By Boardpass Members Arthur Ostrowski
Did you guys do everything for yourselves or do you have a network of people working for you?
Honestly we did everything ourselves. No network of people. We were just 15 year old kids. We learned by mistakes, just fucking up. Everything from Epitaph, making the records and going on tours, printing t-shirts, yeah we did it all on our own. We figured that everyone has an opinion of what you do, and since there were four of us we figured we had enough opinions.
What's your reaction to what's going on around us in the world today, does it affect your music?
No because it's like what happened at the world trade buildings. Like we've been singing about that for 12 years. Sure it caught everyone off guard, but not everybody. It's a humanity issue. I'm no different in my reaction to the situation that I was in '91. Same war, same people same guys but just his dad. They're fucken crazy. It is not unexpected. What I got mad about was that Americans weren't willing to educated themselves about why this was happening. George bush "w" got 51% of the Americans to believe that Saddam Huessein was responsible with the 9/11 attacks, and that he is tied with Alquida. So people don't bother to do their homework and believe him. Which is not true, they hate each other. Nobody bothers to do any work. 500 000 children will lose their lives because they can't fucken get their medicine. Don't get me wrong. Saddam Huessein is a fucken lunatic who doesn't deserve to be in power, I agree with that. But for people to not know how this all started, that I don't agree with.
Does anything you read influence your music?
Lyric wise sure. Books are like, I'm hesitant to use this analogy but books are like drugs. You allow yourself to get taken over by them, and they can change your life. They open you mind and let you see them in a different point of view. I'm not an advocate of drugs, nor am I an opponent I just find that spending time in someone else's brain, basically what you're doing when you read a book, is very liberation. And it can change more than just your songs and your lyrics. It can change the way you live. There are a couple books that stick out. Anything by Kurt Vonnegut , cat's cradle, slaughter house five. He kinda had a way of writing that wasn't over the top, he wrote in a way literate yet understandable. Things that were not real, but you believed to be real because of the way they were described. Those two were probably the biggest influences on Bad Religion because we all read them
What was the biggest thing that made you big, was it an explosion or a slow transition?
Really slow. The band started out in 1980. We started having some kind or qwasy success by '91. We put out suffer in 1988. The record wasn't huge but people liked it but it only sold like two thousand copies. But there were only two thousand punk, I mean it was just dead. It just kind of kept building on itself. Our highest point was "Stranger than Fiction" and then it was hazy because we kinda fucked it up. That was when managers and major label came it and things got messed up. It didn't change the sound or the band just the people.
Is there more to life than being in Bad Religion?
Probably, we don't look at this band as the most meaningful thing in our lives. It's not our reason for existence, it's our hobby. Like playing hockey or anything else you do with your friends. I think when your in a band you always have aspirations of people liking what you do. But we realized a log time ago that we can't control that.
Being in a band, does it consume most of you time?
That's what I'm trying to get at. Never let the band get away from that feeling. Like I play golf, play cards with baker, skate and go snowboarding like I did before. It's just that I now get paid for playing the bass guitar and not snowboarding in Whistler. I wish I did, fuck I'd quit this. I was just a really fortunate person and got in and got paid for what I like doing. I mean you can't take it for granted and you can't take it too seriously because at the end of the day it doesn't mean anything, you just an idiot with an opinion.
Were you good friends before you started the band?
No, no.. I knew Greg Graffin. There were only four of us in the band when it was first started. I knew Greg for about 3 or 4 months because we when to school together. We met Brett and the drummer at a party. With in a couple of weeks we started. We're just like brothers. I mean when you start out you're friends, then you're in this married thing and then you're just like family, you fight like family you know.
Do you have any regrets by just being in a band rather then something else you might have wanted to do?
You know what, I don't have any regrets with the band. What I do have regrets with is that I didn't take my education seriously. Dropped out of high school and went and got a job. Fortunately it didn't work out that bad for me but I would have like to been a little more focused. But it's so fucken hard when you're 15 or 16 years old to think about what you're going to do when you're forty. I though I would be dead like in my thirties. You're history when your thirty. I'm 38 and I'm like wow that didn't happen. I've been very fortunate that I've learned so much in these past 23 years. Now that I have 2 kids I miss them a lot by being on the road 6 to 8 months a year.
We're you ambitious about your band and thought that you'd be really big?
We'll no, I know band that put on guitars and act like they're the Beatles. I mean they have this really strange mentality and they walk around thinking they're huge. We never did that. We weren't really good but we like what we did. It was really just something to do after school. We really had only 2 choices. Go to the mall and get beat up or go to Graffin's garage and play music all day. I got tired of get'n beat up.
Do you guys pay a lot of attention to theory when you're writing songs?
This band has no musical talent what so ever. I took guitar lessons like twice. I wanted to learn Van Halen but he wanted me to lean like this row row row you boat. I was like no I wont be doing that. When you hear something else, like when I hear an Elvis Castello song that you really like or background harmony it sticks in your head. When the time comes up you're just like oh I have this thing in my head that I always wanted to do. Insert into song here. I know it's not difficult for us, but I know it's difficult for most people. Living in our own bubble, we kinda perfected our own style. It was easy for us because we really have a great sense on communication. It's almost intuitive where you don't even have to say something and it's like " I know I know I've got it". you don't even finish the sentence and Brian baker is already playing the guitar part that you were thinking. It works out really well.
How do you guys have the time to write new songs and put out a new album?
You just have to find the time. Being on the road is not time consuming. Like really you only have to work for an hour a day. I know a lot of bands that carry studios when they tour. We don't do that because the problem is that when you write songs on the road, they're all about being on the road. It's not a really good time to be writing songs. We just go to our corners of the universe and get going.
What do you think about all the media coverage you guys have gotten.
We've been on everything except Leno. It's fun. I don't really care about it. It's a perk, not a prerogative. We don't focus our time so that we can get on TV. Sometime you just become friends or friendly with guys like George from Much Music, who's a great guy. So that's kinda a bonus.
What about the music videos that you guys have made?
We make terrible videos. We will honestly go down as the band that makes the worst music videos. Like not just one bad one, but all of them. I don't know what to do. I wish I was Matt Good because he makes great videos. Music wise we have that little secret that that works for us but video wise, it's like we fight like cats and dogs. It's like Greg wants to be riding a horse through a pasture and everyone wants something different. You realize it's not what we do. I found that entertaining to myself that when it comes to playing music and recording music we're really good at it. When it comes to visualizing that music, we're fucken awful at it.
Do you guys plan out your tours and stuff for the year yourselves by sitting down and talking it over?
Not this year, but most years we do. This tour was just put together like a month ago.
Dan: you guys do it yourself?
Jay: well no, I don't do any of the phone calls it's too much work. We've got a great agent that does all that work. We just say what we wanna do. It's good to have people that think the same way you do.
