Last Tuesday the website for Greg Graffin’s new book Anarchy Evolution was launched: www.anarchyevolution.com. On this website there’s a (growing) list of dates and places where Greg will be appearing to promote his book. Obviously, a lot of these dates will match with the Bad Religion tour dates. The website also contains a Q&A with Greg in which he tells about him signing all pre-ordered copies of his book. As most of you already know, you can also pre-order it in combination with Bad Religion’s new album The Dissent Of Man from Kingsroad Merch.

On that same day The Bad Religion Page was able to sit down with Greg in Dortmund, Germany to talk about his book. As we found out, this was actually the first ever interview about Anarchy Evolution.

When you hear that you're going to be interviewing Greg Graffin you immediately begin to get terrified. This is for two reasons: 1. You have no idea what this is going to be like and 2. It's Greg Graffin. You're excited and intimidated as hell! He's everything you expect him to be.
So right before the show we sat down in one of the dressing rooms for our exclusive interview.

Below you can find the first part of that interview; the second part will be published in the next day or two.

Check out part 2 here.

Part 1

GG: I’ve been so uninvolved in your website that I think for me to get involved now is pointless. There’s an inherent world out there that talks about me that I don’t pay attention to. And this is probably part of that. I have a philosophy and that’s why I don’t interact with you in general on the page. And I believe that there’s a Bad Religion of my own heart and there’s a Bad Religion of public consumption. I don’t control the public consumption. I can’t control it. People think what they want to think and they talk about it whether it’s accurate or not. They can fight about it. But there’s a certain barrier I want to keep up because it’s my life and any breaches into the privacy of my life would then be for public consumption.

TheBRPage: Has it always been this way for you?

GG: It has always been this way. There are people who are masterful at spin. These are people who are so obsessed with their own public persona that they have anything meticulously laid out. And I’m the opposite of that. I’ve never really paid attention to it. If people say nice things about me I don’t get involved in that either. Because it’s not necessarily based on anything real except their own perception of it. Your website is really good for allowing that to happen and if you take the time to get it right then I respect that even more.
Your website is really an archive of material.
Who did you take it from? Roger?

TheBRPage: There was indeed Roger Vulture, but he kind of disappeared a number of years ago. The last thing we heard is that he left for an island in the south pacific or something.

GG: Really? He disappeared? Who did he give it to?

TheBRPage: That would be Kristoffer from Sweden. He did a redesign of the site when he took over. Then, a couple of years ago the site wasn’t doing too well as it couldn’t be updated anymore. That’s when I [Marty] volunteered to do a complete redesign. And I think it’s doing better than ever.

GG: I hear it’s pretty good. No offense, I don’t spend much time looking at it

TheBRPage: Our main objective is basically to be an archive and right now also doing things like interviews and such.

GG: Like reporting. More journalistic.

TheBRPage: Exactly. And we’re trying to ask somewhat other questions than you’d normally see in interviews with, for example, music magazines. At least, we hope.

GG: You’re the first people really to talk about Anarchy Evolution so we’re in charge.

TheBRPage: The whole reason why we’re sitting here right now is that we came across some information on your publisher’s website. It’s a list of “talking points”, which is basically a summary of what your book is about. Maybe you wrote it, maybe someone else.

GG: Can I see it?

TheBRPage: So you’re familiar with the material?

GG: Yes, now I recognize it.

TheBRPage: So what we did was, we sent this list of talking points to some people on the site who we thought might be interested in the subject because of their studies and such. We asked them to come up questions for us to ask in this interview. All in all we ended up with almost 4 full pages of questions, of which some were extremely in depth and even included formulas.

GG: Ah, fuck them. I’m very non-mathematical in my approach.

TheBRPage: Before we came in you mentioned an announcement earlier today. What was that announcement exactly?

GG: The announcement is that if you pre-order the book you get a signed one. For people familiar with my dissertation that’s nothing new. That I’m doing it again for my book is surprising to most people because most major publishers don’t do that thing. They maybe have the author sign them after they’re done.

TheBRPage: Did you convince them to do it this way or was it the other way around?

GG: It was my idea. On the website www.anarchyevolution.com there’s a Q&A with me and one of the questions is why did I do it. Well, then you don’t have to wait in line [laughs].  A lot of people have to wait in these long lines when I’m doing an appearance. Now I can do an appearance and maybe talk about the books and people already have a signature. It’s just more interesting to talk about what’s in the book.

TheBRPage: So basically saving you time?

GG: Well not really, because I still have to sign them all [laughs].

TheBRPage: The initial release date for Anarchy Evolution was set to April 2010. What caused the delay of 6 months?

GG: When I signed the contract for the book, they always like to say “when are you delivering it by?” I knew that April 2010 was not realistic, because I was teaching paleontology when I should have been writing this book. I was teaching in UCLA last year and while I was teaching I couldn’t start writing. So I started writing during the Warped tour last year. Then I did a serious amount of writing in the Fall of 2009. And the final revisions weren’t going to be done until March of 2010.
They need 9 months or something. We pushed it up a little bit so we could get it out around the same time as the Bad Religion album.

TheBRPage: Which is, of course, a great opportunity for you.

GG: The nice thing about the way that it all worked out - this is also why I subconsciously dragged my feet a little bit in 2009 - consciously I simply didn’t have the time. Maybe subconsciously I was thinking that 2010 was going to be a better year for the kind of things I’m talking about in here.
This is the first time I’ve ever talked about the development of my own life as the singer of Bad Religion. And what better place to talk about it then the 30 year anniversary. So I think it’s a perfect literary supplement to the celebration of 30 years.
One thing you’ll know about me is that I’ve never really paid much attention to merchandizing and sales. Those are things that other guys deal with. And I’m not a big conniver. I don’t think in terms of marketing. I’m not very good at it. All you have to do is read my Twitter and you’ll see [laughs]. Some guys are experts at timing.

TheBRPage: It all sounds so perfect still. First there’s the new Bad Religion album, then a couple of days later there’s your book, followed by a tour to promote both the album and the book.

GG: Well, you can thank Harper Collins, Epitaph Records and the publicist for that because that’s what they’re paid for. And they’re very good at it! So I’m lucky to be involved with those two. And also, Epitaph Records and Harper Collins get along very well. They seem to be very helpful in all of this.

TheBRPage: Apart from the “Talking points”, the site where we found the info on Anarchy Evolution also contains the following: “Graffin is committed to doing whatever it takes to sell the book.”

GG: It’s really also because I’m cheap. I’m kind of a cheapskate [laughs].  The thing is, if they send you on a luxury tour and you live it up and everything, you’ll never ever see a penny from your book sales because they’re going to recoup it from the sales. What I said is: Don’t worry about funding my tour. I’m already on tour with the band. I’ll be on stage at night time and during the day I’ll go to some bookstore in town and hopefully people will show up for it. So we’re really doing it as way to make best use of my time. This year I don’t have to write. Last time I spent time writing before the shows when I’m on tour. Or when I’m traveling I write on the airplane or what not.  This time I have nothing to write right now. So I might as well use that time to go and meet people and talk about the book.
Having more time plays into my favor because I really have to develop a new book on the heels of this one.
Here’s something I haven’t told anybody really. I’m looking at this release kind of in the same way as Suffer was the beginning of the release of a series of Bad Religion albums and productivity and my song writing. I want to start to develop more books. As I get older I feel very comfortable sharing ideas with people and it gives you the same satisfaction to be able to talk about these ideas . Maybe in a quieter setting than a punk show. I want this to be a starting point.

Check out part 2 here.