The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Us and You
Published by Under The Radar
“TO ALL SELF-SERVING BANDS, CRITICS, CREEPS, A&R REPS, PROGRAMMERS, EDITORS, WRITERS, FALSE FANS, TROUBLEMAKERS, NARCS, GROUPIES, PSYCHOS, LIARS, DRUG FIENDS, EGO-MANIACS, HAS-BEENS, WOULD’VE BEENS, COULD’VE BEENS…” reads the inner sleeve of The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s new album, …And This Is Our Music. “YOU ARE OFFICIALLY UNINVITED TO OUR PARTY!!!”
It’s a Thursday night in September, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre are having a record release party at the Little Joy, a small dive bar in Echo Park, Los Angeles. BJM leader Anton Newcombe is spinning music from turntables and a laptop -- everything from Joy Division and hip-hop to bossa nova and Far Eastern music. There are no BJM CDs or posters in sight, and the new album won’t be out for another three weeks. Newcombe has agreed to do an in-person interview, although he usually prefers email.
Later that night I meet bassist Tommy Dietrick and drummer Dan Allaire, two of the latest members in a band that has shuffled some 40 people through its revolving doors since 1990.
With Under The Radar’s print deadline looming in mid January, I learn that the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival has gone to Dig!, a film that follows Newcombe and The Dandy Warhols’ Courtney Taylor over the course of seven years. As the press release describes the Newcombe captured on film, his “creative psychosis takes him to the most remote areas of the human mind to find his original art, and as a result, he destroys every opportunity for financial success.” Indeed, after more than 13 years, his accomplished band is essentially still playing small rock clubs.
Newcombe, intense and caustic according to legend, is warm and polite when I meet him. One of the bar managers lets us do the interview in the office. Newcombe’s a little uneasy about handing off the turntables to his stand-in. At one point in our discussion he interrupts himself: “He’s running outta shit and he’s already playing wrong.” Pause. “That’s fine.” Long pause. “He’s totally blowin’ my shit.” Newcombe likes things a certain way.
“He basically communicates it with a lot of glares,” says Allaire when I ask him how Newcombe gets across his abstract musical ideas. To an audience, those looks reinforce Newcombe’s rabble-rousing reputation, as do the performance critiques and sarcastic remarks that pass for stage banter. But Allaire’s disclosure comes in the larger context of friendship and mutual respect, one that makes being in The Brian Jonestown Massacre, for the most part, “really mellow,” according to the drummer.
Where it was once easy to connect the dots between the band name and the Jones-era Stones-isms, Music comes from all over. Filled with flute, strings and horns, as well as guest performances by the likes of Ed Harcourt and the Lilys’ Kurt Heasley, it also quite deliberately channels Ennio Morricone, Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce and Echo & The Bunnymen’s Will Sergeant. In fact, those people and at least a dozen more are credited with “spiritual guidance.” You never have to ask Newcombe about his influences; they’re all listed somewhere or another.
“I never really liked Radiohead, because I have my own Radiohead,” says Newcombe when we’re on the topic of his favorite producer, Nigel Godrich. But when Amnesiac came out, he says, he stopped writing songs for a year. “I was just blown away. That’s really how you do it…. That’s so beautiful, and it’s more or less where this record’s coming from.”
But to hear him describe it, Newcombe’s own brand of “cinematic” music is more populist. He puts it this way: “I want those mistakes and unfinished parts and unfinished lyrics. I want all that wobbly stuff in there…. I want it to be very much like anybody with a real ego problem could go, ‘Well, I could do that better.’”
Never slight on instrumentation, the BJM poured buckets of guitars into their shoegazey 1995 official debut, Methodrone. They’ve since released seven studio albums and a few EPs that have mostly tinkered with ’60s beat and psychedelic forms. Vintage instruments; old-school, no-EQ recording techniques; and moppish hairstyles complete a period vibe which the band’s music is clearly outgrowing.
