The Cult guitarist Billy Duffy knew what he wanted from an early age: a rich Gretsch tone that swung to a beat and hit hard. As one of the most defining guitarists of his generation, he went about forging this instantly recognisable sound through technical customisation and sonic innovation – pushing the limits of himself and his guitar: a Gretsch White Falcon that is so synonymous with the Manchester-born guitarist’s sound, in 2013 the US heritage guitar manufacturer honoured Duffy with his own Signature iteration.

Duffy has been rocking the White Falcon throughout – low-slung, waist-level. From the rich anthemic melodies of The Cult’s seminal 1985 record Love (most notably She Sells Sanctuary) through the heavier, Rick Rubin-produced Electric, the even heavier Sonic Temple, and beyond. From Duffy’s formative years in Theatre of Hate to his more recent projects including Circus Diablo and Cardboard Vampyres.

As Gretsch marks its 140th anniversary – a milestone of musical trailblazing – we speak to Duffy about what it means to be a key figure in the brand’s storied history, and how he evolved and amplified his signature sound.

Alex James Taylor: This year marks the 140th anniversary of Gretsch. With your Signature White Falcon, how does it feel to have your own story within that heritage?
Billy Duffy: I’m actually truly honoured. I think the Gretsch story is honestly amazing. It’s still a bit of an outsider brand, not a lot of guitar players can really handle a Gretsch for everything. But I would say that every guitar player worth their salt has at least one in their collection, maybe two. Basically I had this epiphany in the 80s, I sent a pick-up to Seymour Duncan, the pick-up manufacturer and said, “I want it to sound like a Gretsch but to have more thump.” And he said, “Send me an example.” So what I ended up sending him was a recording of a Telecaster with a humbucker on it. Somehow, between all that, we came up with this pick-up on my signature.

AJT: I love that you and the Gretsch have this relationship where you each helped each other open up your sound.
BD: I think that’s the best kind of relationship. It set me some parameters and it’s certainly a great talking point when you walk into a room and put on a Gretsch. 

AJT: Do you still have the first one you ever bought?
BD: Oh no, fucking hell, I’m not that kind of guy. They aren’t all in glass cases in my room of achievements. [both laugh] They’ve all gone their own separate ways. The first one I got was a double cutaway, they were very rare in the UK, I got it from Orange Music in Charing Cross Road and it was £800, which was an enormous amount of money at the time. I’d just joined Theatre of Hate and it was everything I’d saved up from working two jobs and being on the dole – don’t tell the government! They were importing them from California and I really wanted a single cutaway like Matthew Ashman from Bow Wow Wow, but they couldn’t find one and I’d got the gig in Theatre of Hate and needed a Gretsch. That was another coincidence and how I got in the band – because I looked like I should be in the band. Kirk Brandon [guitarist in Theatre of Hate] asked me, “If you joined my band, what kind of guitar would you play?” I had a picture of a White Falcon on the wall in my flat. He came round to my flat before the audition to check me out, and on the wall I had three pictures. One was football related, the other was a Bull Terrier, which are the dogs I’ve always liked, and then I had a White Falcon poster. He said, “What’s with the dog?” And I said, “I’ve just always liked Bull Terriers.” Brandon goes, “I grew up with Bull Terriers. I had one called Sharky.” So that was that. Next thing, he saw the Gretsch, and I said, “Oh yeah, if I get in the band I’m going to buy a Gretsch.” That’s a true story.

“Every guitar player worth their salt has at least one in their collection”

AJT: Do you remember the first time you picked up a guitar?
BD: The first guitar I picked up was a bass in a music lesson in my school in Manchester. It was a semi-acoustic bass and I think I tried to play a rockabilly bassline on it. That’s my first proper memory of picking up an instrument. My brother had a little Beatles plastic ukulele some time in the early 70s. 

AJT: Did you find yourself instantly drawn to the guitar?
BD: I was attracted to the idea of being a guitarist, for sure. I never remember wanting to be any other instrumentalist in a band and I was only average at football, so career-wise, guitar was my only option.

AJT: You were at that Sex Pistols gig at Manchester Free Trade Hall – it’s such an iconic moment, can you tell me what it was like to be there?
BD: I was at the second one, not the first one. Only the real creme de la creme of Manchester royalty was at the first one. But I was at the second one, yes, where there must’ve been about 250 or 300 people at most, not the 300,000 who claim to have been there. [laughs]

AJT: What was the gig like? Was it as game-changing as people say?
BD: It was exciting, and quite violent. I’m still friends with Mick Rossi from Slaughter and the Dogs, and he was on the bill. There was quite a violent atmosphere in the crowd, but there generally was at punk gigs, it’d kick off quite a lot, and that’s even before the Oi movement that came later and infiltrated punk. It was a bit tasty. I remember all they’d sell were these bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale, and they’re quite a missile. The Buzzcocks were brilliant, Slaughter and the Dogs did their thing, which was a bit Bowie-esque, and it was a great vibe. I went with four or five of my mates and a few left because of the violence, I was fifteen, so I wasn’t any kind of tough guy. But I stayed and saw the gig and the Pistols were amazing, as were The Buzzcocks. 

