Daniel Shulman: The ClassicRockHistory.com Interview

Feature Photo: Daniel Shulman Silhouette photo By Jackson Hyde (w Garbage at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles)

As a teen, young Daniel Shulman—who had barely dipped his toe into hip-hop’s groovy pool—found himself in the studio with Run-DMC during the group’s ’80s golden age. The result was some mighty fine four-stringed fretwork on 1986’s Raising Hell, and 1988’s Tougher Than Leather, and a production credit on 1993’s Down with the King, featuring none other than Tom Morello.

If Shulman had stayed in the hip-hop world, he probably could have made a name for himself as a reliable session man—but he didn’t. “I play different genres because I’m a fan of different music,” he says. “Most modern popular music is total, and in 4/4/ time with a backbeat, but I like playing jazz, for example, because it’s largely improvisational.”

That could be why Shulman hooked up with ’90s alt-rock icons Garbage, sticking around for two records, 1998’s Version 2.0 and 2001’s Beautiful Garbage, and three world tours. And maybe that’s partially why he left to join Def Jam’s A&R department.

Shulman was replaced by former Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery, but in recent years, Shulman has been seen on stage with Garbage after Avery rejoined Jane’s. Though not lately, as former Smashing Pumpkins four-stringer Ginger Pooley toured with Garbage in the summer of 2024.

But Shulman says the association remains. “Garbage asked me to play on the new album they’re recording,” he says. “And Butch threatened to challenge me with something even more challenging than the chorus of No Gods No Masters.”

When did the bass enter the mix for you?

I started trying to hear the bass parts in records and had a big moment watching the cheerleaders rehearsing Silly Love Songs by Wings and getting into Paul McCartney’s bass line, which is loud in the mix. I had an acoustic guitar, and my piano teacher, Eric, started teaching me guitar. I bought my first bass with the money I got from my Bar Mitzvah.

What was your first bass and amp?

My first bass was a short-scale Fender Musicmaster. Originally, I played it through my dad’s stereo by putting the tape player on Pause and Record and plugging it into the headphone jack. The first amp I bought from my guitar teacher was a Fender Concert Amp, and I played the bass through that. I had a band in Junior High, where we plugged both the bass and vocals into the Concert Amp.

Tell me how you hooked up with Run-DMC as a teen.

I went to check out Berkeley School of Music in Boston, and my brother Lyor, who was the tour manager, introduced me to Run-DMC at the hotel. A friend of mine had played me Hard Times from their first record, so I knew who they were. I ended up riding in their limo with them to the show and hanging out backstage, where there was a pretty wild groupie scene.

The show was packed. Rap was fairly new to me, and I was amazed that a group with a DJ and no singing could be rock stars. When they found out I was a rock musician, they said they rapped over rock tracks and that I should write a track for them.

I made a demo they liked, and they invited me to work on Raising Hell, which, largely due to their collaboration with Aerosmith, became a culture-changing moment. They invited me to come back and work on the follow-up, Tougher Than Leather, and I got to co-write and produce a track for their record Down with the King and get Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine to play guitar.

What gear did you use?

For the bass tracks, I used my Music Man Sabre with a direct box, and for samples and sequencing, I used the Roland W-30.

You mentioned Tom Morello. What gear did he bring?

We recorded in New York, so Tom brought his guitar and pedals, and we rented a Marshall and a 4×10 cabinet.

Had you met Tom before?

I met Tom when my band Double D Nose would do gigs with his band Lock Up, which was pre–Rage Against the Machine. I remember being backstage at this club called The Lingerie, where my guitar player said, ‘You have to come out and check out this guitar player.’

Tom was just starting to experiment with all the idiosyncratic stuff he developed to the max with Rage. I remember jamming one day with Stephen Perkins from Jane’s Addiction and Flea from the Chili Peppers and Perkins played us the first Rage demo. I went to see them open for Porno for Pyros, and it totally blew my mind.

