Category: | Interview - Internet | Publish date: | 1/1/1996 |
Source: | Kastle (United States) | With: | Brian Baker |
Synopsis: |
Interview with Brian Baker
By Kastle
The summer heat has finally kicked in for Southern California. On this unusually hot Saturday night, the Orange Show Fairgrounds are beginning to look like a punk rock Woodstock as Bad Religion fans sprawl out on the grassy lawn around the fountains outside Citrus Hall. Before Bad Religion take the stage, the front barricades surge from the weight of the crowd and plastic water bottles and other various objects are hurled overhead.
The spacious, general admission venue will soon turn into a roaring, sweltering sweathouse with several mosh pits spinning out of control both in front and around the stage. The scene is almost reminiscent of the punk shows in the hey day of the late '70s and early '80s but a few things have changed. Namely, the members of Bad Religion are all older and wiser and some, like singer Greg Graffin, have completed college and started families. It's a far cry from the band that started in 1980 when Graffin and Jay Bentley were feisty teenagers living in the suburban wasteland known as California's San Fernando Valley. They formed Bad Religion based on what was basically the inspiration for all of punk rock -- boredom, frustration and rebellion against everything that was considered the "norm."
Since then, the band has put out 11 albums and made a name for themselves as one of the most enduring and influential bands to come out of the American punk brigade. Through their long career, the band has gone through a few lineup changes. The current band consists of Graffin (vocals), Jay Bentley (bass), Greg Hetson (guitars) and Bobby Schayer (drums). The biggest and most recent change was the departure of Brett Gurewitz, who left the band to devote himself full-time to Epitaph records, the label that was originally a tool to put out Bad Religion records and later exploded with the success of Offspring and Rancid. Gurewitz was replaced by Brian Baker who is no stranger to punk himself. Having been a part of the original wave of American hard-core punk with the legendary band Minor Threat, Baker later played with Dag Nasty and did a brief stint with the abrasive LA hard rock band Junkyard. Two years ago Baker was asked to join Bad Religion, packed his bags, sold his car and vacated the Hollywood bar scene and moved to Washington DC. to begin his new career.
Sitting outside on the ground of the parking lot backstage, Baker described his new job with Bad Religion as "What's not to like!" Though he wasn't an original member he admits he was somewhat of a fan of the band. "I liked 'How Could Hell Be Any Worse?' when I was young, then I lost track of them and I missed all the pivotal 'Suffer,' 'No Control' period. I rediscovered them at 'Recipe For Hate' and thought they were absolutely wonderful. But even when I joined the band I had still never heard "Suffer." So I was a fan but a selective one. I've known Hetson for 16 years and the others for various lengths of time just through that old punk rock. So it wasn't too hard to assimilate because we already knew each other."
Baker said he doesn't feel pressure in replacing half the songwriting team that made Bad Religion. "I'm just trying to help -- I'm like a Band-Aid!" Rather than stress about it, he says he just does what he knows best, "I had no intention of trying to write half a Bad Religion record like Brett. I can't write lyrics nearly as well as Greg Graffin and the last thing you want to do is try to imitate what was already there. I just did my usual thing and wrote a handful of Dag Nasty-esque, DC type songs because that's all I know how to do. Greg liked four of them, made words for them and changed stuff around. That's called collaboration. I wasn't trying to fill anybody's shoes. If you have a good riff in your head it just won't go away -- you must share it!"
Though Baker mainly sticks with songwriting, the lyrics are left to Graffin who's educational background includes a master's degree in Geology at UCLA and he's working toward a PhD in Biology from Cornell. Graffin's lyrics are supercharged with social political stances. No "Oh, baby, baby" rock anthems here but rather well written observations that they hope will make their fans think. And it seems they are succeeding. After their show, one fan expressed how he loves Bad Religion because he learns from them, stating how he had to look up two words in the dictionary that were on the new album.
While Graffin may have some strong opinions on the state of humanity, Baker says he agrees with everything Bad Religion stands for. He explained the main theme behind their latest album, "The Gray Race", "It's just a neat use of language for Greg as a metaphor for the human race. Conceptually, he just made an observation that the humans who are the most developed of all animals, are the only ones who can see in shades of gray, but only deal in black and white issues. Greg noticed that, it became a song and it sort of became a theme."
With "The Gray Race" and their previous album, "Stranger Than Fiction," Bad Religion are achieving the kind of success most of the early punk bands never thought they would see or ever wanted to see. While Baker's former bands remained relatively underground, he says playing in Bad Religion isn't that different. "It's just like all the other bands I've been in except more people come see us. The dynamic is the same, it's all friends. I don't really think about it from the outside, I think about it from the inside, about how much fun it is to play, the people get along and the songwriting is fun. That's why it's fun for me. I would be in it even if it wasn't popular."
At tonight's show, the two main Southern California "alternative" radio stations have sent out their party vans to set up camp in the parking lot. Legions of baggy trousered, T-shirt and sneaker wearing fans, many of whom were just born around the time Bad Religion formed, hang out and party before the show. Not exactly the kind of mentality that was seen in the first punk movement. During the show Graffin asked the crowd how many were just hearing Bad Religion for the first time and received a round of cheers. Considering it used to be punk's code of ethics to be faithful to the underground rather than a follower of "sellout corporate radio," it's hard to figure where Bad Religion falls at this point. Baker dismisses what used to be a very elitist attitude in punk. "I don't think it's my job to determine how people are supposed to react to Bad Religion music, I'm not the punk police. What I do is play music and whoever shows up is cool. I have no intention of telling people how to have fun or saying 'you people aren't cool enough to go here and since you only heard the single on the radio that means you're not a fan.' I think that's bullshit. Come one come all, slam dance your brains out. The more the merrier, it's still better than Winger!"
With punk becoming so mainstream now, Baker says there's no turning back but what is important is to get back to the spirit of what made it important, "It was already blown out of proportion by 1985. That sense of community and danger had dissipated as soon as runway models started wearing leather jackets with studs in them and movies like Sid and Nancy came out. The only reason everyone's saying it's all being destroyed now is because they're 14. Punk rock is now mainstream and you can't fix that. It's time to stop worrying about the community that doesn't exist and be more concerned about liking bands for the right reasons because maybe they have something important to say, not what label they are on. Take the time to investigate music a little bit more thoroughly which is one of the few things you still can do that we used to do when we were punk." One good outlet, Baker says, is the internet: "The internet is really good for punk rock. It kind of culls out the Beavis and Butt-heads because they don't really know how to operate a computer well enough to get in there and if they accidentally do, people get rid of them. On the Bad Religion Web sites, you can find incredibly cool stuff I never even knew was there. I learned about my own band from the Internet!"
He said he recently bought a computer but hasn't had much time to go on-line since the tour began , but says Graffin is on-line all the time from the hotel rooms. For right now, Baker is more interested in sleep and devouring the fish tacos his bandmates were kind enough to bring him. As he wandered back into the venue to get ready for the show, Bad Religion fans were still whooping it up in the parking lot and the heat still hadn't let up.