AJT: Was there a big shift between the Pistols and the Buzzcocks?
BD: I mean, they were the first punk bands I’d ever seen, in that order, Buzzcocks, Slaughter and the Pistols, in the same night. It was just exciting to be part of it and be in the same room. It was very divisive, it split my high school band down the middle, half wanted to be like Fleetwood Mac or Crosby, Nash, Stills & Young, and the other half wanted to be Iggy and the Stooges and New York Dolls. 

AJT: What was Manchester like at that time? My family are from Manchester and they tell me it was quite bleak, but then of course you had things bubbling away creatively with the likes of Tony Wilson.
BD: It was very grim, aesthetically, so music was a great escapism, but you also need to remember that none of those people then were who they’ve become in terms of legend. Tony Wilson did an amazing job, he was a TV presenter, a well educated chap. He got on ITV and put Iggy Pop and Johnny Thunders on local TV at tea time, and for that I’ll be forever grateful to him. That’s what resonated with me and my mates, one of which was Johnny Marr, which is well known. But there were a bunch of other lads who never made it who were just as interested, passionate and active in music. I guess we were all looking for something and found it in the energy that punk rock created. 

AJT: Listening to The Cult, you can hear that balance between the British Manchester sound and a more American punk rock influence. That mix has come to define your sound.
BD: I always aesthetically liked the Americana look, Levi’s and Marlon Brando in the motorcycle jacket and boots. I wasn’t the only one, take a look at The Clash, one of the best dressed bands. I never really wanted to wear a Crombie and ride a scooter, you know what I’m saying? It wasn’t my thing, I never wanted to be a mod, I’d much rather be a rocker with a motorbike. That was one of the things we all had in common and also how I linked up with Steven Morrissey, through the New York Dolls and being interested in that scene, Iggy and the Stooges and MC5. It’s not that I didn’t like British bands because I loved Generation X, Penetration, the Pistols, the Banshees, The Adverts, but I was never one of those to wrap myself in a Union Jack. I was always fascinated with the States and that’s seeped into the music I’ve made.

AJT: And Morrissey ran the New York Dolls fan club, right? Were you involved in that?
BD: I think he invented the New York Dolls fan club [laughs], and therefore, ergo ran it.

AJT: Speaking of the attraction towards America, when you guys went across and recorded Electric with Rick Rubin in 1987, what was LA like at that time?
BD: LA was interesting because it was a bit of a musical backwater in the 80s. They’d had the enormous cocaine-fuelled Eagles and Fleetwood Mac time. That followed on from the late-60s, 70s Laurel Canyon, The Byrds, The Doors, that rich musical heritage on the West Coast. But from the mid-70s New York was always the place, with Lou Reed, The Dolls, then Television, the Ramones, Patti Smith. Me and Morrissey used to go and find a magazine called The New York Rocker. It was like a newspaper printed about the New York music scene and we would used to go and find it in town at some obscure record stores – that was how we found out about up-and-coming events in New York. I found that quite exotic, in an otherworldly way. I went to go see acts like Jayne County & The Electric Chairs, I loved the guitarist, this New York guy called Greg Van Cook – he’s gone on to become completely obscure but he’s a fantastic guitar player. 

AJT: And how did Rick Rubin influence your sound at that time and the way you approached production?
BD: We went to America in ’84 and New York was the portal, every band went there. We played a couple of places then went to Canada, did San Fransisco, and me and Ian really liked Los Angeles, there was something that just clicked. The Rick Rubin thing, we did that album [Electric] in New York, Rick and George [Drakoulias] hadn’t even moved to LA then. They moved about the same time me and Ian did. New York was a bit played out after the punk scene in the 70s.

In the mid-80s the energy seemed to move to LA where there was room to breath. The rock thing was kind of happening and culminated in Guns ‘n’ Roses being the prime example of the rock scene. They were the figurehead band to bring back rock. As you well know, we toured with them in ’87 and we were inclined to head in the same direction, musically. Rick Rubin was very simple [in his approach], he said, “Do you like early Led Zeppelin? Do you like early AC/DC? Do you like early Aerosmith?” We went, “Yeah,” and he said, “Well let’s make a record then.” [both laugh] To Rick, those were the essential pillars of rock music. That was the kind of record we made with him, Electric was a fundamentalist, bare-bones rock album recorded method-style in a great studio with no frills. It was honest and enduring. I think we could only make that record once. I say that because… I’ll use Rick’s quote because it’s great, he said, “I didn’t so much produce The Cult as reduce them.” We made the album, it was too overblown, too many layers, and Rick stripped it right down like Jenga and rebuilt it from the foundations up. It was a very important thing for us, it was like necessary surgery. 

“That was one of the things we all had in common and also how I linked up with Steven Morrissey, through the New York Dolls and being interested in that scene, Iggy and the Stooges and MC5.”

