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Last Updated:
Mar 19th, 2008 - 07:43:02 |
The Wild Ones:
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
In these times, with a war existing outside of our bubbles, we lie dormant until a sharp dagger comes to burst it and then hopefully, we will flood the streets with the spirit of the '60s.
Until then, us young people have no reason to protest, right? We are more worried about securing our financial futures after college than speaking out against the war and our government. But, if you look around and listen to the sudden outpouring of protest music that is coming not just from the underground, you might see that people are ready to bust at the seams.
As Neil Young said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, “But as soon as you have a draft, you’ll see everything change immediately. It would be like night and day. These students are ready to rock. But nobody’s pushed the button.”
On Baby 81, the explosive new record from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the band finds themselves with their fingers tightly squeezed on the trigger. And to their credit, they’ve been troubadours of the ideologies of the '60s since their conception. Formed after lead signer Peter Hayes departed from hippie revivalists ,The Brian Jonestown Massacre, BRMC have been one of few bands to preserve rock 'n' roll’s long lost free spirit.
“I’ve had that before I was in Brian Jonestown,” says a crackling, smoky voiced Peter Hayes. “But it comes from the old school way of thinking I guess, which was an 'us and them' as far as music and you’re not supposed to mix. But at the same time, bands like The Rolling Stones, Beatles, Stooges, The Who or whatever, from what I understand, always wanted to be the biggest band in the world. Somehow things shifted from 'it’s not cool to be the biggest band in the world, you gotta be the most unknown band in the world,' and it’s better to be on an indie label and somehow being on a label gives you credit. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me; an indie label somehow gives you credibility? I think the music gives you credibility, not the label.”
BRMC are signed to RCA, but they don’t follow the major label credo. There has been hardly any promotion for their new record, nor a music video (one has been shot for “Weapon Of Choice,” but it has yet to be aired).
They aren’t playing many festivals, I say that’s good because their music sounds best at night, to which Hayes agrees. And as they’ve noted in numerous interviews, they won’t license their music to corporations for mammoth payoffs.
Perhaps if BRMC worked the market more they’d be one of the biggest bands on the planet. The "balls to the wall," grinding, amplified riffs of Baby 81 would make great fodder for a Ford Mustang commercial. The album’s lead single “Weapon of Choice,” has a dualistic barrage of thundering tambourine and psychedelic acoustic chops layered under a mushroom cloud of blitzing drums. Straying away from the folksy blues of their previous effort, Howl, BRMC wanted this record to rock, and that it does.
“If you put on ‘Red Eyes And Tears’ [B.R.M.C., 2000], that’s just a riff,” Hayes says. “But if you were to take that and do a little more with it, that’s the idea we were getting at with this album. We got a lot of comments that our live show makes a lot more sense than the record does, as far as the ups and downs. Sometimes when we record, it becomes more of a drone, people said shoegazer. So going into this record, we’re trying to bring that live element, making our riffs stand out more than just a drone. It's hard to get across power in simplicity.”
When Hayes speaks, he grumbles, his voice crackles and he often stumbles into his answers, searching for words. It’s 1 p.m. in L.A. and birds chirp in the background along with blaring rock emanating from a nearby stereo as Hayes and I speak over the phone. Earlier in the day, I had listened to “American X” off Baby 81 and noticed the track clocks in at 9:11. “It was a kinda creepy mistake,” Hayes says. “The engineer ended up letting things fade out and hit stop and it ended up being 9:11. We debated it and we were like, 'OK that’s gonna be talked about in the wrong sense.' But at the same time, if we take off that second, 'Did you purposely cut it down?'”
“When the song started out it was called ‘American Sex,’” Hayes says. “The idea was going with the thought of the cover of every magazine is scantly clad women selling something. In one respect, you got this ultra-conservative Christian controlling the country, and at the same time you got this brainwashing of America with sex and money.”
BRMC have long been criticizing the state of the nation with songs like “U.S. Government,” from 2003’s Take Them On, On Your Own. On “Weapon of Choice,” there is a lyric that goes, “I won’t waste my love on a nation.” Hayes feels that a lot of the issues the media focuses on, like illegal immigration, abortion and gay rights are merely distractions to avert people’s attention from the war.
“I think all the debates come down to people protecting their money and diluting it with the government saying 'we’re protecting the U.S. people,'” Hayes says. “I think that’s a big lie. I think it comes down to someone is protecting their money and I don’t give a shit about my money. That’s the way I wanna live.” Before you can have a widespread revolution, individuals need to go through personal revolt. BRMC hope they can get the ball rolling with some rally cries and rebel rousing rock 'n' roll
“It's really easy to point a finger at the government,” Hayes says. “It comes down to what you’re gonna do about it. Are you gonna sit in front of the TV and yell at it or are you gonna turn it off? Are you gonna listen to the station that plays music that you don’t really feel is of any use to society or are you gonna change the channel or actually gonna call up the station and say, 'Quit it'?' ... I’d like to imagine enough people doing something that can make a difference. That’s kinda where we been coming from since day one. I feel like we been misunderstood a lot in what we've been saying.” | RDW
BRMC • May 25 • St. Andrews Hall
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