Deftones, Kerrang! May 1, 2010
WHEN THE news came through, it was devastating. Chi Cheng, Deftones’ bass player, had been seriously injured in a car crash. Not wearing a seatbelt, he had been thrown from the wreckage and across the highway, suffering major head injuries in the process.
He was lucky – if lucky is a word that applies here – that some off-duty medical staff were passing the scene. It was probably the immediate treatment they gave him on the roadside that means he is still alive. However, he is a long way from being present.
Cheng went into a coma that day, November 4, 2008, from which he has not yet fully emerged. Still just semi-conscious he has had millions of dollars of medical care but still, when his bandmates visit, he shows not a flicker of recognition. The lights behind his eyes won’t spark into life – though they know he can hear them as they tell the old jokes with heavy hearts.
It was an accident that jarred Deftones’ world. First, was the fact that the man they refer to as their “brother” was no longer beside them. For 20 years, the other four members of Deftones had been used to looking over to his spot on the stage and seeing his reassuring presence. They had been used to walking past his bunk on the tourbus, hearing his stories, including him in all that they do. Now, when they look, he’s not there.
But there was another reason it knocked the band from their axis. After years of deteriorating relationships between the five of them, slowly things had seemed to be getting back onto an even keel. Life in Deftones was fun again for the first time in 10 years. Then tragedy tried to take that away.
The band’s singer, Chino Moreno, believes the rot started setting in when Deftones were recording 2000’s White Pony. He believes they had slowly become “unfocussed”, “lacklustre” and “unconnected” ever since. When he talks, in musical terms, about two of the subsequent albums they released, Deftones and Saturday Night Wrist, he says, “I don’t know what we were thinking – well, actually, I don’t think I was thinking.”
The latter, the band’s fifth record, took them nearly three-and-a-half years to finish. Moreno says he and guitarist Stef Carpenter were not communicating; instead one would create music in one sphere, while the other would create in a different one. When it came time to record, Moreno says they would simply mash their ideas together.
But all that had changed. After touring Saturday Night Wrist, they had somehow rediscovered the spirit and bond they shared when the band first formed in late 80s. The old friendships were back, the camaraderie had returned and, crucially, the creativity was rampant.
They had been in the studio, with Cheng, recording what should have been their sixth album – Eros. It was experimental. Carpenter says he was influenced by the R&B dance music of The Neptunes and Timbaland and wanted to create club-like grooves over their heavy riffs. “I don’t think I necessarily achieved it,” he says with a shrug, “but those songs are all great.”
Moreno says Eros was sounding psychedelic, that Deftones had pushed themselves out to the bounds of their imagination and had returned with new, jamming-inspired sounds. “There was a really good vibe,” he says. “We had reconnected as friends and as a band. We were all in a super-tight place. We were all in it together again.”
And then, suddenly, their newfound world was torn apart. Or was it?
THE SUNSET Marquis hotel, nestled discreetly just off Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip is perhaps one of the world’s nicer places. On a warm day in California, as relaxed waiters offer out menus and hotel guests lounge by the pool, its casual luxury, sun-blushed charm and elegant cool seem a million miles from that tragic day a year and a half ago when both Carpenter and Moreno received the news about Cheng.
It is at this hotel, though, that Moreno and Carpenter are to meet to Kerrang! to talk about how they set about rebuilding their band since the accident. Drummer Abe Cunningham, keyboardist Frank Delgado and new bassist Sergio Vega have been spared interview duty. And perhaps, after all, it is not such an inappropriate place because, as the sunshine diffuses down through the palms above, so Deftones have found light from the darkness in which they once found themselves. For the story of what the band did after Cheng’s accident is one of rising from the ashes. Because Deftones are back on their feet again and, as they are only too keen to make clear, stronger than ever.
When Moreno comes wandering out to the hotel’s outdoor restaurant, his wife and bouncing young daughter beside him, his appearance requires a double take. Where once he had seemed resigned to letting himself go, his weight meaning he could perhaps politely be described as padded, now he is slim and very healthy looking. He seems fit, cheekbones cut across his face, there’s a vigorous glow to his skin, and his clothes no longer come in XXL sizes. He has a smile and a positivity about him. He looks good.
“Thank-you, man,” he says, when you tell him as much. “I’m getting my head together. I’m getting my brain and my body together and that means everything just comes easier. Waking up in the morning is better and I sleep better, I live better and I feel better.”
