Page Hamilton gets credit, and deservedly so, for expanding the boundaries of rock guitar through his work with Helmet, the pioneering avant-metal group he founded and continues to lead. But that achievement merely scratches the surface of what this modern-day Renaissance man has achieved, and what he has yet to achieve, by virtue of a rich and ever-expanding musical palate that distinguishes Hamilton from his headbanger peers.

“I have this weird assortment of skills,” Hamilton acknowledges during a freewheeling conversation in which he references Ellington, Coltrane, Ravel, Schubert, Copland, Van Gogh, Howard Roberts and Wire, among others - not showing off but drawing quite naturally on his broad-based grounding in the arts. “I always try to make it about music, as opposed to the genre or style. Maybe I should focus on one thing, but I love all of it.” And Hamilton makes deft use of all of it in his vital, virtually indefinable music.

A musician of remarkable range and interests - or, more precisely, passions -Hamilton has worked with some of the leading contemporary film composers as well as writing his own film scores, producing records for other artists and operating as a hired gun in the service of a diverse assortment of writer/artists including David Bowie, Joe Henry and Dr. Dre, while continuing to push the envelope with ever-shifting lineups of Helmet. Rather than resting on his laurels, he continues to expand his considerable musical knowledge by immersing himself in the study of orchestration with Patrick Kirst at USC.

Let’s now pause momentarily for the requisite, “Who knew?” 

“Jazz is my first love, along with rock,” he says. “But through the process of doing a number of movies with Elliot Goldenthal, I’ve become fascinated with the colors of the orchestra. Elliot turned me on to the orchestra in a different way from school, where you’re studying sonata form, Beethoven and things like that. It’s like, ‘Wow, there are a hundred musicians playing together in this room - it’s so much heavier than heavy metal.’”

Hamilton is no stranger to scholarly pursuits, having majored in jazz and classical performance at the University of Oregon before getting his master’s degree in jazz guitar from the Manhattan School of Music in 1987, whereupon he took a hard left turn toward the downtown avant-garde scene, playing with hypermodernist ensembles Band of Susans and Glenn Branca’s Guitar Symphony - experiences that sparked a personal epiphany and, in relatively short order, a revolution that proceeded to spread throughout the rock landscape.

“I was walking home one night, and I started hearing this music in my head,” Hamilton recalls of the fateful moment. “I sat down with my guitar at 4 in the morning and it started coming out. I had to retune the instrument to be able to achieve these sounds that were coming to me, and that opened a whole new world, freeing me from those intellectual/technical guitar trappings. That was exactly what my teachers had always encouraged me to do: develop my own voicings on the instrument rather than learning to play by mimicking someone else. So I taught myself this whole new vocabulary, and it led me to Helmet.”

While hard-rockers were having their minds blown by Hamilton’s new vocabulary as defined by Helmet’s records and live performances - a radical reimagining of the uses of tunings, distortion, feedback and effects (what he refers to as “the process of hearing in colors”), earning Helmet a gold album and a Grammy nomination for 1992’s Meantime, Hamilton continued to push himself toward new challenges. His next breakthrough occurred in 1995, even as Helmet was reaching new heights of popularity and critical acclaim, when he started working with Goldenthal on the score of Michael Mann’s Heat, forming a fruitful relationship with the renowned film composer that continues to pay dividends to both artists

The learning curve was steep and intensive, as Goldenthal (whom Hamilton describes as the most skilled musician he’s ever worked with) introduced him to the heady realm of composing to narrative. Four years later, having absorbed this vocabulary, Hamilton scored his first film, the independent production Chicago Cab. These early experiences led to a steady stream of film work (including Feeling Minnesota, In Dreams, Catwoman, Titus, Saw and the upcoming Across the Universe), as Goldenthal enthusiastically recommended Hamilton to his peers. At the same time, he added the role of outside record producer to his dossier, helming projects for Bullets & Octane, Gavin Rossdale, Totimoshi, Classic Case and others. Thus, for the last decade, the guitarist/composer/ producer/hired gun has nimbly straddled several overlapping worlds, fueled by a voracious appetite for knowledge and new challenges.

“I’ve always tried to maintain a standard of working on projects that I’m genuinely interested in and excited about, rather than just working for the sake of working, and I’ve been extremely lucky in that regard,” says Hamilton. “I view the restrictions that exist in film work and record production, where you’re sharing a vision with someone else, as a positive thing. It only makes you better as a musician, because you’re trying to solve a musical problem. It’s not about writing the perfect chord progression, it’s about coming up with something that captures a particular mood or represents a specific character in a scene. The music is not the focus of attention; it’s there to bring the images on the screen to life. That’s a really good lesson for a musician to learn, because we can so easily get lost in the world of technique. The music should come first; the technique might help you improve as a musician, and develop your ear so that, when the time comes to create a specific mood, you have more to draw from, whether a cue calls for aggressive metal music or oboes playing weird dissonances.

Listening to Hamilton talk, his conversation brimming with insights and enthusiasm, you can’t help but feel this heady dude is just beginning to reveal what he’s capable of as an artist. “Every intelligent musician has a lust for knowledge,” he says, “and in my case, I want to continue to develop new creative relationships so that I have other outlets for myself. Whether they’re music supervisors, movie producers or directors or bands, these relationships are collaborations, and I’ve been the king of my castle with Helmet for all these years, which is great, but I also need other challenges. And to get into situations where I can contribute to somebody else’s vision really interests me, because the musical possibilities are limitless. There are so many things I want to do.

Think you’ve got a project that will pique the interest of this up-and-comer? Then step right up—the line forms on the left.

As an accomplished and learned musician, producer and composer Page is an eloquent personality who draws on a wealth of knowledge bridging all spectrums of music. He is the type of person who can prove to be an enlightening resource figure to any serious musician no matter what genre they pursue or level of their expertise. Page is available to deliver conference keynote addresses, lectures, panel discussions, etc.