Originally from San Francisco, The Brian Jonestown Massacre relocated to L.A. prior to the emergence of a downright respectable psych scene, which also includes The Warlocks, The Tyde, and Beachwood Sparks. The recent rise of relative newcomers The Warlocks, whose frontman Bobby Hecksher did a stint in the BJM, might raise the question of who started this whole thing. Newcombe’s not resentful, but he doesn’t appreciate it when journalists fail to make certain basic distinctions. “I open up NME and there’s this article about The Warlocks,” he says, “and I swear, they just took my whole Web page. It’s like, ‘They’re this drug band from San Francisco and their motto is Keep Music Evil.’ And that’s the name of my record label. That isn’t their motto. They’re not from San Francisco. I’m from up there.”
Without mentioning The Warlocks in particular, he says he does feel like bands are following his lead. But he also claims that it’s offered him an opportunity for growth. “Instead of going, ‘Wait a minute, that’s my style,’” he says, “I just decided to do something different. Rather than cry loud about it and make another garage record, I decided to try and do something a little bit more symphonic. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”
When I reach Dan Allaire on his cell phone, the band has just pulled into Nashville for a gig. The big news from the road is that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club wants them in the opening slot on their U.K. tour (BRMC’s Peter Hayes also used to play in the BJM).
“Anton’s got an interesting idea about rhythms, and I’m basically still learning about it,” says the drummer, who left Cincinnati for L.A. when Newcombe recruited him in early 2002. “It’s kind of abstract, but it hinges on speeding up and slowing down within a phrase. Some nights we do it without thinking, and then some nights it’s not a battle but we’re constantly pushing and pulling at each other.”
Did somebody say battle?
“I’m really good at distinguishing when somebody’s pressing my buttons or when they aren’t,” says Newcombe when I ask him about the confrontation that’s been known to visit a BJM show. Between Newcombe’s accounts, his band mates’ explanations, and my own observations, I have to say I’m still a bit confused. “I don’t go around starting fights with people,” he continues, “but you’d be surprised how many people will push me around, just waiting to see what my reaction’s gonna be.” Fair enough; I’ve seen it. But he also seems to welcome the opportunity, like when I catch the band’s show the following week. At one point he challenges a heckler to come up with something better. Dead air then tempts him into a rankling discussion of the vagina and its sway over dudes. The next day during an in-store, he asks the front counter to play his record so that his band can learn the songs.
It’s not hard to see frustration in all of this. Between intelligence undervalued and influence under-recognized, it’s enough to make a guy go for broke now and then. “I’m one of those people that I don’t think people can understand,” Newcombe says. “I think it takes too much work to understand. Frustration? Yeah, maybe. The thing that I find fascinating is any time art has any emotional depth, you get everybody trying to find out if the person was a junkie or if they were insane. None of it can just be passion."
There’s passion all over …And This Is Our Music, a dark, dreamy cohesion binding its layers. There’s also elegance and vulnerability -- perhaps the private yin to Newcombe’s public yang. Give him the floor to discuss his art, and it’s almost tender how much he’s into it. “I’ve gone so far as to teach myself how to record and play every single instrument,” he says about losing band members over the years. “I just love music.”
Newcombe answers every email and gives up every BJM album in the form of free downloads on www.brianjonestownmassacre.com. But don’t think you can buy in by filling your iPod with his love songs; his thing isn’t ready to wear. “That’s why the new record says, ‘We’re officially uninviting you people to our party,’” he explains. “It doesn’t matter that you paid the ten bucks for the record. You’re not a part of this. Enjoy the record, but you’re not a part of this. It’s not elitist either. I’d like to include everybody, but people make me sick.”
By early December the band has wound its way back to L.A. I go to their show at Spaceland to learn that Tommy Dietrick has quit. The bassist reportedly walked immediately following a November 22nd gig in Minneapolis. I can’t reach him for comment, but two people who spoke with him separately tell me about the deal-breaking incident: Newcombe threw a cup of coffee at him. I email Newcombe, who replies, “He didn't want to be on tour anymore. If it was an easy thing to do, every band you ever heard of would be out there doing it.”