‘When I’m recording I can find a sweet spot on any guitar, but live it’s still the Squier and nothing else. Man, that guitar knows all the songs by now and it can play ‘em without thinking - which is what I need ‘cos I got to worry about other things when I’m on stage.’

‘The Squier’ is Chuck’s battered Japanese Telecaster. It cost him $150, and it’s been a mainstay of his career since early Green On Red days. He’s fitted Seymour Duncan Vintage Telepickups and the sixth tuner flips between E and low D. For amps, Chucks a vintage tube fanatic. His main squeeze is a blackface Fender Delexe Reverb with a single 12” EV speaker, though he’ll also use a Princeton and, for its metronomic tremolo, a Musicman also, on Feast Of Hearts, producer Steve Berlin brought on other toys for Chuck to get to grips with.

‘He had bazoukis with lipstick pickups, electric mandolins, baritone guitars, things like that. As a producer he’ll want to record a lot of things for effect and he does that by using a lot of effects - big crates of boxes. But I just thought music came outta your fingers y’know? But, if you can keep yourself amused with that stuff, he’ll reel it out for you.

‘A good example of what we did is Battered And Bruised, which was cut with a baritone 6-string bass capo’d at the 5th fret through a phase shifter which is his sort of thing. I was just going, “Oh yeah Steve, i’m into a lot of new groups too man, I like the Cure, Modern English…” Of course, Berlin loved it ...’