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Article published Apr 18, 2008 FULL THROTTLE: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club back from the brink with rocking 'Baby 81'
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
It sounds melodramatic, to hear the guys in Black Rebel Motorcycle Club talk about their near-breakup.
Drummer Nick Jago left after a 2004 tour of Europe, fed up with tension and excess. The band’s previous two albums — 2001’s self-titled debut and 2003’s “Take Them On, On Your Own” — had vaulted the band into a tier of critically acclaimed, if not overwhelmingly popular, rock ‘n’ roll bands that fused rock, blues and psychedelic fuzz into a sound that’s often overlooked these days. With straight-ahead, driving rock, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club hearkened back to a simpler time when guitars were the weapon of choice and big hooks and killer riffs didn’t necessarily mean the music had to be unintelligent.
Suddenly, founders Robert Levon Been and Peter Hayes found themselves on their own. Back in the States, they went into the studio, channeling emotion and sorrow and regret and trepidation into a phenomenal, acoustic-based album — “Howl.” It was a precarious time for the band, Been told The Daily Times this week.
“Each song kind of got us through the day, and then the next one got us through that day,” Been said. “Every time, we found a new way of approaching it and reinventing it, and it gradually became the sum of its parts. One song would lead us to the next, and I don’t think it could have gone any other way. I feel like ‘Howl’ is our best record, because so many things went into making it — the situation made it a live-or-die sort of thing, and I don’t know if it’ll come like that to us again.
“We were just all in a strange place trying to figure things out. Peter and I needed that time as well to kind of figure our own way and to try and reinvent it and find some sort of purpose in the music. With or without Nick, that was kind of necessary at the time, with all of the different stuff we were going through. It wasn’t just about that one issue.
“‘Howl’ kind of saved the life of the band, I guess,” he added. “We kind of took a leap of faith in making a different album, and there was a lot of good that came from it, both personally and musically.”
The band’s journey through the therapeutic endeavor of “Howl” and the turbo-charged urgency of its most recent album, “Baby 81,” started in the mid-1990s, when Been and Hayes met in high school in California. They soon hooked up with Jago and took their name from the gang in the cult film “The Wild One,” playing around California and fine-tuning a blend of droning vocals, blues-based guitars heavy with psychedelic drone and thick bass lines.
On “Howl,” the songs took a dramatically darker approach — stripped of fuzz and drone, they were bare-bones exercises in summoning the band’s demons and purging them from the musical collective. At the time, Been said, he and Hayes were unsure if Jago would return to the fold, and they were unsure whether Black Rebel Motorcycle Club had a future beyond the record they were making.
The result is an album as raw and tender as burnt flesh, a searing portrait of a band that’s unconcerned with charts or sales or popularity. The craftsmanship in those tracks is a sign of artistry, and that’s something sorely lacking by a lot of BRMC’s rock ‘n’ roll peers these days.
“For the most part, it’s difficult to not get disheartened with a lot of music today,” Been said. “These days, respect and credibility seem to go hand-in-hand with money and a number figure. That’s not just music, but it’s hard when it gets into something that’s not really that easy to sum up. I guess it’s always been like that, to some extent, at least since I remember starting playing.
“There are a few band still out there, a few people making music that inspires me to pick up the guitar and see if I can beat them. As long as there are a couple of people or bands like that nipping at your heels, you feel like there’s a challenge, and that’s a really good feeling. If you don’t feel that, something’s really wrong.”
The sessions for “Baby 81” began before “Howl” was even completed. Jago returned to the fold on the tail end of those sessions and happened to be at the studio as Been and Hayes were recording one of the final tracks for “Howl,” a song called “Promise.”
“That same day, we ended up jamming out — I think we played ‘Took Out a Loan’ and ‘666 Conducer’ (two songs off the new record),” Been said. “The takes we did of each of those songs were the ones we ended up using for the record. It was all done kind of in the moment, which I think gave it a lot of life. It was kind of surprising, because I don’t think any of us expected it to come so fast. But it was cool being able to turn up and kind of push the room as far as we could, because we had only recorded more acoustic-sounding songs at that studio.
“We had never tried to see what would happen with a live drum kit and everything going full blast. It felt like there were lots more things to explore and places to go, and I guess that was kind of the urgency you hear on that record. Using those two songs, we held onto that direction to see where it would take us. Everything seemed to be open again, and it felt a lot more free.”
The album’s frenetic energy reaches a crescendo on a handful of the songs off “Baby 81” — “Berlin,” “Weapon of Choice” and “Need Some Air” are all full-throttle rockers, blistering examples of what rock ‘n’ roll sounds like when it’s done right and musicians playing it come together to form a whole greater than the individual parts. It’s raw and mean and thick with testosterone, and hearing those songs feels like the perfect line drive cracking off the end of a bat or the perfect tee taking off from the smack of a golf club.
In the live setting, the songs take on an even greater urgency. The guys first learned to play the songs off “Baby 81” as close to what they sound like on record as possible; with that in the bag, they started taking creative liberties to change them up for shows like the one taking place Thursday at The Bijou Theatre in Knoxville.
“We can’t sit still too long — we change songs all the time live,” Been said. “Sometimes, we even beat what the recording sounds like; other times, we have to change it to figure out how to do it live as a three-piece. Some of the ‘Howl’ songs we ended up changing drastically, but at the same time, we learned how to play them all.
“This tour, we’re using it as kind of a chance to write and test out some new songs live. More so, it’s kind of important for us to just play and soundcheck and stand close by while keeping our guitars in hand. When we all separate and go home to our different corners, things tend to move a lot slower.”