serj tankian - andrew fishserj tankian’s vocals seem both at odds and in perfect sync with the...

62 venicemag.com march 2010

SERJ TANKIANThe Manic Maestro’s Epic Symphony

BY ANDREW FISH PHOTOGRAPHY ASTOR MORGAN BACKDROP DROPITMODERN.COM

With soft, soothing lilts risingto thundering, operaticcrescendos before rippinginto a blood-curdling roar,Serj Tankian’s vocals seem

both at odds and in perfect sync with thebrutal nature of hard rock and metal. Thelead singer of System of a Down’sunorthodox approach to the genre gave ussomething we’d never heard before, andthrust the fans toward the brink of feralecstasy. And now that Tankian has steppedaway from the head-banging bedlam in favorof harp, cello, and viola, the audience thatused to descend into the primal mosh nowgazes wide-eyed at their luminary, andbecomes a sea of great, big, goofy grins.

The year after the platinum-selling Systemof a Down — or “SOAD” — entered indefinitehiatus, Tankian released a solo album titledElect the Dead (2007, Serjical Strike/Reprise). The engrossing and hard-edgedwork featured the familiar yet ever-jarring,mid-song mood shifts that first endearedTankian to his admirers — but brought theclamor down the tiny notch needed to invitea profound evolutionary leap. The singer-musician-producer, who lives part-time onthe North Island of New Zealand, wasapproached by the Auckland PhilharmoniaOrchestra with an offer to work together —and Tankian set off to re-imagine his recenteffort as a full-orchestra piece. The result isElect the Dead Symphony, a CD and DVDrelease that documents the epic perfor-mance on March 16, 2009, a synthesis ofmanic, melody-driven art-rock and classicalcomposition.

Tankian takes to the stage, as always, asboth entertainer and activist. As Armenian-Americans, he and his SOAD bandmateslashed out against injustice, and quicklygained momentum as a political force. Andalong with Tom Morello of Rage Against theMachine and Audioslave, Tankian formed theAxis of Justice, an organization that encour-ages political activism and involvementamong young people. Now on his own,Tankian continues full-force in his mission toraise awareness of the Armenian Genocide,the oil-influenced wars in the Middle East,and the social inequities among the classeshere at home. The frenetic performer’s trade-mark hurdling from one sonic extreme to thenext serves the cause well, as he howls thedecree that, “We are the cause of a worldthat’s gone wrong. The world will survive ushuman dogs after all.” And then offers up anote of pure idealism, upon a softly tappedpiano chord: “Wouldn’t it be great to heal theworld with only a song?”

The wickedly insightful maestro is affableand animated when we meet up with him atWarner Bros. Records in Burbank. Yet hissoft-spoken demeanor offers little hint of hisstage persona, and if not for his infamy asone of rock’s loudest, strangest, and mostremarkable voices, we’d have no clue as tothe crazed rhapsody that lurks beneath...

Venice: Where did the idea come fromto put together a full orchestral perfor-mance?

Serj Tankian: I’ve had an inkling to dosomething orchestral for a while, and theopportunity came up when the AucklandPhilharmonia Orchestra reached out througha friend of mine, another New Zealand artist,to see if I was interested in doing anythingwith them. They didn’t have anything spe-cific in mind; they just thought of me andwanted to do something. So I thought aboutit for a while, and I decided to re-do all of thesongs on Elect the Dead for orchestra, butwithout a band, so it’s completely orches-tral. And the reason I did that is because theband takes up a lot of dynamics. The drumson the lows, and the guitars on the highstake up a lot of the frequency range, and itwould almost be a shame to take up thespace that would otherwise belong to theviolins, and the violas, and whatnot. So Idecided to do the full orchestral thing. I satdown and basically did separate orchestra-tions for each song, and built it up fromscratch. It was almost like writing a wholenew record with sample strings. And thenconvert that into full scores, so that they canread it and play it.

Was there a lot of re-writing from theelectric album that this one is based on?

A complete re-writing, except for the orig-inal vocal tracks and the primary instrument,like piano or acoustic guitar. Everything elsewas built from scratch.

Did you write the music? I write on sampled strings, using MIDI, and

I use a number of programs to do it. I’ll do itmostly in Pro Tools, sometimes in Logic,sometimes in other programs. And then I’llhave an orchestrator look at that, and cleanit up, and then we convert it into Sibeliusfiles, and print them out.

That’s a lot of tech stuff. It reminds meof the opening line of “Toxicity”: “Conver-sion software, version 7.0.” When thatalbum came out, it was the first time I’dever heard words like that in a rock song.

[Laughs] I used to have a software com-pany before System, so I think that’s where itcame from.

What kind of differences did youencounter when you put together thishuge orchestral project that were unlikea straight-up rock album?

