 08/05/2008 Alas, the pen is a dangerous tool; a tool with great ability - and not just if jabbed into the retina with such force that pus spews forth, like liquid from the tested needle of a junky. No, the pen has the ability to produce information for us to see and learn, albeit without an ink-stamped Guarantee. Ah, how one takes the pen’s work as a given, eyes scanning data like a puppy-dog drooling beneath a dinner table - ever eager to sink it’s teeth into yet another juicy scrap of meat. Mmm...
Many stories have been written about self-professed ‘Flower Punk’ (“we came up with that to stop the media trying to label us”) Atlanta four-piece The Black Lips, and yes, a lot of it is probably true. The pissing on stage, the vomiting, the nudity and male on male bonding RE: a tongue jammed down the throat, cannot be disputed. Nor their mad-cap live album Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo shot in location in Tijuana, Mexico, where money buys momentary peace from the authorities, drug wars are rife and pimps, prostitutes and thieves walk the streets and seedy back-alleys like wolves on a midnight prowl.
Ah, the pen can reveal such exciting truths; but it can also distort the subconscious of the reader. Sometimes one has to dig deeper, like a dog with a bone, to reveal the changing of the guard or the facts behind the facts. In this interview The Black Lips reveal that how they're perceived may be true, but there's far more to them than mere debauchery. They're a band with the same energy live on stage that they showed when pissing in each others mouths, and they still evidently have fond memories of the hedonistic Tijuana but… well, they've matured somewhat.
The Black Lips history, their struggle to get signed to a major label and the hard rigours that led to its eventuality, have given them a deeper respect for their music - all too apparent on their last album Good Bad Not Evil. A modern masterpiece; no doubt. Alas, this isn’t merely an interview with bass-guitarist Jared Swilley and drummer Joe Bradley, it’s a morality tale in the vein of: “If at first you don’t succeed, keep fucking trying”…
PN: Okay lads, we’ll start with the new single, Bad Kids; I heard through the grapevine that it was inspired by your time in detention centres. Any truth to this or was it inspired by something else?
Jared: I think just for getting in trouble as kids - just crap, a lot of vandalism. I mean, I actually had to go to a detention centre but it’s not actually about being in a detention centre. We all hung out together in school and destroyed a lot of things; got drunk a lot. We did pretty good… Well, I guess I didn’t do so good in the end because I got caught, but we had a good run. I’d had a bad week, I got kicked out of school and got arrested a couple of times.
PN: What about the other track, Leroy Faster, is it based on any experiences or…
Jared: I think its just nonsense that song…
Joe: Might be about a crack head who got hold of the wrong stuff.
Jared: Yeah I think it’s about a crack head.
Joe: There’s a lot of crack in Atlanta. Lots of crack heads too.
PN: So what was it like growing up in Atlanta, other than there being shit loads of crack heads; was growing up there an inspiration to your music?
Jared: Well we grew-up in a little suburb, so I’d imagine growing up in the city would have been a lot different. I enjoyed where we grew-up because there was a lot of like-minded kids…
Joe: Locked up for break…
Jared: I think it was maybe an inspiration to our music - cos there was just nothing else to do. I think bands from the suburbs tend to make better music than kids that grew-up in the cities.
PN: Your live shows have gained notoriety for being debauched affairs, pissing in each others mouths and the like. When did you first start causing such onstage madness and what inspired you to start doing it?
Jared: That was in the very early days when we were still teenagers - like a lot of that stuff doesn’t happen anymore. I mean the shows are still crazy and energetic but mostly it was just, um, being immature and not knowing how to play our instruments - I think that was it.
PN: So would you say that you’ve done a lot of growing up? That you’ve matured as band?
Joe: A little bit, yeah, well we would hope so…
Jared: Not too much! But, um, I don’t know why we did that stuff. I think it was, you know, punk-rock - that’s what you’re supposed to do, so… We were really into The Germs and stuff like that and they were a big influence. We still have the energy we’re just not as dopey anymore. We didn’t want the antics to get in the way of the music.
PN: ‘Good Bad Not Evil’ is an extremely diverse album - the way a lot of The Stones albums were in the 60s…
Joe: You don’t want to constrict yourself to one type of music; you really disable your career with your ability to evolve as a band. Plus, you get bored if you play the same music all the time - it gets really boring, so we always like to explore new things.
