The Exploding Hearts' Terry Six Shares The Stories Behind 'Guitar Romantic'
The Exploding Hearts’ history is rock lore catnip: A quartet of high school friends (plus a quirky "fifth Beatle") from Portland were singularly dedicated to making music. They released one beloved and often misunderstood album. And just as the group was hitting their stride, a van accident on tour killed three of its members — all of whom were in their 20s.
What remained of the group’s output, 2003’s Guitar Romantic, is power pop perfection. Its 10 tracks are led by lovelorn, hooky lyrics and appropriately snotty vocals; punchy guitar and killer bass that are both studied and seemingly effortless. The record has been handed down from punk to punk for 20 years, and still stands out among the era’s alternative output. But naturally, the conversation around Guitar Romantic is not without a heavy tone of tragedy.
Guitarist Terry Six — the sole surviving member of the Exploding Hearts, as their fifth member "King" Louie Bankston passed away in 2022 — wants to change that. With help from Third Man Records and original producer Pat Kerns, Guitar Romantic has been reissued and expanded.
"Not only does it feel like it needs another shot, but it needs a different approach. I'm tired of the album being synonymous with death," Six tells GRAMMY.com from his home outside Palm Springs, California. "That’s not what they would have wanted. That's not what I wanted. And that's not why we signed up to do this."
Six and vocalist/guitarist Adam Cox, bassist Matt Fitzgerald and drummer Jeremy Gage "invested our entire soul" into making Guitar Romantic. "Every single choice we made was, how do we make this album the best it could possibly be?" Six recalls. “We lived, breathed and ate that album at the time."
The Exploding Hearts wore their influences on their sleeves, referring regularly to Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and ‘70s punk. "Adam’s subject was always heartbreak, loss and tragedy of that sort, and it needed a bit more of a brazen edge to it," Six says. "We kind of agreed: We'll take the saddest, most melancholy subject matter, and take the page from Nick Lowe, but like here's Buzzcocks, here’s the Jam, here’s the Dead Boys. Let's kind of f— this up a little bit."
Guitar Romantic was recorded over two weeks in a cramped basement studio in Hillsdale, Oregon. The band did everything themselves, recording each section separately and then building the record huddled over a soundboard in a converted laundry room. Their studio chatter is all over the reissue, which features three additional tracks, and allowed Six some catharsis.
"Discovering all the audible life and background noises of us talking and bulls—ng and I was just like, I need to put this in here," Six says of the reissue. "People need to hear that these were people."
Out May 26, the reissue will be followed by several already sold-out shows where Six will sing with a new band. "I'm putting the record back on tour and I'm merely just a conduit to it," he adds.
Below, Six recalls the stories behind each song on Guitar Romantic – which he remembers with impressive detail. "From right after the accident, I think I knew that I was the timekeeper. And I would have to remember everything," he says, adding that he never stopped listening to the record.
"There are a lot of things that I don't listen to from my past or are just like, cringe for me. But this isn't one of them. And I'm really proud of this album and ….I don't have a bad memory about it. It's all positivity for me."
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
"Modern Kicks"
By the time we were getting into adulthood…Adam left to go back home to San Diego. I after a while wouldn't let [the idea of our band] go. Adam and I talked all the time on the phone and then I eventually convinced him to move back to Portland to do this. How I did that was I played "Modern Kicks" for him over the phone — from his apartment, which I was subletting — and "Jailbird" and he perked up and he's "Okay, I'm coming back."
"Modern Kicks" was [originally] really slow; it was jangly and it was like okay, this is more like Flamin' Groovies, but where's the punk? It was a cool song, but there was nothing anthemic about it. To see that song re-recorded again [in the Guitar Romantic sessions] with more firepower from Matt and just more rehearsed, we really drove the punk edge home. That that opening and that just getting in there with the cans and then just letting it rip was really great.
"I'm a Pretender"
So Adam was on one side of the street, Louis was on another, and Louie yelled at Adam: "spider baaaaby," because Adam was in the Spider Babies and Louie knew that band. They day drank together and Adam was kind of catching up and telling Louie about what he was doing and he gave the Pink Demo of what we were doing, Louis took it home, listened to it over and over and over again, and called Adam that night and said "You have to let me in your band. and I have the perfect song for you. It's called ‘I'm A Pretender.’"