His guitarist, Carpenter, is always late according to those who work with him. It’s a surprise, then, when he rolls up 15 minutes early. He’s come straight from the golf course after a quick nine holes. He’s fretting today about his handicap dropping down to a still respectable eight.
It seems unfair, on an afternoon where both seem so buoyant, to bring up the incident that has brought them to this place – Cheng’s accident – but both acknowledge that they may not be here at all, were it not for that disaster. Because, eventually, from the tragedy came optimism.
“When it happened it was a wake up call for us as a band and in life in general,” says Moreno. “It made us re-evaluate what we’re doing and why we’re doing this.”
It’s clear Cheng is still in both of their minds, though each has been dealing with the situation in different ways. Moreno and Cunningham spent last weekend with their bass player, speaking to him though he can’t speak back.
“He’s doing better. He looked good,” says Moreno. “His body is healing and he looks healthy in that respect. It’s hard to say what kind of damage he has because he’s not speaking yet. When I was talking to him, he was staring right at me and you look into his eyes and it seems as though he’s in there. But it’s hard when you don’t get any expression from him. You’ll say something funny and his expression doesn’t change. You expect him to smile, laugh or even just blink his eyes. So that’s hard. I miss him a lot. It’s still tough, it’s still really tough. It’s pretty raw.”
Carpenter, though, has only been to see Cheng once – shortly after the crash. He finds it hard to think about his friend in his current condition.
“I haven’t seen him in a long time because I think I’m still in denial about it,” he says. “I don’t want to see him like that. I don’t want to think about him being laid out because that’s not the way I want to picture him. I don’t want to picture him being that way forever. One day I know I’m going to get a call from him. He’ll just say, ‘Hi, fucker,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Shit, it’s about time!’”
WHEN THE accident happened, Deftones had nearly completed Eros. It was the first record they had made together in nearly 10 years on which, as Moreno tells it, they had all enjoyed themselves. There had been deep problems before.
“On the last couple of records [Saturday Night Wrist and Deftones], I’ve wondered what was the purpose of us making music,” says Moreno. “It seemed that there was so much drama to finish a record, there were so many obstacles. A lot of them were self-generated – there was lack of communication and so many little things. I remember telling myself when we were finishing the Saturday Night Wrist record that I don’t know if I want to make another Deftones record because it has to be one of the most stressful, unhealthy experiences ever. It used to be fun.”
One of the issues was the difficult creative relationship between Moreno and Carpenter. Moreno says that, at times in the past, they had been trying to outdo each other.
“Maybe we were a little competitive,” he says. “Perhaps we were trying to prove ourselves to each other. Instead of building on top of each other, Stef and I were building two separate things and then trying to mash them together. It worked to an extent – the records didn’t turn out horrible – but is it the essence of what we’re trying to do? I don’t think so.”
There was also a control issue. Moreno is quite a tightly wound character and he admits he thinks too much. He felt that if he wasn’t driving the band forward, making things happen, then the chances were high that Deftones just wouldn’t focus. It’s a theory that gains more credence on meeting Carpenter. The guitarist has a laidback attitude, expounding pot-spun theories and calling himself “the anti-hype person in the band”. In fact, his attitude to songs is unusual for a man who makes his living from them: “In six months time, after we release a record, it will be dead anyway. They’re just songs. I’m not married to them, they’re a dime a dozen to me.”
“On the last couple of records, I had been organising our ideas,” says Moreno. “I’m sure it pissed [the band] off because it probably seemed like I was coming in and dictating. I’m sure it was frustrating for them and it was taxing on my brain too.”
But that hadn’t been the case on Eros. The songs had been born from jams and had come together naturally, if a little untidily.
“In the Eros sessions we were getting along really well. Everyone was having fun. The only thing we were lacking was a little focus,” says Moreno. “We would come into the studio at about eight o’clock at night, then we’d sit around and play cards for an hour, or play dice, dominoes or talk bullshit.”
The old gang, it seemed was back. But then Cheng’s car crash forced them to reconsider the record and their future.
“So we stood back for a few months, put everything onto the back-burner and, then we reconvened to talk about what we wanted to do,” says Moreno. “We said, ‘Do we want to finish this record or do we continue on? What do we do?’”
“I said we should start over as a whole new band,” says Carpenter. “I thought we should have a new name and start all over again. When everything happened with Chi’s accident, out of respect I didn’t think we should put [Eros] out. But now, I think it should come out to help him and his family.”
