Australia, February 1997

(the first time BR toured Australia)

 

 

Jabba: I might as well welcome you to the show - Big Jay and Big Greg from Bad Religion. 

 

Jay: Hi. 

 

Greg: It's great to be here. 

 

Jabba: You guys have been rumoured to be touring here for such a long time. What has taken you so long? 

 

Jay: We just wanted to keep perpetuating the rumour. Everyone said, "Are you coming?" and we said, 'Yeah, we'll be right there." Then like a year later, "Are you coming?". "Yeah, be right there." Like the procrastinators that we are ... 

 

Jabba: Have you ever had an aborted Australian tour? 

 

Jay: No, we've been asked ... earlier on when we were still with Epitaph and we'd just opened up the distribution down here, we asked a few people and it just didn't seem feasible. Yhey said, "Yeah, you can come here", but we weren't selling any albums, and no other bands like us had come down before '94 or so ... No FX came down down. So we asked, what was it like? 

 

Jabba: Yeah, it's kind of funny cos we've had the newer punk bands come down first, before the ones that were there in the very beginning. We've had Green Day, we've had NO FX, we've had Offspring, we've had Rancid. 

 

Greg: Another thing about feasibility is that we have had such a long tradition of touring in other parts of the world, it's very hard to open up a new market, so to speak. To go somewhere when you're not really sure if anybody's every heard of you. The only way we've found the time this year, is that we've done all of our other commitments, and this is the year to address whether we're really a popular band in Australia, and luckily, from the offers from the promoters, and the feedback from the fans, we determined there is actually a following here. Because we didn't have a lot of feedback earlier as to whether we were popular. We didn't know. And at our stage of touring, it's very difficult to take a risk like that. If you go somewhere, commit two weeks to a tour, when you could've been touring in a place - say Sweden or anywhere in Europe where you've got a following - you know they're behind you. Any time you go to a new place it's a risk. I hope the Australian audience will make us feel welcome and don't beat us up. 

 

Jabba: Does is make it more nerve-wracking when you're playing shows in a country you've never been to before? 

 

Greg: At first it does, for me personally. Like I was just saying, you don't know what the customs are. Maybe they throw stuff at the band, and that means they like you ... I don't know how I'd react to that personally. 

 

Jay: Same as you did in Atlanta .... 

 

Greg: Oh yeah, I'm pretty good when people throw stuff at me, but I don't like it, I don't like it a bit. If I see you, I will single you out and beat the s**t out of you. 

 

Jabba: You've learnt a lot from Rollins. 

 

Greg: Absolutely. But the fact is, I'm used to that kind of stuff ... when people try to ... it's just not a friendly thing. 

 

Jabba: 'Gee you up', that's an Australia expression ... when people go to a concert and throw bottles at you, to 'gee you up' ... Gee'ed him up. 

 

Greg: Yeah, and if you try to gee me up, it probably won't work, because if that's all you're trying to do, I won't give you the satisfaction of acknowledging your presence. But if you actually provoke me enough, push me over the edge ... I don't have any restraint and I'll probably end up in jail for murder. I'm telling you, don't try to gee me up. 

 

Jabba: Now, 'The Gray Race' - the album before 'The Tested' which is the live album which just came out - 'The Gray Race' was produced by Ric Ocasek from the Cars. Why did you choose him? 

 

Jay: Cos he's tall - really tall. We are one of the taller bands ... 

 

Greg: Not taller than the lead singer from Midnight Oil ... 

 

Jay: No, but on an average ... and I think we're faster. 

 

Greg: We're taller and faster than Midnight Oil ... but Ric Ocasek is definitely a part of that whole culture ... the tallness thing. Some people think it's a weird combo, but it's not that strange. You think about the actual artistic ideas The Cars had, before they were super-popular, they were really a unique, ground-breaking band in '78 and '79. And Ric is still one of the more ... I respect him as an artist and I enjoy working with people I respect. 

 

Jabba: Ric Ocasek was actually a bit of a punk fan from producing a Bad Brains album ... 

