Led by guitarist Billy Duffy and vocalist Ian Astbury, British post-punk band The Cult is still going strong after nearly 30 years. Formed in 1983 and strongly influenced by classic rockers from the ’60s and ’70s, the group unleashed a hard-edged sound with shades of psychedelia that presented a strong contrast to the drum machine-driven synth pop that led the UK music scene at the time. Powered by Duffy’s melodic riffage and Astbury’s bluesy wail, the essential ’80s albums Love, Electric, and Sonic Temple saw the group evolve in an increasingly heavier direction, a tradition carried on today with their latest release, Choice of Weapon.

From the very beginning of The Cult, BOSS and Roland gear has been at the heart of Billy’s guitar tone. BOSS stomps have been his pedalboard mainstays for three decades, while the Roland JC-120 amp and its built-in chorus effect has a permanent home in his backline. “She Sells Sanctuary,” recorded in 1985 and one of the band’s most enduring songs, features this setup prominently, with multiple BOSS pedals and JC chorus shaping the tune’s memorable guitar intro.

BUG recently sat down with Billy to discuss The Cult’s music, his thoughts on tone, and his long history with BOSS and Roland. He also gave us a demonstration of how he developed the classic sounds in “She Sells Sanctuary” and “Fire Woman,” another iconic song that showcases Billy’s unique style.

When did you start using BOSS pedals?

The first time I got my hands on a BOSS pedal was really early in ’83. A guy called Jamie Stewart joined The Cult [on bass] when we put the band together in England. He used to be a guitar player, so he came with guitar effects. He handed them over and said, “I won’t be needing these anymore.” One of them was a BOSS Super Overdrive, which I’ve pretty much used until today. That was the first time I’d seen a BOSS pedal. Very quickly thereafter I started getting into BOSS delays—the old DM-2, the analog one, and I think it was a DD-2. And then I used a [BOSS] flanger. I never used chorus, because I always used [the built-in chorus in] my Roland JC-120.

A funny story about that: the first gig I ever did with The Cult was in a club in Oslo called Rats. We kind of debuted the band out of the UK. We did our first Led Zeppelin copy, which was “play outside the UK first, get your chops up, and come back.” So we did a gig in Oslo, and they gave me a thing called a JC-160, which I believe was a 4x10 [version]. I’ve never seen one since. That was the first amp I ever used [live with The Cult].

What is it that makes BOSS pedals appealing to pro players like you?

I use BOSS pedals primarily because they’re reliable and they’re consistent and they’re readily available. And they still, to me, sound the best. I haven’t heard much that sounds better. I kind of beat my stuff to death, and anything that can stay 12 rounds with me I’ll keep hold of.

Do you have any favorite BOSS pedals?

It would have to be the two delays—the analog DM-2 and the [digital] DD-3. Those would be my two must-have pedals. I like the Super Overdrive. I think it’s a really good overdrive pedal. When I was growing up, I was into the punk rock bands, and I thought [the] Distortion Plus was the go-to pedal. That was what I thought was the industry standard until I got hold of the Super Overdrive by BOSS, and I was just like, that was it: done. I ditched the other pedal and I’ve never looked back. My little guitar fetish is to keep playing around with the ultimate overdrive pedal. And in 30 years, the BOSS Super Overdrive is still in my top four, which is a pretty good testament.

When recording with The Cult over the years, have you often used your BOSS pedals?

Yeah, I’ve always used the pedals in the sessions. Sometimes over the years the producer has basically said, “Set your live rig up and we’ll start with that.” And my live rig is predominantly BOSS pedals—three-quarters of my pedals are BOSS. The pedals always get used in the studio.

You’re also known for using the Roland JC-120 and Gretsch guitars.

I use the JC-120 for the clean sound. I’ve always used it in combination with a valve amp. You know the chorus itself is really sweet. The way the phasing kind of works on the speakers, that’s a magical sound. Other fairly major bands, I know for certain they use the Roland amps, the JC-120. It’s just a go-to amp with the clean tone and chorus.

I’d been using a Gretsch in the previous band to The Cult, but I hadn’t got the right amp setup. I was using a Fender Twin, and it kind of sounded really thin and scratchy. As so when The Cult got together, the Roland JC-120 had come around. I kind of jumped on that, [and] mixed it with a valve amp. It didn’t really matter what kind of valve amp, as long as it sounded okay. Usually Marshalls in England are the easiest thing to get. Fenders are great, but in England they’re so hard to get and the good ones are rare. So I always did Marshall and Roland amps. And that was kind of that. That’s kind of the initial sound of The Cult. I was trying to be orchestral with it. Nothing too tricky, but paint a big sonic picture.

