, if only for the experience of it, the Deftones' live adaptation of the Cure's "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep," which was recorded during the band's appearance during last year's "MTV Icon: The Cure."
"Because we did it in front of the Cure, the pressure was on," he recalled. "It couldn't have been any more unnerving: The entire Cure was sitting right there, no more than 20 feet away, and we're like, 'OK, hope you don't hate us after this!' We ran into them afterwards and they were so cool. They were like, 'You were the only band that did us justice.' "
Meanwhile, Cheng said Moreno's spent the last few weeks recording vocal tracks for a dozen songs that'll surface on the D-Tone's forthcoming fifth album, which still hasn't been titled . "Chino's got to make it just right," the bassist said. "It's the Deftones way, really. It's not always the quickest way — it sure as f--- takes a long time. In fact, a few months ago, I thought maybe we had broken up. It takes [Chino] longer to do it, but the stuff I've heard from him so far is amazing. Just when I want to get pissed at the guy, you hear a little rough track or something, and it's like, 'Oh, well, it's pretty amazing.' I don't care how long it takes, as long as he continues to put out the sh-- he puts out."
Still, when asked about a possible release date, Cheng said, "As soon as possible — I can't wait to get out there and tour," before saying the album will land sometime next year.
At the moment, Moreno's recording the vocal tracks alone, without a producer; from time to time, he bounces ideas off of Terry Date, who's produced all of the Deftones albums and helmed Team Sleep, Moreno's electronica-tinged side project. The band had been working with Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Jane's Addiction) earlier this year at his home studio in Connecticut, but "Chino and Bob were not jiving," Cheng said. He also noted that the album won't be as heavy as Moreno's suggested in prior interviews.
"I know there's some of the heaviest stuff we've ever done on this record, but it's also a Deftones record, which means it'll have some of the softer side of this band to it, too," Cheng said. "A lot of really cool melody ... I mean, the last album was a really dark album. This one has shades of White Pony to it. Lots of melody, you know? It's not strictly going to be a heavy album."
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