🎉🎈 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐃𝐀𝐘, 𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐘𝐃! 🎈🎉

Today we honour a man who has always been very important for Placebo but usually prefers to stay in the background.

Photo credit unknown, edit by Silke

Bill Lloyd was part of the band's history from the very beginning. He played an important role in Placebo's career by helping them to get their first record deal. “I first met Brian Molko at the Edinburgh festival in 1993. I was also working for a record company at the time, so I asked Brian to send me a demo tape of him, Stefan Olsdal and their original drummer. It had four or five tracks on it and I was immediately blown away; it’s how Placebo got their first management deal,“ Bill explained in an interview with Native Instruments.

As the band was very inexperienced he started to drive them around, helped them to get some equipment and did their sound. Later Bill became Stefan's tech and also started programming a bit. Around the release of “Without you I'm nothing“ Placebo asked him to play live with them. Bill Lloyd: “At first, I used to play behind the cabs because they wanted to keep it to three members on stage [laughs], but after a while they said, no it’s silly, come on stage with us.“

Soon he also started to assist the band when they worked on new releases. He mainly plays bass, guitar and keybord, and since “Loud like love“ he is also involved in the songwriting.

You can read more about Bill Lloyd in his own words in the interview below. And in the quotes right below you can read what Brian has to say about him.

Photo credit unknown

📌𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡 𝗕𝗜𝗟𝗟 𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗬𝗗📌
📢 ”Bill has been around since day one, you know. Bill used to drive us in his ford transit van, you know,with a mattress in the back and the equipment and do everything for us, sound etc. He's been our close friend since day one so when we needed and extra guy it was obvious that Bill was going to be that person. It took us a long to time get him out from behind the amps. He was shy so he liked to hide behind the amps. Now that he has come out in front of the amps it's actually changed him into a bit more of an extroverted rock and roll person which is nice, which is good to see. The reason that we decided to have an extra keyboard player was because the sound and the album had become just too complex for even just the four of us to play live.”
(Suicide Girls, February 2004)


𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦? 𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘦?
📢 “He’s Bill Lloyd from the group Tram, and he plays a little bass when Stefan and I are both playing guitar, and plays a little keyboards. It’s his choice he’s offstage. He doesn’t want to be seen. He’s our tech, who got promoted.“
(NME, "Missive Attack", December 1998)


🔺𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐈𝐎 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐘𝐃🔻
Stage hand, backing musician, studio guy and mentor to Placebo, Bill Lloyd takes through the band's sounds at their recent London showcase.


Placebo’s unsung hero Bill Lloyd plays an invaluable role in the band both live and in the studio, where he’s a strong advocate of using GUITAR RIG and Native Instruments plugins.


Every rock band needs a good tech guy, and Placebo has certainly been grateful over the past 20 years for the contribution of William Lloyd. The former member of Faith Over Reason has been an integral member of the alternative Brit rock giants, not just plugging holes in the studio but coming up with creative ideas and on-stage technical solutions.
Lloyd joined Placebo in the early-‘90s as a roadie, but as the band became increasingly reliant on his expertise, his role evolved far beyond that. Today, he not only serves as their technical advisor, but strategizes their transition from studio to stage, where he also plays bass and keyboards.


We caught up with Bill at the O2 Brixton Academy during Placebo’s latest round of UK concerts, as he further explained his creative and technical role in the band.


🔷𝗔 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 𝗠𝗘𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚🔷
I first met Brian Molko at the Edinburgh festival in 1993. I was supporting Jeff Buckley with my first band Faith Over Reason and he was helping his friend from The Kills with some crazy off-hinge theatre production. I met him in the pub, got chatting and thought he was interesting. I was also working for a record company at the time, so asked Brian to send me a demo tape of him, Stefan Olsdal and their original drummer. It had four or five tracks on it and I was immediately blown away; it’s how Placebo got their first management deal.


Because they were very inexperienced and didn’t really know anything about gigging, I started driving them around, helping them to get some equipment together and did their sound. As the band developed, I became Stef’s tech and did a tiny bit of programming. I delivered the gear for the first two album sessions, but didn’t stick around much for Without You I’m Nothing because the producer just wanted to crack on with it.
I came back during the last week just to hang out with the boys and pick the gear up, and that’s when they told me that they wanted me to play live with them. Basically, there were a lot more parts on the new record and they couldn’t do it with a three piece, so I started playing bass and keys on the second album tour. At first, I used to play behind the cabs because they wanted to keep it to three members on stage [laughs], but after a while they said, no it’s silly, come on stage with us.


🔷𝗔𝗡 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗜𝗡 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗🔷
I was always interested in sound. At school I did the sound at plays and productions and started to learn about it. I bought some amplification gear so my band could rehearse and used to get involved in the mixing and recording using a basic four track. I also got into synthesis at an early age. I liked a lot of the early ‘80s synth bands like Depeche Mode and OMD, but also hip hop and rock. My first synth was a MiniKorg-700S, which I bought for £50, although it’s probably worth a grand now. It was analogue, very simple and had what’s called a ‘traveler’ so you could do swoops. It was fun, and a great way to learn.

Photo credit unknown

🔷𝗪𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛𝗚𝗨𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗥 𝗥𝗜𝗚🔷
I get involved in the writing sessions, especially in terms of recording and mixing. I also do some guitar programming, help them get sounds together and take notes on how the sounds were created and what pedals we used. We use Guitar Rig a lot for guiding the guitars, so I’ll set that up and programme them ready for recording. When the producer and engineer get involved, I’ll let them get on with it, but I’ll still be alongside the boys setting up pedals and dialling up sounds. They’re quite particular and like to get hands-on with everything, but they’ll usually ask my advice on a few things.


