“For each album, a Summoning is held to present a new singer and frontman for the Ghost project at an undisclosed location in Lincopia, Otrogathia. Papa Emeritus III, the singer for the Meliora sojourn, was revealed via a paid advertisement on VH-1 Classic on May 20, 2015, during a late-night broadcast of Caddyshack.”
And so it goes that Swedish hard rockers Ghost, known as Ghost B.C. in the United States, launched into their latest project, Meliora, the band’s third full-length album and first with (possibly, though probably not) new lead singer Papa Emeritus III.
To find out what helps the world’s most enigmatic and obviously hilarious band create their particular brand of surprisingly progressive, oddly psychedelic, and unmistakably powerful Scandinavian hard rock, we caught up with a Nameless Ghoul to find out the guitar gear that Ghost couldn’t live without.
Sentimental Value
The weird thing is I have a few guitars that aren’t necessarily very good, but that I’ve had basically all my life and they’re definitely not expensive ones you would assume a professional guitarist would have.
I have an old BC Rich, with a different head than the usual ones. I don’t remember exactly the name of it, but it was my first real guitar when I first got into death metal. It sounds like fucking crap. Back then, I had like an old Marshall Valvestate and a Floyd Rose tremolo. It has a high sentimental value.
Cool Guitars
I do not have a huge guitar collection. There’s a lot of things that I want to buy. There’s a few guitars I’ve had in my life, but had and sold, and they’re nothing special. I had a cool, classic, white Flying V, like an ’80s version that I really liked.
But at some sort of weak moment 10 odd years ago, I had to sell it. It’s not a hard guitar to find in any way and I can probably find a cooler year’s model. But when you start touring in bands, you sort of change your perspective a little bit and what you think is actually a cool guitar.
Stage vs Studio
Our guitars differ between what we’re touring with and what we’re recording with. At home, all the music is written on my guitar here at home, which is a regular black Gibson SG, which is highly regular.
But that’s my go-to guitar, that’s my favourite guitar. And usually when we go into the studio, there’s nothing wrong with that guitar, but it tends to detune a bit too quickly. I’ve changed the screws on it, but in the studio you want something reliable.
In the studio we tend to use one set of things and live we use Gibson RDs and those are really good for the live thing. Also, just for the coloration of the sound, we want to use different guitars in the studio.
A Les Paul sounds different to an SG, a Flying V sounds different to a hollow body, so you can get a lot of rich sounds if you use a different set for everything.
The Mona Lisa
For the latest album, we rented everything. We were in Stockholm and had a lot of contacts, collectors with cool guitars. We had this old Les Paul, I think it was from ’62 or ’64 or something like that, originally a Goldtop, but it looked like the Mona Lisa, it was all cracked up.
And besides maybe the Neve Console, it was probably the most expensive thing in the studio at that point, but it sounded so great. When you have something that is basically a museum artefact in your hands, you realise that white Flying Vs come and go, but this is something special.
A Guitarist’s Needs
I think my needs are pretty much like anybody else’s, the feel of the guitar is important, but I just love Gibson. Even though Flying Vs are very unpractical when you sit down — that’s why I love Explorers — they fit my body, especially the SG.
I’m not a big guy and SGs are light, where Les Pauls, which I really love playing too, feel like they’re double the weight. So the SG is like my go-to model. RD would probably be the second, in terms of having gotten used to them, because we wanted a guitar style that would carry some of the imagery of the band.
Writing
The way that I write, a song idea or riff or anything, the smallest piece or grain that seeds the song, can come out of anything. Usually, I don’t even play guitar to get the idea. I just hear it in my head and I find a guitar and play it.
Obviously, you can get different ideas depending on which instrument you’re playing. For example, the song ‘From the Pinnacle to the Pit’ on the new album was actually written on a bass. I hear it immediately, because it’s a bass riff.
It’s a funk thing, very sort of Jay Leno band sort of thing. Very much late night show-based, even though we transposed it and made it more Led Zeppelin.
Ghost have just released their new album Meliora per-order and stream link here.
