Devin Townsend often presents as a louder-than-life character – a rock force with an operatic vocal range and a thing for puppets.
“Regrettably, insecurity plays into my process in a big way,” he admits. “But I guess my objective with music has always been about representing where I’m at emotionally.”
His recent album PowerNerd, written in a fortnight (with lyrics that were longer in the making, drawing from challenging personal times), is a hard-hitting explosion of his defining attributes: colossal riffs, dreamy soundscapes, king-sized melodies, a touch of daft humour, and surges of deep feeling.
The first music I remember hearing
My mother used to play Brahms on the piano in the basement. In the Pacific Northwest, in the seventies, the environment was wetter than it is now, so there was a real attachment to those minor-key piano melodies with the sustain pedal pressed. From a young age I was ‘trained’, in some way, to equate those tonalities and reverb to rainy days.
The first song I performed live
In tenth grade there was a parent-teacher night, I put together a band and we played in the cafeteria. We played Stairway To Heaven, and the feeling of acknowledgement that came from a room full of people applauding was pretty intoxicating as a kid.
The guitar hero
Eddie Van Halen. When I was about twelve we used to hang out on the roofs of our houses and put our stereos out the windows, and everybody listened to Van Halen. As guitar players, the badge of honour was to be able to play the tapping section in Eruption.
The singer
Rob Halford. Being in Vancouver, there were no stations that played rock or metal, but if you took your TV’s cable and gaffa-taped it to your ghetto blaster or radio receiver, you could pick up stations from Seattle. KISW played Victim Of Changes by Judas Priest, the live version from Unleashed In The East. Rob Halford’s voice was so interesting to me. I remember singing into a reverb unit trying to replicate his voice. But only passively, because I didn’t want to be a singer.
The songwriter
The Clancy Brothers and Johnny Cash. At Christmas my grandfather would come over and we would sing that. Also Leonard Bernstein – I was raised with seventies musicals. They were such broad strokes of emotion. America [from West Side Story] was so abstract rhythmically, but because it was such a big part of my life it didn’t seem complicated.
Favourite musical
The ones that really affected me emotionally were Jesus Christ Superstar and Popeye. Popeye was much maligned, because the concept of it is absurd in every sense: Robin Williams, doing a live-action Popeye musical. However, myself and a bunch of people that I know, strangely, have a huge affinity for it.
The greatest album of all time
A solo artist named Rapoon put out an album called Darker By Light in 1996, and I’ve listened to it more than any record. It’s soundscapes, like an auburn-coloured, dark kind of watercolour. It’s the type of music I prefer to almost anything.
Music I mow the lawn to
It’s the only time I participate in music that has lyrics, really. I look for shitty eighties metal, and I’ll listen to things that colleagues of mine have released. The last Sevendust, Meshuggah’s last one, Shinedown, Gojira…
The best record I've made
A record I made in the pandemic, called Snuggles, because it was made consciously to try and make people feel better. There’s a host of female voices I asked to sing, and I said the only criteria is that whatever you say has to be a constructive sentiment – like a prayer or mantra. When I listened to it one day, the positivity and constructive nature of it made me very proud.
The worst record I've made
If there’s a record that I like less than others, it’s only because the time that yielded that bounty of music was less pleasurable. And those times might be Physicist [2000] and Z2 [2014].
The best cover version
Two Steps From The Move by Hanoi Rocks opens with a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Up Around The Bend. When I tried to listen to the Creedence version, I realised how much more I liked Hanoi Rocks’ one.
My favourite live band
Probably Meshuggah. They’re friends of mine. I feel similar about Meshuggah as I do with AC/DC. Not musically, but there’s very few bands that have isolated something so specifically and then mastered it. I have a lot of time for that conceptually.
My Saturday night party song
Hall & Oates, maybe Bob Marley, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan. My parties are not wild. One wild party at fifty-two years old and I’m fucked for a week.
The song I want played at my funeral
Prabhujee by Ravi Shanker and George Harrison. Probably my favourite song of all time. I think I first heard it when I started taking acid. Once that era of my life dissipated, a lot of music that [had] seemed appropriate didn’t have any value to me. But that one carried itself through that period.
