DEFTONES Cried ‘Tears Of Joy’ While JERRY CANTRELL Was Recording ‘Gore’ Guest Appearance

A Rock of the Rock 105 radio station conducted an interview with DEFTONES drummer Abe Cunningham and samplist/keyboardist Frank Delgado at this year’s edition of the Carolina Rebellion festival, which was held May 6-8 at Rock City Campgrounds at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina. You can now listen to the chat using the SoundCloud widget below.

Asked how ALICE IN CHAINS guitarist Jerry Cantrell‘s guest appearance on the DEFTONES song “Phantom Bride” came about, Abe said: “We had this song. It was pretty much done. It could have been left as is, but it sort of had this big kind of a gaping hole in the end, like a gap, that could have just been or we could have filled it up with something. But we were nearly [finished] tracking, everything was pretty much done; we were [working on] one of the last songs, and we were having barbecues in the studio — just having fun, winding down. And we started brainstorming: ‘Man, what if we got someone to play a badass solo on that?’ We’ve [made] a lot of friends over the years. So we started brainstorming. We were, like, ‘Man, what about so-and-so? What about David Gilmour? What about Jimi Hendrix? Oh, he’s passed.’ And we had about 25 people [on this list], and we were, like, ‘Oh, shit! That would be bad.’ But we were, like, ‘Oh, hold up! What about Jerry?’ And then Jerry was in the next day.”

Added Frank: “And he’s a good friend and we just kind of rang him up and he was with it. And he came and hung out with us. And we were barbecuing still, and he joined the barbecue and went in there and he kind of banged it out and it was a lot of fun.”

Continued Abe: “[We had] tears of joy when he was laying it down. I mean, he’s one of those people that has an instantenous… When he plays, you know immediately it’s him, and that’s a rarity. And we’ve, of course, grown up on him and became friends with [his] band over the years, toured together, and it was just a magical pairing.”

Said Frank: “It’s really good when it’s organic like that too, where it’s not too thought out and premeditated, where you’re, like, ‘All right, we’re gonna make a song. We’re gonna have Jerry Cantrell come and play on it.’ It just kind of falls into place.”