{"id":362134,"date":"2025-08-21T13:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T13:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/362134\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T13:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T13:27:10","slug":"deftones-singer-chino-moreno-ive-got-hundreds-of-drawings-of-myself-in-my-house-deftones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/362134\/","title":{"rendered":"Deftones singer Chino Moreno: \u2018I\u2019ve got hundreds of drawings of myself in my house\u2019 | Deftones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you remember what your expectations were on the eve of [<\/strong>Deftones\u2019 1995 debut] Adrenaline<\/strong> being released? <\/strong>JonnyT
I was very excited that we were about to put out a real record, on a real record label. I was a little scared as well \u2013 we were this new band, putting ourselves out there. The label sent us physical copies of Adrenaline when it came out \u2013 I think we even got cassettes back then. It was so exciting to open it up and have something tangible to hold. But we had no sense of the longevity it would enjoy. I didn\u2019t anticipate people would still be listening to it, or even that we\u2019d still be a band this many years later. We still have nerves, obviously, whenever we release something. But we also have a sense of confidence, especially with this new record<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

D<\/strong>o you find your creativity burns brightest in hardship<\/strong>?<\/strong> Or can peace be just as potent?<\/strong> shenead
There\u2019s something to be said for both, and our music has that dichotomy built into its DNA \u2013 a lot of our songs have that yin and yang within them. There\u2019s a lot more peace than chaos in our lives at the moment, and I\u2019m happy it\u2019s that way. A lot of our earlier records were made when life was more crazy, and we were able to capture that. But with this record, there\u2019s some of that beauty that comes with this invigorated time we\u2019re living in now. But it\u2019s always good to be able to yell and scream sometimes, right? The pandemic was really difficult for everybody, but as someone who was spoilt by having this outlet my whole adult life, to be able to tour and play shows and express myself \u2026 I really came to a dead stop during Covid. It really affected me. Making music \u2013 to be able to express emotions, good and bad \u2013 has definitely been a gift.<\/p>\n

Deftones in 1996, (from left) bassist Chi Cheng, singer Chino Moreno, turntablist Frank Delgado, drummer Abe Cunningham and guitarist Stephen Carpenter. Photograph: Gie Knaeps\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

I work at HMV in a small town and we sell at least five copies of 1997\u2019s <\/strong>Around <\/strong>the Fur<\/strong> to teenagers every week \u2013 way more than <\/strong>Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Rumours or Nirvana\u2019s Nevermind. To what do you ascribe its longevity?<\/strong> DameHedwig
I would hope it\u2019s because we made some good records that have been able to transcend time, and that people of all ages find something within them they connect with. It\u2019s probably no different from when I was a kid discovering groups like Led Zeppelin. And I\u2019m not saying that we\u2019re as great as them, but those bands were around for many years before I discovered them. I was able to connect with what they created, and it\u2019s a lovely thing. We\u2019ve always made a constant decision to not date ourselves with the music we make. We were always afraid of being lumped-in with the nu metal groups that came up at the same time we did. Not that we felt we were in another league; we just wanted to have our own identity. So we would make certain creative decisions to try not to fall too deep into any category.<\/p>\n

Deftones\u2019 <\/strong>Covers compilation shows a wide range of influences, including a number of <\/strong>British artists from the 1980s <\/strong>such as Duran Duran, <\/strong>the Cure, <\/strong>the Smiths<\/strong> and Sade<\/strong>. How much of an influence <\/strong>were they on your music? <\/strong>JimmyD
It\u2019s the first music that I fell in love with, and it seemed very exotic to me as a sixth-grader. When you\u2019re watching videos by Duran Duran, and they\u2019re cruising on yachts in Sri Lanka, it just seemed like this music from far away. It was the 80s, and this stuff was pop music, but a lot of my friends were listening to Michael Jackson and stuff like that. And I loved that as well, but this British music was different. I felt very \u2026 selective, that I had this music that nobody else knew about. And there\u2019s things there that I\u2019ve carried over to Deftones<\/a>. We\u2019re still a hard rock\/metal group, but I\u2019ve snuck some of those influences in. And it\u2019s not shoehorned; it\u2019s very natural, because I genuinely have an affinity with this music.<\/p>\n

Moreno at Lollapalooza in Chicago, 2024. Photograph: Josh Brasted\/FilmMagic<\/p>\n

It seems your recent albums have had deeper, almost occult themes and symbolism. Is this intentional<\/strong>, or <\/strong>just something unconscious coming out through your art<\/strong>?<\/strong> Phronesis
It\u2019s unconscious. I\u2019ve always been intrigued by things we don\u2019t understand. It\u2019s not me buying into any of these things at all \u2013 it\u2019s just being curious about that which I don\u2019t understand. I don\u2019t do it for shock value. When I was a kid, my grandmother would go to church, and all of us kids would go to the kids\u2019 church group, where they gave us an illustrated book of stories from the Bible. It had the scariest illustrations. I would stare for hours at these illustrations of, like, King Solomon holding up a baby by its feet. And then I\u2019d read the story, these two people fighting over who the baby belonged to, and Solomon chopping it in half. It boggles me to this day, that it would be something a kid might read. But I\u2019ve always had a curiosity about stuff like that.<\/p>\n

