There are times when video games make strange bedfellows, and this is certainly one of them. For the latest in the Jak & Daxter series, the cartoonish racing game Jak X: Combat Racing, developer Naughty Dog hired Billy Howerdel of the hard rock band A Perfect Circle to do the music. Which isn't as weird as Mot¿rhead doing a song for the Spongebob Squarepants movie (which they did), but even Billy thinks it's a little odd, as we found out when we talked to him about this new project.



GameSpy: How did you wind up writing music for Jak X?
Billy Howerdel: The guys from Naughty Dog were looking for bands to do music for the game, and A Perfect Circle's name came up, so they contacted my manager who asked me if I wanted to do it. At first I was a little hesitant because I'm working on a new album -- I don't know if you'd call it a solo album or a new band -- and doing this would push that back a while, but it's seemed interesting, something I'd always considered doing, so I put a couple months aside and took it on.
GameSpy: Some might think that it's a bit odd that a guy from a hard rock band is doing music for what's essentially a kid's game. Do you?
Billy Howerdel: Yeah, I was surprised at first, too. I even asked them why they came to me, and they said they like the other-worldly-ness of A Perfect Circle's music. But they also told me that while it was a game for kids, they wanted it to grow up a bit. Then again, it isn't that much of a stretch, it's still rock music.
GameSpy: Well, it's not like A Perfect Circle do all sorts of obscene satanic songs. And it's not like this game is only for little kids, it has more of an all-ages appeal.
Billy Howerdel: Right. It's not a black metal band doing Mario Bros. But I look forward to the day when another video-game company asks me to do music for some dark, atmospheric thing. I think I could really dig into that.

GameSpy: How much music did you write?
Billy Howerdel: They originally wanted twenty songs, all instrumentals, but there was no way I was going to be able to write twenty songs, nor would I want to. So I can up with the idea of doing four or five songs, and then having fifteen remixes done of those songs. So I farmed the stuff out to some people I trust like Danny Lohner [formerly of nine inch nails], who did a bunch of them. But he eventually hit a brick wall, so he started to write his own music, which the guys at Naughty Dog were jazzed about. I also had some done by Eric Bass, who is a musician friend of my best friend, and Dean Menta, who was one of the guitar players of Faith No More.
GameSpy: Did you start from scratch or did you use any music you had lying around?
Billy Howerdel: Totally from scratch. The music had to be driving music, uptempo, which is totally not my M.O. What you've heard from A Perfect Circle is what comes out naturally, and it's not up-tempo and it's not going to have that constant energy. But I looked at this as an exercise for me to step outside of where I usually go. And I wanted the new project that I'm working on -- I wish I had a name for it -- to be more up-tempo as well.
GameSpy: Were there any songs you wrote for Jak X that turned out so good that you kept them for yourself instead?
Billy Howerdel: There were. I was working on my own album at the same time, so I did sometimes have to make the decision: is this song going to the game or is it going to me? I also protected myself because I was worried about what would happen if I wrote what I thought was the best song of my career, but I gave it up to the game. So we worked it an arrangement that we -- me, Naughty Dog, and Sony [who are publishing Jak X] -- were all happy with, which also made me feel more at ease about the whole project.