WHAT HELPED them make the decision to continue was getting back in a room and playing music. So they called their old friend Sergio Vega, the former Quicksand bassist, and met up in their studio in Sacramento.
“It was the first time we had all been in the same room together since Chi’s accident,” says Moreno. “To even be in that room together without Chi there was a big thing. But it was also a really special thing. I felt closer to all these guys than I’ve felt to them in 10 years.
“It wasn’t about writing anything new, we just wanted to play. It was very therapeutic. At the end of the rehearsal we sat down and I said, ‘How do you guys feel about writing some more music?’ It wasn’t even about writing a new record, it was about trying to pour what we were going through into something.
“I looked at it like starting a new chapter. Eros is sacred and special to us and, at this point, it’s the last thing that Chi has played on, but I really felt like looking forward. After the first two weeks, we had about eight songs. On the last few records, it took us a year to get that much material. And it happened naturally. It was great.”
Moreno had had issues with Eros, enjoying its experimental edge but fearing its songwriting was too untidy. He wanted to improve that on what would become their new album, Diamond Eyes. At least part of the reason for that was because he had come to a startling realisation.
“We needed to save our career,” he says. “To be completely honest, I feel that if we had put out Eros, it could have been the end of our career. That’s not because the record’s terrible but we were still a little unfocussed and people could easily have written us off. In fact, I think a lot of people are on the fence with us at this point.”
Why did he feel this about his band? “I think our lacklustre attitude was showing. There were times I went onstage and, because of my weight, my health and the way I felt, I didn’t want to go out there. I’d have been drinking and, because I was drunk, I wouldn’t remember shit. I was just getting through it and that was it. I think people still expect a certain amount of quality from us and I don’t think the Eros record had that essence and quality.”
So they started work on Diamond Eyes, and despite the fun, confidence and creativity they discovered once again, there was still guilt that they were doing this while their friend lay on a hospital bed.
“Yes, I think that [guilt] was there,” says Moreno, who also admits that Cheng’s family may have been unhappy too: “I imagine [their] initial feeling was that they probably weren’t too happy with us. I imagine they thought, ‘How could they be doing this?’ I can imagine they felt a little unsure about it.”
However Moreno and Cunningham recently had a long chat with Cheng’s mother about the situation and they feel it is no longer an issue.
“She really opened up to us and was really understanding,” says Moreno. “He’s in our minds constantly. We’re not being disloyal. This is something we had no control over. Also, it has affected us pretty big too. We’ve had to rebuild our whole infrastructure and it feels as though we’re still doing that. In a way, it feels as if we’re starting over again, it feels as though we have to prove ourselves as a band again.”
IN WRITING and recording Diamond Eyes, Deftones rediscovered the art of working together and, in doing so, have recorded their strongest album since White Pony. It helped that, as Carpenter says, their new bassist “just fit right in, it was as though he’d been in the band forever.” And with that in place, Deftones turned to each other and music as support.
“As soon as we all got together in a room, we got a powerful feeling where we knew we still had each other,” says Moreno. “We knew we still had an opportunity to do something good. And then we did it. We did what we said we were going to do. There was a lot of stuff that we had to deal with. Through it all, though, I can honestly say this was one of the most fun records I was involved in making – though that’s probably hard for anyone to believe given the situation.”
Rather than the one-upmanship that had marked their last few albums, the band were pulling in the same direction.
“Everyday [Stef] would come in with three or four ideas,” says Moreno. “He’d pick up his guitar, start playing, and creativity would pour out of him. That inspired me right away. But instead of him coming up with an idea and me trying to work out the next part [as had happened in the past] I would work out a vocal part for the idea he had. That, in turn, would inspire him to go on to write the next part of the song. There was a constant building process that was very immediate.
“It really sounds like a cliché but it was a case of us going back to our roots and doing things how we did them in the beginning. We went into a room together, had fun playing our instruments and came up with songs from nothing again. It was a good feeling.”
It’s why, when you see Deftones now, they exude positivity despite the painful process they have been through. Because it took Cheng’s accident to reveal that they are still a band of brothers. It took tragedy to bring things into context.
And, with priorities made clear, Deftones are once again making music in which they believe. Cheng is still there, in their hearts and in their heads, but they’re moving on. For the first time in a long time, though, they’re all doing that in the same direction.
“Optimistic is a good word. I’m optimistic about the future of this band,” says Moreno. “We’re in a better place that we’ve been in years and years. Despite the dark cloud that is over our heads.