It sounded almost like a skate punk song, but the idea was there. There wasn't an opening, there wasn't the pre chorus, it was just Louie banging on a guitar and just playing it as fast as he could with bar chords. Adam heard the potential.
Louie tried to pitch "I'm a Pretender" to the Royal Pendletons, which was his first band. He played it for [producer] Alex Chilton when they were recording. And then Alex stopped and was like, "Louie, you wrote a hit song. That's amazing. Let's do it." And then none of the band wanted to do it. So he sat on the song for about eight years.
Louie was married before. And then he left New Orleans to come to Portland. He and I never really talked about it a lot, but I know that he always did have issues with thinking he could be in love or that he could have a solid relationship. I definitely think that there's an air of truth in the song for Louie.
"Thorns In Roses"
That's probably the most disappointing song to me. I love that song and I love playing that song, but it was not meant to be a duet. Adam was an idea guy, so was I, we just had different ideas about it. Since I was always coming from the less is more [school] I said something like, "Save the duets for your solo career in like 20 years." Let's make a punk record, you know?
And we fought about it. He heard me at the time and said "No, you're right. I won't do it." Until we got to the studio and then he's like, "No, we're doing it." In a band, you make compromises even though you don't know you're making them.
"You're Black and Blue"
That song was around for four years before we were even the Exploding Hearts. Adam wrote that song about one of his ex-girlfriends that had blue eyes and black hair. That's when we first started getting into the Zeros — we loved that band. Every time we were stuck, were like okay, let's make this a Zeros part.
We played it faster live a few times. But I think that we brought it down to make it more like [the Zeros’] "Hand Grenade Heart" a little bit tempo-wise. It left more room to be creative and do backups. It was a cool-off song before Sleeping Aids.
"Sleeping Aides and Razor Blades"
That song I think we just pulled out last minute. I mean, Pat has a few versions of us really working that out — because he was a part of the pre-production phase, he kept everything that we ever did: practices and rehearsals, whatever.
And that song is another example of a song that went leaps and bounds and took a lot of workshopping. Because again, it was [originally] played with a different bass player it was a lot slower. [Editor's note: the Exploding Hearts initially engaged a bassist named Jim Evans prior to Fitzgerald rejoining the group.]
"Rumours in Town"
We were very Jam- inspired. We had the Rickenbacker and the Marshall, so we decided to use it and we didn’t have a song in G — we were thinking of [the Jam's] "In The City." That song took a lot of workshopping. God, we probably did it 10,000 times in rehearsals. That's another song that just really came together when we were tracking guitars.
None of these songs were [written] as fast as they were on the actual finished product. I had to relearn them as I was tracking them. That was a song that I really had to make some on the fly judgments about.
I just kept thinking I'm just gonna do what I think Pete Townshend would do here, and then just do open voice stuff and bang the hell out of the guitar.
"Throwaway Style"
I still kind of step back and like I can't believe we did "Throwaway Style." When I heard that in pre-production, I was like, this sounds like a joke. It just sounded like a dumb song; it was a lot slower.
That’s another one of those songs that just happened In the studio. I remember we tried to do some open voice chords and some weird changes with the chorus, and I was like, “No, we just need to play it straight, just do power chords and keep it as minimalistic as possible and just drive it home."
That one took the longest time to get up to snuff. To Matt's credit, he made that song. The bass is everything. And the fact that he did it as punchy and as he kept the time with Jeremy, that's what was missing. That's what made that song great.
When we were tracking vocals, Pat kept saying to Adam, "More Diana! Less punk, more Diana." That was how we kind of got him to sing so high as he was like, Okay, I'll just pretend I'm Diana Ross. The other thing about this record is that we wanted to take production value from old Motown records. And we were really, really, really adamant about getting a Motown drum sound.
"Boulevard Trash"
That was my name in one of our previous bands, Boulevard Trash; my 18-year-old also-known-as title.
We just wanted a pub rocker. We love "Heart Of The City" by Nick Lowe; we love Larry Wallace; and we were thinking of all these really cool footstompers. We didn't have a trashy, Dolls-y, just straight-ahead blast so we pulled that out of our ass.
