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Monte was interviewed recently and he talked about Adam. Here's the Adam parts.

A musician's path can take a wide array of varying courses, but the path Monte Pittman's musical career has taken is arguably more atypical than others. Metal outfit Prong has utilized his services upon two full-lengths, so in light of that, one would expect Pittman's other accomplishments to be in a similar vein. While all musicians usually enjoy material from different genres, the fact that a group like Prong shares a musician with the live bands of both pop superstar Madonna and American Idol finalist Adam Lambert seems unlikely in theory. However, it's true, and has been for quite some time.

On March 18th at 21:00 GMT, Hit The Lights' Robert Gray telephoned Monte Pittman to discuss his time as a member of Madonna's and Adam Lambert's respective live groups.

You initially appeared with Madonna on the 'Late Show with David Letterman', performing the song "Don't Tell Me", and this led to you joining her band.

That was the first time I played with her. I probably knew about that appearance two days before, and she had only been playing for a month. I didn't know what to expect. If you play on 'Letterman', it's extremely cold; I played there with Adam Lambert back in November - a few months ago - and it was colder inside Letterman's studio than it was outside, which was in winter. I waited in the dressing room, where someone just brings you down, and you walk out. I didn't really have time to think about anything - I just walked out, and the audience isn't that big. We just did our thing, played a song, and everybody just completely flipped afterwards.


How would you compare performing live with Madonna to more conventional live performances, considering what's involved in Madonna's live performances?

I also play with Prong and Adam Lambert, and with Prong shows and Adam Lambert shows, I think there's a lot more playing involved - the band is what the performance is. For Madonna, the band is only part of the performance because dancers are also part of the performance. In that respect, you have less pressure and also, there's so much more going on. I always say that where Madonna concerts are concerned, it's not what you play but what you don't play. There's a couple of times where I've done guitar solos, but there's other times where I could've done more guitar solos. Sometimes I just don't hear it, though if I don't hear it, I could force it if I wanted to. People say "How come you're not playing more? How come you're not playing during this part of the song? Or on this song?". Just because I'm sitting there with a guitar, that doesn't mean that I have to play guitar all the way through the show or the song. Sometimes less is more.

Could you talk me through the formation of The Citizen Vein?

I wanted to start a rock band in Southern California. You could be playing all over the place, and be playing every week. You should be able to live off of that technically. You can go from San Diego to Las Vegas; you can drive, play, have a really good band, and have a big following, especially if you get together a supergroup. That's why I wanted to make a supergroup of superstars from local groups, so I used to play these local shows in LA. With The Zodiac Show, you play on the first Saturday of every month. One month would be David Bowie, another would be Prince, and so on. Everybody dresses up like some part of that musician's career, and plays David Bowie songs or whatever. You have different singers for every song, and some of these singers are some of the best singers that I've ever heard. I said to a friend "Look, I wanna start a rock band. Who's the best singer in LA you know of that I can start a band with?". He said "You gotta try Adam - you two guys would be perfect".

I looked around and tried to find him, but I didn't have any luck. I was then doing a Zodiac performance, and Lee Cherry - who puts on The Zodiac Show - knew that I wanted to meet up with Adam. He had Adam come in to do a song, and when Adam came in for a soundcheck rehearsal, his voice just filled the room. I just thought "Wow". Then afterwards, we talked. I said "You're really good. I think you're the guy that everybody is telling me about". He replied "Oh yeah? I think you're the guy that everybody is telling me about who wants to start a band", and said "I wanna start a band". We just started writing. Tommy Victor, who plays guitar and sings in Prong, was looking for a bassist at the time, and we made a deal. He said "Look, I'll play bass for your band if you'll play bass for my band", so that's how that happened. That led to me doing Prong's 'Power of the Damager' album, which is now looked at as being one of the best Prong albums. We then got Steve Sidelnyk, Madonna's drummer who's now with Seal, to play drums.