No one was really doing what Tom was then. Is that why Run-DMC asked him to be on the record?

The turntable-influenced sound effects that Tom was doing were mind-boggling. When I got the gig to produce Big Willie for Run-DMC, I knew I wanted to use Tom. This was before the first Rage record came out. Tom was telling me about how they recorded in their rehearsal room with the PA facing them and how they mic’d their instruments and the PA.

He also told me about having to remaster the record because the first try didn’t have the power of the original mixes. Run-DMC had sent a limo to pick up Tom at the airport, and he was concerned that this would impact his punk rock cred. [laughs]

Once Tom got into the studio, what was he like to work with?

When Tom came in, I had the drums programmed and had recorded the bass. I showed him what I wanted him to play on the riffs and had him double this on a wah-wah pedal. Then, I just asked him to overdub all the crazy Bomb Squad- [producers of Public Enemy] influenced stuff he was doing with Rage.

I knew Run-DMC were huge Public Enemy fans. In fact, we tried to sample something from Public Enemy but couldn’t make it work, so we used Blood, Sweat & Tears instead. I had Tom demonstrate for Run-DMC, and they loved it!

So, they let Tom do his thing and stayed hands-off.

Run said, “That’s so B-Boy!” They left the studio while we recorded, and when we came to mix, they were bummed that there was a verse without the crazy sound effect overdubs, so I sampled Tom and added it in.

When it came time to dial in Tom’s tone, how did you do it?

I wanted a lot of low-end on the guitar, so he turned the bass on the Marshall to 10. I wanted to have a battle between him and Jam Master Jay, so I had Tom do his turntable-type stuff and leave room for Jay, who overdubbed his response when we went in to mix.

I remember that he used a harmonizer on his solo, and we doubled it. He was super nice and easygoing. I tried to convince Jam Master Jay that we should remix it with the guitar even louder, but he thought I was crazy. I also remember that Tom used the toggle switch to sound like a crossfade on a turntable and pick scrapes to sound like scratching.

Did you run into Tom after the record came out? It didn’t seem to impact his street cred too much!

I saw Tom backstage when Rage opened up Lollapalooza, and he told me how much he liked how Big Willie turned out. He said he was a massive Run-DMC fan and had bought King of Rock right when it came out.

Tom aside, what’s your recipe for hip-hop bass?

A hip-hop track usually has a drum machine, a live drum loop, or both, so the drums are going to be consistent. I’ll usually keep the variation to a minimum and lock into the groove. Even if it’s a rock track, I’m going to try and make it funky. I’m a big James Brown fan, and I love the way Bootsy Collins would lock into a pattern.

Which song best demonstrates that?

One example is Big Willie by Run-DMC. I sampled a drum pattern from a rock record, cut it up, and rearranged it, and Jam Master Jay and I both added a drum machine. Jay also cut a drum loop live, straight from a record, during an instrumental break. There were two different bass parts, which I played without variation until the end when we soloed the bass.

What were the keys to your bass tone?

Although it was a guitar amp, the Fender Concert had 4x 10s, and the Sabre’s active electronics sounded pretty good. It got better when I started using a Cerwin Vega with an 18″ and a 12″ speaker and a Galen Kruger solid state, and it got even better when I started using the Ampeg SVT with 8x 10s.

Although I like boosting the low end, I learned from Jaco Pastorius about turning down the treble and playing towards the bridge, which brought out more of the Sabre’s midrange. When I started playing larger venues with Garbage, that wasn’t enough, so I got some Fender P-Bass Deluxes from the Custom Shop and started using a pick.

Do you use any pedals?

I’ve messed around with octaves and envelope filters, but mainly, I’ve just used distortion pedals, if any at all.

How did you join Garbage?

My friends Joe Zimmerman and Josh Segal were in a band called The Borrowers, which had a publishing deal with the same company Garbage did. They rehearsed where Garbage’s manager at the time had her office, and they met out in the hallway. I had just directed a video, and the editor showed me another video he was working on, which was Garbage’s first single, Vow.

