News

Back to Being Loud: An Interview with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

When they made their debut in 2000, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were initially pegged as the West Coast answer to the rock renaissance then sweeping New York courtesy of The Strokes. The choice was poor casting, and the three members of BRMC were unwilling actors, preferring Jesus and Mary Chain-styled psychedelia over radio-friendly garage-rock.

Following some internal and external band turmoil, the trio shifted gears entirely on 2005's Howl, fashioning themselves as an Americana band, complete with harmonica solos and lyrics about the devil.

"Then we went back to being loud," sums up guitarist/singer Peter Hayes, speaking about his band's new album. Actually, Baby 81 (out May 1) offers multiple sides of the BRMC sound, from brash post-punk to U2-sized arena ballads. In an exclusive interview with ARTISTdirect, Hayes talked about making Baby 81, eliminating the need for outside producers, and working to reclaim the BRMC swagger in time for their upcoming tour.

We're talking a few weeks before your tour really kicks up. Are you getting some final relaxation time in, or has the grind started already?

No, no, we're in high alert mode. No fucking relaxing. It's getting a little frustrating. We're trying to cram everything together, and we've been rehearsing nonstop. We were supposed to have a month of rehearsal, then it got cut down to two weeks because we're going over to England to do some stuff. You have to learn how to play what you played on the record; it's kind of like cramming for finals.

Some of the songs on the new record seem like they'd be pretty complicated to translate.

Yeah. I love having that problem. (laughs) It really makes the brain work. With Howl, we kind of did the same thing—we got in the studio to rehearse it and went "Oh, fuck." We ended up bringing out another guy [Michael "Spike" Keating]. Same with this—we figured, well, we got him out for Howl, so why don't we have him again? It was always strange to have him come out for the Howl songs and sit down for the other songs. Now he's got more songs to do, and he can help us out with the vocals, doing the harmonies and all that. A lot of stuff on Howl was three-part harmonies, and there's a lot of stuff on [Baby 81] that's three or four-part harmony.

Is the progression of sound between the albums something that gets discussed and premeditated, or does it just pop out in the songwriting?

Howl was premeditated in a way—we had songs like "Shuffle Your Feet," "Complicated Situation," and "Gospel Song" for the first album, and, at the time, they didn't work. They didn't really seem to fit on the record, and we didn't want to give the impression that they were filler. The plan was to save those songs for an album that was going to sound like that. So we saved them up and made Howl—and then we didn't have any more songs. (laughs) Then we went back to being loud. Who knows, maybe two years from now we'll have more acoustic songs.

When I listened to Baby 81 for the first time, the music came on and kind of made me feel cool; it gave me a little swagger. Does it have a similar effect when you play it?

I don't know yet. (laughs) That's really kind of the most frustrating part of playing right now—listening back to the album and trying to get the parts and the solos and the licks in between. The brain kind of concentrates on that so much that it ruins the feel of it. You're trying to remember what you're doing and where you're supposed to be putting things, so for the first month, at least... you feel like a cover band, in a way. It's a shitty kind of feeling. You're not listening to the other guys all that well because you're worrying about your own shit so much. Once you're able to let go and get back into it and just play, then, yeah, you have a lot more fun with it. That's the whole thing we're fighting for, that swagger.

How did you guys approach production?

» keep reading

1 | 2