“But we’re grateful that we have each other, we have our health and we’re happy we’re able to do this. Just realising that is the key. It feels great. Everybody’s happy right now, happier than we have been in years.”
© Tom Bryant 2010
He was lucky – if lucky is a word that applies here – that some off-duty medical staff were passing the scene. It was probably the immediate treatment they gave him on the roadside that means he is still alive. However, he is a long way from being present.
Cheng went into a coma that day, November 4, 2008, from which he has not yet fully emerged. Still just semi-conscious he has had millions of dollars of medical care but still, when his bandmates visit, he shows not a flicker of recognition. The lights behind his eyes won’t spark into life – though they know he can hear them as they tell the old jokes with heavy hearts.
It was an accident that jarred Deftones’ world. First, was the fact that the man they refer to as their “brother” was no longer beside them. For 20 years, the other four members of Deftones had been used to looking over to his spot on the stage and seeing his reassuring presence. They had been used to walking past his bunk on the tourbus, hearing his stories, including him in all that they do. Now, when they look, he’s not there.
But there was another reason it knocked the band from their axis. After years of deteriorating relationships between the five of them, slowly things had seemed to be getting back onto an even keel. Life in Deftones was fun again for the first time in 10 years. Then tragedy tried to take that away.
The band’s singer, Chino Moreno, believes the rot started setting in when Deftones were recording 2000’s White Pony. He believes they had slowly become “unfocussed”, “lacklustre” and “unconnected” ever since. When he talks, in musical terms, about two of the subsequent albums they released, Deftones and Saturday Night Wrist, he says, “I don’t know what we were thinking – well, actually, I don’t think I was thinking.”
The latter, the band’s fifth record, took them nearly three-and-a-half years to finish. Moreno says he and guitarist Stef Carpenter were not communicating; instead one would create music in one sphere, while the other would create in a different one. When it came time to record, Moreno says they would simply mash their ideas together.
But all that had changed. After touring Saturday Night Wrist, they had somehow rediscovered the spirit and bond they shared when the band first formed in late 80s. The old friendships were back, the camaraderie had returned and, crucially, the creativity was rampant.
They had been in the studio, with Cheng, recording what should have been their sixth album – Eros. It was experimental. Carpenter says he was influenced by the R&B dance music of The Neptunes and Timbaland and wanted to create club-like grooves over their heavy riffs. “I don’t think I necessarily achieved it,” he says with a shrug, “but those songs are all great.”
Moreno says Eros was sounding psychedelic, that Deftones had pushed themselves out to the bounds of their imagination and had returned with new, jamming-inspired sounds. “There was a really good vibe,” he says. “We had reconnected as friends and as a band. We were all in a super-tight place. We were all in it together again.”
And then, suddenly, their newfound world was torn apart. Or was it?
THE SUNSET Marquis hotel, nestled discreetly just off Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip is perhaps one of the world’s nicer places. On a warm day in California, as relaxed waiters offer out menus and hotel guests lounge by the pool, its casual luxury, sun-blushed charm and elegant cool seem a million miles from that tragic day a year and a half ago when both Carpenter and Moreno received the news about Cheng.
It is at this hotel, though, that Moreno and Carpenter are to meet to Kerrang! to talk about how they set about rebuilding their band since the accident. Drummer Abe Cunningham, keyboardist Frank Delgado and new bassist Sergio Vega have been spared interview duty. And perhaps, after all, it is not such an inappropriate place because, as the sunshine diffuses down through the palms above, so Deftones have found light from the darkness in which they once found themselves. For the story of what the band did after Cheng’s accident is one of rising from the ashes. Because Deftones are back on their feet again and, as they are only too keen to make clear, stronger than ever.
When Moreno comes wandering out to the hotel’s outdoor restaurant, his wife and bouncing young daughter beside him, his appearance requires a double take. Where once he had seemed resigned to letting himself go, his weight meaning he could perhaps politely be described as padded, now he is slim and very healthy looking. He seems fit, cheekbones cut across his face, there’s a vigorous glow to his skin, and his clothes no longer come in XXL sizes. He has a smile and a positivity about him. He looks good.
“Thank-you, man,” he says, when you tell him as much. “I’m getting my head together. I’m getting my brain and my body together and that means everything just comes easier. Waking up in the morning is better and I sleep better, I live better and I feel better.”
His guitarist, Carpenter, is always late according to those who work with him. It’s a surprise, then, when he rolls up 15 minutes early. He’s come straight from the golf course after a quick nine holes. He’s fretting today about his handicap dropping down to a still respectable eight.