It was a whole different thing. With this,you weren’t really recording. With a rockrecord, you’re recording from day one. Withthis, you’re just writing, and you’ll recordthe live stuff all together, at once. So it’s awhole different way of doing things. And somany layers! For one show, we wentthrough the process of writing a full record,except the original songs were there withvocals. But with all of the arrangementsand instrumentation, and making sureeverything’s great, and perfect, and, “No,that cello doesn’t sound great. It should bea solo cello, not an ensemble cello.” “No,that horn doesn’t sound great there; maybea trombone would sound better.” Everyminiscule technical aspect of it had to bedone correctly, so that it works — for oneshow! So thank God we recorded it! [laughs]And thank God it turned out well —because otherwise, that’s a lot of risk; that’sa lot of work to do for one show. But for me,I was excited, because I had an orchestra atmy disposal, and as a composer, you can’tsay no to that. You’re like, “Fuck, yeah! I’mgonna do that.”

This was a new experience for you. Yeah, first time I’ve ever played with an

orchestra, and wrote for an orchestra.

And thinking about things like violinsand harps.

Well, I had done some small arrangementstuff on System records, but they werealways so buried under the guitars thatyou’d never even hear them. But on anumber of records, from Toxicity on, I wouldwrite cello and violin and viola pieces, andjust layer them in.

When you were doing things like thatwith System, did you ever think, “Wouldn’tit be cool if we did this on an even biggerscale?”

Of course. But it didn’t make sense forSystem at the time. There were already toomany competing sounds on the canvas.

When you were performing with theorchestra, did you feel that you were ableto get across a different kind of energythan you have before?

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Yes, I did. And I’m not sure exactly what tocall it. It felt different, playing with anorchestra than with a band. It kind of felt likegraduating. Like when you’ve graduated,and now you’re going to a real job interview.It felt like the real thing, after all these years.It was kind of interesting that way.

Are there plans to put this performanceon again?

Yes. We’re looking at doing, I wouldn’t saya tour, but there are a number of offers fromEurope to work with different orchestrasover the summer, to kind of replicate the vibeof this show, and maybe even add stuff to it.We’re looking at opportunities in the Statesas well.

And you have another album comingout after this. Something jazzy andorchestral, I understand.

It’s electronic, orchestral jazz-rock.

What kinds of ideas are you exploringin it?

There are always certain social issuesinvolved, and personal issues, andhumorous issues. Let me put it this way:You’ll know it’s me doing the songs, becauseof the voice and the themes and how I exe-cute things, but musically and sound-wise,it’s completely different, which is interestingfor me. And it’s a huge sound. It’s kind of likeif you took Elect the Dead — the power ofthat rock thing — and then you took theorchestra, and the beauty and the power ofthat, and put them together, you’d probablyget this record. And you added jazz, morejazz!

Looking forward to that! Does it have aname yet?

I’m kicking around the name, MusicWithout Borders. I haven’t 100-percent set-tled, but it makes sense for the record. And itcame from the idea of Doctors Without Bor-ders. My girlfriend actually came up with it,and yeah! Why not? Music Without Borders.And one of the songs was called “Borders”on it, anyway.

What do you see as some of themesthat you tend to focus on in your lyrics?

Certain political issues, things having todo with the poetry of our times, is how I seea lot of music that I do. Talking about what’sgoing on right now. Looking into environ-mental things as the leading construct of thetimes to come, and personal stuff, which isalways part of an artist’s palette.

On the orchestral Elect the Dead DVD,you say that civilization is dying. What areyour feelings about the future?

My feelings about the future have a lot todo with my read on both the environmentand the geopolitical landscape of the world.I think that there is going to be definite,

drastic change, and a lot of it is going to bestarting from the environment. Not just cli-mate change, but things that are caused byclimate change. There is going to be a lackof rain in certain parts of the world, espe-cially in the Southern Hemisphere, and areasaround the equator. And because of that,there’s going to be an agricultural fallout.There’s going to be a lot of migration. Thereare going to be a lot of issues and wars thatresult from all of these things. There are sixbillion people on this planet, and theresources on this planet are barely enoughfor those six billion people, and yet we’re stillexpanding. Those resources aren’texpanding; those resources are diminishingat an accelerated rate. So how does that for-mula work out? It just doesn’t equate. Butyet, what we have is love. What we have isunity. And what we have is our uncannyability to survive as a species — and that’swhat I’m relying on.

Tell us about the idea of “the unthinkingmajority.”

A country that has an educated majoritycan’t be an unthinking majority. A countrythat has a majority that’s uneducated — andI don’t mean uneducated in terms of theschool system; it could be spiritual educa-tion, or anything, is dangerous. Democracywithout the truth is dangerous. That’s what itleads to, and that’s what I’m getting at.