The song “She Sells Sanctuary,” which was a single before it appeared on the Love album, features a lot of BOSS pedals in its intro. How did that come about?

We had this song, and we were going to go and record it. And quite stubbornly, we insisted on using a studio in London called Olympic, which if you know your British music history, was where Free and Zeppelin and various bands recorded. But in 1985, it had become very, very out of date. Everybody was trying to sound like the Thompson Twins, like Howard Jones, and everybody wanted their drums to sound like a robot. And here we are saying, we want to go where Zeppelin did their first two records. And we went into this extraordinarily expensive, old-fashioned studio that was basically used for orchestral movie soundtracks. People thought we were nuts.

I remember we were kind of getting settled in this room, standing there with my guitar and a little BOSS pedalboard, that little gray briefcase thing, plastic molded with the little connectors, and that was it. That was all I had. That was like my flight case. And I had my Gretsch and I had my JC-120 and I probably had a Marshall going. I might have even had an Ampeg amp at that point, but a valve amp as well.

I’m all ready to go, and I looked down on the floor and I saw a violin bow, because there had been an orchestra in there scoring a movie. We’d been talking about the ghosts of Zeppelin, because the house engineer had actually been around when Zeppelin recorded.

So, anyway, I think I’ll just mess around and play The Song Remains the Same violin bow thing for a laugh. I put on my delays, and started doing the whole Jimmy Page kind of thing, and then I just hit every pedal I had. I had the analog delay, the digital delay, a flanger, a phaser, and it was going through the chorus on the JC-120.

After I’d been screwing around doing this thing, [someone] asked me to play the [“She Sells Sanctuary”] riff. And that was that, as they say. It was always going to be the middle section of the song, and we just used it as an intro. A lot of this Gretsch/BOSS pedal thing was on the Love album.

When you were working with producer Rick Rubin on the Electric album, did he change the way you were using pedals in the studio?

Working with Rick Rubin was very Orwellian. Rick basically swept out everything. I made the whole album with two Les Pauls that were rented and a couple of Marshall heads and a 4x12 [cabinet]. That was everything I used, as far as I can remember. There might be a bit of wah-wah, but I didn’t own a stick of equipment. I think I brought a guitar pick with me from England. I couldn’t really imagine making an album that way again. It was just that one album. I think Rick’s quote was the best, that he didn’t produce The Cult so much as reduce them. We needed some serious minimalism, and he came in and did that and we took away a lot of stuff.

How did your approach change on your next album?

On the Sonic Temple album, with Bob Rock producing, the idea was he wanted to combine elements of the Love album and elements of Electric into kind of like the complete Cult package. So that’s what we attempted to do on Sonic Temple. “Fire Woman” was fairly big; I think it was our biggest American chart single.

Guitar players talk a lot about tone. What does tone mean to you?

I’ve heard it said that one of my better features is that I get a great guitar tone. I suppose I put a lot of emphasis on sound because I’ve never really had the inclination to practice enough to be a shredder, or ever liked guitar players who were shredders that much anyway. I always found that what moved me more as a fan was the tone of the guitar. I think therein lies the essence of why you play.

A lot of the guitar players I liked, it really is about the sound. I think that communicates greatly. For me, tone is what a guitar player has in terms of the emotion in a singer’s voice. That’s where I go to communicate what I’m feeling with the music that I write.

With The Cult, the way we’ve written songs a lot of the time, [the music] has come first. Ian has a lot of lyrics and a lot of ideas and words, but he waits until I actually present some music for him to kind of marry the words [based on what the] music suggests. That’s kind of how we’ve operated on a creative level, and guitar tone suggests certain things.

How do BOSS pedals help you get your tone?

BOSS pedals don’t color what you do too much—they don’t get in the way. They really more enhance what the player’s doing. If you look at any great guitar player, 99 percent of them would still sound great playing any guitar and any amp, and they would also sound like themselves. I believe that to be one of the great laws of music, that it’s the person and the human, how you attack the guitar and how you express yourself.

But having said that, we all need equipment that works, that’s reliable, that does the same thing every night. And I’ve found that BOSS equipment, for like 30 years, has never ever let me down, ever. I still have pedals at 30 years old that are still going. The worst thing they do is they’re neutral—they just allow you to express yourself. And at best, they actually contribute in the sense of allowing you to get your playing through without being too effect-y. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that.