Story Telling and Artist Angst With Robert Ortiz of Escape The Fate (A two part article)
Robert Ortiz shares the inspiration for his seven year creation projects, the joys of fatherhood, and what it’s like to be his own worst critic.
** Author’s note: This was a wonderful and raw interview. I wanted to share as much as possible. Subsequently, it will be released in two parts. Some names and identifying information was removed for privacy , and edited for punctuation.
Artist quotes are in bold
ME: ” I was listening to some of the music I absolutely love “Forgive Me” because some people of a certain age have re-invented themselves numerous times and come back to our first love.
So here we are. So tell me a little bit about your inspiration for that.
I know that you and your lead singer kind of write
together a little bit on this one.”
RO: “This this was probably the most collaborative song in total.
So just so just so you know so it’s like Maddie’s the lead guitar
player, and Eric’s rhythm guitar and live he’s bass, TJ’s rhythm guitar
and we all really contributed heavily to this song. (The lineup is rounded out by Craig Mabbitt)
I‘m glad you like this one, because it’s it is. I don’t know if I want to say this way, but it just has so
many intricate pieces for me of the writing process.
It actually started. I’ll do the boring stuff first, actual musical side of things, right? The actual notes, and then I’ll get into the theme.
I actually started writing that song like 7 years ago.
I was in the sonogram room for my daughters, yeah, and I had
downloaded a garage band on my phone. So I was messing around with it and I had this idea in my head that I’ve always wanted to do some kind of rock opera of sorts,and I have.
So “Black Parade” was, sort of. That’s what I’m aiming for. I need some kind of signature piano thing that when you hit the note, it’s iconic and people know what it is. So, I’m messing around with notes on this GarageBand thing.
Meanwhile, you know, ’cause it takes a long time when you’re at
the doctor’s office or put in the jelly on the belly, and then
just like, all the stuff and then the sounds, and I have twins. So, it’s taking forever because they gotta find all these different heartbeats and it’s complicated. So I’ll just, write dude.
So I’ll start messing around with this thing and I figured out
that I could do our Pacio things and that became my strings. Then I’m like, I finally found the note and I had the cords, and I just started moving it around and I’m like, Oh my gosh, that
is it. So then, that planted the seed of. Essentially, what would become the direction of a large part of the album.
Not all of it, but a large part of the grandiose sort of theatrical, symphonic style that we, you know, use on a lot of the songs on the new record, and the fact that I could trace it back to my daughters in the womb is really special to me. So now you Fast forward years, right? I’ve never used it.
We tried a little bit looking at it, and then you get into this
sort of theme, I’ll be honest, that.
So you know, by the time people are listening to this, they may
have heard the song. That line that keeps getting repeated over and over is” I killed
myself today”, right? I liked the idea of using a provocative phrase.
As a positive thing, though it sounds negative on the surface. Well, in truth, I got that when my friend (sic*), actually, he’s a great friend of mine. He’s actually helped me with some songs before because I can’t really sing very well (sic*) , so he’ll help me just sing my parts out for me and he’s really awesome, nice guy. He did try to kill himself.
He he hung himself and but he texted a message to his parents, and his brother and stuff and they were luckily able to get there in time and they cut him down and everything and you know, he seems to be doing a lot better now and everything. It was a weird time for him, and you know, I hope he’s OK with me telling the story. But you know, and then myself personally, I had these, you know, I don’t know how else to phrase it, but like a sort of born-again Christian thing happen. Something occurred to me that one night when you finally are just faced with God and you can’t hide anymore and you’re alone and your thoughts and your prayers and you’re just like I cannot run from you. Like no matter what, like I can’t have any type of excuse like it’s just you’re just could see everything. So I finally realized, like, if I’m really gonna let God in my life, I gotta kill my old self. Yes to it. Done. Dead. So I woke up later and I’m just thinking that phrase,
thinking about my friend (sic*) thinking about like that. I’m like, like, that’s weird. Like I killed myself like last night and like my friend (sic*) literally did for like a minute, and then you’re reborn. You have this new outlook on life, and I wrote this whole other song and I sent it to Craig.
He didn’t really like it. Craig was going through a similar thing of sort of rejuvenating reborn in his life. He’s been sober now for years and he walked away from his old self, and when we did that, we were sort of just cohesive in that way. It was weird the way that timing works.
So I sent him this old clip from 7 years ago. Here’s some music. He’s like sent me some lyrics and I sent them these lyrics and he peeled parts from them and that phrase stuck with him. Then he built on top of that and changed a lot of things, but that one became the resounding rallying cry, and basically the theme for the whole record that. Then we’re out of the shadows, our old self that we no longer want to be, we’re out of that and we’re moving in towards the light. It took the theme of the whole record and it’s just that’s our sort of rallying cry, add to its sick fucking guitar solos and sort of riffs, which collaboratively is, you know, that was really fun and we just would go, ‘oh that riff fuck dude, that’s sick’ and it’s just kind of it. It all just came together really well and I’m such a (pauses) I’m such a self deprecating, self-conscious artist that when I still think of ‘how it could be better ‘ and all this stuff, but at the end of the day, you take a step back like that’s pretty fucking sick and I really like it, you know?“
ME: You really have to look at it through, in your case different ears, in mine different eyes. Take a step out of yourself and look at it as another person would.
RO:” It’s so hard to do.”
ME:” I can completely relate to that. None of my work is good enough, ever.
RO: (A wash of recognition swept over Rob’s face. ) “EVER!”
ME: (Wiping tear away) “You didn’t see that happen. WOW!I I didn’t know we were going to get that deep today.”
RO: ” But that’s the way I typically work ya know. I don’t often get inspired by joy. Maybe it’s just riffs. I ‘m like YEAH! Sometimes I’ll just pick up my guitar and pretend to be James Hetfield. If I start writing lyrics, it’s like I need therapy. Like fuck, I need to get out of me. So, that’s I have something to say. I don’t really write a lot when I’m happy. I just enjoy the day.
PART TWO available 08/17/2023
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