 

Jay: You know, surprisingly he's more of a metal fan - he's out to sabotage punk rock. He's calling bands and trying to get produciton and he's really trying to kill them in the studio, cos he's really a fan of heavy metal. He wants to bring it back. 

 

Greg: We only found this out through KISS's agent who let us know this well after the fact ... so we're sorry about all; the flaws on 'The Gray Race'. It was done completely without our knowledge - an underhanded ploy by someone we trusted. 

 

Jabba: That's pretty ground-breaking new for us, it's a scoop. 

 

Greg: This is definitely an exclusive. We haven't talked about this with anyone else. It's very hard on us. It's hard to be vulnerable about something that's so personal ... (Much fake crying from both.) Why did you have to get onto that topic? 

 

Jabba; Well, let's get onto the live album then. Why the absolutely intricate details on how each song was recorded? 

 

Jay: Cos it's good. 

 

Greg: Well, when I was young I used to really enjoy reading about how albums were made, and liner notes, some insight ... I don't believe in the all-too-common idea today, that you listen to an album and don't really read it ... a CD can have a lot more information than most of them do today. I wanted this to be an example ... 

 

Jay: We've always had a high quality standard with all of the packaging. The standard was based on having a lot of information and not letting the fact that an album, a 12" by 12" was so great for artwork, but the CD's 5-and-a-half by five-and-a-half so the artwork's shrunk down - we just figured out a way to fit more information in. Cos I like to read about where a song was recorded and what a band was doing. 

 

Greg: The CD booklet contains a huge portion on how and why each song was recorded, and then it goes song-by-song and tells a story about each of the songs and each of the venues where it was recorded. And it has pictures also. And as for lyrics - the real Bad Religion fans out there who are buying this - they already have the lyrics for all these songs on their albums. And you can get the lyrics for free if you wanna write to the address. This is far more unique than just putting the lyrics ... 

 

Jabba; Going back to the 80s, American punk came of age in the Reagan days. What was it like being a punk kid back then? 

 

Greg: Kids never feel the effect of presidents. Let's just wipe away that fantasy straight away. At that age, Reagan was an idiot - we knew that at 15 .... It was easy to criticise back then, when we were young. The times were really conservative in America, and that made things like Bad Religion look really shocking. But today, there's still a very powerful conservative element in America, and there probably always will be, much to our dismay. But who's in charge, who's the president, has very little to do with the course of human events in America. 

 

Jay: Certain presidents allow a little more religious lee-way. I think that's where we were heading in the Reagan/Bush era. We were heading for the Orange County, upper middle-class, Christian Coalition. That had a lot more impact on what we were doing than who was the president. I think the dream of America is a joke ... 

 

Jabba: You guys travel a lot - do you see the world becoming more Americanised? 

 

Jay: There's McDonalds everywhere ... 

 

Greg: You're wearing Airwalks!! Look, you don't have to ask us about that, because what we see is irrelevant to what's really happening. And what's really happening you have to consult some other literature. That the world is becoming more Americanised ... 

 

Jay: But the world wants that. If they didn't want that, it wouldn't be happening. If you said, "F**k that", and didn't eat there, then they'd close their shop and go somewhere else. Right? They're giving people what they want. If the people don't want it, they don't stay. It's not necessarily Americanised - it's western culture, the economy of our times. 

 

Greg: I'm not proud of the fact that all of the biggest banks are in America, and all of the pressure on the world monetary fund comes from America, all the pressure on the United Nations comes from the United States. I'm not proud of that fact, but until other nations find some way where they don't have to depend on the United States economy, it's gonna happen. America's going to ruin every other continent like we ruined our own. The message that I have to other young people around the world is to be aware of how much influence America has on your way of life, and decide pretty quickly whether or not you want to live that way. Because I assure you, the leaders of your countries are getting their thumbs pressed by the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle economic and sometimes political forces that are shaping our economy. And unfortunately they're all coming out of North America. 

 

Jabba: Do you guys talk politics when you tour, or do you talk more music? 

