Coheed And Cambria, ‘The Father Of Make Believe’

Coheed And Cambria‘s Claudio Sanchez guides us through the latest chapter in The Amory Wars saga, ‘The Father Of Make Believe’, out now.

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“There was an absence of a target, you know? I had started on some of the material that I had gestating from around the time of ‘A Window Of The Waking Mind’. I just kept writing.” 

As he discusses the early steps of creating the latest opus from Coheed And Cambria, the more you realise that frontman Claudio Sanchez is a true once in a generation talent, constantly churning out the kind of infectious melodies and riffs that most bands would kill for, all while wrapping it up in a wider narrative package stretching across multiple albums and comic books. Yet for Sanchez, the bigger picture comes second. For each record, the starting line remains the same.

“I just wanted to write what I was feeling. The record really told me what it was. I think about all the things that I had gone through, the loss that I had experienced over the time of writing the record, and the questions it posed. It was not something that I was completely thinking about when writing the record, but in looking back at the material that I chose, that was the story that wanted to be told.”

As the world awaits the next chapter of Coheed’s Amory Wars odyssey, the thrilling ‘The Father Of Make Believe’, Sanchez guides us through his deeply personal creative process and how building an imaginary world helped him to discover his true self.

THE SOUND

The charging ‘Blind Side Sonny’ gave fans their first taste of ‘The Father Of Make Believe’ back in July, raising the curtain on a new era with a high energy and effortlessly fun summer smasher that likely took many listeners by surprise.

“It was so strange and different for Coheed, that was what prompted our decision to select it as the first single,” Claudio reflects. “This record is so nuanced. It traverses a lot of space so I wanted people to question what this record was going to be, you know? I think that one really poses a question. Then following it with ‘Searching For Tomorrow’, and now ‘Someone Who Can’, I feel like it really is a good indication of the journey this record takes.”

“It’s funny, ‘Blind Side…’ was one of the last songs I wrote,” he continues. “I took a trip to Paris for a week, I did this little writing retreat. I found myself for the first time in a while, alone, really alone. My son was still in New York, my wife was in Italy on her writing retreat. I got to explore myself in those moments and two songs came out of that trip, and ‘Blind Side’ was one of them, but the other was ‘Meri Of Mercy’. So there are these two opposite ends of the spectrum of what it was like to be alone with my thoughts for that period of time.”

Elsewhere, the dreamy pop rock of ‘Someone Who Can’ makes for arguably Coheed’s most accessible and radio-friendly track to date, another marker of just how diverse and capable Sanchez has become in his songwriting.

“When I wrote that song initially, it was arranged in a different way. I wrote it with a piano and an acoustic guitar in my house, a stereo mic set up, and I performed everything. It was actually going to be sort of a solo song. But when rounding out the 30 songs that I put together, I figured I should just throw this in the batch. Then I said to Zakk (Cervini, producer), ‘Hey, here’s 30 songs. This is what I have in mind for the record. But please listen to all of them, and if you find any elements that the record might be missing, I value your objective opinion”. And the first one he selected was ‘Someone Who Can. So together, we produced it in a different fashion. It does a little bit more of that thing that ‘A Disappearing Act’ does for ‘A Window Of The Waking Mind’. I loved the song but I didn’t necessarily initially think it would be the song that it is now. But that’s the great thing about my relationship with Zakk, I’ve become so comfortable with his opinion that I open up and allow him to maybe see some things that I can’t because I’ve been living with the material for so long.”

THE LYRICS

Perhaps the biggest challenge of creating a story as epic and wide as The Amory Wars is keeping that world at the centre of the music without overwhelming it. A constant balance between accessibility for new listeners and pushing the narrative forward must be achieved. Yet on ‘The Father Of Make Believe’, Claudio tells us that the process felt more natural than it perhaps has previously.

“This time around, I didn’t really think about the concept when I was writing the music. It was really about who I was at the time, the questions I was asking myself,” he explains. “It was really more therapy. Constructing the concept came later, finding those qualities in the songs that made for good storytelling. You could listen to this record and never care about the story component, because there’s really nothing that literally connects it. To me, constructing the story was about finding those things and utilizing them to help establish character motives and feelings. But for the most part, this was a record for me and and about me and the struggles and questions I have for myself when I die, when I don’t die, or when the people that around me die, you know? I mean, death has always been a constant in my output, but this time around, it is becoming so very real and it’s creating questions that I didn’t think I’d ask myself. Not the simple ones of just like the mourning of loss, but just the questions of self and place.”

The sad loss of Sanchez’ uncle forced a new perspective onto him as a songwriter, culminating in the record’s cinematic opener ‘Yesterday’s Lost’ which sees him deal with the question of what the world will look like when the time comes for you to no longer be a part of it.

“I haven’t really experienced a ton of loss in my life. It’s always been kind of sheltered from me, and as I get older, it’s becoming very real. I still feel very bad, clearly, for the people that are left behind. It really put things into perspective and made me ask myself questions of what would life be like without me? Or what would life be like without my wife? That’s what really started a song like ‘Yesterday’s Lost’. That’s what really gave me a sense of what the theme of this record is. The questions that you start to ask yourself as you get to this point in your life, they really started to reveal themselves in the songs that I was writing.”

