KILLING TIME
There are few individuals who can lay claim to changing the course of music. Some have done it by the sheer forcefulness of their musical personality: Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan. Miles Davis. Others have done it as part of a group: Metallica. Led Zeppelin. Radiohead. But few have put their money where their mouth is for the good of the scene like Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz. Affectionately known as ‘Mr. Brett,’ Gurewitz founded groundbreaking punk label Epitaph, now one of the most recognisable music brands in the world. Epitaph has launched the careers of dozens of ground-breaking acts, and sustained the careers of others who found themselves without a home but still with something to say. It’s a safe bet that without Gurewitz’s influence, punk rock as we know it today either wouldn’t exist, or would never have reached the heights that it eventually scaled. Oh yeah and also he’s the guitarist in Bad Religion.
For all his accomplishments on the business side of things, it must never be forgotten that Gurewitz has been a driving force in one of the most important punk bands ever (and even when he stepped out of the band for a while, he was still involved). New album True North is an essential entry to the Bad Religion canon, a blustery, direct, angry, inspired and bold statement that looks back to the bad’s past without rehashing it. There were guidelines in place heading into the project — ideas of getting back to Bad Religion’s roots in terms of making songs that were short, sharp and succinct. “That was the guiding principal,” Gurewitz says, pointing to the short, direct song structures that are especially prevalent this time around. “There’s something to shorter songs, and it was part of the ethos of punk rock in the first place. When we first started in LA there were groups like The Descendents and The Minutemen and The Germs, and those groups were our contemporaries. The Germs were a little bit older, but that was our culture. And these groups were sort of making these inspired sonic explosions in a reaction to the environment of 25 minute Yes songs, one one side of Donna Summer orgasming, y’know. So that was the environment we were in, and we said ‘Fuck that!’ We started making these songs that were the polar opposite of that.” Gurewitz admits that the band strayed from that mission statement over the years, a little here, a little there, but they always knew who they were. “The times where we lost the plot, we always tried to regain who we were, to come back to it. That’s been the evolution of Bad Religion albums. This is one of those times where we really came back to what made us strong in the first place.”
Gurewitz says it doesn’t necessarily require a different set of brain muscles to write a short song compared to a long one, but interestingly it requires a different kind of discipline. “You have to think about what you can subtract, instead of what you can add,” he says. “And it’s a different way of thinking about it. I guess it’s like writing a haiku instead of writing iambic pentameter. They’re both valid but they’re different approaches and I think one requires a little bit more discipline. You have to be willing to let go of things. So you write the song and then you have to cut back and trim away more and more. I found myself and Greg getting into debates of ‘Hey, let’s just get rid of it. Let’s get rid of that ending, get rid of that reprise, those four bars.’ And every bit that could be spared, it was like being in a life-boat: you just throw it overboard. But that’s what we did on our first two albums. We always did that, and on the last few albums we stopped doing that because you can’t keep making the same record, so we strived to make something we hadn’t heard before. But it’s been quite a while since we’ve done that very vigorously like we did this time. Maybe we were afraid the when we did that, what we’d end up with would be too basic, too plain. But I think the opposite happened.”
Gurewitz has typically always been a Gibson Les Paul player favouring Seymour Duncan JB humbuckers, but the secret weapons of True North were a Fender Kurt Cobain Jaguar (used during the demo phase) and a couple of Nash Telecasters. Each ‘secret weapon’ brings its own sonic artillery. On the Jaguar: “It’s very richly harmonic, because it doesn’t have a through-the-body bridge. The bridge causes a lot of ringing, almost like a reverb, but it’s very bell-like. It reminds me almost of a Mosrite tone. I’d very highly recommend that guitar.” As for the Nash Telecasters, “His Teles are really thick. There’s the punch of a Les Paul. They’re not shrill like a Tele can be. He puts these Lollar pickups in it.” In terms of amps, the majority of the record was tracked with a Marshall JCM800 with a Mesa cabinet for a slightly bigger low end. And that’s it. Just like the album as a whole, the guitar choices were stripped back, direct, efficient and purposeful.
BY PETER HODGSON
True North is out now through Epitaph.
