James Iha
James Iha
James Yoshinobu Ihais an American rock musician. He is best known as former guitarist and co-founder of the alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins and for his eclectic musical projects of recent years, most notably being a permanent fixture of A Perfect Circle. He was most recently a member of Tinted Windows, a 1960s/1970s inspired group with members of Cheap Trick, Fountains of Wayne, and Hanson...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth26 March 1968
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
I'm happy doing different things. Being in a band is great, but being in a band can be difficult sometimes.
I like a lot of different kinds of music. I like strong projects, big music.
I like the challenges of doing different things. It keeps things fresh for me.
The music industry is not what it used to be. Being in a good band is great, and I've been lucky to be in great bands. I've done solo stuff, and that's been great. I also produce rock bands and I do co-writes, where I write with different singers in bands and songwriters.
Well, we didn't have our original drummer on our last record. And most of that album was not played as a band in the studio. It was mostly the world of computers and overdubs. There was very few things played live or worked out as a band.
You know, it's going to be a really long tour, and well, I guess I'll see what happens with A Perfect Circle, 'cause they do other projects too, and I don't know. I hope I can always do a lot of different things, do 'em well.
It's not like that often, I mean, I suppose out of a ratio of 10 fans maybe like 1 or 2 of 'em might be Asian, and maybe every second or third time they might bring up something that they're Asian and I'm Asian.
It's probably getting our old drummer back and actually playing as a band. And, I don't know, it sounds like what we do best right now.
My first job in NYC was playing a gig in the early nineties at CBGBs.
The band set up in January and just started rehearsing. If there was a song, we'd just rehearse it as a band, and it would get arranged as a band, and it got changed around a lot.
So there was something of a learning curve with doing your own thing and people seeing you outside of the band. I mean, people have never really heard my voice before - or heard a whole record of mine before. So it was a completely new experience.
Yeah, I'm sure there are stereotypes of Asian people.
We have a partnership deal with New Line Records, which is part of New Line Cinema, and... I worked on that.
Well, I always hope that I'm a role model.