BRIAN BAKER of BAD RELIGION: But Are The Kids Really Alright?
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
With the release of their seventeenth album Age of Unreason earlier this year, Bad Religion once again cemented their formidable place in punk rock. Formed in 1980, numerous line-up changes over the years have never weakened their resolve to be a band that has made music ‘to inform”, often addressing controversial topics such as politics and religion.
Commenting on today’s current political climate, ‘The Kids Are Alt-Right’ was an unsurprising catalyst for heated discussions around issues such as racism, free speech and gun reforms. Bad Religion once again proving that they are more relevant today than they ever were.
Making their way down to New Zealand for a highly anticipated show that will see them play alongside both Frenzal Rhomb and Bodyjar, two of Australia’s most revered names in punk, fans can be assured of a night that will go down in the history books.
Not only a member of Bad Religion for the past twenty-five years, but a member of the hardcore Washington D.C. punk band Minor Threat, Brian Baker is both grateful for the recognition he receives but disconcerted by the society he currently lives in. I sat down with Brian to discuss not only the new album and upcoming shows, but his admiration for our very own Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern…
You were of course a member of Minor Threat, cited as one of the most highly influential punk bands of all time, the song ‘Straight Edge’ the catalyst for an entire movement; how do you look back on that period of your life now?
“Well I mean I’m very grateful; it’s interesting how at the time how insignificant it all felt because we were very, very young and for me this was my high school band [laughs] We’d go practice at the guitar players Mom’s house after school. So, no one really thought it would wind up having the significance that it has attained over the years, but I attribute that to Ian MacKaye who is truly a visionary and a fantastic singer. We were very lucky to have him otherwise no one would be talking about Minor Threat”
Obviously, you have been involved with several other bands, your two longest standing being Dag Nasty and of course Bad Religion who you have now been with for over twenty-five years; so, what is it about Bad Religion that has made you stick with them for so long?
“Well Bad Religion were a band I was very into before I joined so it was really an honour to get to be part of this group that had impacted me as a young man. And then as time has progressed you know I didn’t have any idea how long this would go on, but it sort of has its own momentum and Greg writes fantastic songs and it is a privilege to play them and they keep doing it! And that is what is amazing to me, a lot of bands who have this long history you know, everyone is kinda like ‘Well we love your early good stuff’ but no one really remembers the last Ramones record if you know what I mean” [chuckles]
Indeed…
“But here these guys are continuing to write thoughtful, passionate music and it’s really fun to play and we also are very good friends, I mean it’s really kind of a perfect storm. I think it’s gone on this long because we get along so well and we’re doing something that we feel is valuable.”
Very much so; and it’s interesting that as you said Bad Religion is still putting out material that is relevant, that is actually being digested by fans; for example, your latest album Age of Unreason which was of course released earlier this year after quite a long gap. In fact, it was almost six years since your last album.
“Yeah it was. And that’s because Bad Religion doesn’t really work on a time scale. When there’s enough songs that are good, that’s when it’s time to do a record and sometimes in the history of the band it has taken a year, sometimes three years, this time it just happened to be over five.
But the good news is, in that period of time, what a rich assortment of topics emerged in that hiatus [chuckles] for Bad Religion to weigh in on. So really, it’s one of those ‘I’m glad it worked out that way, I wish it had been on purpose’ but it just happened.”
Yes, speaking of things that have happened to have influenced your music; a song that was released by Bad Religion that was heavily criticised, but which many of us thought was brilliant was ‘The Kids are Alt-Right’.
As a New Zealander, I am only an outsider looking in, but I thought it was a poignant statement of a very terrifying movement that people have seen shift through the United States over the last few years.
“Well as do I. And that song was always intended to be a stand-alone song, it was never intended to be part of the album. It seemed the urgency was great, and the title was perfect. The one thing that we didn’t understand is that there are people that are so fucking stupid in the Alt-Right that they believed it was a pep song for them!
There was a combination of people that thought ‘Yeah! We’re Alt-Right!’ and then unbelievably there was a section of people who were like telling us, ‘Hey man, just stick to the music. I mean, what’s all this political shit?’ and I’m just like ‘You have no concept, of what Bad Religion has been and what Bad Religion will always be!’
