Kevin Shields

Kevin Patrick Shields (born 21 May 1963) is an Irish musician, singer-songwriter and producer, primarily known as the vocalist and guitarist of alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine. After My Bloody Valentine went on hiatus in the early 1990s, Shields got work remixing and producing various musical acts. He has also played sporadically with Primal Scream since 1997. In 2003, he contributed music to the motion picture Lost in Translation, and was nominated a BAFTA for his efforts. Rolling Stone included Shields at number 95 on their list of the 100 greatest guitarist of all time in 2003. More recently, Shields had provided musical accompaniment to Patti Smith's reading of her book The Coral Sea. In 2007, Shields announced that My Bloody Valentine had reunited and were recording new material. On 2 February 2013, they released MBV, their first album in over 20 years. Childhood and formative yearsedit: Born in Queens, New York City to a mother who worked as a nurse and a food-industry executive father, Kevin Shields is the oldest of five siblings. Shields' parents immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland in the 1950s. He went to a Catholic school that he has described as "a really horrible school run by psychopathic nuns." When he was 10 years old his family returned to Dublin to live close to the support of their extended family. Shields has described the culture shock of moving to Ireland from the USA, reflecting particularly on the American consumer culture, saying, "It was like going from, as far as I was concerned, the modern world to some distant past." The one difference between the USA and Ireland that had a big impact on him was the marketing of music towards teenagers in the UK and Ireland. He said it didn't really exist in that way when he lived in the U.S. in the 1970s. Shields continues to hold a U.S. passport. When Shields was 15 he was approached by a 12-year old who asked him if he wanted to be in a band. This band was where he first met My Bloody Valentine drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig. The band was called The Complex and they played "somewhere between Oi! and older punk", Shields remarked. Expanding on how he developed his playing style he said, "I always just wanted to be like Johnny Ramone. Just be really good at one thing. I think because I was never dexterous, and because I never really learned how to play a scale, or lead guitar, or anything, but because I still wanted to be expressive, that made me use the tremolo arm, which gave me something to work with for a long time. I really get off on hearing, I can't even really describe it, the difference between hitting the same chord one way or another way, and the subtleties within that. So in that respect, more so than flashier guitar players, I can play and it sounds like the amp is turned down real low, and then play and it sounds like it's on really loud. Control." Guitar soundedit: One of the most recognizable aspects of Shields' music is his thick and dreamy guitar sound, associated with his later recordings with My Bloody Valentine. Customizing the tremolo system for Fender Jaguars and Jazzmasters, Shields manipulates the tremolo arm while strumming chords. He has had the tremolo arm on his guitars extended considerably and uses tape on one end so that the tremolo arm sits very high on the guitar and is very loose. With the tremolo arm in this position, his motion is not restricted, allowing him to strum chords without having to alter his motion to accommodate the tremolo arm. To thicken the sound, he plays through a Yamaha SPX 90 using a reverse reverb effect that inverts the normal reverb envelope without making the notes backward. Augmenting his sound further, he cranks amps to exceptionally loud volumes and uses open tunings, causing the amplifier to "breakup" and increasing sustain. Instead of the usual note bending with a tremolo arm, he achieves a kind of chord bending that Rolling Stone described as, "a strange warping effect that makes the music wander in and out of focus". Fans who played the vinyl record of Loveless were known to check the records for warping on first playing them. On the subject of 1991 album Loveless Shields remarks, "the songs do have weird timings and things, but the textures come from the guitar tunings." Shields has pointed out that he uses far fewer effects pedals and overdubs than fans and the music press sometimes make him out to use. He has noted many times in interviews that most tracks feature one or two main, albeit massive sounding, guitar tracks that give off many layers of sound. This has mistakenly led people to believe he uses multiple overdubs which he has repeated over and over is not how his sound is achieved, at least not before the Tremolo EP. Although Tremolo and Loveless featured more sampling and sampled guitar, Shields has noted that a Jaguar or Jazzmaster with some strings in an open tuning combined with an effects processor (such as the Yamaha SPX90) can achieve a massive swirling guitar sound with one guitar, whilst sounding like numerous overdubs. Kevin's earlier recordings pre-Tremolo consisted mostly of one guitar during the chorus and then a guitar with a different tone during the verses. Tremolo and Loveless involved more sampling of guitars and synths. Shields explained, "Ninety percent of what we do is just a guitar straight into an amp." "People think it's all pedals, but all my pedals are graphic equalizers and tone controls. It's all in the tone." Various effects pedals mainly play a role when trying to recreate studio sounds in a live setting. Many have tried to replicate the guitar sounds on Loveless, with varying degrees of success. Shields even had trouble reproducing the sounds himself, as his live guitar sounds at the time varied greatly from those on the record. He was known to try to duplicate the sheer power of the recorded tone by turning on-stage monitors to face the audience, rather than the band. The My Bloody Valentine regular set closer "You Made Me Realise" typically included an interlude using blasts of noise and feedback that could go on as long as 40 minutes, which the band termed 'the holocaust'. Regarding this interlude, Shields remarked, "It was so loud it was like sensory deprivation. We just liked the fact that we could see a change in the