The studio environment is perfect because you want the recording to be as clean as possible. It’s very rare that you’ll find studios with decent isolation booths, so we’ll track everything and get the drums down first with Guitar Rig guitars, so there’s no bleed on the drums and it’s all coming direct into the headphones.
Guitar Rig has speaker simulations, so you can create a bit of air and it really works a treat. It’s got its own guitar patches, but you can plug the guitar in and it will emulate speaker cabs, pedals and amplifiers – or any combination. It’s very rare that what we do on Guitar Rig actually ends up on the record, it’s just a guide, but it creates a real intensity and the vibe of playing through a big rig, even though you’re just playing through a computer.


🔷𝗚𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗙𝗨𝗟𝗟 𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗜𝗖🔷
There are a few songs on the new album that are more electronic rock-orientated, but the blend’s good I think. The song “Exit Wounds” starts with samples, loops and crazy noises, but when the guitars kick in it lifts it into the rock world.
Nobody knows where we’ll take the music in the future. I just bought a Roland modular synth because the boys are quite keen on dirty synth sounds at the moment, but whether it gets on the record, who knows?


🔷𝗠𝗢𝗥𝗣𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗠 𝗦𝗧𝗨𝗗𝗜𝗢 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘🔷
That’s the main part of my job really. I don’t really think about that side of it much while we’re recording because we just want to concentrate on making the record, but when we come towards the end of an album session, or during mixing, I’ll start thinking about how I can translate the songs to the live arena.
The boys give me free reign to consider what samples to use and whether we’re going to play them live as a long sample or chopped up. We prefer to play live as much as possible and don’t like to track anything, but we’ll bring clicks and loops in and out and I‘ll play some loops as well. Brian doesn’t always like to come in at the same spot every night and sometimes waits a bit to add dramatic impact, so we like to keep everything flexible.


🔷𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗦𝗔𝗠𝗣𝗟𝗘𝗦 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗔 𝗧𝗢𝗨𝗥🔷
There’s always been synths, pianos, loops and samples on all the records. Maybe not so much on the first album, but we play a couple of songs from that on this tour so I sampled sounds from the original and augmented them with digital samples and emulations. From the second album onwards, there’s always been lots of loops and samples. Even the drumming tracks have some studio trickery, but we try to keep everything as live as possible.


I do most of the programming at home. I’ll usually take the studio sessions and start looking at them, chopping up the obvious bits straight away. Then we’ll get together for a pre-tour, pre-production session in a small studio. We’ll get a block booking, and while the boys relearn how to play the stuff live, I’ll be throwing in the samples and loops to see what works.
If a track has a loop in it, I’ll always make sure the loop is ready to go and clicked up for the drummer, and if there’s a lead line that’s really particular to a song, I’ll make sure that’s ready to go too, but I’ll also throw in atmospheres, re-programme sounds on-the-fly and add in a bit of distortion or speaker emulation, again using Guitar Rig, which we use quite a lot because it makes the samples a bit dirtier and more real-sounding.

Photo credit unknown

🔷𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗚𝗨𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗥 𝗥𝗜𝗚 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘🔷
Between 50 and 70% of the bass playing is done live, but we’ll use Guitar Rig live for emulation to make the samples sound a bit more gritty with some air around them so they’re a bit less clinical-sounding. I use the Leslie Amp in Guitar Rig quite a bit because it adds distortion on a couple of key tracks. It’s basically a Hammond organ speaker cabinet that has a rotary effect, and it’s brilliant. I think Guitar Rig sits better with guitar music. Pop music is more clinical and the punters don’t care about what sounds you use, but in rock it’s good to be a bit more individual and use a programme that sits well with the guitars and can dirty stuff up a bit.


🔷𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗞𝗢𝗠𝗣𝗟𝗘𝗧𝗘 𝗜𝗡 𝗠𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗚𝗘 🔷
We use Mainstage live, because it’s like a big mixer. It hosts all the soft synths and samples and you can actually play samples from it, although I’ll normally do that within the Logic ESX24 sampler or use Kontakt. Because we use 14 channels of samples, Mainstage is great for mixing all of those, sending them and adding effects. Being a fan of ‘80s reverbs, I love Komplete’s RC48 reverbs, which I use a lot. I’ll also bring in Logic delays, Massive, and third-party plugins like Sylenth and assign them to different channels.
The layout on Mainstage is great. You can do keyboard layering, key zones, all your mutes, and see them really clearly. We’ll use Massive for some of the lead synth sounds because they work brilliantly. The guy who assisted the producer on our last album always tells us to go straight to Native Instruments when starting a mix. In fact, I just did a mix for TV and ended up using NI plugins for most of it. When we’re on the road, we might do a TV or radio show and we’ll often prefer to do our own mix. I’ll get a raw live feed from the front of house and use NI plugins for filtering, reverb and compression. I especially love NI’s SSL emulations; they’re fantastic.


🔷𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗔’𝗦 𝗞𝗘𝗬𝗦🔷
Although we use real pianos on the album, Alicia’s Keys software does a lot of the piano emulations live. We’ve recorded some fantastic pianos in the studio using a great Yamaha rack, but the software is getting quite close now. Unless the listener is a real nerd, they’re not going to pick up on the difference.
We’re controlling Kontakt with Roland pianos, which have their own sounds anyway. You can’t replicate the feel of a piano and how it reacts to being played, but Alicia’s Keys is close enough. We tested it against other software companies and it came out on top. It sits well with everything and reacts really well live.
(Native Instruments, November 6th 2017)

𝘖𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘴:
👉 http://bit.ly/363JAxr

Post by Silke