How Helmet's Page Hamilton Went Space Age with Gigantor
BY GREGORY ADAMS
Helmet are titans of groove. That’s undebatable. From the mighty “Unsung” — post-hardcore’s first mainstream hit — up to the barrack-collapsing chunkery of the outfit’s most recent album, Left, founding guitarist-vocalist Page Hamilton has always specialized in uniquely infectious, percussively bombastic riffs.
Part of that power comes down to the drop-d approach the jazz-trained player started experimenting with near the dawn of the ‘90s. Eventually, he realized the simplified low-end theory of barring out a power chord with his index finger afforded the rest of his fretting hand a richer range of possibilities — ethereal stacked fifths; wild card sevenths and elevenths; you name it. Back when he wrote “FBLA,” from 1990 debut album Strap It On, this blew his mind.
“I could play all these power chords with one finger, and then I started experimenting. The developing of that over the years has been just my jazz nerdom,” he recalls, adding of his overall technique, “I’m always messing around with different voicings, to expand the vocabulary that we came up with all those years ago, starting with ‘FBLA’.”
Though that approach to chord theory is all over the Helmet catalogue, one of the songs that best conjures that lushly chorded, brutally bouncy hybridity is the band’s cover of “Gigantor,” which they’d tracked for 1995’s Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits compilation.
What’s kind of weird about the tribute is that Helmet’s take is thrice removed from the source material, a 1956 Japanese animated program called Tetsujin Nijūhachi-gō — itself based on a manga of the same name. Japanese broadcasts delivered a campily onomatopoeic, bullets-and-bombs-‘splodin, men’s choir-sung jingle in the model of the classic Mighty Mouse theme. While delightful, it’s not what Helmet based their cover on.
After being repackaged and redubbed as Gigantor for American audiences in 1963, the cartoon’s updated theme took on more of a conga drum-rumblin' exotica feel, fit with an oddly ominous vocal harmony shouting out the titular space age robot. In 1980, first wave pop-punkers the Dickies zoomed into a speedier, sugar-jolted arrangement for a 7-inch single. Helmet’s cover sits closest to the latter, though they added an original, Helmet-style mosh, as well an art-shred solo section from Page.
But those chords — those glorious, glorious chords. So many to choose from, but let’s zoom in on the super buttery Bbsus2 with the added #11 that the band lay into in the verse. Drop down and try it on your fretboard sometime. Pure magic.
If you ask Page, though, one of the biggest standouts is the sound of his characteristic, somewhat sinewy ‘90s-era singing voice.
“God, my voice is so much better now,” he says. “I didn’t know techniques about using your head tone; I sang a lot from my chest back then. And I have so much more confidence now. I also discovered that I’m a baritone [vocalist], so if I drop the guitar down a whole step [to C] it gives me a wider vocal range, somehow.”
Speaking with Gut Feeling, Page Hamilton further recalls Helmet’s most animated performance.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How do you recall being approached about doing this Saturday Morning compilation?
PAGE HAMILTON: My manager just said, “Hey, would you guys be into doing a Saturday morning cartoon thing?” I love cartoons, I’m a huge fan. I obviously grew up in the ‘60s. I watched every episode of Tom and Jerry; I saw The Jungle Book in the theatres, and that’s one of the greatest movies in the history of movies when you’re 10. So, I was like, “Yeah, I’m in!”
They gave me a choice of songs do. I didn’t know Gigantor at all, but the Dickies did that cool cover. So, I listened to that and we got to work at The Hit Factory, the studio in New York where John Lennon did his last album, Double Fantasy.
It was so cool to walk into that studio. We tracked everything in a day. We did everything quickly back then. The Led Zeppelin tribute was done in a day too [ed. Helmet and David Yow covered “Custard Pie” for 1995’s Econium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin].
We never rehearsed these covers; we learned them in the studio. There was something about the bridge of the Dickies’ “Gigantor” that wasn’t working for me, so I wrote that super Helmet-y groove instead. I came up with that, and [drummer John] Stanier and [bassist Henry] Bogdan were always amazing at fleshing that shit out fast. That was it!
This was obviously pre-YouTube, so were you sent any old video tapes of Gigantor to get into the spirit? Or was the prep mostly done off that Dickies cover?
HAMILTON: Just the Dickies, really. I’d seen the space age robot somewhere, though. I swear it was in black-and-white, and I saw him taking off…but maybe I’m confusing that with Mighty Mouse [laughs].
You shot a music video for this where you’re all playing on a soundstage, and they eventually green-screened scenes from the cartoon into the background. You’re running around with a Telecaster in this video, which is interesting because at that time I think of your magenta Horizon as the be-all/end-all Page Hamilton guitar. Was that your Tele, or something they had at the shoot?
HAMILTON: Back then, I think I owned two or three G&L ASATs, and I think it was one of those in the video. When I got divorced, I had to go through the same thing John Entwistle went through — I needed some money, so I sold those ASATs. One was a clear red ASAT, and one was the classic Tele colour with a black pickguard. I also sold a couple PRS’s.
Do you remember what you brought into the sessions at the Hit Factory?
HAMILTON: It would’ve been my 50-watt Marshall, or maybe an Orange.
You mentioned giving this cover that Helmet groove, but you also give the song those very Helmet-style chord voicings. There’s a richer vernacular than the Dickies version…
HAMILTON: For sure. We did play this on the 30th anniversary tour because we got so many requests for it. It’s a fun song to play! A lot of times when you do those one-off tracks, you never play the song again.
Had you played it back in that era?
HAMILTON: I don’t think we ever played it live. Same with the Bjork cover we did [ed. “Army of Me”], until our 30th tour. The Sabbath thing [ed. “Symptom of the Universe” off the Jerky Boys soundtrack] we’d never done live either, until now. That’s a blast to play. It’s hard for Kyle [Stevenson] because he’s got to play a drum solo every fuckin’ section, but I love it. I love drum solos!
Further reading: my interview with Page about Helmet's new Left album is up at Guitar World.
Even more further reading: please peep Gut Feeling's other Saturday Morning talks with Matthew Sweet on Scooby Doo, and face to face's Trever Keith on Popeye.