Paul Banks on Guitars in Hip-Hop and His Dave Murray Strat

Paul Banks might be best known for his groundbreaking work fronting New York City rock band Interpol, but he has another project that has rightfully gained international acclaim, both critically and commercially.

Banks & Steelz is a collaboration between the singer/songwriter and RZA, who is otherwise known as Bobby Steelz, and it finds Banks reaching across the rock genre into hip-hop, something he’s dabbled with in the past. The duo first got together in 2011, creating a demo that saw Banks offering vocals to a beat RZA created.

As time passed, Banks and RZA circled a full-length album, and in late 2016, Anything But Words dropped with high anticipation.

The record also lived up to that anticipation, with Banks’ trademark baritone fitting in with RZA’s spitfire raps and head-nodding beats. That resulted in a few major 2017 festival dates for Banks & Steelz, including Coachella and Corona Capital, and the fresh single “Who Needs the World”, which was released in May.

Here, in his own words, Banks discusses his musical background, how he incorporates the guitar into hip-hop and his love for the Dave Murray Stratocaster.

”I Was Entirely Self-Taught”

“I don’t think I have the discipline of a shredder, though. I don’t really know how to solo. I could never be a session musician. I can never just jam with people … or I can, but it’ll be full of errors. I can just write what I write. I feel my way through things by trial and error. That’s always been my process. It never felt important to me to learn how to be a busy guitar player. So I learned a couple of chords and started inverting them and finding different ways to make them sound. Essentially, I’m a rhythm guitarist, and I never, ever, wanted to just wail all over the guitar. I mean, I was a big Slash fan, but I was too busy thinking, ‘This chord progression is too cool.’ It probably would have made me a better artist to learn songs and stuff like that, but I didn’t.”

“’Dream On’ by Aerosmith made me want to play guitar.”

“My father was a guitar player, so we had a bunch of guitars around the house. When I was a kid, he tried to teach me how to play, and we had a giant acoustic, but no kid could play that. So when I was in the seventh or eighth grade, ‘Dream On’ came on, and I was obsessed. I had to find a guitar in the house to get closer to that music, and that’s how I fell in love with it.”

”Listening to Neil Young on Acoustic Taught Me the Percussive Nature of a Guitar”

“That’s another thing you don’t have with the piano, the way you can beat it with your hand and palm mute at the same time and work on your harmonics, there are so many ways you can express yourself on a guitar.”

”I Think the Guitar is the Most Expressive Instrument”

“I think piano is the most total instrument, but guitar, maybe because it occupies the register of the human voice, it can be the most intense thing in the mix. I can be a shrieking sound, but because it’s just strings and fingers, you have such control of dynamic. When I said I was self-taught, it was a bit of a lie, because I took two weeks of classes with a classical guitar player on a nylon-string guitar. Around that time, I was kind of obsessed with Simon and Garfunkel, and I took a few lessons on classical, so I sometimes like to fingerpick. You can control the dynamic with that, or just dig in with power chords. It’s such an array or sounds you can do.”

”I Just Saw That Dave Murray Strat and Fell in Love With It”

“30th St. Guitars is my guitar shop of choice, along with Matt Umanov. I love the feel of Strats, but I’ve also played a lot of guitars that have humbuckers. I like that thick sound. I loved the longer neck length of a Strat. And I’m a rhythm guitarist, so that just feels good on a Fender. Maybe it’s the longer neck and the tighter strings, but you get that meaty sound that you might not on other guitars. My first-ever guitar was a Squier Strat. It, honestly, was pretty ugly. I’ve always been kind of particular about things, and it was the wrong color. It was like maroon. But I saw that Dave Murray Strat in the store and saw the humbuckers and just loved it. I don’t know anything about Iron Maiden or Dave Murray, but I know I love that guitar.”

I Didn’t Really Know What Banks & Steelz Would Be”

“We get along really well. Our personalities definitely mesh outside of making music. I don’t think I really had expectations. I think the same thing with Interpol and anything I’ve done that I believe if the ingredients are good, then I’m pretty sure we can do something cool. The first time we jammed was proof that we could work together.”

”Bringing Guitar in to That World Wasn’t in Question to Me”

“I’d previously made a mix tape that had some guitar and some electronic music, and I had rappers on that. So I’d already had and exploration of putting a rapper on my music, and I’ve listened to hip-hop my entire life. Before I became a guitar player and a rock musician, I was obsessed with rap music, like from the age of 12. I feel like I was really steeped in it. I felt that—and maybe this is a part of a lot of my artistic process—but I have a good instinct of what I don’t like. It’s not that I have it all mapped out to what it’s going to be. It’s that I’m pretty certain about what is going to be wack. It’s editing yourself. I felt kind of confident that I could bring something to the table with a hip-hop artist that wasn’t going to be terrible, because I love that genre.

"Listening to Wu-Tang, any number of the things that RZA might use in his productions, it’s all sounds and notes and atmosphere. It wasn’t like, ‘Guitar can’t work here.’ It was like, ‘We’ll find atmospheres that work, we’ll find chord progressions that work. We’ll find ways to fit it in.’ And I tried to make it not one of those collaborations that I’ve heard where it’s like ‘rock artist staying rock artist, then raps.’ I really didn’t want to do that.”

For more information on Banks and Steelz, click here.