audience at a certain point". Many, including Shields, note that the Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine shows were amongst the loudest rock concerts they had ever experienced. Fans even speculated that damaged eardrums had contributed to the post-Loveless absence of My Bloody Valentine. In August 2003, Shields was voted the 95th greatest guitarist of all time by the Rolling Stone magazine. For recent live shows he admitted to using 30 effects pedals to achieve his guitar sound. Guitar Rig & Signal Flowedit: A detailed gear diagram of Kevin Shield's 1991 My Bloody Valentine guitar rig is well-documented. My Bloody Valentineedit: When creating My Bloody Valentine's album Loveless, Shields became a relentless perfectionist. Shields attributed the time involved to both their lack of resources (money to get their guitars in shape was one example noted) and simply not recording when there was no inspiration to guide them. So many mistook the main guitar track for ten to fifteen layered guitars. Most tracks ultimately were done in one or two takes with one or two main guitar tracks. The most notable exception is "To Here Knows When" which took months to create and even longer to mix. He went through 18 recording engineers before finishing Loveless. Other eccentricities included not allowing the engineers to hear him or Bilinda Butcher singing while recording. These drawn out, expensive sessions allegedly drove Creation Records bankrupt, although Shields has refuted this claim saying many other bands on the label at the time were also to blame. Shields has commented that the extent of the contribution of the engineers was to get him tea and other gopher chores. After Loveless, My Bloody Valentine signed on with the major label Island Records. Island ended up empty handed after financing the band for several years (finally spending approximately £500,000 according to Shields). Island cut off finances in 1997; however, Shields was still legally tied to the label until 2001 when the contract was finally terminated. In the meantime, Shields wrote many songs but never released them. The only work to come out of this period was two covers: We Have All the Time in the World (Louis Armstrong) on the 1993 Peace Together compilation; and a Wire cover on the 1996 tribute album Whore. Shields expressed interest in a reunion and releasing a new album with My Bloody Valentine. In an interview with Magnet in 2007 he said, "We are 100% going to make another My Bloody Valentine record unless we die or something. I'd feel really bad if I didn't make another record. Like, shit, people only got the first two chapters, but the last bit is the best bit. It's just that it's taken me such an oddly long time for that to happen." In November 2007 Shields announced that the band had reunited and that a new album which the band had started recording in 1996 was "3/4 finished." This reunion came to fruition starting in June 2008 with two live rehearsal shows at the ICA before a five-night stand at the Roundhouse in Camden. The band played a number of festivals, including the Roskilde Festival, Bestival, and the Electric Picnic. They had curated and performed at the 2008 All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Monticello, New York in September before playing a brief tour across the United States and Canada. Work outside My Bloody Valentineedit: Since the cessation of activity of My Bloody Valentine, Shields has found steady work remixing and producing for artists including Joy Zipper, Placebo and Yo La Tengo. After working with Primal Scream, he joined them on tour between 1999 and 2006, and had contributed to their albums XTRMNTR and Evil Heat. He also contributed guitar to two tracks on Curve's Gift. Shields has produced and played on Dinosaur Jr's Hand It Over (along with Bilinda Butcher contributing vocals) and on J Mascis and the Fog's More Light. He contributed (uncredited) guitar to the Manic Street Preachers' 2001 album Know Your Enemy on the track 'Freedom Of Speech Won't Feed My Children'. In 1999, Shields composed music, which includes "2", for the Canadian Contemporary Dance company La La La Human Steps. In 2003, Shields contributed four tracks--including the single "City Girl"--to the Sofia Coppola film Lost in Translation. He was nominated for a BAFTA for his contribution to the film score. In 2005, Shields appeared at London's Meltdown Festival with Patti Smith, providing accompaniment to her reading of her book The Coral Sea (a tribute to her friend photographer Robert Mapplethorpe). This is available for streaming here. Live album The Coral Sea released on July 2008. Patti Smith has said My Bloody Valentine was her favorite group in the last 15 years. He co-wrote and performed on some of the tracks of Le Volume Courbe's debut album, I Killed My Best Friend. Shields was credited as "Noise Consultant" for the documentary film, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. Shields has remixed and combined two songs for The Go! Team, "Ladyflash" and "Huddle Formation" into "Huddle Flash", which can be found on the "Ladyflash" single. The band expressed their desire for Shields to produce their second album, although this did not happen. He remixed two songs by Bow Wow Wow, for the Sofia Coppola film, Marie Antoinette. In 2009, Shields contributed guitar to the Paul Weller song "7 + 3 Is The Striker's Name" from the album, Wake Up the Nation. In July 2010, Shields made a guest appearance on guitar at the Spacemen 3 reunion show (without Jason Pierce) at the Hoxton Bar and Grill in London. Personal lifeedit: Most of Shields' siblings have gone on to various degrees of fame. His brother, Jimi Shields, was a member of Rollerskate Skinny and Lotus Crown, and is co-director of landscape design practice TTT (thirtythreetrees). He is currently in the band Wounded Knees. Their sister Anne Marie has worked extensively in the music industry, managed tours for the brothers' respective bands, and was credited for "coordination" on Loveless. Their youngest sibling is shoe designer Eileen Shields. In the late 80s/early 90s, Shields and Bilinda Butcher had a relationship, which they had discussed in various interviews at the time. Recently, Shields has been linked to Charlotte Marionneau of Le Volume Courbe.

Source: Wikipedia

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