Jared: We have a lot of different influences and stuff so they all kind of creep up along the line, you know?
PN: Sure… Okay, what’s the story behind the live chicken on stage (Siren Festival), was that some kind of fucked up voodoo ritual or…
Jared: (laughs) It was mostly just because… Sometimes at festivals it’s hard to, you know - you’re like a tiny speck to most people, so we got our friend to build this air canon. And it was mostly just an excuse to shoot out tons and tons of feathers but it was supposed to look like we’d put a chicken in a canon and exploded it. The chicken was fine, we used food stamps to buy it at a Puerto-Rican market. The chicken was fine. We set it free in McGolrick Park in Brooklyn; someone probably killed it and ate it. It was just a pretty cool thing to have tons of feathers, like - snowing down! It looked pretty cool.
PN: What about Tijuana in Mexico (The Black Lips recorded live album Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo there), that must have been a pretty cool, debauched affair. What was it like playing there and what sort of things did you get up to?
 Joe: It was cool because, like - over half of the audience were - like, Mexican kids; and we played with this awesome band who came down there. It was a really dangerous place; you had to worry about the people as well as the police - probably the police more.Jared: The police are the most dangerous thing. It’s not such a great place to play shows; we had a good show just because the circumstances were right, but it can go really wrong down there as far as getting robbed or - getting arrested is the worst because they’ll arrest you for anything. We gave everyone eighty bucks in cash when we went down because that’s the going rate for a bribe.
PN: Shit. That sounds like Columbia!
Jared: Well, just a couple of days ago there was a battle on the street - the street we played on down there - like a big gun battle between local drug gangs. Like, all down the street there was a high-speed chase with people shooting from car to car and, like - thirteen people died. It was pretty hairy down there. The drug wars are getting bad along the border. We had a couple of things stolen and our tour manager got shaken down for eight-hundred bucks, but that’s kind of mild compared to what could have happened. You get stopped a lot - you’d be insane to take your car there; actually some people did but you had to pay someone to guard it - a lot! But we walked over there and on the way back I got stopped, like - three of four separate times. They’ll take everything out of your pockets, take your money, smell your fingers to see if you’ve been smoking joints. When you walk down the streets they’re selling prostitutes and they’ve got, like - sticks in their hands and they jab you in the side…
Joe: Like that (makes jabbing motions) ‘CH-CH-CH-CH’ when you walk by…
Jared: And we tried to take a picture of them right then and they started blowing all these whistles and waving flags and stuff, and all the prostitutes ran inside and all these guys were blowing whistles to try and distract you.
PN: I guess you didn’t have a lot of luck with the Tijuana women then?
Jared: No…
Joe: You really don’t want to…
Jared: It’s pretty much the most hedonistic city. It’s kind of cool that it’s still there because, I mean, San Diego’s just like an affluent Californian, Southern City town, and within a two minute walk you go straight into dirt-ball country. It’s kind of creepy to see middle-aged white men walking round alone there because you know they’re doing horrible things. It’s like a poor mans South-East Asia, I guess… for Americans.
PN: So when did you first develop an interest in music? Was there a standout moment of clarity when you realised ‘this is what I want to do?’
Joe: My Mum was real musical in the church so she got me into the choir and shit when I was like, five…
Jared: I was kind of the same. My Dad was a musician and I sang in church when I was a kid. But it was mostly, you know - your Beatles and stuff? And knowing about punk bands when I was real small I kind of wanted to be in a band. It was like skateboarding sure got me into it a lot because I’d skate with older kids and they got me into ‘Black Flag’ and stuff like that so… I mean, I really loved punk-rock and ‘Black Flag’ and stuff, but I was really into The Beatles and The Stones so it’s kind of a merger…
PN: If I hadn’t been a journalist I’d probably still be working fruit and veg in a supermarket. What would you have done if you hadn’t done music?
Joe: Engineering.
Jared: I’d probably be either a garbage man or in the army.
PN: Back to the live stuff, do you have any pre-stage rituals, touching a cross or going for a massive shit, or do you just get pissed before you head on stage?
