Chords for Bernard Butler - How to play Animal Nitrate

_ _ _ [E] _ _ [Ebm] _ _ _
_ Hello, [Ab] my name's Bernard Butler [N] _ and I'm going to do today Animal Nitrate by Swede.
I remember coming up with the riff for it, _ _ early 92 it must have been, _ yeah early 92
in rehearsal, _ _ playing it a few times over.
I made the mistake of playing a song _ that
was a complete piece of music, which is always, this is always quite a sort of, _ [Ab] one of those
things that can go wrong with singers, if you play a complete piece of [Gb] music _ [N] _
without
them being involved in it, because it can go wrong, I find people can be sort of over-roared
by that and so it's better when people are involved at an earlier stage and with the
vocals and the lyrics and the melody and the song develops together.
This is quite an odd
one because when I played it I remember Brett kind of [Eb] not really getting it and I played
it with the band in rehearsal, lots of the other tunes at that time I played to him [G] before
they got to rehearsal room, but this one, played it around with the band and for quite
a few months he just [F] wasn't into it or he just didn't get it or couldn't come up with
something for whatever reason.
Inspiration at the time was totally secretly _ Smells Like
Teen Spirit.
Well the funny thing is about the riff, I haven't played this, I genuinely
can say that to this day I haven't played [B] this song since the last time I played it
in Swede, so I had to kind of think about it this morning trying to remember what the
hell it was.
But this is the guitar I played it on, 1980 Heritage Les Paul, really love
it, through a Vox AC30 which is the one I'm using today, it's exactly the same setup,
so this is exactly as it was.
[G] The funny thing about it is the riff at the start is pretty
memorable, it's kind of a memorable part of the song but it's the only time you hear the
riff in the song that you don't hear it again after that.
So the riff is really [B] simple,
it's just basically if you were to play some chords, B [Bm] minor, _ [A] _ _ [G] G, _ [Em] E minor, just a basic
[D] minor chord descending thing.
_ [B]
But instead of [Bm] strumming it, [Bb] I'm just taking a [B] little
melody here that goes, [Gb] _ _ [E] and then it goes, each chord does the [A] same thing, _ _ and then to the
G.
_ [G] _ _
[Em] _ _ And it's just supposed to be like a vocal melody, it's the kind of thing that you could
sing really, _ which is what I thought Teen Spirit was, one of those things you just want
to sing along to, even though it was a guitar part.
[Bm] So that's all it was at the start, _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ [Bm] _ _ [A] _ _ [E] _
_ [Em] _ _ _ _ _ _
and
that's all it is [Abm] layered up with, I [N] think there's about three or four guitars doing
it.
I remember there being a Rickenbacker 12 string which I've never used since, I don't
really like them, I remember using one of those in desperation.
This guitar, my 355,
_ all layered up and there's kind of like a _ flange effect on it as well.
Then when the
vocal comes in, it changes to this, so it just does basically the same chord, but the
riff [Ab] changes _ [B] to_
[A] _
_ [Gm] _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [Bm]
So all it is is playing the same part, just saying, if I had an acoustic
guitar I guess I'd just strum it, _ [A] but _ _ [Em] _
_ [Bm] _ _ [A] _ _ _ [Em] _ _
I didn't want to do that, and I kind of at the time
had a bee in my bonnet about people just kind of strumming guitars and they didn't mean
anything at all.
So _ _ I found the most direct, sort of brutal way of bringing the chords
across.
It's not hard to play, but it's just, you [Gb] just play, dig in on [A] the_
It's [Em] like
a drum part where you go boom, kick and a snare.
So you dig in on the bass [B] note, which
is there, and then on the snare it'd [Bm] be, you pull on the top, and then you do that [A] on the
A, _ _ and then _ you play this down bottom thing.
[E] _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [Bm] _ _ [A] _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ [G] _
_ [A] _ _ [B] _ _ [A] _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ And that just takes you to the chorus.
I was
the only guitar player in the group, [G] the only sort of added extras you get to use are things
like an effect pedal, so I used to use a Boss Turbo Distortion, which is down here.
[G] But
the other great thing about Les Pauls is that there's a totally different tone to the pickups,
particularly this guitar when I got it.
It just had a really brilliant contrast between
the [Bm] mellow, _ _ this pick, using this front pickup here, it's the rhythm pickup, and the treble
pickup to the back one, which _ _ [E]
is sharp and trebly and really bright.
And there's quite
a contrast between the two.
And I used to use that so that in the verse part, it would
always be on that.
[Bm] _
_ [A] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _
[B] _ And then when it went to the chorus, I'd flick to the middle pickup
and put on the Turbo Distortion, _ [D] and it went kind of a bit more mellow and fuzzy.
_ _ So as
you get this out, _ _ [Em] _ so basically the chorus part is, these are the [E] chords, it's just D,
_ [G] _
_ [E] _ _ [G] _ _ sounds kind of Beatles-y or something like that, you know.
And that's all it is, B minor.
[A] _ _ [G] _
_ [A] _ _ [D] _ _ [G] When you play the lead parts, _ _ I kind of play this semitone thing where it moves up between
the D major and the G to make it sound a little bit sort of nerdy, is the only way of describing
it, and slightly odd, _ [A] _ which is the nature of kind of what we were at the time.
And so
I'd play it like [D] this.
_ [Em] _
_ [D] _ _ [Em] _ _ [Ab] So you're playing going between a D chord and a G chord, but I'm just
playing these [A] three notes.
_ [G] _
_ [D] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
If anyone can spot the TV show that comes from, it wasn't my
fault.
But anyway, moving on, that's not how I played it.
I got into this thing again
because I was the only guitar player in the group.
There wasn't a rhythm guitar player.
When I went in the studio, I could put 15 guitars, be on a rhythm and a lead and play
it, but I couldn't do that live.
So I got into the habit of learning how to play a lead
part of my left hand, but strumming with my right hand.
So it'd be kind of like a rhythm,
but you'd get this big sound because all the strings were going like that all the time.
So you'd [D] get_
_ [G] _ _ _ [Bm] _ _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ [G] _ _ [D] _
_ [G] _ _ [B] _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ [E] _
_ [D] _ [Bm] _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _
_ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _ [Ab] _
And then you'd have that [C] bend of the neck at the end.
So it's anything you can find
when you're a guitar player.
You find any kind of stupid thing.
And a lot of them are
kind of really _ mechanical techniques.
And you think all you have to do is pull the neck
back a bit and it makes this amazing sound.
That's all you have to do.
It's really not that hard.
[B] The solo is kind of like the verse part.
The chords change a little bit.
_ [D] It's one of those
things when I did it, I didn't really actually write the chords under it.
I just came up
with the part and I'm worried about the chords later.
But there's a solo that starts on the [Bm] B minor.
_ [A] _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ [Em] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Gb] _
_ _ _ [Db] _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ [D] _ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ [Db] _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
And [B] that's how bad I played it live, genuinely.
In fact, that's probably better than I used
to play it.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _