Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka has called out the “tunnel vision in contemporary rock records”.
For his side project Mirador, Kiszka and his bandmates revisited old traditions and genres and he feels modern artists would benefit from looking back and experimenting more.
He told MetalTalk: “There’s so much tunnel vision in contemporary rock records.
“Some of the philosophy in what rock ‘n’ roll could or should be for our generation. We were contemplating the future of rock ‘n’ roll, but what we did was the complete opposite: looking back, perhaps even further back, through the threads of influence that were the lineage of rock ‘n’ roll’s invention.”
Speaking of their self-titled debut album, he said: “The amount of evolution these songs have taken is crazy.
“The majority of the record was written on two acoustic guitars in an old Victorian house in East Nashville.”
He added of the extensive creative process: “We played versions of the songs before recording them, then recorded them, and they changed again. Then we constructed the headlining set, and they changed for the fourth time – and then they change every night. It’s a shape-shifting thing as we go along.”
Meanwhile, Kiszka previously insisted Greta Van Fleet has evolved beyond Led Zeppelin comparisons.
The shredder has studied all the guitar gods, including Zeppelin’s very own Jimmy Page, and although there is no denying the band has been influenced by the Whole Lottta Love legends, with their most recent LP, 2023’s Starcatcher, they felt they’d arrived at their signature sound.
Speaking to Guitarist magazine, he said of religiously studying Page’s guitar playing: “There’s been a handful of guitar players I’ve done that with. [Eric] Clapton was one. [Jimi [Hendrix], from the American side. It gets into philosophy at some point.
It was like living and breathing a type of guitar player at any given time. Page was one of those guys where if I was playing a Zeppelin track, I would walk through exactly what his thought process was when he was putting that song together. I could think exactly like him, or Hendrix, or whoever. Because if you spend enough time with that stuff, it’s like a psychological character study, if you will.”
Asked if he’s ever met his idol, he replied: “I haven’t. I’ve been in close proximity. We were staying in the same hotel in LA and missed each other in the lobby by a couple of minutes. Our manager was like, You know who just walked through here? Jimmy Page?’ So, close but not quite.”
Asked if they’d put an end to the comparisons with the album, he explained: “I think, if you take a common denominator control group, and you ask them, What is rock ‘n’ roll to you?’, then Zeppelin and those groups that laid the foundation are the baseline. So our [early] approach was, We’re playing rock ‘n’ roll music.’ It’s what we grew up with. It’s what we listen to. It’s driven deeply into our DNA. And initially, yeah, the reaction was like, ‘This sounds a bit like Zeppelin?’ You’d get that reference a lot. I’m sure every rock ‘n’ roll band gets that reference a lot. But time goes on, you get a bit older, there’s an evolution in what you’re doing, and with ‘Starcatcher’ it definitely sounds like Greta Van Fleet, no doubt about that.”