Joe: We slap our faces and warm-up our voices.
Jared: I like to take a shot of whiskey. But we don’t really have any - I don’t know… Some bands pray.
Joe: Yeah, or huddle and touch each-others butts. We’re not into that; we just go out there and do it.
PN: Some writers, particularly the likes of Ginsberg and Hunter S. Thompson, have been described as outlaw writers. Some people might describe your music as outlaw music, would you agree with that?
Jared: I’d agree with that mentality as far as there are a lot of bands around who are cowardly and safe and I don’t think anything artistic should be safe at all.
Joe: People conform to too many norms… Normally.
Jared: I don’t know - not doing what everyone else is doing and not being afraid to take risks.
Joe: Not being a pussy…
Jared: Yeah not being a vagina about having to be on the road all the time.
Joe: Too many people are waiting for people to lead them in a certain direction and that’s just not the way you’re supposed to do things, you’ve got to find your own way.
Jared: Yeah, I get real bent out of shape about a lot of these bands – they put a song on MySpace and they’re huge and they’ve never struggled or had to do anything; it‘s just kind of happened…
Joe: How are they supposed to appreciate all that they’ve had when they’ve done nothing to earn it?
PN: Sure. I totally agree man. But those bands are mainstream, you know? Don’t you think the mainstream’s an important thing to break into?
Joe: No, that’s not true.
Jared: Yeah, I like the mainstream. I mean, like - The Beatles were the biggest band in the world but they put in their time in Hamburg and slogging it out in like strip-clubs and stuff like that, so I admire that. But I don’t admire stuff that - if you don’t work for stuff… There’s nothing wrong with being on a major label. You know, maybe if they’re really good they deserve it, but there’s something that bothers me about it.
Joe: It’s not them doing the hard work it’s someone else paying someone else to do the hard work for them, and that’s just not something we admire.
PN: I guess it makes you stronger as band to go through the shit-run to success, right? To have to slog it out…
Jared: Yeah, I mean we had to deal with four years of homelessness and poverty.
Joe: Eating out of trash cans and stuff like that…
Jared: And more. It just recently got more comfortable. I mean recently we’ve been able to eat and stay in hotels and pay our rent and stuff like that.
PN: Man, I guess at that stage you carried on going just for the love of the music?
Joe: Yeah. Homeless shelters - I mean basically they were the only thing keeping us going. We didn’t have homes to go back to or like - food to go back to so the only thing we could do is find some way of like - getting to the next show and play it… Get closer to getting home. Sheer determination!
Jared: Yeah, sheer determination. And I knew if I went home I’d just be washing dishes and stuff like that. A lot of people would have quit a long time ago.
PN: And it’s paid off! I mean you were on the Conan O’Brian show for Christ sake. I read, and I don’t know whether it’s true, that when you were on the show there wasn’t a single crime committed in New York.
Jared: (laughs) I never heard that before; that’s awesome.
Joe: A ridiculous statistic.
Jared: It’s slightly crazy. I think New York’s pretty tame now. It’s pretty safe there; it’s a lot safer in New York than anywhere else.
PN: Do you think you have to have some form of rebellion to make good music…
Joe: Not necessarily. It doesn’t hurt though. It usually comes down to, like, when things are bad the music’s good and when things are good the music’s bad. Like when Bill Clinton was president, like, that’s when we had all the Backstreet Boys and N-Sync and all that crap; and then when things started going bad, you know, the music got better. Not always at a constant, but that’s normally how it works.
Jared: I definitely think that there needs to be some rebellion in good music. I mean, even straight-laced guys - the people who make straight-lace music that my parents like, are fucked-up… Buddy Holly was a total fuck-up!
Joe: Yeah, but at the same time in the 80s you had the Yuppie culture come in and that was a rebellion to everything before, like it goes both ways, you know? But you definitely need some kind of something.
PN: Okay, so on the theme of rebellion, what about drugs and music? They were synonymous in the 60s - kind of went together hand in hand, to some extent. Do you think they can help with the song-writing process?
