PS I Love You’s Guitar Debacle
Forgiveness isn’t easy, even when it comes to your best friend. That’s especially true when the press calls you a master of the fender telecaster, and said friend abandons your cherished instruments on a street corner.
That’s exactly what happened to Paul Saulnier, guitarist of Canadian garage rock duo PS I Love You (PSILY). Drummer Benjamin Nelson’s absent mindedness nearly put an end to their 2010 cross country tour, not to mention their friendship.
“I went to my girlfriend’s place, Ben was responsible for loading the gear,” Saulnier says over the phone from the band’s current residence in Kingston Ontario, in the lead up to PSILY’s August 26 Yugong Yishan gig. “The guitars got left outside for too long and were taken, it was f*cked up.”
“The day that happened was one of the worst days of my life,” Nelson says. “I had never felt so terrible. One of the hardest things I've ever had to do was call him and tell him what happened. I'm pretty sure Paul still hasn't completely forgiven me.”
Below the pair detail how they patched things up.
How did you both cope with the guitar theft?
Paul Saulnier: It was a sh*tty time. An instrument is like part of your soul. Like, I’ll watch Star Trek or X-Files for six or seven hours lots of days while playing my guitar the whole time.
That’s not a distraction?
PS: That’s my process for coming up with riffs. The most important thing for me is to keep constantly playing guitar, but sometimes it’s hard to just do that, so you need something else to distract half your mind. When it comes to those shows I pretty much know everything that’s going to happen, so then it’s just background nose.
Jamming to memorized Star Trek episodes. Ben are you equally geeky?
Benjamin Nelson: I am a little less nerdy. I am a total design and print nerd for sure—doing the screen print for all our merchandise as well as posters and t-shirts for other bands when we aren’t on tour. But Paul reads Peanuts and was into comics when he was a kid. I was never into that stuff.
PS: I’m like, entry level nerd (laughs). I have Star Trek toys, but I’m not a collector. I just have them as keepsakes because I’ve had them since I was 10 years old.
So if you aren’t equal geeks, then how did the two of you bond?
PS: My early solo shows were calamities. I played guitar and a Casio that was never loud enough. I knew Ben was a good drummer that was inspired by drum machines and Depeche Mode. He was a perfect replacement for the Casio. I’m glad we stuck together this long, and started writing songs together.
Ben, apparently you were an even better partner after the guitar debacle.
BN: Yeah, my friends and I put up posters around the neighbourhood where I left the guitars. And, luckily, they were returned a month later while we were on tour.
PS: It was like I was real person again when I got them back.
Were you still angry with Ben after that?
PS: It was a huge stumbling block between us then. But it was sort of hard to blame him because f*cked up sh*t happens all the time. And we’re both kind of forgetful dudes. I don’t really care about it anymore.
BN: He’s right, we’re both forgetful. In fact, to a degree, I am more careful and less forgetful than Paul in general. But I do keep track of our gear more now.
PS I Love You will perform at Yugong Yishan on Aug 26 at 9pm. RMB 120, RMB 100 (advance). For more information visit Yugongyishan.com.
Photo:Vanessa Heins