Because we all had gigs with other bands, it was hard to get everybody together to play a show. What I would do is write a song, and send it to Adam. Adam would put vocals on it, and then we would all send the song to each other. Everybody would learn it, and we'd maybe do one rehearsal where we just ran through the songs. We'd then get shows booked and just play the shows. Everybody was good enough where they could just come in and do the show, and it didn't have to be perfect because whatever we did, we got around it. We tried, tried and tried - we tried to do something with it. Even with having connections, it's still hard. Adam was also in 'Wicked', the musical production / theatre play, and then Adam said he was gonna go on 'American Idol'. I remember saying to him "Go on 'American Idol'", and I know a lot of his friends were telling him that too. He eventually decided he was gonna go after he went to the Burning Man festival in Nevada (laughs). And so he went. We all knew, all his friends knew, that once he went on that show, that would be it. Now he's a superstar. We just played in Singapore last week, and Sony presented him with a Gold plaque, a Gold record. Also, I've put out my own album, an acoustic album called 'The Deepest Dark'. Instead of releasing it through a record label, I put it out myself on CD Baby and iTunes. I'm my own boss. 'The Deepest Dark' is already better than any album I've ever worked on, and is the greatest thing I've ever been involved in. I did an acoustic album because with The Citizen Vein, we'd have to call around everybody, and by the time everyone got back to one another, the venue had already filled that spot. I'd write stuff, and Tommy would go out with Prong sometimes with and sometimes without me - he also plays with Danzig, and played with Ministry. Adam would then have to go away for a few weeks to appear in 'Wicked' in another city, so I thought "I'm gonna go back to the whole reason why I wanted to start a band". I decided to make the first album acoustic because it's just me (laughs). I don't have to call anybody else to do a gig, and that's turning out to be really beneficial.

Will any recordings cut with Adam Lambert as a part of The Citizen Vein ever be released?

We talk about that a lot. I mean, you never know. Another plan is to do Adam's next album with the band that we have now, and write and record the album as a band. I would guess yes. I think it's safe to say that one day we will, because it isn't like we don't like the music. He has his solo act, I have my solo act, Tommy's got Prong, Steve's got another group, and The Citizen Vein is still kind of the supergroup mentality of what we were going for. Also, one of The Citizen Vein songs called "The Circle" wound up on my record. Prong wants one of the songs on the next Prong album, and Adam could do one of them on his next record. But yeah, I hope something is released. I know one of the things that got released was claimed to be Adam's first album ('Take One'); me and Steve played on that, and Marcus Brown put piano and bass on it. That was just something we had done as a session, and then after Adam came in second on 'American Idol', they then released this under Adam's name and tried to pawn it off as his first album. I don't know. Crazy things happen when you start having success. I remember Henry Rollins talking about when he first made it with Black Flag; when he came back from a tour, all his friends turned on him and he hadn't even done anything. The fame and the money doesn't change you, but changes more the people around you.


Do you feel Adam Lambert should've won the eighth season of 'American Idol'?

Oh absolutely, yeah. I guess it doesn't matter. I mean, the only thing really that would be different would be seeing his face on promotional material for when they're doing auditions. I don't know what else would be different. I don't know what kind of financial rewards there are if you come in first or second. It's none of my business, but he did win if you think about it.

How would you describe Adam Lambert?

He's really creative, and is a sweet, loyal guy. His parents raised him right. He has a vision, like the acoustic version of "Whole Lotta Love" that we did out near Palm Springs. We thought "Man, we shouldn't be messing with this (laughs). We don't need to be doing an acoustic version of "Whole Lotta Love". We're gonna get trashed for this". To this day, it's the most popular thing that we did. One of the cool things was that it kept the integrity of the song. Something kinda happened towards the end where we just jammed and improvised, and not in a rehearsal room, but in front of a large audience. The YouTube video of that got roughly twenty-four thousand hits in less than twenty-four hours, which is great. He has a very unique vision, and one of his strongest points when he's singing is that he can take a melody, do his own take of that melody and come up with something new to it. What I used to do on purpose was write something, give him a melody I didn't really like, and say "Here - sing this", and he'd sing it differently (laughs).

There was discussion in the press of Adam being a possible fit for Queen. Do you feel he'd be a good fit for Queen?

Yeah, oh yeah. If you wanna hear Queen music live, then you gotta have somebody sing it. Who else would you get? I'd love to hear them do something some day. It isn't like they have much time.

Yeah, you're right.

Brian (May) is probably in his early sixties...

They are knocking on a bit, yeah.

That's not to say he's lost his abilities. I wouldn't be surprised at Brian May being better than he is now at a hundred.

I don't mean in terms of their abilities, but in terms of his physical ages.

I mean, yeah. I would love to see Adam do that. I would love to see him play with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Jason Bonham too. I think he can sing with anybody, and can sing anything. I think Adam's got a big career in front of him. I'm there to do my part, and help him out in kicking ass all the way.

Read the whole interview at source below!
SOURCE