It seems unfair, on an afternoon where both seem so buoyant, to bring up the incident that has brought them to this place – Cheng’s accident – but both acknowledge that they may not be here at all, were it not for that disaster. Because, eventually, from the tragedy came optimism.
“When it happened it was a wake up call for us as a band and in life in general,” says Moreno. “It made us re-evaluate what we’re doing and why we’re doing this.”
It’s clear Cheng is still in both of their minds, though each has been dealing with the situation in different ways. Moreno and Cunningham spent last weekend with their bass player, speaking to him though he can’t speak back.
“He’s doing better. He looked good,” says Moreno. “His body is healing and he looks healthy in that respect. It’s hard to say what kind of damage he has because he’s not speaking yet. When I was talking to him, he was staring right at me and you look into his eyes and it seems as though he’s in there. But it’s hard when you don’t get any expression from him. You’ll say something funny and his expression doesn’t change. You expect him to smile, laugh or even just blink his eyes. So that’s hard. I miss him a lot. It’s still tough, it’s still really tough. It’s pretty raw.”
Carpenter, though, has only been to see Cheng once – shortly after the crash. He finds it hard to think about his friend in his current condition.
“I haven’t seen him in a long time because I think I’m still in denial about it,” he says. “I don’t want to see him like that. I don’t want to think about him being laid out because that’s not the way I want to picture him. I don’t want to picture him being that way forever. One day I know I’m going to get a call from him. He’ll just say, ‘Hi, fucker,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Shit, it’s about time!’”
WHEN THE accident happened, Deftones had nearly completed Eros. It was the first record they had made together in nearly 10 years on which, as Moreno tells it, they had all enjoyed themselves. There had been deep problems before.
“On the last couple of records [Saturday Night Wrist and Deftones], I’ve wondered what was the purpose of us making music,” says Moreno. “It seemed that there was so much drama to finish a record, there were so many obstacles. A lot of them were self-generated – there was lack of communication and so many little things. I remember telling myself when we were finishing the Saturday Night Wrist record that I don’t know if I want to make another Deftones record because it has to be one of the most stressful, unhealthy experiences ever. It used to be fun.”
One of the issues was the difficult creative relationship between Moreno and Carpenter. Moreno says that, at times in the past, they had been trying to outdo each other.
“Maybe we were a little competitive,” he says. “Perhaps we were trying to prove ourselves to each other. Instead of building on top of each other, Stef and I were building two separate things and then trying to mash them together. It worked to an extent – the records didn’t turn out horrible – but is it the essence of what we’re trying to do? I don’t think so.”
There was also a control issue. Moreno is quite a tightly wound character and he admits he thinks too much. He felt that if he wasn’t driving the band forward, making things happen, then the chances were high that Deftones just wouldn’t focus. It’s a theory that gains more credence on meeting Carpenter. The guitarist has a laidback attitude, expounding pot-spun theories and calling himself “the anti-hype person in the band”. In fact, his attitude to songs is unusual for a man who makes his living from them: “In six months time, after we release a record, it will be dead anyway. They’re just songs. I’m not married to them, they’re a dime a dozen to me.”
“On the last couple of records, I had been organising our ideas,” says Moreno. “I’m sure it pissed [the band] off because it probably seemed like I was coming in and dictating. I’m sure it was frustrating for them and it was taxing on my brain too.”
But that hadn’t been the case on Eros. The songs had been born from jams and had come together naturally, if a little untidily.
“In the Eros sessions we were getting along really well. Everyone was having fun. The only thing we were lacking was a little focus,” says Moreno. “We would come into the studio at about eight o’clock at night, then we’d sit around and play cards for an hour, or play dice, dominoes or talk bullshit.”
The old gang, it seemed was back. But then Cheng’s car crash forced them to reconsider the record and their future.
“So we stood back for a few months, put everything onto the back-burner and, then we reconvened to talk about what we wanted to do,” says Moreno. “We said, ‘Do we want to finish this record or do we continue on? What do we do?’”
“I said we should start over as a whole new band,” says Carpenter. “I thought we should have a new name and start all over again. When everything happened with Chi’s accident, out of respect I didn’t think we should put [Eros] out. But now, I think it should come out to help him and his family.”
WHAT HELPED them make the decision to continue was getting back in a room and playing music. So they called their old friend Sergio Vega, the former Quicksand bassist, and met up in their studio in Sacramento.
