Quote of the day: "I don't ask questions, don't promote demonstrations, don't look for new consensus, don't stray from constitution" - Inner Logic
flexyourhead.com (April 2003)
Details
| Category: | Interview - Internet | Publish date: | 4/15/2003 |
| Source: | flexyourhead.com (April 2003) (United States) | With: | Jay Bentley |
| Synopsis: | Flex Your Head talks with Jay Bentley about the punk audience, the relevance of punk rock, and the bands discography. | ||
Transcript (1531 words )
Languages: English
Bad Religion will always be a punk rock staple. But like every long-running band, time saw them get all bloated and tired. Did we really expect them to keep up the pace of 1988's classic Suffer album for 20-odd years? The end of the '90s saw Bad Religion striking out with three less than spectacular albums that included mid-tempo slow punk and glorified power ballads. The last of those albums, 2000's The New America was even described by bassist Jay Bentley as "absolute poo" (see below). But fear not, Bad Religion returned to form with their latest record, 2002's The Process of Belief, which saw the studio return of original guitar player and principal songwriter (Mr.) Brett Gurewitz. Sure, they're not getting any younger, but this is a band with some fight still left in them, even if it costs a day's pay to go and see them play.
Jason Schreurs spoke with Bad Religion bassist Jay Bentley about growing old in the punk world, the 2002 comeback album and those damn expensive ticket prices. Interview conducted in mid-April, 2003.
Is your audience getting younger and younger as you guys grow older and older?
I think our cut-off point is somewhere around 26, 27 where people get jobs, get married and then they're like, "Oh, I haven't seen you for X years." Then the funny part is we're starting to get some guys who are like 35 that are showing up with their 10 and 11-year-old kids going, "Ya, my kid's a real big fan of yours," and I'm just laughing and going, "Oh my god!" I have an 11-year-old kid too and I take him to go and see concerts all the time.
Is it a bit strange for you to be playing to people who are half your age?
I don't think so because what I've gleaned from people who listen to Bad Religion and like us is they really do seem to be questioning their surroundings. This is not a "Good Charlotte hour" where we are going out just to jump up and down and not care.
Does Bad Religion feel responsible to speak out on stage in the face of the current political climate?
I don't because I don't take advantage of the fact that I have a microphone in front of me, in the sense of an entertainer, and use that platform to have a political rhetoric viewpoint and spend an hour discussing it. I don't mind sitting down and talking about things because it's not an "entertainment hour" where someone is paying money to come in and watch music and they don't want to hear someone babbling about politics.
But the strange thing about that is a lot of your songs are political.
So then we'll let the music speak for itself.
Is punk rock still relevant in this day and age?
I guess that would just depend on what your idea of punk rock is. As far as a sound... I agree with what your getting at, and know that as a band we've sat down on a number of occasions and said, "In 1988 we put out an album called Suffer which sounded unlike anything else that we'd ever heard and it became very popular over the course of the years." As time has progressed there have been more and more bands that sound like what we do. We don't want to sound like every other band that sounds like us because that's certainly not why we're here. So we work on that, but you have to understand something -- all of these things that we do, they really are for us. We sit in the studio and make these things that we like, and if they are different in ways that we can hear then we're happy.
So it's still challenging and satisfying?
Absolutely, because the idea is not to change our sound on every record and become this crazy band who puts out different sounding records every year.
But, by the same token, there's a lot of punk bands that do radically shift their sound from record to record, and you folks have done that too, but now you've gone back to Against the Grain era.
Ya, I think part of that was having (original guitarist) Brett (Gurewitz) coming back, who hasn't been in the band for 10 years. Realistically, this album was probably the logical album in sequential order from Stranger than Fiction. That would have been 1995-96. So, theoretically, if you put this album back then we would be in timely shape.
And what about the albums that are in-between?
I thought The Gray Race was great and the other ones (1998's No Substance and 2000's The New America) weren't so great and the last one (The New America) was just absolute poo.
So this is a return to form for you guys then?
I think so. It's a return to what makes us as a collective happy. It's difficult for one person to write all the material, so when Brett came back and split the songwriting duties up, everybody's got all of these songs to choose from and it's a lot of fun. It's reflective and it shows in the recording and it shows in the final product.
So you haven't written songs for the band since Against the Grain. Do you miss writing songs?
I still write for myself. (Singer) Greg (Graffin) and Brett seem to have a healthy competition when they write. They seem to write against each other and they enjoy it. When I was writing I was kind of the third wheel and it didn't seem like you could have a good sport with three people. I was basically the George Harrison (laughs).
What does Graffin think of you calling his record "absolute poo"?
Honestly, I don't care. I'm allowed to have an artistic opinion of other people's work, especially if it's my own as a band. The only reason I say that (about The New America) is because I know we've done better work. I feel that after having been in the band for 25 years, I'm allowed to have an educated opinion about what I think is our better material. That's the only reason I can say that, and he knows that. I would never tell him, "You suck!" Do you know what I'm saying? Even when we were making the records I said, "Hey Greg, I don't really like these songs this much"; I told him this. But who am I to say, "Hey, you, monkey! Get back in there and use your typewriter and write better songs"?
A lot of people say you guys are past your prime. How do you answer to that?
I don't care. It doesn't bother me. I'll know when I'm done. I don't disagree with what anyone says though. I learned a long time ago that when people are negative about us, that's totally cool, because when people are positive about us, that's totally cool too. They are both the same to me. It's just someone's opinion. I know a lot of people who take the praise and they swell their heads, and they throw things when people give them negative reviews. Well I chose to go the opposite way, which was if people say nice things, I say, "Thank you very much." If people say bad things, I say, "Thank you very much."
Why were the tickets so expensive for your Canadian shows? ($33 in Vancouver and Victoria). Do you have control over how much people pay to come to your shows?
Yes we do. In all honesty, I think it was an oversight because we're running a $20 ticket in the States and I would have been perfectly content with a $20 ticket in Canada, but someone had a calculator and did the exchange rate and that happened before anyone could stop it. And I apologize for it but, by the time anyone saw it, it was too late and what do you do?
The concern here is who can afford a show at that price? I don't think working class people would be able to go... so how do you deal with that?
At this point I'm basically embarrassed. That's not what I wanted to happen, but it happened, and I'm not sure how to get out of it.
So was the promoter to blame then?
No. You know what? I'm never going to be a person who blames anything on anybody else. I think that's bullshit. I'm the artist; I'm the one who's directly responsible for this, so it's my fault. It's my fault that I wasn't paying more attention. When I finally looked into it, I saw that all these other bands were coming into Vancouver and playing for 18-20 bucks. It's one of those things that I didn't catch fast enough and the tickets went out. I'll take the blame because I didn't see it fast enough.
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