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"I love that song, it's one of my favourite Clutch songs ever," says Tim Sult, guitarist with American hard rock band Clutch, of the No 24 riff in TG's reader-voted 50 Greatest Modern Riffs poll. The poll popularity of '50,000 Unstoppable Watts' is testament to the discernment of TG readers and Tim's masterful, finely honed riff-craft. Let's find out some more…
Interview: David West

Strange cousins and spacegrass

TG: How did you come up with the chorus riff to '50,000 Unstoppable Watts'?

"Honestly, it was really simple. I just started playing it. There was absolutely no thought process whatsoever. The pre-chorus was actually a part that I'd worked on for a long time. Then our bass player Dan [Maines] threw in that tail riff at the end of the pre-chorus and that brought everything together. As far as the chorus riff goes, it was 100 per cent spur of the moment while we were jamming in our drummer JP's [Jean Paul Gaster] basement and the rest of the song fell into place from there. All the parts flow, like a good rock song is supposed to."

TG: What are your top three Clutch riffs?

"That's a hard one. I know people like 'Spacegrass', which is a classic riff that our bass player came up with a long time ago, but I've heard that song so many times I could never say that's my favourite. So from the point of view of a fan, I'd say 'Spacegrass' and 'Big News I' are very memorable riffs because those songs are more sparse and repetitive than our recent material. The riffs are beaten into your head."

TG: Any riffs off your new album, 'Strange Cousins From The West'?

"There are some good riffs in 'Minotaur' on the new album. It's not set in the normal verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo arrangement, which is a breath of fresh air. 'Freakonomics' is another cool, catchy song from the new album, more in the vein of our older material. An old one that's fun to play is 'I Have The Body Of John Wilkes Booth'. I wrote a lot of those riffs back when I lived with my parents. I was probably trying to write something that sounds like Led Zeppelin. Those are my three favourites on this tour."

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