Is that something we’re experiencing? I think it’s something we’ve experienced in

Rome. [laughs] I think it’s something that alot of societies have experienced, and we’veexperienced. To me, it was more of a Bush-era term — more than now, I think. WhenBush got reelected, that’s when I shouldhave written that song. I was like, “What arewe fucking thinking?” And I say “we”because even though I didn’t vote for him,I’m an American; that’s “we.”

Can you talk a little about the ArmenianGenocide, and the importance of itsrecognition by Turkey and other parts ofthe world?

A forgotten genocide is one that’s likelyto occur again. And it’s not just important torecognize a genocide, because we’ve rec-ognized the genocide in Sudan, but it’s onlyhelped to a certain degree. I think theimportance is that genocide is not just acrime against humanity, but a human dis-ease — which is what I like to call it. Andthe only way to eradicate it is to have acomplete world understanding. A multilat-eral understanding that when this happens,even if you’re my friend, if you’re doing it, Ihave to turn against you, along witheveryone else, and say, “We’re not going todeal with you. We’re going to cut you off.”There’s got to be some international way ofdealing with genocide. To this day, thereisn’t! Which means if Sudan committed




genocide, China still works with thembecause they have oil interests. The CIAstill sends intelligence officers in becausethey think Al Qaeda is there. The Sudanesegovernment uses that to their advantage,to think that there’s a link, and uses us. Westill haven’t learned from the age-old his-tory of people over profits. And as long asthat’s not learned, genocide will continue.The Armenian Genocide, specifically, hap-pened during World War I. It was com-mitted by the Ottoman Turks, andone-and-a-half million Armenians perished.The genocide occurred for the same rea-sons that the Holocaust occurred, and thatother genocides occurred. And my grand-parents were both survivors, which is whyI’m around.

What prompted you to move to NewZealand?

It’s one of the most beautiful places in theworld.

There was a rumor on the Internet thatyou wouldn’t move back to the Statesuntil the Iraq War was over. Is there anytruth to that?

That was a couple of years ago, actually.That was bullshit. No, I moved to NewZealand because I like the idea of being in acountry where the water is clean, the air isclean. It’s an educated democracy. It’s non-nuclear and there are only four millionpeople there. And the people are nice, man.I’m not trying to make it sound like heaven,because it isn’t; they have their own prob-lems. But it’s how things should be — and ithas nothing to do with the Iraq war, or ourimperialism, or anything like that.

Your vocals are really unusual, espe-cially for a hard-rocking band like Systemor your non-orchestral solo work. Howdid you decide to combine this with ametal feel?

I always approached vocals from a verymusical standpoint, and not a lyrical stand-point, to be honest. And when we startedwith System, I never thought of it as aninstrument of songwriting; I thought of it asan instrument. The guys would jam, and I’dbe jamming on the vocals. So if they did,“det-det-det-det-det,” I’d do “det-det-det-det-det” on the vocals. So my estheticapproach was different, if you will. I justthought of it as an instrument, and that’s stillhow I think of it in a lot of ways. Now I’vekind of evolved. Metal came in mostlybecause Shavo [Odadjian, bass and back-ground vocals] and Daron [Malakian, vocals

and lead guitar] were huge metal fans, andthat’s where most of the metal influencecomes from. Although I listen to it as well,of course.

Did you have detractors at the time,saying that this is not the classic metalvoice?

The detractors that I have now, saying,“What are you doing? You’re doing a wholedifferent type of music. You’re doing some-thing your audience may not catch onto.” Itreminds me of when people used to say,“What you guys are doing is really far left. Idon’t know if they’ll ever play you on theradio.” And we’d be like, “Yeah, whatever.Who cares?” We never came in thinkingthat we’re going to be successful commer-

cially, because we didn’t think our musicwould ever do that. But I guess we nevergave people the benefit of the doubt.

What was it like when you started toget that kind of recognition and popu-larity?

It was a very gradual process, so it wasn’ta realization from one way of living toanother. It was through a lot of touring andhard work. We didn’t have a single out untilwe were already on the road for a year or ayear and a half on our first record. And eventhen, it was very gradual. And it wasn’t untilToxicity that we even started to feel like, “Oh,our records are selling. Wow!” So it wasokay, you know? But I also saw a lot ofchange over time because of those things.And that, to me, is interesting. I’ve been in alot of industries before, and this is the onlyindustry where people in it believe its ownbullshit. In other industries, they throw thebullshit out, [and among themselves] they allknow what’s real and what isn’t. But withinthis industry, the bullshit’s also inside, andthat, I find funny.

What was your reason for breakingaway, and moving into solo work?