Joe: It’s more about the perspective. Drugs change your perspective, you know…
Jared: I think they could; I don’t necessarily think they have to. I think the only reason they’re synonymous with it is because the type of person who’s usually a musician has that kind of lifestyle – it’s what they’re around all the time. But, I mean - I’ve written good songs drunk before, so… But I think with some characters it probably helps them. I think some people with, like, predispositions to take drugs are probably pre-destined to do something like music or write or paint or something like that.
Joe: Yeah, but doing drugs doesn’t necessarily always mean you’re gonna make good music.
Jared: Yeah, I think cocaine makes really bad music.
Joe: Yeah, unless you’re doing hip-hop.
 PN: What about the ‘Flower-Punk’ tag that you’ve been categorized into. Was it your idea for your music to be known as ‘Flower-Punk’ or was it a media creation?
Joe: We came up with that to combat the media trying to put all types of labels on us. We got called, like, 'garage, rockabilly, punk' or something. They’d gone too far. They love to have a definition of some sort so we just came up with a definition of our own so people would stop keep trying to make up stuff.
Jared: I think rock n roll’s a good enough description most of the time. But you know you don’t have to put a label on it, you don’t have to describe it. Some people do it better than others but we just kind of say it as a joke. I think there are probably other ‘Flower Punk’ bands out there now.
PN: What about the track ‘How Do You Tell A Child That…’
[A thin guy in a scruffy suit two sizes too big - and a tasteless tie, probably early to mid forties, thin grey hair and a moustache like Graeme Souness circa 1980 - approaches the table with a look of lo-fi excitement strewn across his face]
Guy: Are you guys playing tonight?
Jared: No, no…
Guy: Um, are you in a band?
Jared: Yes…
Guy: Um, and you’re Kula Shaker?
Jared: Yeah…
Guy: Come on - what’s the name of your band?
Jared: The Black Lips.
Guy: What?
Jared: The Black Lips…
Guy: Um, who?
Jared: The Black Lips!
Guy: The Black Lips? Oh… Do you know Kula Shaker?
Jared: No.
Guy: Oh, well apparently… You know Drink Tea? Well Kula Shaker, um, they covered that. Yeah, Drink Tea, they did that. And, um, they… They had big ‘taches so I just thought… I just thought…
PN: Yeah? Man, that’s great, but we’re kind of doing an interview here so…
Guy: One of them, um, one of the really great songs had an Indian theme. Yes… Um, which is apparently something to do with King Arthur…
[The guy walks over to the bar and takes a seat, smiling at us every now and again as he necks pint after pint after pint. He later asks a sexy blonde if he can take her photograph on his mobile phone - “You look like a model, are you a model” - to which she gives a look of genuine distain]
PN: Right. The track ‘How Do You Tell A Child That Someone Has Died’ from Good Bad Not Evil - was that in anyway based on the loss of Ben (Eberbaugh, original band member killed when a drink driver going the wrong way collided with the car he was driving)?
Jared: Well, no, no. It’s just about the death of everyone really. I mean, I guess if you put it into… It was mostly an ode to these old trucker sounds - an old genre of country called trucker country; and it was just, like - ballads where they talk over the music. And all of them were like, so heart-retching and depressing but like, so comical.
PN: I mean, the only reason I ask is because there’s a section of the song that refers to someone getting killed by a drunk driver (The teacher you loved Mr. Peterson / Has sadly passed away / He was killed by a motorist in a drunken act of rage)…
Jared: Oh yeah! I mean, Cole wrote that and I don’t know whether that was his intentions but we’ve told people that maybe it could be. But it’s just about… We had a load of friends that died, maybe that was… But it’s kind of like a tongue in cheek song. We like to mix black and white together so it’s supposed to be, like, kind of sad but funny at the same time.
Joe: I mean it sounds kind of happy, but then the contents are like, really dark, you know? Kind of like black comedy. Black comedy meets white on white crime.
PN: I guess not all of your tracks are related to reality then? So how do you come up with songs that come from the subconscious? What’s the song writing process?
Joe: We’ll just write songs and then come together in the studio and just show ‘em to each other.
Jared: I’ve just written a song. I had just a few minutes to write the lyrics while we were in the studio so I just went through ‘The Song of Solomon’ from the Old Testament and just picked up random sentences from that. I’ve used that ‘Might is Right’ book to pick out, like, brutal things from that.