It was mind-blowing” [chuckles]
[Laughs] ‘I’m a big fan of your band, but can you not do the political stuff?’
Haven’t really been listening have they…
“Yeah, please! ‘Please stop singing about global harmony or the environment’ yeah it was crazy
You know Bad Religion isn’t about hits. Bad Religion is about sharing information, and sometimes it’s cloaked in something that people like and sometimes they think it sounds a little too like 1970. What are you gonna do?”
That song in particular though – and I ask this because as a kiwi, even though we recently suffered a terrible tragedy in Christchurch, for most part, we are a very peaceful country, a very multi-cultural country and we have a fabulous female Prime Minister who is very forward thinking – as an American yourself, this Alt-Right movement that has flared up over the last few years, rather concerningly seems to have many of the younger generation following it. Why do you think they are taking up this cause?
“Well first I would like to say what an admirer I am of Prime Minster Ardern, and I only wish we had at least a crumb of that sanity that would allow the United States to simply say, ‘Hey you know what? We’re gonna ban semi-automatic weapons’ or requiring a gun license. I mean these are just common-sense things, but you know, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around why.
In our country perhaps just because the population is so large, that why it’s so hard to see that this is about humankind. Gun ownership is a privilege, it’s not a right. And that’s a huge thing here in the US and it’s also I think, the way we’re generating a lot more of this Alt-Right in the young people is because of the way the people tailor their information streams.
It’s very easy to be in a feedback loop with Facebook, or Twitter or whatever news source you have in a community, where this type of thinking is being reinforced and there is no space for anything outside. It’s a very us against them. And it seems to be very, very difficult to break. And it’s hard because there is also the idea about free speech and who is to decide how you manage this information that you know to be destructive?
It’s a huge topic. [chuckles] I spend a lot of time thinking about it. A good portion of everyday, it’s very disconcerting”
Yes, very much so; huge and rather complex.
Bad Religion are of course coming out to New Zealand, which your fans are extremely excited about; and you will be playing with both Frenzel Rhomb and Bodyjar…
“It’s been ten years, and I have no idea why. I think that’s crazy. I don’t know why it takes so long for us, we really should – I don’t know – really put things in gear [laughs] at this point.”
Well if you already like our Prime Minister, just come and stay for a while. You would be more than welcome…
“I would love to, I would Ich bin ein Aucklander; I would love to! [mutual laughter]
But you know, there are other worlds to conquer; I’m going to enjoy my time in New Zealand as much as possible, and hopefully we will come back with more frequency of course.”
Now for the fans, obviously with your new album coming out this year, can we expect to hear some of that new material live alongside the classics?
“Well certainly, but what I’ve found is that with Bad Religion, there are so many songs that really need to be played from our history because we do have seventeen albums worth of material and a lot of it’s good.
So what we do is we try and play as many songs as we can, if we get to represent a new album with maybe four or five songs then that is a win to us, because there are certain Bad Religion songs that you must play because they are the fabric of who we are, and we still really enjoy playing them. I will never tire of playing ‘American Jesus’.
So, the set is going to be a trip through every era, and we will touch on… almost every album; there’s one or two bad albums that we won’t be touching on, but as they say, they can’t all be winners.”
[Laughs]
“But people coming to see us, I hope there will be something for everybody and after forty years I have to say that we’re pretty good at doing it. We’ve got this. These three chords, we know them! And we know the fourth chord too! There’s that fourth chord in some of the later work, we know that one! So, I don’t think there will be any disappointment.”
[Laughs] Nice, nice. A quick one for all your followers who are more musically minded; instrumentally what are you using at the moment?
“I have always played a Gibson Les Paul, a junior, a standard, a custom… I’ve been playing these guitars for my entire life, and I will be doing the exact same thing in Auckland. I am going to be playing a Gibson Les Paul guitar with a chord through an amplifier, no effects, just kind of the basic elements of the instrument. And I like it that way. It’s a challenge.”
Bad Religion are performing tomorrow night (Wednesday 4th December 2019) alongside Frenzal Rhomb and Bodyjar at Auckland’s Powerstation. Very limited tickets are still available from Eventfinda but get in quick as they will sell out!
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