What music did you listen to when you were 22? <\/strong>Jlimbless
I was probably touring and listening to a lot of early electronic stuff and trip-hop. I was really into Portishead, Unkle, DJ Shadow and Tricky. I still love that music. It was marrying a lot of things that I love: sample-driven music, drum-forward music. It had a lot of the elements of hip-hop, but slowed down, and there was a lot of romantic imagery within it.<\/p>\n

I listen to a lot of the songs from <\/strong>Eros [Deftones\u2019 unfinished sixth album<\/strong>, abandoned after bassist Chi Cheng was left comatose after a car <\/strong>crash<\/strong> in 2008; he died of complications from the <\/strong>accident <\/strong>in 2013<\/strong>] floating around the internet \u2013 Dallas especially. Do you think that record will ever see the light of day? <\/strong>weavermachine
We\u2019re always asked about Eros. It will most likely never see the light of day. That would involve going back to that period and resurrecting unfinished things, and somehow bringing them to completion. Dallas is the only song that was anywhere near finished. This new album started with ideas we\u2019d been working on alone, through the pandemic. And when we got together to actually start making the record, none of us wanted to look back at those ideas from the pandemic \u2013 we wanted to capture the moment we\u2019re in today. So going back to try to capture what was happening back during Eros, and finishing those ideas, doesn\u2019t really make sense.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Usually for me, it\u2019s the heavier, the better<\/strong> \u2013 but then I heard Sextape [from 2010\u2019s Diamond Eyes], which I love (and its mellower parts, especially). <\/strong>What inspired the lyrics<\/strong>, and how did it become the banger it is? <\/strong>danozism
I don\u2019t have any recollection of writing the words. A lot of our songs are written very abstract, to paint a picture of a feeling. There\u2019s three notes that go through the whole of Sextape, and they\u2019re very lush and beautiful \u2013 they take that side of us to the extreme. There\u2019s beauty there, in the sonics of it. Lyrically, I just ran with that emotion.<\/p>\n

How do you separate your different creative modes <\/strong>between<\/strong> Deftones and your other projects? <\/strong>Mdrudolph
I don\u2019t. Each is its own thing, but I don\u2019t approach them in any different way. I react how Chino would react. What I mean is, there\u2019s no such thing as \u201cChino from Deftones\u201d and \u201cChino from Crosses\u201d and \u201cChino from Team Sleep\u201d. There\u2019s just one Chino. And I just react to what\u2019s presented to me, musically, as myself. [A pause] I don\u2019t often refer to myself in the third person. Actually, I feel like that was the first time. And I felt really weird doing that!<\/p>\n

Deftones in 2025. Photograph: PR<\/p>\n

Your cover of the Sade song No Ordinary Love<\/a> is just otherworldly. Did she ever get to listen to it or give any feedback? <\/strong>Lazygunn
That was sacred ground because, as an artist, Sade\u2019s unique. Even when we were recording it, it felt like a very self-indulgent thing to be doing. We weren\u2019t intending for it to come out. The demo was recorded in my garage; we really just made it for ourselves. The fact that it ever saw the light of day at all was scary, to be honest. If you\u2019d asked me, \u201cWould you want to cover a Sade song, and other people are going to hear it, including possibly Sade?\u201d, I would never have done it. I\u2019m glad people do like it. I\u2019m not sure that she\u2019s ever heard it.<\/p>\n

If you could go back in time and offer advice to your younger self, what would you tell him? <\/strong>Zack_S917
There\u2019s a lot of life lessons that I had to learn the hard way, and they created the person that stands here today. I don\u2019t have many huge regrets in life, because it all shaped who I\u2019ve become. That said, it might be nice to go back to a few moments and tap myself on the shoulder and say, \u201cNo \u2013 go that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

You must get a <\/strong>ton<\/strong> of love from fans, and I imagine the <\/strong>gifts<\/strong> can get pretty creative. What\u2019s one of the sweetest or coolest <\/strong>things<\/strong> you\u2019ve received from a fan? <\/strong>StarrXperience
People often give me drawings of myself. I always wonder what they assume I will do with them. I don\u2019t even like to look at photos of myself. They\u2019re all different types of drawings \u2013 there\u2019s cartoony ones, pen and ink ones. And I think it must bring the artist some kind of joy, that I\u2019m holding on to a piece of art they created. \u201cYou shared your art with me \u2013 I want to share my art with you.\u201d I do appreciate it. But because of that, I have stacks and stacks, hundreds of drawings of myself in my house.<\/p>\n

Private Music is released 22 August on Reprise\/Warner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can you remember what your expectations were on the eve of [Deftones\u2019 1995 debut] Adrenaline being released? JonnyTI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-362134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115066991062029136","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}