Fender announced today that they’re releasing a new update on their popular Player II guitar line called the Player II Modified.
This new guitars take some of the immensely popular Player II models and add upgrades to them that many owners would do to their own guitars, like the addition of noiseless pickups, locking tuners and other upgraded hardware and electronics (such as treble bleeds, coil splits and brass block saddles).
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“Pickups are undoubtedly one of, if not the most common mod,” says Jim Tuerk, Reverb’s Director of Business Development and resident guitar expert. “The hum of single coil pickups is a ubiquitous issue for a lot of guitarists — and Fender has had many variants of noiseless pickups — but noiseless pickups have typically not been standard on the low- and mid-priced lines. For a beginner or intermediate player, that’s a big unlock with the Player II Modified line.”
Tuerk also points out that entry- and mid-level guitars often come with underwhelming tuners — another welcome upgrade on Fender’s Player II Modified line that will lead to newer guitarists spending more time playing and less time re-tuning. They’re important upgrades to one of Fender’s most popular and accessible lines, and one that many consider to be a direct replacement of the old “Standard” series as the baseline for Made in Mexico (MIM) Fenders.
“The Player II effectively has replaced the MIM series for consumers looking for a basic Fender, as it effectively is the MIM models with updates and upgrades from what was being done in yesteryear with more colors and configurations,” Tuerk says. “The Player II Series have been popular in the market, as you would expect for a mid-priced guitar with Fender on the headstock. The Player II Modified Series gives a great option for picking up a pretty cool instrument for the money. On Reverb, you’ll find even more competitive prices within a month of launch on a gently used instrument. Fender’s Certified Pre-Owned program will also have well-priced, like-new Player II Modified guitars in their store.”
But rather than simply announcing the new collection, the massive musical instrument manufacturer teamed up with the Grammy-nominated rockers in IDLES to show off the new goods. Beyond just being a massive band, the connection also makes sense since IDLES is far from a traditional rock group — the perfect fit for guitars that go beyond normal expectations.
SPIN sat down with IDLES guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan as well as vocalist Joe Talbot to discuss the new guitars, IDLES’ recent Grammy nomination, and much more.
SPIN: You’ve partnered with the guitar giants in Fender to unveil their new Fender Player II Modified line, what are some of the important upgrades you see with them?
Mark Bowen: The big thing for me is just the durability of it all, and what makes a big difference for me is the saddles. For a long time, Fender has used these vintage kind of saddles. I play really heavy strings and I play really hard, and those saddles tend to buckle and break. (1:06) These ones are indestructible. Plus, they’ve got locking tuning heads. It’s designed to be a constant, where you can throw whatever at it with your playing, and it’s just going to take it. It’s going to hold and stay, because it’s for a player.
Lee Kiernan: It’s for actually going out and playing shows, not sitting at home or just sitting on a wall. You can actually use these properly.
Joe Talbot: For legal purposes, I think we have to say that “indestructible” is just a subjective adjective.
And IDLES is obviously very much a guitar band, but it’s not the simplest rock band out there. How do these guitars (and your other equipment) factor into the band’s diverse sound?
Bowen: We want to be a guitar band that doesn’t sound like a guitar band. We aim high to sound like our influences. We want to sound like electronic music. We want to sound like hip-hop. So we need to have these tools that we can chuck into pedals and can become this transformative thing where you really focus on the sounds and be very creative with it. But we’re also about having those moments where you pull it back and it becomes a guitar band again. It’s not chaos pads in the middle of the guitar and all this wacky stuff that just doesn’t sound like it’s from Earth at any point. We want that human aspect of it. We create these very simple big blocks of sound, and it’s very important that the nature of the player comes across. It’s the characteristic of how we play those simple chords that make the difference. If it was just very simple and it was played simply, it wouldn’t have that essence, that character, that personality. So it’s all about being able to get that across as readily as possible, with a massive consideration for the live show. It’s got to be something that has a visceral energy to it where you can see the expression of the players — where you can dig in and do all that stuff and you can see it, you can feel it. It’s all these subtle nuances that need to be translated, from the source of the player, through the guitar, into all these million pedals, and then through our sound engineer in order to create this sound.
