“The producer showed me a great recording trick – he covered my pick with a thin layer of paper. The sound was pure Bowie”: He played with John Squire and KT Tunstall. Now George Vjestica is exploring his experimental side as one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds

George Vjestica is part of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, having first lent his licks to 2013’s Push The Sky Away before coming on full-time for Skeleton Tree (2016). Considering Cave’s restless creative muse and Vjestica’s following a player like Mick Harvey, his integration into the Bad Seeds machine is no small feat. 

But then again, the guitar is as much a part of Vjestica’s soul as a tool; just ask him: “It’s been a constant in my life since I was nine,” he tells Guitarist. “Rarely does a day go by when I don’t pick up a guitar and have a play around. There’s something so magical for me in those six strings.”

He adds: “I felt so sad when Jeff Beck died, and I really got stuck into how he played. I’ve got a little studio, and I sat in there for about a month trying to figure out his tone and how he used the tremolo. I became obsessed with that track Nadia; I fucking love playing that song just for myself. I can sit in my little shed for hours just playing. There are so many great guitarists and musicians to be inspired by. I could go on forever!”

That willingness to shape-shift has served Vjestica well while playing behind Nick Cave, and also John Squire on his Marshall’s House record from 2004. And it’s been an asset while aiding in creating atmospheric scores for films such as Proposition (2005) and Lawless (2012). 

Thinking about how his experiences have shaped him over the years, he says: “I’m more geared towards trying to make my own records these days. It’s not just about playing the guitar; that is what has changed the most for me. You have to think about how to produce a track or an album and how it’s going to sound musically, lyrically and connect emotionally. Self-indulgence is totally fine. I’m all for self-expression.”

What inspired you to pick up the guitar?

“I saw Jimi Hendrix on the television when I was nine, which lit the fuse. My dad bought me a nylon-stringed guitar for Christmas. That was it – me and the guitar were inseparable.”

What type of music scene did you grow up in?

“I grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, the same place where Slash spent the first five or so years of his life. It’s a working-class town full of industry, so ‘rock music’, as it used to be known, was a big thing there, but it had a great soul scene and when punk happened that was big. Growing up, live music was everywhere in the 1970s and early ’80s.”

Aside from Hendrix, what sorts of guitarists caught your ear?

“I have two older brothers who always had tapes and borrowed records from their friends, so I listened to a lot of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Bowie and The Spiders From Mars, and loads of guitar bands.

“I loved Hendrix, The Who, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Be-Bop Deluxe and Yes. Steve Howe was so different from all the other rock guitarists, and on the flip side I loved the Sex Pistols, especially Steve Jones’ guitar playing. It was so raw and powerful.”

And how did all that impact you as a player?

“I went to tons of gigs in my teens. I really found the music that would define me between 12 and 18 years old. I loved The Jam, The Clash, The Pretenders and post-punk stuff like Magazine; John McGeoch and Keith Levene from PiL were major influences.

“Then I got into jazz players like Wes Montgomery and Grant Green. Stoke was a great place to see bands – there were loads of venues and Manchester was up the road. It was an amazing time to be young and into music.”

How did you evolve while touring with Groove Armada from 2006?

“I wouldn’t say I evolved as a guitar player with Groove Armada, but playing live and touring with them was a great experience. The shows were mega productions, full on with loads of lasers and big PA systems, and heavy sub-bass everywhere! It was a lot of fun, and I travelled worldwide with them. Playing in Australia, South Africa, Japan and South America was awesome.

“Playing-wise, it was super-tight musically, and with it being dance-oriented music, everything was on click track, so that was a discipline you needed to have. I enjoyed making the Black Light and White Light albums [2010]; if you listen carefully, you can hear how my James Honeyman-Scott and Bill Nelson influences snuck onto those records!”

From there, how did you meet John Squire and end up touring with him?

“Sophie [Upton], his wife, is an old friend. He was looking for a guitar player when he was about to tour his first solo album, Time Changes Everything, and she suggested me to John.”

What lessons did you learn from John? 

“He’s amazing and somebody I have huge respect for. He gave me a major break and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. He’s an incredible guitar player, so fluid and lyrical. Guitar-wise, he opened my eyes to different tunings and capo positions.

“There’s something unique about the way he plays the guitar. I worked with him for two years, so I saw up close the way he played. He’s like Django Reinhardt, flies all over the fretboard, and he was fucking loud! His phrasing is brilliant.”

What was your touring rig like?

“I used my Stratocaster, a late ’69/’70 sunburst model. I bought it for £400 in 1989, and I used John’s old Vox AC15 and had my old AC30 as a backup, a ’60s copper top with blue speakers. I got it from Paul Weller’s old guitar tech, Dave Liddle. I had a Boss tuner, [Dunlop] Cry Baby, an Ibanez Tube Screamer, and a Boss DD-3, a pretty basic setup.”

What was the experience of working on Marshall’s House like? How did you and John play off each other?

“It was great. We’d been playing together for the better part of a year. John had written the songs for Marshall’s House, so we went to his place, worked them out and rehearsed in the barn there. 

“He was really open, and we kind of did a lot of weaving in and out, guitar-wise. It was instinctive, musically; it was a great band and we all naturally played off each other. It’s such a gem that record, so underrated. Both of his solo albums have beautiful songs on them.”

