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Virgin Records
Released: September 2, 2003 |
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
“The whole fucking point of art is to question what’s going on. That’s art’s purpose and artists have every right in the world to do that.”
–Peter Hayes, June 2003
Right now, there must be a million bands out there paying lip service to the idea of independence and freedom of expression, but you can probably count the number actually practising what they preach on the fingers of one hand. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, though, is definitely one of them.
In September this year, they’re set to release a second album that confirms that in the most powerful way possible. The follow-up to their hugely successful, self-titled debut, it reiterates their anti-establishment ethos and their belief in rock’n’roll as protest music. Called ‘Take Them On, On Your Own’, its title is part rallying cry and part a description of what the band have had to do ever since they first emerged in 1998.
It’s an important and fiercely brilliant record both because of what it has to say and the way in which it chooses to say it. At a time when dissenting voices are being pushed further and further towards the margins, ‘Take Them On, On Your Own’ opts to deal with both the personal and the political - and does so with a wired originality and intensity that will suck the air from your lungs.
The band would never say it, but it promises to make them the most vital rock’n’roll group on the planet.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have been on the verge of this ever since they drifted together back in San Francisco in 1998. The three of them had all gravitated there from different parts of the globe. Peter grew up on a small farm in Minnesota, while Nick spent his childhood in Devon in Britain. Robert, meanwhile, grew up deep in the woods of the Santa Cruz mountains, where he lived with his father Michael Been – the former frontman of ‘80s new wavers The Call, and these days Black Rebel’s redoubtable sound engineer.
From the start, the band were outsiders with no connection to the music scene they found there and no interest in finding one. Peter and Robert initially worked with a drum machine, before the arrival of Nick led to the band’s first incarnation as The Elements. That in turn mutated into Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (the name, of course, taken from the Marlon Brando film The Wild One), at which point the three of them set to work recording a 13-track demo. It was met with blank indifference.
“It was really hard to be doing something new,” says Peter now. “People weren’t looking for that. Trying to do something different didn’t really fly and it’s fair to say we weren’t very well supported.”
In 1999, the band relocated to LA and their luck began to change. Around Christmas of that year, they signed a deal with Virgin that promised them full artistic control. They set about making use of that pledge as quickly as they could. Without any outside instruction (their original A&R man quit early on in the process), they constructed their dense, multi-layered debut throughout 2000.
“When we recorded that album, the speed of our lives was deathly slow,” smiles Robert. “When we listen to it now, we don’t feel that there’s much life coming from it. It’s a great record, but maybe it could have benefited from us going outside every now and again while we were making it…”
‘BRMC’ was a great debut. Difficult, uncompromising and atmospheric, it was probably best defined by the inclusion of ‘Whatever Happened To My Rock’N’Roll (Punk Song)’ – a furious and elegant encapsulation of their belief in the symphonic power of music. It certainly struck a chord, particularly with audiences in the UK. Black Rebel might have spent much of 2000 and 2001 route-marching their way back and forth across the States, but it was in Britain where their message was more rapidly received.
The start of 2002 saw them on the cover of NME. It was the prelude to an avalanche of press coverage that was maintained throughout the whole year. Following a handful of triumphant shows with Oasis in the summer, the band even relocated there, while they attempted to take care of a persistent problem with drummer Nick Jago’s American visa (now happily resolved).
Once ensconced in the UK, they decided to make use of the time by entering the Fortress studio - a cramped, dank shoebox of a space in the back streets of east London. There, every night from 6pm to 6am, they set about making ‘Take Them On, On Your Own’. They knew from the outset what they wanted. It had to be a taut, propulsive rock’n’roll record with “faster tempos” and “no fat”. They wanted it to be a statement, a step on from what they’d done before and an attempt to distance themselves from the competition.
“We were really conscious that the content of music wasn’t being discussed anymore,” explains Peter. “What does most music give people aside from a good feeling? We wanted to know where the substance was. What makes a band great and lasting isn’t the way they look or act, it’s what they have to say.”
That’s a feeling that’s shot through the whole album. ‘Take Them On, On Your Own’ is a fiercesome confirmation that music can still exist as a radicalized form of protest. From the brutal conviction of lead single ‘Stop’ and ‘Six Barrel Shotgun’ through to the sharply personal ‘And I’m Aching’ and ‘Shade Of Blue,’ it’s a record built to provoke thought rather than proffer a handful of empty slogans and it achieves its aim in tandem with a soundtrack of thrilling, adrenalized rock’n’roll. “We put a lot of heart into this record,” concludes Robert, “and we want it to be taken with all seriousness.”
On that score, he needn’t worry. There’s a substance and ambition here that eludes most, if not all, of the band’s contemporaries. It doesn’t happen very often, but when you finally come face to face with the real deal, it’s a shocking, disorientating experience. You should acquaint yourself with it as soon as possible.
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