Audley Freed interviewed by UK magazine 'Guitarist' in 1993.

Source: 'Guitarist' Magazine December 1993

If it worked for bands like the Black Crowes….Audley Freed and friends go 'retro' on their latest album

Recievers of rave reviews wherever they play and hailed as 'the next big thing' by everyone who hears them, Cry Of Love's new album, 'Brother', proves that their back-to-basics attitude can produce music which is exciting and considerably more than a cheap day return to memory lane.

"I was always attracted to the music I heard on my dad's AM radio in the car when I was a kid," says guitarist Audley Freed. "I can remember riding around and hearing all kinds of things like Alice Cooper and Joe Walsh and thinking how coolit sounded. I also had a friend down the street who played guitar and I would go over to his house. He had two guitars and he would pick up one of them and play it and I would pick up the other one and not be able to do anything on it! That was not cool - so I had to take some measures to learn how to do something with it.

"So one day I came home from school and my parents said they'd signed me up to take some guitar lessons. But after I'd learned the basic chords and things I took the ball and ran with it myself. My bedroom became my classroom and my turntable was the teacher."

Which bands were the most influential in those early days?

"I had been really getting into ZZ Top and standard rock stuff like Bad Company, Aerosmith and The Allman Brothers. I had a friend who had a Les Paul and a 50 watt Ampeg amp and he was real instrumental in focusing me - he would come over and show me stuff. I went through a big southern rock phase - I'm from a small town in North Carolina and I guess the regionality and my upbringing really sort of made me lean towards that sound! I was into Lynrd Skynrd for a long time, I got their live album and learned it backwards! My town was really small, about 1200 people and there was really only one other guy in the whole county that played guitar, so I had to really reach to obtain any kind of information. But I would see pictures of people like Robin Trower playing a Stratocaster and think 'Wow, it would be really cool to have one of those!'"

When did you start getting into bands?
"Well, there were a couple of kids in my neighbourhood and we would get together and play - everything from Steve Miller to Cream, Deep Purple and stuff like that. It wasn't anything phenomenal at all - probably wasn't anything very good but it was fun!"

What sort of guitar were you playing then?
"It was a Les Paul my parents got for me when I was 15 that's since been stolen - it was a blond LP custom. I'm playing a Custom Shop Strat now with Stevie Ray Vaughan pickups - they're really meaty and fat. On the record I used a Charvel that I put together about five years ago and I use an old '73 Super Lead 100 watt Marshall that I put 6550s in so it stays a bit cleaner and gives me a better rhythm guitar sound. I used a Telecaster that I have, a '62 reissue Tele and I used an old '58 Les Paul Junior and a Les Paul that I borrowed."

How did Cry of Love come together?
"We'd all known each other from playing in clubs and stuff on the circuit. It was four sets a night until the wee hours of the morning. We were trying to write songs in our respective bands and do things ourselves, but it just didn't happen and so we just decided to bail ourselves out of this and get a rehearsal space."

I can tell from your playing that Hendrix was a hero.
"Of course! I like all of his stuff - it's just so deep in expression; there are so many facets, so many nooks and crannies and stylistic quirks that you can't really begin to discuss. It goes beyond, it transcends mere pop music, it's just astounding!"

Let's talk about other influences on the band - what about Bad Company and Free?
"A lot of that has really been in the rhythm section - that sort of 'four on the floor stomp' thing that really makes things work. I think that the biggest thing we've been able to glean from them is not so much chord progressions and things like that, but just where the holes go and the use of space. How the bass, drums and guitar work together instead of the bass and drums supporting the guitar flying all over the place. It's all pieces of machinery that lock together to make the riff work really properly and that's something that I think is really brilliant. Those bands would just go flying off into boogie tangent, you know?"

Your record has a very live feel to it.
"All the basic tracks - bass, drums and guitar - were cut live. We just put the guitar in an isolation booth so it wouldn't bleed and counted the songs off and played just like we do in rehearsal. We'd done so much rehearsing that we did them all in three takes or less."

So the album didn't take long to record?
"No, not really. We did all the basic tracks in five days and took 15 days to do overdubs - vocals and guitar solos."

So there was a conscious effort to resist studio overkill?
"Right!, A lot of bands went through a period in the 80's when they were trying to use production techniques that really didn't serve their music. There were a lot of bands that needed to make up for their lack of expertise in other areas - namely playing.
"But any other kind of sound doesn't suit us; we've done things on four-track that don't sound a whole lot different to our record. It just astounds me that in 1993 people find it absurd that a record can sound like a band playing live - I mean that's kind of weird isn't it?