Luke Preece lives in the heart of the English Midlands, but his heart and soul scream international metal mayhem.


CHILDHOOD PASSIONS & EARLY CREATIVITY

I was drawing from a very young age. I remember my mum telling me a story: when I was at primary school, we did some art thing at school and I drew a picture of, I think it was a guy floating in space or something like that, like an astronaut. And the teacher pulled my mum aside at the end of school and said, “Your son has a talent,” and this was when I was about eight years old or something like that.

I enjoyed comic books as a kid, 2000 AD Comics in particular, and I enjoyed film too. I was into a lot of sci-fi films like Star Wars, and then kids’ TV shows. Obviously, I was into music as well, listened to a lot of metal music growing up. I was 10 or 11 years old was when I started picking up a guitar, and I was getting into drawing as well, copying my favorite album covers, or copying pictures out of comic books, all that sort of stuff. I can specifically remember going through the …And Justice for All inlay and doing a picture of the Justice hammer with the four faces. I remember copying some of the Pushead stuff when I was a kid, and a lot of skateboard art as well, so Jim Phillips stuff, the screaming hand from Santa Cruz.



MUM SUITED BONHAM PERFECTLY

My mum’s a tailor; she used to make suits and things like that. She and my uncle made John Bonham’s suits in the ’70s, which I always thought was quite a cool family story, because John Bonham was local to where a lot of my family are from (Redditch). I grew up just outside in a small village on the edge of Worcestershire (Cookhill), but I attended the same high school that Bonham went to also. In fact, my friend lives in John Bonham’s birthplace, which is kind of mad. It’s got a plaque on the front of the house! As a kid I didn’t really think anything of it… I’ve got this picture of my uncle with John; it’s a picture of Bonham being measured for his suit. John’s just stood there with his cigarette in his hand in his brand-new suit looking effortlessly cool. And he was always bringing the suits back to the shop with cigarette holes in. My uncle had this big stack of suits that were always in for repair and I don’t know what happened to them.

FROM COLLEGE TO 2000 AD

I went to art college in Birmingham, and I did a foundation in art at Bournville. I just wasn’t enjoying it and felt motivated to get a job so I could start making money. I just felt I wasn’t jelling with the art course I was on. A job came up somewhere for a junior position as a graphic designer, and I dropped out of college, went straight into this job as a junior. It was the best thing I could’ve done. I started at the bottom and just learnt from other people working there. They would teach me bits of art software, very early versions of Photoshop. After that, I worked at 2000 AD for nine years as a graphic designer thanks to an art friend of mine that I’ve known since I was about nine years old. We’d been buddies all through school, we were both into very similar things, and we’d always draw and geek out together when we were kids. We even both dropped out of art college around the same time. His name is Simon Parr, but everyone calls him Pye Parr. He was already working there, I’d been made redundant from my current job, and next thing I was driving to Oxford [where 2000 AD is based], chatted with the guy who runs the company, and got the job there and then. What a great experience to work at the comic I loved as a kid.



BREAKING INTO PRINT WORLD

I worked with a gallery in Los Angeles called Hero Complex Gallery. An art friend who’d done work with the gallery suggested I try them. I got in touch, they gave me a go, and that was it. I did some other gig posters as well with a small outfit called Garageland, again in the US, and this was all around 2014. I went with Hero Complex to the New York Comicon, they had a stand there selling prints. So I met up with other artists who were all just names before, so it was good to do that and it was a bit of a confidence boost.

The year that I went, Santa Cruz Skateboards were there. And as I’ve always been a fan of a lot of the art that came out of Santa Cruz back in the ’80s, I just went over and said, “I love Santa Cruz Skateboards,” and got chatting with those guys and one of the art directors - Cody Mellick (a.k.a. Pitchgrim). He was kind enough to offer me some work with Santa Cruz. So, I did some illustration for some apparel and skateboards – which was amazing! He's a good guy and we continue to work together.

PUSHEAD REMAINS HIS SKULLFATHER

He is the master of drawing skulls. I’ve studied his work for many years, and I've noticed a lot of other artists who work in the metal/punk realm take inspiration from his work. There’re many things that influence me, but those t-shirts and those images that I had as a kid always seep through. When I was going into doing the “Sad But True” artwork, it was hard not to think of his stuff, because throughout the Black Album era, you look at all the artwork from the t-shirts and it’s all Pushead. I was trying to think of a way doing the art so it didn’t come across as being something that had been done before. It was really hard.



SAD BUT TRUE THROUGH THE EYES AND HANDS OF PREECE

I got the email from Probity [the UK/EU Metallica Shop] asking if I wanted to do one of these images for The Black Album. And of course I was like, “Hell, yes I want to do one of these images!” Because for me, The Black Album as a whole was a big thing growing up, it’s one of my favorite Metallica albums. In a way it sort of shaped who I am a little bit, because I was 11 years old when this album came out, it introduced me to metal. I can remember being at a friend’s house, watching A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica, watching those VHS tapes over and over again and just thinking Metallica were the coolest fucking band in the world. And I wanted to be James Hetfield!

So, I went through the lyrics, looking at the meaning of this song, and so many people think it means so many different things. For example, I think some people think it’s about depression or something related to depression, the split personality thing which is, I think, what Pushead did with his artwork. He kinda gave the song a whole new meaning in a way, and I think James Hetfield has been quoted as saying he never looked at it like that before, but he’d been given a whole other meaning. So I was looking at all that stuff and trying to do something that’s not those things because I don’t want it to be a rehash of what’s been done before.

So for me, there were three things in lyrics that stood out, and “You’re my mask” was one of them; that’s what the goat’s head is. That’s also a female figure, I don’t know exactly why, but to me it’s a female figure and she’s a scapegoat, which is what the bell around her neck represents, the whole “goat with the bell” thing. “Do my dirty work, scapegoat.” The arrows in her back signifies she’s been betrayed. “They, They Betray...” The final thing, and it’s just like a little thing really, the way I drew the Metallica logo, I wanted it to feel like it was made from sand as another homage to themes of the album.



PREECE IS AN AXEMEISTER

I took guitar lessons for five years, and all I was learning was old Metallica stuff, [Judas] Priest, Black Sabbath and Megadeth... I wanted to master “how Kirk plays the solo in that song.” And this was back in the day where you didn’t have YouTube and stuff, you had to like get a VHS and keep pausing and rewinding to see where his fingers were on the fret board. Then getting my guitar teacher to help me learn it, and buy the tab books, and then the tab books would be wrong! I was obsessed. I just wanted to get home from school, get my guitar out, and just start shredding. My mum would allow me to make as much noise as I wanted in my bedroom. I loved the “Seek and Destroy” riff, the main riff in “Blackened” is great, the opening riff in “Battery” too, which is really hard to play as well. I was in a band called Calling All Cars back in early 2000s, and we played up and down the country, but we broke up in the end as that's just the way things worked out.

OH, AND P.S.

Yes, I do sometimes think I’m just getting away with it drawing pictures all day, that I need to get a normal, “proper” job.

To learn more about Luke Preece and his many projects, including No Music on a Dead Planet, Gears of War, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 and Santa Cruz Skateboards, visit LukePreece.com.