While on tour in Europe, heavy psych- and progressive rock masters Elder were invited to record a live session at the legendary BBC Maida Vale Studios for a radio show. In 2024, «Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios» was released on vinyl and CD. Before release, we sat down with frontman and guitarist Nick DiSalvo to discuss being at the infamous studio, touring with Tool, his favourite guitars and loving Motorpsycho.
Text: Anne-Marie Forker
How did you end up in BBC Maida Vale Studios?
This guy Daniel Carter who runs the BBC Radio One Rock Show is a fan of the band over the years and he just asked us if we can do a session. I’m not really sure how the whole thing runs internally there, because we didn’t see him when we did the session. But it aired on his show, so he must have been the guy with the bull to invite us.
Were you the last band to record there, because the BBC sold it to Hans Zimmer and a group of people last year?
It was in the news while we were there. I think it was actually in the news for the first time publicly, the day that we were recording. People were saying, “oh, you might be the last session”. We don’t know if that’s what happened but I also don’t know if anything else has been recorded there. I don’t know if they were going to start repurposing the building immediately or something. But yeah, I like to think that we were one of the last sessions. That sounds special.
It does. It’s very well regarded. Was it just another building or studio to you or did it feel like a special place?
The location is beautiful. It’s in a very stately mid-century building. I imagine it is a Victorian building. It was huge and there’s just a lot going on. We walked past the London Philharmonic or some kind of state orchestra practising, and then went to see all the other studios. We were in the studio where a lot of the Peel sessions were reported. You felt that there was some sense of history there for sure. It was very cool. Just pulling up to the BBC building on a drive to London and taking a tour of the place. We were all walking around taking photos.
There were three songs on that set from three different albums. Why did you choose those particular songs?
Those were all part of the set list we were playing on that tour. We wanted to do something from the newest record. They sound good, an even representation of the catalogue somehow.
Do you use different guitars live than you do in the studio?
No. I’m pretty boring when it comes to guitars. I have a few and they pretty much all have the same pickups and are very similar.
What’s your preference for a guitar model?
I’ve been using Dunable guitars for some years now. Sacha Dunable, the guitarist of the band Intronaut, started making guitars back in, I think, the 2010s, and I bought a relatively early model off of him because I wanted to get a new guitar. I had been playing an SG for a long time but I wasn’t really happy with its stability and he started making guitars for people specifically playing downtuned music, who needed something that would hold tuning better and have better playability, because when he started doing that, there wasn’t a whole lot in the way of guitars for downtuning heavy music that didn’t look hideous and pointy like Schecters or PCR or whatever. So, I got one of those and I loved it. I kept buying guitars from him and now I have a couple. I’d love to get a nice Strat.
Did you find it harder with the SG?
Primarily with tuning stability. The SGs are famous for tuning instability. I tried different things, but if you’re playing 10, 15 minutes songs, you have to keep trying to find a break to tune the guitar. That was the thing that really annoyed me primarily. I don’t need 100 guitars and I guess that’s why I keep getting them put in the same configuration. I found what I wanted. That’s fine. It does what I need it to do. It was fun in some ways because the neck is super thin so you could really interact with it in a different way, you could kind of like bend it and pull it.
The album cover. Who made it, and what is it?
So that one was done by my friend, Adam Hill, who’s great. He does posters and some graphic stuff, but doesn’t have a web presence at all. He just emailed me one day years ago and I happened to respond because I really like his portfolio that he sent and it turned out, he was a South African dude who just happened to be my neighbour. He was just a couple streets away from me and I was like, okay, let’s meet up, let’s talk about this shit and I had him do a poster for us. It came out awesome and then I had him do some other work for us and I really loved everything he did. He’s done most of the designs and a couple of shirt designs. I wanted him to do the artwork. I always like this personal connection to the artist and I felt like we had been working together at that point for at least a couple tours. He was super stoked to do it. So we came up with this concept together for the futuristic BBC building and what that might look like in the year 3000. If you zoom in real close, it’s got the facade of the entryway to the BBC Maida Vale Studios as it stands today. A very small detail. The rest of the building has these towers protruding. If you turn it sideways it’s an E for Elder. I just gave him this idea about making the building a futuristic kind of thing and he just ran with it.
How was touring your last album, “Innate Passage”? Did any particular tracks surprise you with the reaction that the audience gave?
It’s been good. It was a lot of fun to play those tracks. When writing the record, I took a little bit more time to understand what are the outer limits of our technical ability live. What can be done? Well, with the personnel we’ve got we can still play epic and complicated music. Some of the songs are still really difficult to pull off live. We ended up playing every song and ended on a few that we found were just really solid. “Merged in Dreams” for instance is a really fun track to play. It’s got these three distinct segments and a lot going on. I think it’s very energetic and a lot of fun for us to play and there’s enough energy that it gets the crowd energy going too. That ended up being the one that stayed in this set.
You supported Tool recently. How was that experience and how did it come about?
That was really fucking awesome. It was kind of horrifying at first and then it ended up being a lot of fun. It came about because we know Danny Carey, the drummer, and he just invited us. They personally choose their support bands – every band member has their turn essentially and when it’s been four tours it gets back to the same band member to choose again. He actually asked us four tours ago, but it was super short notice because I think we were his second or third pick, and the other band couldn’t do it. We were about to go into our own tour, and we couldn’t handle both. Danny said “No problem, next time” and he held good on that promise.
Wow. That’s nice to hear. He’s such an incredible drummer.
He really is, he’s amazing. They don’t play anything to a click track, they don’t use backing tracks. Everything they do, as crazy as it is, it’s organic, it’s awesome.
I believe you’re a fan of the Norwegian band Motorpsycho. How did you get into them and what’s your favourite album?
They’re not popular or known at all in America. I always had my ear to the ground pretty well when it came to psych rock and heavy rock, but I only found out about them when I was an exchange student in high school or just out of high school in Germany because I came over and I was going to every festival I could. I went to Roadburn Festival that year for the first time and I don’t think they were playing but somehow I found a flyer and got turned on to the fact that the “Little Lucid Moments” album had come out. That was the first record of theirs that I heard, and it blew my mind.
Will we see a follow-up to “Innate Passage” soon?
I really hope so. I’m working hard on it and hoping we’ll be able to record in the beginning of next year or something like that.
That’s good news. I hope you’ll come to Norway again.
Oh, we will, definitely. Norway is kind to us! [UPDATE! You can see Elder in Oslo at Desertfest 2025]
(Interview originally published in Norway Rock Magzine 2024 #3)
