Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
| As promised: Alternative Ulster May '07 interview with Pete | ||
 Posts: 757 |
Posted Thu May 24, 2007 12:05 PM | Quote |
| Quite a good article, apart from one mistake the writer keeps making (i.e. not realising that it's Rob and not Pete who sings on WOC). Anyway, clicky-clicky on the thumbnails and enjoy! (Note to Mich and Porcupiny: I've sent this to you girls for your sites.) :) Page 1:  Page 2:  Page 3 (last page):  |
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| Re: As promised: Alternative Ulster May '07 interview with P | ||
 Posts: 19 |
Posted Thu May 24, 2007 3:23 PM | Quote |
| Sorry 2 complain but its kinda hard to read. Do u think u could make it bigger by any chance? | ||
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| Re: As promised: Alternative Ulster May '07 interview with P | ||
Posts: 757 |
Posted Fri May 25, 2007 2:49 PM | Quote |
| Sorry about that; I hosted those on ImageShack and it seems to be shrinking everything. Does anyone know how to get round this? | ||
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| Re: As promised: Alternative Ulster May '07 interview with P | ||
 Posts: 253 |
Posted Fri May 25, 2007 3:05 PM | Quote |
| Maybe try an upload them on sendspace as a zip file? | ||
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| Re: As promised: Alternative Ulster May '07 interview with P | ||
Posts: 7 |
Posted Fri Sep 14, 2007 4:17 AM | Quote |
| Alternative Ulster Magazine May 2007 Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – The rise, fall and rise again of BRMC After a decade inducing tinnitus across the globe, LA’s finest, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club return with their fourth studio offering, ‘Baby 81’. On the eve of its release AU talks with black, beaten and brave frontman, Peter Hayes, about how they all made it out here in one piece. A few years ago it seemed a sound bet to write off Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Apparently riding the waves of the noughties’ garage surge and hanging on the coattails of the White Stripes and the Strokes, you could have said that their excellent and successful debut was just a flash in the pan and the subsequent collapse of the band after their second release was the wave breaking, with their third, ‘Howl’, representing the sound of a band in retreat, but they were never going to see it that way. Well the ‘garage revolution’ has well and truly past and in its wake the musical landscape is very much different. That was six years ago and today BRMC are on a short tour of the UK for their comeback album ‘Baby 81’. They have survived and their new album has been released on a new label with a newly rejuvenated band at its core set to take on the UK and USA like it was six years ago. ‘It’ll be like the good ole days,” Peter Hayes tells AU, “except without the shitty van.” Touring has always been eventful for Peter. If you recall the classic indie-documentary Dig!, he was oh-so-briefly a member of the Brian Jonestown Massacre line-up that gets arrested in Georgia midway through a tour. After that he wasn’t long for BJM. At that scene though he gets his one pertinent line announcing that, “I’m starting to think that I shouldn’t have come along for this ride.” Right there is the decision that leads to the birth of BRMC. When they formed in San Francisco in 1998 they came into a city willfully ignorant of this screaming and kicking brat of a band. Try as they could, back in the day, BRMC could not get a gig in this supposed bastion of liberal taste in the USA. It’s strange to think today, especially when AU later surveys the crammed Ritz in Manchester, sold out as it is. “Yeah, it was strange. We basically couldn’t give our CD away even to friends. It was a little bit too cool for school. I hated that whole thing as far as…the thing is everyone’s got it to a certain extent but we had seen a bunch of bands like BJM and they had gone down to LA and they’d got gigs and they seemed to be getting a lot of attention as far as they’d keep getting shows. So you know if you want to make a living making music then you’ve got to play out and people have got to come. That was kind of the point.” In LA, BRMC’s rise was rapid and once again Anton Newcombe had to sit and watch another of his prodigy outstrip him in the popularity stakes. A major catalyst for the surge was the dreaded British music press’s hyping of the next big wave. BRMC got lumped in with it all, although predictably it’s not a bad place for any young band but it has its perils. “You know that was, that was really nice for us at the start. “ Peter illuminates. “And I guess we are kind of one of the lucky ones of those bands. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are still around. I think they’re still kickin’. And the White Stripes and The Strokes got shot into the stratosphere of the untouchable. Not that I feel bad for it. But at the same time that was what happened and there was nowhere to go from there. It’s kind of rough and you’re trying to dodge that the whole time.” Everything looked cosy, pigeon-holed as they were. They signed to Virgin Records and as Peter states, “We thought we’d be the poison in the belly of the beast of the major label” he laughs now dragging on his cigarette with hindsight adding, “and it kind of played out that way… but horribly.” Sure enough the charge for the gates was abruptly halted following ‘restructuring’ at Virgin. BRMC’s second album, ‘Take Them On, On Your Own’ had failed to chart well in the US and received a lukewarm reception in a UK press now looking the other way. The shine was off them and so was the label’s enthusiasm for the band. Fickle, but they did not share BRMC’s long-term visions. “Virgin fell apart and then Echo fell apart over here. And it’s really a drag showing up in town and nobody having any clue. I mean we’d walk down the street all the way through ‘Howl’ and people would be like ‘Hey, are you in BRMC?’ and I’d be like “Yeah” and he’d say, ‘What are you doing here?’ and I’d say ‘We’re playing a fucking show.’ And he’d be like ‘Shit I didn’t know.’ 2004 was a dark time for the band. All the hysterical heat had begun to evaporate from the band’s fender and it was obvious that this would be no easy ‘ride’ from here on in. It was also to be littered with many substances and much drink. Everything came to a head during the 2004 tour on their way through Edinburgh. The details are sketchy, but there was some sort of fight, words were said and in no uncertain terms the band split for a while. “It was me leaving and him (Nick Jago) leaving. We kind of left at the exact same moment. We both left the planet basically. A mental fucking meltdown, so we took a break for six months. We had started ‘Howl’. Nick kept in touch with his family and then he came back. Then we did ‘Promise’ with him and ‘666 Conducer’ and ‘Took Out A Loan’ and those were done back-to-back in one take basically and having had that experience it was pretty clear we were all OK.” Whatever the criticism levelled at ‘Howl’, that maybe it was too-over laden with Americana signifiers and or that it is essentially backward-looking, it was even level for the band. The album’s down-home folksy feel was the band’s way of instituting stability again especially for the country kid in Peter but it was also a way of getting back to basics and to the identity of BRMC. “That album was about the final introduction of the band. You know, we were still trying to beat off the ‘garage rock’ tag. But we didn’t have nothing to do with that, but we’re more than that. The music on ‘Howl’ was… I don’t know it can be debated whether we are musicians or artists or not but it was our step towards saying ‘We are fucking serious about this.” This reaffirmation of the band’s total commitment in the Betty Ford clinic that was ‘Howl’ was met by RCA and Island Records, and today with their fourth album ‘Baby 81’, they have rarely been in a better position. As an album it successfully marries the acoustic ‘Howl’ era BRMC with the straight out rock elements of their earlier candour. ‘Baby 81’ is BRMC’s coming of age album as well as being a political statement delivered in a more mature way than before. Instead of directly confronting wider political institutions and finger wagging like on say ‘US Government’, the ideals are based around ‘personal revolution’ according to Peter. You only have to look at the chorus of the lead single ‘Weapon of Choice’ to get a taste of a particular current and American ennui. “What’s your weapon of choice?” sings Peter, “Where is the weapon to free us all? I won’t waste my love on a nation”. It could be a rallying calling for the new disengaged, a generations’ popular disenchantment of America, post Iraq and post 9/11. “It is disenchantment you know. That’s dangerous ground to tread, but I don’t mind treading there. And that’s what’s fucked, that’s what’s absolutely wrong about it. The American people were held to ransom by religion and I think that’s fucking insane. You know by their government saying, ‘Those are evil- doers and if you don’t fucking believe in what we are doing then it is implied that you are a fucking evil-doer. It’s all tied in with religion and that crap and a bunch of people fell for it.” What about Bill O’Reilly-style charges of being unpatriotic, of not “staying the course“, of not “supporting the troops”? “It’s insane because I completely support the troops. I was on the path to that myself. I grew up on a farm and the only way to get the fuck out of the farm I was living on was go into the marines, that what I was doing. I happened to take a bunch of LSD, and I don’t know if that was the reason, but I ended up going, ‘Well I like guitar so I am not going to pick up a gun.’ But I completely understand those people and I support that, but that’s what’s fucked, because they’re our people that are in a bad situation, that need help and the government and military is going ‘it’s all good, we got this for you’. With that statement Peter has unwittingly crystallized the thrust of ‘Weapon of Choice’ and the core of the album. He has revealed it to be a more personal tribute than he could ever have realized. When he sings, “What is your weapon of choice? Where is the weapon to free us all?” he may be singing about one person’s choice of a guitar over a gun and as crass a comparison as that is, it is sadly a real reality for the youth of today in America. Looking at Peter here, sitting up on the lower step of a David Lynch style red corridor of the venue you see he is older, and that the fresh faced teenager in Dig! Who stormed off into the night with Matt Hollywood is gone. That was a decade ago and the ten-year mark is also looming for BRMC. Most bands dream of making it, while others that have, find it more of a prison sentence, but what does it mean to Peter? “You start feeling like you earned it, you know. I mean that’s all we have ever wanted – to fucking earn it. And I guess if you don’t beat the shit out of each other in a hotel and break up and you just keep playing your music then you slowly get to that place, and it’s like, ‘OK, we are just about there. OK we’ve got a little bit of self-respect.” Are BRMC and him slowly aging with some sort of character then AU asks? He laughs and then drags on the ends of his cigarette and stubs it out on the damp carpet, considering his thoughts and then coming back round, speaking slowly, any signs of rock n roll swagger absent in his eyes. “I don’t mind that, you know. I have always been into the long term of it anyway. Like I said, you’re lucky if you can do it, you know what I mean. And we’ve been lucky to be able to do it pretty respectfully as far as I know. I mean, we haven’t been shoved down people’s throats too much or exploited into something ridiculous. It’s been a respectable sort of rise… and fall and rise.” |
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| Re: As promised: Alternative Ulster May '07 interview with P | ||
 Posts: 1165 |
Posted Fri Sep 14, 2007 10:14 AM | Quote |
That album was about the final introduction of the band. Thats the most intelligent way of explaining that album I've read so far. There are some great pieces to read in this section just lately. |
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| Re: As promised: Alternative Ulster May '07 interview with P | ||
 Posts: 367 |
Posted Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:44 PM | Quote |
| Thank you both. | ||
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