Speaking of the live show, IDLES played a ton of gigs before officially releasing an album or anything. What went into building that live experience before nailing down the recorded side of things?
Talbot: It’s imperative for us as people, but I’m not saying it’s imperative for anyone else. There’s a million ways to skin a cat, but one of the things that made our band successful — before any outward monetary or audience success or that bullshit — was the combustion in the room of us together. It was about us understanding that and maneuvering it in a way where we all felt like we were speaking the same language. That didn’t happen very often at first, but when it did, it was magic. Our old drummer — Jon Harper of the Cooper Temple Clause fame — told us we needed to get out there and play live. That’s always my advice to people, no matter how terrible you are or how terrible you think you are. It’s the most freeing and punishing experience. It’s electric, and it makes you feel alive. It also makes you realize where you need to improve, because it’s the deep end and you drown very quickly — and that’s the best fucking feeling in the world.
Bowen: It’s instant feedback. You start to understand what it is about your identity as an artist and as a band that resonates with people and resonates with the audience. (6:33) And then you can hone that in and say “How do we become even better at it? How do we become even more successful in that? How do we relay that in that heightened kind of mood?” A stage requires amplification of your personality and your intent as a band to convey it and to get that energy back from the audience. It’s a huge learning curve.
Talbot: I’ve been describing the songs recently as a mirror, and when you put up the mirror, the audience holds up a mirror to the song. The song is both of our mirrors, but we see completely different reflections. When you start writing songs and playing live, it starts as a frame. You’re wearing other people’s hats and trying new things. That’s the beauty of it. There’s nothing wrong with trying to be David Bowie or pretending to be hip-hop. That’s the fun of it. When you’re a kid, you put on costumes and you learn. Then, over time, you become fluent in your own shit. When you go out there and play, that instant feedback makes you realize the payoff comes from finding your own language in that mirror. It takes a long time for some of us, but not everyone. If you watch the Sugarcubes, Bjork was already Bjork back then. Some people just have that sense of vitality. Whereas I, as a frontperson, didn’t. I was desperate to please, and I couldn’t be myself fully in that moment of terror performing in front of eight drunk people.
Bowen: I was reading an article with Ian Brodie of the Lightning Seeds — who’s also a producer — and he said something really interesting that resonated with me. It was something like “You have to find what the band thinks they sound like.” Because we’ll be like “Oh, this just sounds like the Stooges,” but it doesn’t. It’s IDLES playing the Stooges. It’s IDLES thinking they sound like the Stooges. It’s not the same. It has a different energy and a different feel. It has a different context that makes it just that thing. By playing live for as long as we had, we were able to piece together those things, like how we can wear our influences without being pastiche or without being them exactly.
Talbot: I think that’s just natural. It’s not what our influences are, it’s what we love. I am exactly what I am because of what I love and my traumas and what I dislike. Certain people lean on their dislikes more than others, whereas I just don’t fucking listen to what I don’t like. I want to celebrate what I love, and that’s my language. It’s not our influences as much as it is our passion.
On a different note, what was it like to be nominated and attend the Grammys earlier this year?
Bowen: It was great! It’s one of those things that you don’t aim for. You don’t consider it when you’re making the music. But it’s like if someone says they like your band, that’s an amazing thing — and being a part of the Grammys is someone just shouting really loudly “Hey, this band’s sick! So to get any kind of recognition from anyone is fantastic, and the more bums on seats we can get, the better. That’s just more people we can try and convert to the IDLES train.
It feels like IDLES has become one of the most successful rock bands in the world, but in a very organic way. Every year, it seems the band receives bigger audiences and more accolades instead of having one major hit and then coasting on that.