 

Jay: Between ourselves? 

 

Jabba: With press and stuff. 

 

Greg: No, we don't talk a lot of music. Bad Religion's music has always talked about relevant issues. That's what we're about. It's the one most unique thing about us. Besides the bass playing ... 

 

Jay: Thanks very much - I've been in this band for 16 years and I finally get recognised!!! Music is a subjective thing, like a painting. You see something, I don't. I see something, you don't. So when you talk about music, "what do you think about this band?" Who cares? 

 

Greg: There's taste when you talk about music. There's no taste when you talk about what's right and wrong, for human dignity. Those are things that we spend way too little time - especially music shows when they're reaching young people - spend so little time talking about how you treat someone with respect, because so much of it is about treating people with respect, only if they fit your definition of what's cool or what's hip. We lived our whole life against that, we were treated very poorly when we were young, and the shoe's a little bit on the other foot now, and we're able to say, you don't treat people like that. 

 

Jabba: Greg, you're college-educated. Are you Jay? 

 

Jay: High school drop out. 

 

Jabba: Way to go. (To Greg) Have you ever gone out and got a day job? 

 

Greg: People who are like true academics are like true artists, they don't really work. They just study. I have a great appreciation for manual labour, and I think people who do manual labour are unappreciated and I wish society and people in general would focus on the work people do, instead of how much money they make. Because I respect the brickmaker more than I do the stockbroker. Because at the end of the day the brickmaker has something that came from his hard work, that can be appreciated, not a nebulous number in his bank account. 

 

Jay: I think that's what works well within this band structure. The band is an artistic outlet, Greg has his studies, I've done a lot of manual work and Greg knows that. We talk about that - his studies are really relevant to me, just as working and what people have to go through, like people working their jobs and getting $3.95 an hour - like you just say, well, that's enough of that. It's all in there, it kinda makes sense. 

 

Greg: The kind of work I do, related to my field - I have a Masters degree in Geology and an undergraduate degree in Anthropology and I've done a lot of field work. Most people would look at it like, camping, for big boys. It's like a fun thing to go do. There's a lot of manual labour to do, you don't get paid, but you gain something else - you're out in nature for a reason. And it's not a destructive reason. It's to interpret our past and understand some of the changes in earth history. And these are things you carry with you the rest of your life. And you share them with people, if you write articles. Or just teaching. Getting on stage singing. 

 

Jabba: Do you have some tactic that you've used throughput your lives, to combat drug-use or anything like that? 

 

Jay: Just take them all until you can't take them anymore. I was just a sponge until I went, ok, that was enough of that. Until I almost died. 

 

Greg: I was scared of drugs my whole life, so I never took them. The tactic when I was young, to keep from having to feel the pressure to stick a needle in my arm, was to stick needles in other people's arms. That really kept me away from heroin. It wasn't so good for my friends, but I was good at it. We could argue whether that was good or bad of me, but does a true friend bring his buddy aside, and say 'i'm not gonna do that to you man, cos it's not good for you'? Or does he just do it really well to help the friend realise how bad it is to do it himself? 

 

Jabba: It's just that you're so coherent and stuff. And to have gone to college and stuff ... 

 

Jay: But you've gotta remember, we started the band when we were 15 years old. Not even legally old enough to walk into a bar. There wasn't a lot of problem with that. 

 

Greg: We never really fit the rock'n'roll stereotype. 

 

Jay: No we didn't. And the only thing I've ever said, is if we were where we are now, in 1984, I'd be dead. Because I'd have this unlimited amount of things at my disposal to just kill myself with. Would've been genius at the time, but it doesn't really happen when you're making nine dollars a month. It's hard to be an extravagant rock'n'roll junkie when you're going to high school. 

 

Greg: But we're fortunate now that we do have some money and we do have some sense of fame, we developed so slowly that we remember very much what it was like before. And we never really lost that sense of who we are inside. If it all ended tomorrow, we'd all be okay. We're still the same guys we used to be. We don't take it too seriously, any hype around us, people who build us up to something we're not.