THESE ANTSY SAN DIEGO ROCKERS PUT ON A SHOW YOU’RE NOT LIKELY TO FORGET — AND ALL WITHOUT THE AID OF A HIGH E STRING
By Mark McStea
THE SAN DIEGO-based Schizophonics are one of those bands that, once seen, are never forgotten. Singer/guitarist Pat Beers literally throws himself into every performance, careering around the stage, combining elements of James Brown, Wayne Kramer and Iggy Pop. To the uninitiated, it often looks like Beers isn’t even playing the guitar a lot of the time, as a huge part of his technique relies on the use of left-hand slurs and hammer-ons. “We’ve done tours where we’ve opened for bigger bands, and audiences who don’t know us would be messaging that they couldn’t believe we’d have the audacity to use backing tapes,” Beers says.
It’s clear from listening to Beers that Jimi Hendrix must have been an influence somewhere down the line. “I had a cassette of Are You Experienced, and that was huge for me,” he says. “Jimi’s still my favorite guitarist. His playing completely floored me. My left hand does a lot of work live, and I think that’s where you can see the Hendrix influence — in the big bends and hammer-ons. A few years later I really got into the Stooges and the MC5 — their songwriting, their riffs and the fact that they were great performers.”
Beers’ choice of guitar is as unconventional as his approach to playing. “I have a custom-made model by Bonser [Instruments] in San Diego,” he says. “It’s really a Strat in disguise; it has a Strat neck with jumbo frets and hot pickups by Seymour Duncan. It’s a five-string guitar, since I don’t use a high E string. That came from when I broke a tuning peg, and I decided to devote a year to really working on a more l