It’s a natural progression. We made fiverecords, we’d been a band for 12 years. Iwas doing other projects, anyway. I didSerart (2003, Serjical Strike/Columbia) andstuff. But whatever project I did, I had to fitinto the schedule of this giant machine.And even though that machine was mymachine as much as anyone else’s, Ineeded to be able to depart from it, to dowhat I really wanted to do. And do otherthings with it, and explore music, and be anartist, and not just be expected to deliver arecord. I didn’t want us to be a brand. I

didn’t want us to be on people’s shelvesbecause we did that. It was more like,“Okay, we did that. That’s great. Now let’sgo do other things. If we want to do thisagain, it’s there for us. No one’s forcing usto never come back; no one’s forcing us tostop. It’s our choice.”

What is the experience like when youtransform from this laid-back guy in yourregular life to the monster that comes outon stage?

It’s excitement. You imbibe the energyfrom all those people, and you act out yourmusic, and you animate it. Nobody wants tosee someone onstage who’s just playingmusic and not performing. Otherwise, youcan just buy the record, and save yourself a

lot of money. I think that’s a part of it. And it’salso ... People misconstrue my vocal inflec-tions as anger. Maybe on the first record,possibly — because of the age thing and theangst — but generally, it’s more a way ofshaking and waking up, the way thundershakes and wakes us up in the middle of thenight. To me, it’s like yelling at the gods andrunning around the fire.

Tell us a little about your history andupbringing.

I was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and I wasraised in Los Angeles. I was seven years oldwhen my parents brought us here during theLebanese Civil War. My dad was here in ’72,and he was going to move us anyway. Andluckily, we had our paperwork done by thetime we got here.

Do you have memories from that time?I do. I remember our school being closed,

and ducking in my bedroom while bombswere falling on the city — which is a fuckin’crazy vibe. I have a statement where I’vesaid, that if you’ve ever heard a bomb fall,you would never make the mistake of drop-ping a bomb on anyone, even an enemy. It’sa really, really fearful feeling, hearing a bombfall. Because you don’t know where it’sgoing to land, there’s this whole Russian-roulette thing about it. So I was seven whenwe came here, and I grew up in Hollywood,and went to an Armenian school in Holly-wood until high school, and then went to CalState Northridge, and got a bachelor’s fromCSUN.

I get the feeling that your wartime child-hood experiences have had an influenceon the kind of music you’ve created. Isthat so?

People misconstrue my vocal inflections as anger, but generally, it’s more a way of shaking and waking up, the way thunder

shakes and wakes us up in the middle of the night. To me, it’s like yelling at the gods and running around the fire.



Maybe. I don’t know. My culture beingArmenian, and having to withstand theatrocious knowledge and lack of a familytree that I have, and being born in acountry that has been plagued with civilwar since my birth, and then living in acountry that is great in terms of freedomsof expression — you put all of thattogether, and you definitely have more sen-sitivity and empathy toward victims ofeither empire or abuse.

At the end of the orchestral show inAuckland, you finish with a passionateplea to “see from behind those emptywalls.” What do the empty walls sym-bolize?

I guess the best way of describing emptywalls is that, to me, the walls are all thosethings that inhibit us from connecting witheach other. And that’s why I call themempty. Because, in reality, there are nowalls. We are all interconnected, in terms ofpsychically, and in terms of energy. Sothose walls are just physical walls, and if wehad the power to walk through them — wedo have that power. We just don’t realize it.And it’s also what separates us from beingcompassionate or empathetic toward vic-tims. Whether it’s a victim of a fire, or avictim of a hurricane. What is it that makesme so cold, and unable to see myself in thesame position as this other person? Thoseare the empty walls.

What can we do to further the cause ofbeing more open?

My thing is, open a door! Be theexample and open a door for someone,and say, “You go first.” Let someone in intraffic. Start with the small things. Thosesmall things add up. Have you had a daywhen you’re walking in the morning, andthe first gesture someone does is reallypositive? And doesn’t that change yourday, already? Either being in traffic andsomeone’s smiling, or just a small fuckinggesture, man! Like, nothing major; noone’s saving your life or anything. But thatmakes a huge difference in your vibe, thewhole day! And that makes a huge differ-ence for everyone you work with, thewhole day. And that makes a huge differ-ence for the city, the whole day. You knowwhat I’m saying? It’s that small act thatmultiplies! ▼

Elect the Dead Symphony CD/DVDdrops on March 9th. Music scored by SerjTankian and arranged for full orchestra byJohn Psathas. Dates for European orches-tral performances have been announced forJune and July at www.serjtankian.com.Download Tankian’s new single, “The Cha-rade,” on iTunes. Stay tuned for hisupcoming composition, a musical pennedby Steven Sater, based on the AncientGreek tragedy, “Prometheus Bound.”


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