How At the Drive-In used Steve Jones’ guitar on ‘300 Mhz’: “A cool piece of history”
The music of At the Drive-In always felt like a delicately controlled explosion, and as such, it was not fundamentally sustainable once the ingredient of international fame was added to the mix. The band famously broke up right at the beginning of their ascent in 2001, during the world tour, in support of their third album (and influential classic), Relationship of Command.
Reunions have since taken place, as well as an unexpected fourth LP, 2017’s In•ter a•li•a (sans founding member Jim Ward), but questions will always remain as to what road the band might have paved had it held the line in the early 2000s. Would they have provided a torchlight out of the darkness of nu-metal and emo, a worthy heir to the thinking man’s angry chair vacated by Rage Against the Machine? Maybe. Or perhaps they just would have had about the exact same impact as their primary spin-offs, Sparta and the Mars Volta.
In any case, because of the shooting-star nature of At the Drive-In’s mainstream notoriety (about six months passed between the release of Relationship of Command and their breakup), it’s easy to forget that they did toil away for a while in the 1990s, putting out a couple of full-length studio albums and five EPs. One of those EPs, which saw a considerable sales spike after the breakthrough of Relationship of Command, was 1999’s Vaya, released on Fearless Records. At the Drive-In were still an obscure Texas hardcore band when they recorded it, but that record does feature a little-known cameo appearance by one of the titans of punk rock, Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones himself.
Jones probably didn’t have a clue who At the Drive-In were in 1999. The guest appearance, uncredited, was actually by one of Steve Jones’ guitars, not the man himself. It’s a random factoid that doubles as a celebration of used guitar shops.
“I’m pretty stoked about it,” At the Drive-In guitarist Jim Ward admitted in a 1999 interview with the Los Angeles punk zine Flipside. “On the newest EP, one of the songs—I don’t know the name of it because I don’t even know the names of our songs—it’s dun unt, dun unt, dun unt—”
“300 Megahertz,” chimed in bandmate-lead singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala. “That one,” continued Ward. “Well, anyways, the guy that I work for at a guitar shop had bought Steve Jones’ guitar, so he brought it down and let me play it on one song. It’s going to be a cool little piece of history.”
According to Jim Ward, the guitar you hear on the Vaya track ‘300 Mhz’—an otherwise kind of forgettable deep cut—is, in fact, an axe once wielded by Steve Jones on, who knows, maybe ‘God Save the Queen’?!
Unfortunately, further details remain unclear regarding (a) who Ward’s friend at the record shop was, (b) how they managed to get their hands on Steve Jones’ guitar, and (c) whether it was a legitimate collector’s item or simply an instrument Jones briefly played during his sit-ins with the Insane Clown Posse (yes, that really happened). It’s also unknown if Jim Ward—following the success of Relationship of Command—ever returned to buy the guitar outright instead of just borrowing it. What we do know is that, pre-stardom, Ward appreciated the kind of opportunities a used guitar shop could still offer in the late 1990s.
“I know some small [guitar manufacturing] companies,” Ward explained in his chat with Flipside, “But they’re called boutique companies. What they do is cater to really rich people. There’s no DIY. It’s too complicated; it’s too hard. To create one guitar costs $1,000.”
Concluding, “So… the best thing in the world is just used guitar stores. That’s the shit. They’re cheap. They’re great. They have character. You don’t need a fancy new thing.”
