While claims that Helmet is New York’s most important rock export since the Ramones flatter them, the quartet’s ‘unsung’ guitarist Rob Echeverria certainly isn’t losing perspective.

Archival April 1994 (pre-Truepunk.com) interview by Steve Tauschke | steve@staff.truepunk.com | with Helmet guitarist Rob Echeverria.

Hey Rob, first up I wondered what sort of audition process you undertook to join Helmet last year?
None really! The whole thing was that (drummer) John (Stanier) heard a record of my old band (Rest In Pieces) and he suggested to (singer/guitarist) Page that they should get in touch with me or whatever. It turned out that we had a mutual friend who was the band’s publicist so it was pretty much in the bag already. They didn’t try out anyone else. We got together one weekend and I already knew the material so it worked right from the start. Interesting and ironic at the same time.

Had you seen the band perform?
Yeah (publicist) Steve Martin took me to see them and I thought ‘wow, these guys are great’. It was the only thing out of New York that caught my interest … my old band broke up in 1990 and a year or two later I saw Helmet and thought ‘this is pretty great, these guys are cool’.

Why did former guitarist Peter leave?
Same old musical/personal differences. From what I understand, and I never met him so I can’t really slag him - but from everything I’ve heard it was a bad relationship from the get-go and he was pretty much taking out all the fun for the rest of the guys. So unfortunately for him, he had to go. Last I heard he was writing for a couple of magazines.

Page Hamilton once said Helmet was his whole life … has it become an all-consuming passion for you too?
Oh yeah, definitely. And now, fortunately for me, it exists in a way where I don’t have to focus on anything other than my guitar. So now I can just sit here and see what I want to contribute to the band and work on that and emphasize all the things I wish to work with and donate, on a band scale. It’s definitely great … I sleep, dream and eat Helmet everyday.

How did the band wind up on the Crow soundtrack?
I guess because of Interscope, it’s an Interscope production so we got asked by the producers to actually be in the movie. But we turned it down because the band didn’t seem to fit the image of the movie and we were touring at the time. Luckily they still let us do a song.

Did you play guitar on last year’s Just Another Victim collaboration with House Of Pain?
That was the first thing I ever recorded with with these guys, yeah!

How was that track assembled by the two bands?
We pretty much did our part in New York on a weekend when House Of Pain was playing a show down here and afterwards they came along to listen to what we’d laid down. So we laid the foundation and then they took the tapes to LA and added their samples and stuuf like that. Then, when we toured LA, we all mixed the whole thing down … A lot of googd things came out of that House Of Pain collaboration. The producer of the Judgment Night album, T-Ray, we met him because he’d remixed a couple of the tracks and we asked him to do our own record. At first (the new album) Betty was going to be this new rap crossover rock-type thing which fortunately for us didn’t turn out that way.

The album is certainly a deviation from some of the band’s earlier stuff. Can you claim any responsibility for that?
Well, I mean my sound is completely different to Page’s and also, I’m told, I’m more together than Peter ever was. But as far as he is concerned, my sound is just totally different to his and I managed to get a different blend with Page. Playing-wise, it’s turned out to be a good thing I guess.

What songwriting contributions did you make to Betty?
All of the songs are Page’s arrangements except fro Rollo and the The Silver Hawaiian which are both by (basist) Henry. This time around it was a lot more of a band thing. It was bascially learnt and practised in the studio and it wasn’t as thought out as much as the stuff on Meantime was. We tried to keep the feel as a band.