ULTIMATE GUITAR 5.27.07

Nine Inch Nails' White At Homme With Goon Moon

Goon Moon is the side-project of Chris Goss of Masters Of Reality and Queens Of The Stone Age fame and Jeordie White, currently with Nine Inch Nails and formerly Twiggy Ramirez in Marilyn Manson. The band is releasing its new album, Licker's Last Leg, on May 8. The disc features guest appearances by drummer Josh Freese and Queens Of The Stone Age mastermind Josh Homme.

In fact, Jeordie White said that Homme was instrumental in the formation of Goon Moon.

"Goon Moon started right when I split with Marilyn Manson. I was looking for people to collaborate with, and I was doing some work with Josh Homme from Queens Of The Stone Age. He introduced Chris and I. I was a big fan of Chris's and he was a big fan of the stuff I did with Marilyn Manson, and we just hit it off. We just started recording and made music together and just really gelled -- ate junk-food and had a good time."

White added that the good thing about Goon Moon is that it's impervious to trends and musical categorization.

"I really like working with Chris and I think he really likes working with me just because there's no sense of trying to be something we're not. There's no sense of trying to be cool or worrying about. 'Oh, what's cool at the time' or what... We just want to really express ourselves just how we want to at that moment, and explore different options musically, different styles, different stuff to do. It's like anything goes with this band. We're trying not to put a brand on it, and be a band that does this style of music or that style of music. We just try to be open to doing whatever we want, and just almost putting out songs you couldn't put out anywhere out. We just concentrate on saying what we want to say. It's good stuff."

Nine Inch Nails recently released "Year Zero," and Queens Of The Stone Age is readying a new album for release later this year. Reznor kept his eye on Ramirez, having championed Marilyn Manson before he and Manson had a falling out in the mid '90s. One off-beat song on Licker's Last Leg is a cover of the Bee Gees' "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You."