Talbot: I think it’s the healthiest way for us, but I think that depends on how strong you are. I can speak only for myself, but my emotional maturity’s taken way longer than a normal person — maybe because of trauma or maybe that’s just because of whatever else. But if I had a huge amount of success early on — and I mean monetary and attention — I would have been an egomaniac. I’ve always been insecure, but the grind is what I was passionate about with IDLES and it gave me a dedication and a sense of purpose. That purpose is why we’re still here, because that’s how we’ve learned.
Let’s not beat around the bush, a Grammy is basically two things: a platform boost and a dopamine boost. There’s only one of those I need, because I get enough dopamine just living a privileged life. I’ll always take the platform boost, but I would have been a fucking horrible cunt if it’d had that kind of real immediate elevation. It’s just not healthy for people with fragile egos, which is definitely what I’ve come up from. This trajectory also allowed us to learn our language as an artist slower and not be pushed and pulled around by temptations, needs from labels, audiences, the growth of that. It’s a different organism, and I think that’s earned us a very loyal fan base that’s grown with us. We have a sense of being carried, which keeps us humble. But why wouldn’t we be humble? We’re fucking terrible at our instruments and we look like shit.
Kiernan: I think it’s been a very healthy process for all of us as people, as friends, and as a musical group together. With us spending all this time together, we’ve learned so much about each other. We know how much time we need to spend with each other and how much time we need to give each other as well. It’s provided some of the most beautiful moments we’ve ever had and some of the most hellish situations whilst on tour. We would never have gone through any of them or experienced them together if we didn’t do the grind.
Talbot: People complain all the time about shit that is insane in this industry. They’re turning up late for their own shows, and complaining about this and complaining about that, whereas we slept in a van under bin liners in minus-whatever degrees, and were happy about it. We enjoyed the experience, because we had five more people at that show than we did the night before. That sense of gratification comes from your own determination, and I think that’s a really healthy thing. You have to be uncomfortable to understand how beautiful comfort is.
Bowen: And you can’t question each other’s commitment to the craft. Everyone has put everything into this, even when it didn’t look like we were going to get anything back from it. We were getting what we needed at every point.
And stylistically, you’re a pretty far cry from a lot of the poppier rock bands that have seen as much success as IDLES has.
Bowen: That’s unquestionable for us. Our success and how big our band is and the rooms that we fill and the awards, blah blah blah — none of that is even remotely a consideration at any point. It comes as a big surprise to us, because while our intention isn’t to make difficult music, we appreciate that it’s not necessarily middle-of-the-road or accessible. But it’s real.
Talbot: It’s an amalgamation of all that we love. Today, I’ve listened to Eric Dolphy and Bob Seger, and I want all of that in our album. That’s just part of what I’m into, and I think you can grow yourself as a person and a musician opening up to fucking sick music. But that’s not to say the middle-of-the-road stuff is always bad. We would always argue the case for Coldplay early on in our career because it’s just an easy band to fucking berate in the UK because the UK hates success. They hate people that are seemingly nice and kind because we’re distrusting due to a crippling class system and fucking tirade of bullshit from the British Empire. But why pretend to not like Parachutes? That’s fucking insane. It’s an incredible album. In 50 years, people will be treating it like people do the Beatles now. No one dislikes the Beatles, or at least they can appreciate how important they are. The UK has that sense of cutting down the tallest poppy, whereas we always just try to celebrate whatever it is we love. But normally we have a collective dislike for stuff that has the intention of fame or money.
You’ve hit a lot of accomplishments in your career, but what else is left for IDLES to do?
Talbot: We just want to maintain a healthy career built around dedication and love for the music we have written. That’s it. Whatever comes with that is great. The worst thing you can do — to quote Tom DeLonge — is stay together for the kids. We’ve got to stay in this because we love it. and we do.
Bowen: I just want to be excited about every album we make and every show we do. So whatever needs to happen to make that happen, that’s what I want.
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