AJT: So when you first went into the studio did you have more in mind for that record?
BD: Well we’d recorded it before in England with the same producer who did the Love album. Love is a great album, probably my favourite overall, so we thought we wanted to do that again but add a bit more muscle to it. That was the philosophy, it just didn’t work out. The songs didn’t get into the right shape and a bunch of different shit happened. The result was that we recorded and mixed Electric in England and it wasn’t what we wanted. That’s how we ended up getting Rick, to kind of bail us out in a very radical way. 

AJT: It’s interesting, I’ve been listening back to your discography and it’s so admirable your desire to evolve, experiment, shift gear. A lot of bands stick to what they know.
BD: It’s a very good point – it’s never been in our nature to stand still. Ian’s very chameleon-like, he’s always reaching, and that helps. In my gut, deep down, I know you can’t write She Sells Sanctuary twenty five times, you just can’t. So why not take on the challenge and make something new and interesting, but still keeping the essence and core of what The Cult is, which is the relationship between myself and Ian. 

AJT: Love is the album where you really announced yourselves – the songs are so anthemic, so big and full, it’s rare for a band to have that richness so early.
BD: I grew up listening to big production records and I wanted the band to sound like Mott the Hoople or Thin Lizzy, Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Free. Our producer has to take a lot of credit for that, Steve Brown, because he brought a great commercial sense to what we did. I’ve always liked a big sound, and Electric was funny because its a small sound that was big, then Sonic Temple was a big sound that was arguably a little overblown, but in context to records being made in 1988, it wasn’t that outrageous. 

AJT: Did you purposefully try and push your guitar playing towards these different sounds or was it almost subconscious?
BD: I realised when touring supporting Billy Idol with Steve Stevens [Idol’s guitarist] and then having Guns ‘n’ Roses support us with Slash, that as the lead guitar player I was going to have to try a bit harder than just looking good and having a big white guitar. I didn’t want to bring a knife to a gunfight, so I better start practising more and partying less. Me and Jamie Stewart on bass, we really did work hard on our craft between Electric and Sonic Temple. It felt like something we needed to do. 

AJT: Reading past interviews, you often use this term, ‘waist down sound’ which I find really interesting. Can you tell me about that?
BD: For The Cult in general, we always thought that heavy metal bands – who I have nothing against – tend to make their music for people from the waist up, headbanging, whereas to me, the best rock ‘n’ roll, swing bands aim it from the waist down. It’s got to have that back beat, which goes back to me picking up that bass playing rockabilly basslines, to me that’s the foundation. That’s the foundation of Led Zeppelin, if you look at Robert Plant and Bonzo’s [John Bonham] drumming. We tried to keep that with The Cult, let’s remember it’s got to swing, it’s got to have a pocket. It doesn’t matter how many guitars there are or what Ian’s doing, if it doesn’t have the back beat and the movement…. Look at AC/DC, the essence of their whole thing is that. It’s about the underpinning, it’s not about Angus [Young] and the fucking schoolboy outfit, it’s about the drummer and Malcolm [Young] and the bass player not getting in the way. That’s AC/DC, and then Angus is the cherry and the cake. The cake is Malcolm, always was. 

“I didn’t want to bring a knife to a gunfight, so I better start practising more and partying less.”

AJT: And how does that philosophy apply to your signature Gretsch? How did you want it to embody that sound? The fact it’s semi-acoustic adds to that feeling and depth.
BD: It’s a battle. The thing about Gretsch is, in general their guitars tend to make a sound that’s quite unique. Whatever you do, there’s a certain signature sound to a Gretsch. I’ve always been fascinated by the White Falcon, they aren’t an easy guitar to play, certainly not at the volumes I do when I interchange with a Les Paul. Back when we did the Love album I thought, ‘”Wouldn’t it be funny if I turned on a Fuzz pedal and a Wah-Wah and started to play like Iggy & the Stooges meets Jimi Hendrix over a psychedelic rock sound. What would happen?” All the guitars on the Love album are Gretsch’s White Falcon – well, there might be Ian’s Telecaster a tiny bit, but so insignificantly that I’d pretty much go to my grave saying Love is all Gretsch. I didn’t own any other guitars at the time. The Gretsch gives you this chiming-like quality, it has a certain ring to it that is undeniable. The battle for a guy like me wanting to apply that to a heavy rock thing… I used the AC/DC analogy earlier, Angus isn’t using a Gretsch playing lead guitar, but I wanted to. And Malcolm’s chopping wood with very thick guitar strings on a Gretsch and it sounds amazing. That was my thing, I wanted to be Malcolm and Angus, please. [laughs] The Gretsch thing was always there for me. At first I just wanted to have a Les Paul and be like Steve Jones or Johnny Thunders, because when you’re a kid you just wanna be your heroes. but then you grow in age and experience. I’d joined a few bands, done a couple of singles and started knocking about the scene in London at a low level and I just wanted to find my own identity, I realised that was more important. The Gretsch was the gateway for me to find my own sound, my own voice – it made me write in a certain way. That’s what the White Falcon brought to me.