Ween – Transdermal Celebration
2003
23K Likes
Best comments
1.“I'm here fucked up in the crib, crying at this video, and I don't even know what I'm crying at.”
More comments
- 2.“That's Dean Ween soloing on Carlos Santana's guitar. Santana had a GMA show, and Ween heard his equipment was in town. He snuck in, used the guitar for this solo, and put it back like he was never there. Took 10 minutes to record.”
- 3.“Thank you, Mr. Santana, for the service you didn't know you contributed.”
The story
Here's how you get an official Ween video: burn a couple weeks of vacation, animate one yourself, and let the band see it. The animator who uploaded this did exactly that back around 2003, and Ween adopted it as the real thing. For years it floated around YouTube in mushy low resolution on other people's channels, until the creator finally posted a clean HD copy of their own a decade later.
The song comes from Quebec, Ween's eighth album and one of their darkest. Gene Ween was going through a divorce, Dean Ween was fighting drug problems, and drummer Claude Coleman Jr. was recovering from a car crash, so Josh Freese drummed on much of it. Dean's guitar solo has a story too: he played it on Carlos Santana's guitar and amp, without asking, in a storage space where the gear was waiting to ship to New York. Ten minutes on a hard disk recorder. Done.
It came out as a single in December 2003, and Devin Townsend later covered it. A borrowed Santana guitar and a fan's vacation time. Very Ween.
