Devin Townsend is supporting Myles Kennedy on a UK and Ireland tour this month - and while they both were into heavy metal in their formative years, they had very different experiences when they were learning how to sing.
“I grew up as a metal kid,” Myles says. “You had Rob Halford [Judas Priest] and people like that. There was a big thing going on with rock singers. But funnily enough, the singers I was trying to emulate early on were all R&B singers like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.
“I studied singing with this guy called Ron Anderson. I took about 18 lessons, he was this amazing teacher based in LA. He showed me these techniques which came from opera singers, though I obviously applied them in a different way.”
Devin admits that his formal training was less successful.
“I went to a vocal coach in LA called Roger Love,” he says. “But I only went to him twice. I’d just started working with Steve Vai and for the first lesson Roger asked me to sing, so I did. And he told me if I carried on like that, I would f**k my voice up within a year.
“Everything that I was doing was not sustainable. So he was trying to teach me better techniques and I was so obstinate or engrossed in my own style I didn’t connect with it. I carried on singing the way I always did. It’s been 30 years and I’m still here!”
Devin also reveals that Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell was a huge inspiration for him - although not, perhaps, for the right reasons.
“In the ’80s I loved Operation: Mindcrime by Queensrÿche. All that over-the-top metal stuff was a big deal. But Jane’s Addiction was really big for me. That guy [Farrell] was hitting wrong notes with such authority that I just fell in love with it!"
Devin continues: “It’s the same reason I love K.K. Downing [lead guitarist] from Judas Priest so much. He was slightly out of tune but it had echo on it. So it sounded really antagonistic like ‘Yeah, we’re gonna play that note and it’s going to echo for a long time!’ That really influenced me.”
Myles Kennedy and Devin Townsend kick off their UK and Ireland tour in Glasgow on 24 November
“He wanted his version of the song to be a stark, heavy solo-piano thing, but they convinced him to turn it into a grand, crashing, theatrical monster-ballad, complete with orchestra”: The story of Nilsson's Without You
“To be honest, when Bruno first sent me the demo I thought it was kind of cheesy. But he just knew, and he said - in the nicest possible way - ‘It’s this way or the highway’, and he was completely right”: Mark Ronson on the making of Uptown Funk
“He wanted his version of the song to be a stark, heavy solo-piano thing, but they convinced him to turn it into a grand, crashing, theatrical monster-ballad, complete with orchestra”: The story of Nilsson's Without You
“To be honest, when Bruno first sent me the demo I thought it was kind of cheesy. But he just knew, and he said - in the nicest possible way - ‘It’s this way or the highway’, and he was completely right”: Mark Ronson on the making of Uptown Funk