Joe: I’ve got one song I’m writing. I got some lyrics, some words, from a Conservative ‘Right Wing’ talk radio show host. He had some really good one-liners like: “The Violence in Europe is oozing like the pus from a broken scab.” That was a good one. You’ve got to get it where you can.
PN: Woah! This morning I read a story about Uma Thurman getting stalked by a fan. Maybe he was a maniac, who knows? Have you had any weird letters, turds in the post, or fans that follow you about in a weird fucking way?
Jared: We’ve got some creepy fans. We’ve got a lot of kids who follow us around. Most of them are nice - you know, they’re just not, like, creepy. But we’ve definitely had some people that creep me out that I avoid. If I know they’re gonna be there I’ll hide!
Joe: Yeah, they creep you out, you know? You’ll be standing there, you’ll start to shiver, you feel a chill up and down your spine, you’ll turn around and the person’s just standing there. Just like that...
Jared: It hasn’t been so much any more, but we used to have like, old men following us around. Lately it’s been nicer because it’s just like, teenage girls, and that’s harmless. I’ve had kids say things to me that scare me; we have these like, crazy teenage boys, and I was sort of like that at their age - but they say really depraved things and they think we’re crazy and stuff like that. That freaks me out. I don’t wanna like, make some kid shoot himself or do heroin and stuff. Some kid thanked me the other day - saying he dropped acid for the first time and he was saying like, “Thank you, I dropped acid for the first time because of you.” I don’t know how I feel about that… I don’t feel too good about that…
PN: You can’t blame yourself for that shit though. So how do you chill-out away from all that crap – away from the music?
Jared: When I’m at home I play tennis or I BBQ. Yeah - tennis and BBQ. I’m not as good as John McEnroe - I’m not as angry as John McEnroe. I wanna start playing golf more to; I think that’d be really relaxing. But we never have time at home; when I’m at home I’ll be working on other music projects.
Joe: Yeah, that’s usually the way it is. I’ll do some yard work; it feels nice doing a bit of work on your yard.
Jared: I take online Spanish classes but I’ve been really slacking on it...
Joe: Normally when I get home I gotta clean up my house because my room mates are kind of messy. I like to get it nice and clean so I can relax. I’ve got three room mates, it’s the only way I can like, afford to be on tour. It’s a nice house but you’ve gotta find some ways to cut corners.
Jared: I share an apartment with my girlfriend so we split it.
PN: Any amusing stories from your recent tour?
Jared: I’m trying to think of anything funny happening. The tour we just got back from was pretty uneventful as far as…
PN: I guess that’s what you were saying about growing up a bit, right?
Joe: Well normally on our tours we have more time but on these last European tours all our drives were like, eight or ten hours between shows; we tried to party but then we’d have to get up at like eight-thirty in the morning so we couldn’t really hang-out and have as many funny times as usual.
PN: Finally, what about a new album, any plans or details you can reveal?
Jared: Yeah, we’re taking the majority of the summer off to record a new album; we have to find out where we’re recording it though.
PN: Any song ideas at the moment or any that you’ve already got?
Jared: I think everyone has ideas. I kind of like it when it just kind of flies by and you go in there without really knowing what to do and…
Joe: It keeps things fresh. If you play the same song over and over again and then try and record them you usually find that  they’re normally pretty stale…
Jared: They way we did our third album I really enjoyed - the one before, Good Bad Not Evil, because a lot of that was written that week. Like - we just came up with a lot of stuff right before it. And I don’t know about the rest of the guys but I tend to work better under pressure, like, when you have to do something. If I’m sitting around with a guitar all day and it’s like, “Oh, I have to write a song” then I probably won’t, but if it comes down to the wire then I’m better at doing that.
Joe: I think everyone works better under pressure… Well not everyone. Highly strung people don’t work well under pressure. If you have a deadline to meet it depends on how determined you are. If you have determination then you’ll work harder and work better towards your goal.
Words: Dangerous Dave! Photograph of Jared, Joe, and Dangerous courtesy of the Kula Shaker fanatic! Bad Kids is released on Vice Records on May 12th. Check out the Black Lips MySpace page! |
