Joe Barresi has produced, engineered and mixed some of the most important hard rock, metal and punk bands out there. He tells Headliner how he got the nickname ‘Evil,’ and how working with bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Tool has been a musical education.
Joe Barresi is renowned for working with the heaviest of heavy metal bands, including Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Avenged Sevenfold and Slipknot. His inspiration? The Partridge Family.
“I don't think they'd ever play the same stage together,” he laughs, speaking to Headliner from his home in Valley Village, California, where he’s hanging out with his dog. Also known by his nickname ‘Evil’ – although he says I can just call him Joe – he was given the name while working on a Judas Priest record.
“I used to be Smiling Joe but now I'm Evil Joe. It actually came from Scott Travis, who was in Racer X before Judas Priest. The guys in Racer X were friends with a guy who did these prank phone calls, and one of his characters was Evil Joe. Racer X did a song called Evil Joe and they put the actual prank phone call on one of their albums, and I worked on a Raging Speedhorn record and they put it on one of their records. Then Tool opened up Coachella and played the prank phone call in front of 60,000 people. It was just kind of funny, and since I was Joe, I became Evil Joe.”
Learning to play the guitar when he was seven, Barresi went on to play in local bands in and around his home. He’d always liked music, and fondly remembers his grandmother’s AM radio, placed proudly on the top of her mantlepiece.
“I started watching The Partridge Family, and I just thought it was kind of cool – it was a very family oriented show,” he recalls. “There is a point in your life when you try to figure out what you are going to do, so I played in bands to try to get better. At some point, it became almost therapeutic in a way, but also, I could focus. I would practice up to 10 hours a day just trying to get better and learning stuff – you never know what it's gonna lead to.”
Despite the intense guitar-practicing sessions, things changed for Barresi when he helped a friend take some gear into a studio, which he realised was “way cooler” than actually being in a band.
“I didn't have to deal with flaky musicians and singers and all the drama that goes with being in a band anymore! It was actually kind of cool just to be creative in a different way, but still involving music.”