The Brent Hinds Interview Process

Back in late 2017 I was tasked with creating an interview video for the, at the time, soon-to-be-released Brent Hinds Terror amp. I’d sit down with Brent, guitarist and co-vocalist for the Grammy-winning metal band Mastodon, and we’d have a chat about the work that went into creating his first signature guitar head. I’ve worked with Brent for almost a decade and quite frankly I’m one of the only people that seems capable of getting him to sit down for an hour to capture an interview.

When it comes to Brent, very little is ever scripted. He just doesn’t operate that way. In fact, most of the time he shows contempt when you give him too much input. Instead, you give him a vague idea and he does the rest, even if “the rest” doesn’t result in usable content. Editing is definitely important in these situations.

About 30 minutes into the official interview it dawned on me that we weren’t going in the right direction. That’s when Brent threw out the idea of having me “get mad” at him on camera. I’d be telling him exactly what to say, he’d say it the wrong way, and then I’d get upset and scream his line back at him. It resulted in a hilarious back and forth that actually resulted in Brent giving us MORE usable content than ever before. Breaking from the standard interview format relaxed him enough that we were able to delve deeper into his psyche. Many people told me that we got one of the best, most serious interviews out of Brent they’ve ever seen (despite the fact it starts off so fake and kooky).

With that said, I wanted to show you the outtakes from that day of filming. This is all unscripted and it’s very “classic Brent.” We only used about 1 second of this footage in the final cut, out of roughly 20 minutes of Brent doing random stuff on camera. Enjoy!