“It was the first time we had all been in the same room together since Chi’s accident,” says Moreno. “To even be in that room together without Chi there was a big thing. But it was also a really special thing. I felt closer to all these guys than I’ve felt to them in 10 years.
“It wasn’t about writing anything new, we just wanted to play. It was very therapeutic. At the end of the rehearsal we sat down and I said, ‘How do you guys feel about writing some more music?’ It wasn’t even about writing a new record, it was about trying to pour what we were going through into something.
“I looked at it like starting a new chapter. Eros is sacred and special to us and, at this point, it’s the last thing that Chi has played on, but I really felt like looking forward. After the first two weeks, we had about eight songs. On the last few records, it took us a year to get that much material. And it happened naturally. It was great.”
Moreno had had issues with Eros, enjoying its experimental edge but fearing its songwriting was too untidy. He wanted to improve that on what would become their new album, Diamond Eyes. At least part of the reason for that was because he had come to a startling realisation.
“We needed to save our career,” he says. “To be completely honest, I feel that if we had put out Eros, it could have been the end of our career. That’s not because the record’s terrible but we were still a little unfocussed and people could easily have written us off. In fact, I think a lot of people are on the fence with us at this point.”
Why did he feel this about his band? “I think our lacklustre attitude was showing. There were times I went onstage and, because of my weight, my health and the way I felt, I didn’t want to go out there. I’d have been drinking and, because I was drunk, I wouldn’t remember shit. I was just getting through it and that was it. I think people still expect a certain amount of quality from us and I don’t think the Eros record had that essence and quality.”
So they started work on Diamond Eyes, and despite the fun, confidence and creativity they discovered once again, there was still guilt that they were doing this while their friend lay on a hospital bed.
“Yes, I think that [guilt] was there,” says Moreno, who also admits that Cheng’s family may have been unhappy too: “I imagine [their] initial feeling was that they probably weren’t too happy with us. I imagine they thought, ‘How could they be doing this?’ I can imagine they felt a little unsure about it.”
However Moreno and Cunningham recently had a long chat with Cheng’s mother about the situation and they feel it is no longer an issue.
“She really opened up to us and was really understanding,” says Moreno. “He’s in our minds constantly. We’re not being disloyal. This is something we had no control over. Also, it has affected us pretty big too. We’ve had to rebuild our whole infrastructure and it feels as though we’re still doing that. In a way, it feels as if we’re starting over again, it feels as though we have to prove ourselves as a band again.”
IN WRITING and recording Diamond Eyes, Deftones rediscovered the art of working together and, in doing so, have recorded their strongest album since White Pony. It helped that, as Carpenter says, their new bassist “just fit right in, it was as though he’d been in the band forever.” And with that in place, Deftones turned to each other and music as support.
“As soon as we all got together in a room, we got a powerful feeling where we knew we still had each other,” says Moreno. “We knew we still had an opportunity to do something good. And then we did it. We did what we said we were going to do. There was a lot of stuff that we had to deal with. Through it all, though, I can honestly say this was one of the most fun records I was involved in making – though that’s probably hard for anyone to believe given the situation.”
Rather than the one-upmanship that had marked their last few albums, the band were pulling in the same direction.
“Everyday [Stef] would come in with three or four ideas,” says Moreno. “He’d pick up his guitar, start playing, and creativity would pour out of him. That inspired me right away. But instead of him coming up with an idea and me trying to work out the next part [as had happened in the past] I would work out a vocal part for the idea he had. That, in turn, would inspire him to go on to write the next part of the song. There was a constant building process that was very immediate.
“It really sounds like a cliché but it was a case of us going back to our roots and doing things how we did them in the beginning. We went into a room together, had fun playing our instruments and came up with songs from nothing again. It was a good feeling.”
It’s why, when you see Deftones now, they exude positivity despite the painful process they have been through. Because it took Cheng’s accident to reveal that they are still a band of brothers. It took tragedy to bring things into context.
And, with priorities made clear, Deftones are once again making music in which they believe. Cheng is still there, in their hearts and in their heads, but they’re moving on. For the first time in a long time, though, they’re all doing that in the same direction.
“Optimistic is a good word. I’m optimistic about the future of this band,” says Moreno. “We’re in a better place that we’ve been in years and years. Despite the dark cloud that is over our heads.
“But we’re grateful that we have each other, we have our health and we’re happy we’re able to do this. Just realising that is the key. It feels great. Everybody’s happy right now, happier than we have been in years.”
© Tom Bryant 2010