You also played on KT Tunstall’s debut EP, False Alarm, from 2004. What was the approach like there?

“KT was going out with John’s drummer, Luke Bullen, and she had just got a record deal when I first met her. She was recording her first album, Eye To The Telescope, in a tiny place in Bath with Steve Osborne producing. It was a case of going in for the day and playing around with a few songs. The part I played on False Alarm was a keeper, and the rest is history. That was a huge album.”

Tell us about putting together the Lawless movie soundtrack with Nick Cave.

“Lawless was the second soundtrack I worked on with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis; I played on The Proposition, their first soundtrack, back in 2005. It was a mixture of cover songs and a few originals that Nick and Warren had composed. Martyn Casey from the Bad Seeds was playing bass.

“It was a raw, bastardised version of a bluegrass band! At that time, you had really slick country soundtracks for films, like O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but this was the total opposite.

“I mainly used a Gibson J-45 on the acoustic songs, and I loved our take on John Lee Hooker’s Burning Hell; it was completely feral. I used an active guitar that was lying around in the studio, one of those with a battery set up in the back, and as we were recording the track, the guitar was literally dying on me because the battery was fucked. It started to make a really distorted noise. 

“I loved it and Nick loved it. I remember the producer running into the live room saying, ‘It sounds like shit!’ And we were like, ‘Nah, it sounds great!’ That stayed on the soundtrack. Full credit to Nick and Warren for sticking to their guns and the support!”

So you worked with Nick on Lawless and The Proposition, but how did you join the Bad Seeds?

“I’d known Nick for quite a few years; he’s a friend. It was the year after the Lawless session [2013], and he asked me if I wanted to play some guitar on the new Bad Seeds album, which turned out to be Push The Sky Away.

“He wanted to make a different kind of record. Mick Harvey had left the band, so he wanted to take things in a new direction, and it was the first album with the Bad Seeds where all the songs were composed by himself and Warren Ellis.”

What did your studio rig look like back then?

“For the Push The Sky Away session, I used one guitar: a 12-string acoustic that was in the studio. It wasn’t flashy, just a very basic guitar that I had to string up because most of the strings were missing. The action was unbelievably high, so you really needed to be a tyre fitter to hold the strings down. 

“Nick Launay, the producer, showed me a great recording trick: he covered my plectrum with a thin layer of paper and stuck it on. The sound was pure Bowie – it had that dry strumming sound. I loved that.”

Did being new to the band impact your approach?

“For me, the song is the most important thing, so play the song. The initial sessions for Push The Sky Away were in a studio in Brighton called The Toy Rooms. It was Nick, Warren, Barry Adamson, Thomas Wydler on drums and me on the guitar. A lot was going on instrumentally, and musically it was very dense. 

“By the time I got to France, to La Fabrique, everything had been stripped back and it felt like a minimal electronic album, beautiful songs with loads of space, so I kept things simple, a ‘less is more’ kind of approach.”

What gear did you use once you got out on the road with the Bad Seeds?

“For the live shows, I used an old 1966 Gibson ES-330 with a Lyre tremolo. I still use that for most of the older Bad Seed songs like Red Right Hand and Tupelo. I pulled out the Strat I used with John Squire and had a couple of standard Gibson J-45s for the acoustic songs.

“I also played a nylon-stringed Yamaha on West Country Girl. I used a couple of Fender Blues Deluxe amps, and the acoustics went through two AER Compact 60 amplifiers for onstage sound, just to lean back on. Effects-wise, I had a [J Rockett] Archer boost/overdrive pedal, Boss Blues Driver, Wampler [Mini Faux Spring] reverb, and a Boss Tremolo [TR-2].”

Is recording with the Bad Seeds much different than doing film scores with Nick?

“With the two scores I did with Nick and Warren, I played what I wanted to play. I went in there and did my thing. With The Bad Seeds, it’s more considered and Nick gives more direction, as does Warren.”

Moving into the present, what sorts of gear are you deploying these days?

“I’ve got some great vintage stuff. I have a beautiful ’60s Gibson Everly Brothers, which I play in the One More Time With Feeling film, a great old L-50, and a couple of very rare Rickenbacker 360Fs. I used one on the Bandante single Bang Bang – it sounds huge.

“I have some Fender Custom Shop guitars, a Nocaster and a Jazzmaster that I’ve been playing recently. I bought a ’70s Marshall 2060 Mercury amp, the little orange one. It has a great tremolo and looks amazing. My favourite pedals now are made by Crazy Tube Circuits: the Constellation [fuzz] and the Splash [reverb] are incredible, sonically.”

What are your goals for the future?

“In the short term, a new Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album is coming out this year [Wild God, due for release on 30 August], and there are live shows, too, so that’s very exciting. I’ve also been working on a score for an HBO documentary with Dan Donovan, who was in Big Audio Dynamite, and we’re also putting out a wild experimental album under the name ‘Andromedae’. 

“As for longterm goals, I want to make a solo album. I’ve got loads of songs that I’m recording, so yes, I want to get that out there and play some live shows. I also recently got up on stage with Dinosaur Jr in London at one of their Where You Been 30th anniversary shows. It was awesome, as nothing beats playing live!”