“When I first started this idea, it was purely out of my insecurities of being a frontman in a rock band”, he reflects. “I didn’t know what life would be like with people focusing their attention on me. I would always play guitar in a band, but I was a background figure, and then when I became the lyricist and songwriter, I became very uncomfortable with that reality. That’s why I started constructing songs that had these disguises to them. They all meant something very real to me, but I attached something more elaborate to them. I love it in a way, because it allows me to be a creator in these two extremely different worlds. But it also really allowed me to be honest in the music, because then I could feel safe.”

Elements of his upbringing would manifest themselves within the musical world he had created. ‘The Second Stage Turbine Blade’ is in direct reference to the airplane parts Sanchez’s father would work on in the factory. The Amory Wars themselves even take their name from Amory Drive, the street he grew up on. Even the dragonfly symbol, present throughout the story, has come to signify a syringe, a way of conveying the power addiction can hold over those close to you including, in this case, Sanchez’s father.

“My mother very much shielded us from the realities of that addiction. The thing is, my dad was a functioning addict and provided for a family. So it almost felt like it didn’t exist in my life. The way I perceived addiction was very different from the way the outside would receive it. I think that’s where a lot of this story came from, is my fear of the way people would perceive me and perceive my upbringing. I didn’t want to villainize the people that were involved, because they were my people. I thought they did a fantastic job, despite the dysfunction, you know? I didn’t want to be that person that was screaming for sympathy, all ‘woe is me’. No. The shit wasn’t that way. The art just became the way I would tell my story, to find a way into this grandiose world, to hide the realities of my life. It worked and I appreciate it, because it’s allowed me to be the artist that I am.”

THE TITLE & ARTWORK

“The title may have come first”, Claudio reflects as he discusses the record’s title track. “The song probably had been happening at the same time, but I think the chorus had different lyrics in it when I initially wrote it, so then I curated them to really work with the title of the album. But to me, ‘The Father Of Make Believe’ is a very ambiguous title, because it is a weird self brand, being the guy in this band that creates this music with this epic story that is a counterpart to it. It’s almost like a blessing and a curse, this brand that I’ve created, because now, as I get older, I can’t help but ask ‘how would the band be perceived had I not suggested a concept?’ But at the same time, the character of Vaxis, who I’ve never really seen myself in, is now for the first time, someone that I’ve connected with. On the previous records, I’ve seen Vaxis as an extension of my son. But now the character is going through a metamorphosis, where really the world is his to create.”

“It was just a title that really complimented both sides of myself as a creator, both in the music and the brand – the weird brand I’ve accidentally put on myself – but also the motives of the character in the story.”

The character of Vaxis, positioned now at the centre of his own story, similarly influenced the decision making behind the album’s artwork.

“I typically do a little photo collage in my phone, taking elements of pre-existing ideas and arranging them. Then I’ll share that with Chase Stone, the artist, and he will illustrate what you see in the final and help create some of the concepts that happen in the story. But on this one, because the last record was such an ensemble of characters, I wanted to put Vaxis as the lead on the cover, alone, because now his trajectory is his own.”

THE COLLABORATORS

Speaking of Cervini, the in demand producer who has worked of late with everyone from Blink-182 and Waterparks to Spiritbox and A Day To Remember, Sanchez cites his input in the studio as being particularly valuable. 

“With the exception of maybe a couple of producer relationships, I’ve always been posed these ideas of what this person will bring to the dynamics of your songwriting and have walked away from those situations a little unfulfilled. When Zakk was brought to my attention, I met it with a fear of disappointment. But I sent him a couple of songs and the way they came back just felt new and refreshing and exciting to me – a way that I’d always really wanted Coheed to sound.”

Then of course, when pondering the band’s next creative move, there is nobody easier for Claudio to turn to than his longtime brothers in arms – Travis Steever, Josh Eppard and Zach Cooper – each of whom are more than capable of bringing their own flavours to the table.

“Generally, I have an idea of what I’d like, but I open it up to everyone’s submissions and their vibe. Typically, it’ll get passed along and things will get added, and I’ll live with them and see if they really help enforce the melody and message of the song. Sometimes, if they don’t, we’ll figure out ways to curate the parts to make sure that they do, you know? Because as I get older, it really becomes important to me that the quality is front and centre. That’s really the thing that is going to be shared with a receiving audience. The musicality is obviously cherished and welcomed. But at the end of the day, the song really needs to speak to the listener and really needs to have a connection with them.”

THE FUTURE

A story such as this deserves a suitably epic conclusion, something that Sanchez is only too aware of and already deep into planning.

“Right now, I know how it ends. I have an ending that I think is very unique and I think it’s perfect for the overall saga of the Amory Wars. But as far as how to get there, it’s very much influenced by life. The things that are going to inspire the songs are going to help pave the road to that ending. So I’m waiting for that. I’m always writing, I’ve already started. There are songs that are still sitting around from the last two records that are waiting for their homes. So they’ll probably gain identities when experiences happen and they make sense.”

Prior to that, Coheed have plenty of dates lined up on the live calendar this year including a summer co-headlining tour with their old friends in Taking Back Sunday – one that will hit the UK when they team up to headline 2000trees Festival this July.

“It’s a beautiful festival from the pictures that I’ve seen. I’m excited. When it was brought to my attention and I got to see some of the visuals of it, it kind of reminded me of being a kid going up to Woodstock, New York, and playing in bands. I mean, that’s how Coheed was started; getting in a bus, going out to the sticks and playing music with people.”