I had also read an article about them in Rolling Stone and was a big fan of Butch Vig as a producer, so I knew who they were when my friend Joe said they were looking for a bass player. I called their manager, Shannon, and she said to bring down a picture, tape, and resume, none of which I had prepared. [laughs]

My brother Motti helped me get it together, and I went down to the office and met the manager and Butch. I thought my tape of hip-hop production would be a negative, but Butch said it was a plus, and I realized why when I went home to listen to the record and realized that they used a lot of loops and samples.

What was the audition like, and what gear did you bring?

They flew me to Madison, WI, where they were based, and I brought the Sabre and played it through their amps. They asked me to go on a six-week tour, and the next thing I knew, I had been playing with them for seven years, been on two records, and done three world tours.

How did the Garbage gig differ from Run-DMC in terms of approach and tone?

Run-DMC was recorded very quickly. I would plug into a direct box, play the track once, and be done. With Garbage, we would mix some amp distortion with a mike, a direct signal, and, towards the end, amp modeling, too.

I would use different bass amps and strings to get different tones for different songs. In the early days, Butch was very meticulous, and we would spend hours on a bass track. When I’ve recorded with them more recently, he’ll just have me do two or three takes and then edit.

What’s the key to locking in with Butch Vig?

On the records, it was similar in some ways to playing on hip-hop tracks cause Butch would use loops and programming, although he would use multiple loops so the rhythms would change throughout the song.

Live, Butch plays live along with drum loops. He’s fun to play with as he’s groovy but also thunderous. So, I try to rock hard but keep it funky. I think obsessively listening to Led Zeppelin, playing with Run-DMC, and my live rap group, Double D Nose, helped.

What were the toughest Garbage songs to tackle?

The hardest Garbage songs to play are a couple of the new ones. The title track from No Gods No Masters has a sort of John Entwisle arpeggio thing on the chorus, and Godhead has some tricky octaves. Shirley Manson let me know if my improvisation got too wild, and Butch would yell John Entwisle in the middle of a random tune, and we’d do our best Keith Moon, John Entwisle imitation.

We had dinner with Dave Grohl in Brazil, and somehow, we started talking about Jethro Tull. I challenged him to incorporate the riff from Aqualung into a Foo Fighters song, which he did at the show the next night. When we played, Butch would yell out Aqualung, and I’d fit the riff into the song we were playing.

What’s the most important lesson Butch taught you?

Sonically, I learned from Butch about having the bass head in the control room so we could adjust the tone not just solo but in the mix. Sometimes, something terrible alone would sound great in the mix. As the tours progressed, we began to use inner ear monitors, at first getting the guitar cabinets off-stage and eventually moving on to amp modeling.

This gives the front-of-house a bass channel that’s not bleeding into other mics, which makes it possible to have a lot of low-end and still cut through. Garbage also likes to use keyboard sub-bass, so sometimes the electric bass will leave out the sub-frequencies, which will give the track sonic dynamics when the sub comes in the chorus.

Why did you leave Garbage for Def Jam’s A&R department?

I met my wife, and we started talking about having a kid. The Garbage tours were about a year and a half long each, and I didn’t want to be gone that long. My brother Lyor introduced me to Jeff Fenster, the head of A&R for Island Records, part of the Island Def Jam Music group, and we set up an interview.

I was playing with Garbage in the Cayman Islands, so I stopped in New York to meet Jeff on the way back. I brought a demo for a potential Scott Weiland solo album and a band I loved called Me Me Me. Although he didn’t sign either, I got the job.

What’s next for you in all lanes?

I’m working on some music with Paul Goldowitz. He was in my first band in sixth grade, and we’ve made music together off and on ever since. I worked on his album Goldo, which had a song called “To All the Lovely Ladies” on the soundtrack for the movie Go.