We all sat and sat in a room together for the lyrics, and we were just blurting out shit as we went. We had a notepad on the table and Louie was like, "I don't do the dishes no more!" and then we're like, "I just throw them away!"
It was like one of those really fun group efforts that I love about our history — we’re equally having as much fun not trying as we are trying very hard to be a band, and that was one of those moments. ["Boulevard Trash" is] a perfect representation — there was no stress about it. We wrote it in an afternoon.
"Jailbird"
That one was one of the songs that I lured Adam back to moving to Portland. I remember holding the phone up to the guitar and playing the opening line, and then he went, "Okay, all right. I'll figure something out." So I have really fond memories about that.
That was a song that stumped me. I had this cool idea for what I called "the king’s opening." So it was the D and the C and then the slide in — I was really obsessed with the Kinks at that point. So I was thinking of "Tired Of Waiting For You" and using that as a template.
We never played it when Louie was in the band, because it was hard and we've never really finished it. Louie was like, "Why don't you play that song? That song is incredible, we should finish it."
[Louie] brought this new perspective to it that none of us even really thought about. It was another one of those songs that we sat in our room with Adam and Louie and we just went through it and we just finished it. I remember doing the 12 string and doubling up and then layering it and then I remember I did in one take.
That was really fun, because I got to really arrange a lot of parts compositionally that I never got to do. That was outside of punk and power pop; it was like, This has a lot going on. And it was the first time I got to really compose an actual ballad.
"Still Crazy"
I wrote that song while I was still in high school [and] another song that I played for Adam over the phone when he was gone. He thought I said "Steel Crazy."
He just hated that song and just never wanted to play. One day I wrote it down on a setlist, and he looked at it, and he was like, oh, oh, okay. He thought about it for a while and he's like, "Do you mind if I have some ideas for lyrics?" And then we finished that together. And then Jeremy was in the room, so he contributed with "I'm not a monkey in a zoo."
I was like, let's really push how much we can kind of get away with lyrics. We blatantly stole Ramones lyrics: "Gotta knife, I've got an axe/ I chop you up so you better relax"— that is 100 percent the Ramones. the fact that we did that and got away with it. That was a very funny moment for me where I was like… we can just kind of do what we want. It's really an awakening moment.
"Busy Signals"
"Busy Signals" was on [2006 compilation album] Shattered. I did not like that version of it. That record was done without me knowing anything about it; I wasn't consulted or talked to or asked if it was okay. It just came out. I was kind of not ready to have that out. What I thought was my decision ultimately wasn't my decision.
I would have really liked to be a part of that record and have a say. "Busy Signals" was part of the sessions of Guitar Romantic [but on Shattered] it sounded like something completely different, like it was from a different mastering or different session all together.
[For this album] I was like, let's do this properly. I found Louie’s backups that were buried and I brought those up. We had this boss Digital Delay pedal that was what was used all Guitar Romantic and I asked Pat if he still had it. We just ran it through and patched it in. We brought [Louis] up and then gave him a little shine …and just remixed it and kind of made it fit back into the original mold of Guitar Romantic.
"I'm A Pretender" (King Louie Mix)
It's the same exact mix, same exact thing we just put Louie’s organ up. The new remix of this was presented as something Louie did himself — which I wish so much that that were true — fortunately, that's not true. Because Louie's passing ultimately was the final nail that drove me to do all this, to move it to a new label to get it away from me personally to just be hands off with it.
I forgot that he played on this song, and we just took him down, because it made the song convoluted. We didn't have Pro Tools; we didn't have automation and we couldn't set a balance that made sense until now. So we got to give him a little shine there. He was mad about that one…he took it home with him and that hurt his feelings. This is my here you go, pal.
"So Bored"
We called [the demos with original bassist Jim Evans] the Quaalude mixes because they were so slow, and clean. And then we brought Matt in and it changed the whole sound of the record. We just sped right up and got right to it. I credited him always with the tempo getting faster.
The Quaalude mix of "So Bored" is on Shattered, but not the actual Guitar Romantic sessions. [The session on the reissue] has a brand new part that I forgot we even did in the studio, a guitar line. So even to me, it was new, and I like hearing it for the first time.