For one of the arguably
best music interviews ever, listen to Benny Horowitz talking to Ronen Kauffman
in Episode 40 of the Issue
Oriented podcasts.
Songwriting
"Songwriting is one of those
old school preacher things, I think. I feel like singers and preachers
get smacked by some kinda crazy lightning right before they deliver; because
I'm completely oblivious if you asked me how to write a song, it just happens,
I can't take the credit for it, and then bang: hallelujah."
(Brian Fallon
- VoxAmps.com, 2009)
"I think a good melody is what gets
you hooked in initially, but the story is what keeps people going back.
I think that is what separates a 'one-hit-wonder' from a 'classic song'."
(Alex Rosamilia
- Room Thirteen, February 2009)
"If you're gonna write anything that's
melody or hook-oriented, you're always gonna dance on that line of it being
cheesy. Sometimes you wonder, is it Social Distortion or the Goo Goo Dolls?
But we have a very serious filtration process in the band. There's a lot
of stuff no one ever hears. And there were songs, while we were writing,
where we just kind of said, 'Nah dude, that's too close to the edge.' We
had to develop some sort of insight into the middle ground. But I'm over-critical."
(Benny Horowitz
- Glide Magazine.com, 16 November 2009)
"We're a soul band, but a soul band
who grew up on punk and hardcore. We sing about everyday stuff -
working, the ladies, growing up, dying ... but we tell the stories with
the language of basement, VFW Halls, dirty clubs, tour vans, and a youth
spent listening to The Clash."
(Brian Fallon
- WonkaVision, August 2008)
"But as far as our influences, where
we come from and how we value ourselves and the people around us, it is
punk. [...] But it’s a lot easier to hold onto those cookie-cutter,
punk ideals when you're 16, living with your parents and getting ready
to go off to college. You've got your whole life ahead of you. It's a big
fucking difference when you're in your late 20s, everything that was supposed
to be great is behind you now and you're still sitting there, in the middle
of the fucking rain with no umbrella because of punk rock. When you reach
that point, your standards can bend a lot. [...] With age not only comes
wisdom but real life tumbling down on your shoulders. It's just a lot easier
to be punk when you don’t have that all coming down on you. [...] If you
grow up punk, and you really believe in those ethics when you do it, it
doesn't matter whether you're a doctor, or a lawyer, whatever you do, you're
going to carry that consciousness and that morality with you. And on that
basis, I think we're about as punk as a band in our situation can get.
We don't treat people wrong. We don't rip people off. We're direct, we're
honest with everyone."
(Benny Horowitz
- Glide Magazine.com, 16 November 2009)
"Being punk rock is nowadays more
of an ethic or a sense of morals than it is a genre."
(Alex Rosamilia
- WFXN, April 2009)
"Everybody in what they do has some
or several people that they look up too. I think that as artists, it develops
their personality. I think that as an artist, in very rare cases there's
a person who'll step out of the gate that's completely original. [...]
I think you copy people, and emulate people, until eventually you've copied
so many people, and emulated so many people, that eventually it's all mashed
together and you've got you're own thing."
(Brian Fallon
- Racket Magazine, March 2008)
"You have to give credit where it's
due. I've been cautious to make people know who our influences are.
When I was a kid and heard a band, then accidentally stumbled upon the
band they stole the riff from, I'd feel cheated."
(Brian Fallon
- Chart Attack.com, 5 November 2008)
"New Jersey has an essence. It has
a different vibe than a lot of places. There’s a lot of hard-working, blue-collar
roots, especially with where we’re from and our families. That definitely
comes out in our music."
(Alex Levine - The
Vancouver Sun, 22 September 2009)
"I wouldn't say there's a specific
Jersey sound or Jersey genre. But even though everything sounds different,
there's a similar sense of desparation. There's a hint of claustrophobia
because of how easy it is to get stuck in New Jersey. So it's not
a genre, but a state of mind."
(Alex Rosamilia
- Gravity Rides Again.com, 26 March 2009)
"We've taken Springsteen's spirit,
because we come from the same place. We're seeing the same things
he saw down the highway 30 years ago."
(Benny Horowitz
- Q Magazine, December 2008)
"I don't want to tell what the songs
are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which
is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my
story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then
it's only my story."
(Brian Fallon
- Backpackrock.net, March 2009)
"You can't grasp the weight of what
someone else thinks about your work. You hear it, and you understand
it, but to actually receive it is something I can't quite do yet. [...]
Like with Joe Strummer; there's no way anybody could feel about my stuff
like I felt about that. And it's not a false sense of humility."
(Brian Fallon - Express
Night Out, May 2009)
"I'll spend three months working
on one song because I refuse to have someone who likes music go through
what I went through when I went out and bought a band that I love's new
album only to learn it was total crap."
(Brian Fallon - Kerrang,
January 2009)
"I won't continue down the same path
all the time. Hopefully, I'll get it right on the next record, but then
I'll want to do something different. If you get something right,
you gotta do something different, 'cause the only thing left to do is get
it wrong. Nobody wants to hear the same thing over and over again."
(Brian Fallon
- Chart Attack.com, 5 November 2008)
"I want to write lyrics for people
who don't have a voice and talk about things that people can't get out
there and make public. We have a recession going on here and there
are things people can't talk about, like health insurance, the struggle
to feed your family and keep your job. I want to write songs that
make people think 'Yeah, I can make it through another day'."
(Brian Fallon
- Kerrang, 20 May 2009)
Performing
"Once
you figure out how to separate what you do when you are normal and what
you do when you are performing, it gets easier. In real life, I'm not the
life of the party. I'm usually the guy in the corner trying to eat
as quietly as I can. That's who I really am. The character is the
person I wish I was in high school. That's not who I am, that's who
I was when I went home and played guitar in the mirror. It's the
same thing."
(Brian Fallon
- Rant n' Rave with John Nagle, 22 October 2009)
"I get up during
the day, and my hair is messy and I'm wearing the same ratty clothes. When
it gets close to showtime, I start combing my hair and then I put my boots
on. When I put the boots on, I become the guy. I'm the guy wearing the
boots to work. It's the little things like that. The one thing I haven't
done is change my clothes. Whatever I wear that day is what I wear onstage.
Then when you put the guitar on, you become a different person. [...] But
I don't turn on the character when I'm outside and someone comes up to
me. If a kid comes up to me, they get the real person. That's the difference.
That's what Joe Strummer was doing."
(Brian Fallon
- Rant n' Rave with John Nagle, 22 October 2009)
Success
"There are so many bands
who have no substance. [...] They're not saying anything, there's no effort
put in and they have no soul. It just sounds like some guys with
a million dollar record deal, a funny hair cut and not a lot else.
I have no interest in what they say at all."
(Brian Fallon
- rocksound.tv, 2008/9)
"Even if we get really, really big,
I still want us to be the band that care about their art, care about the
people that come to see them play [...]."
(Brian Fallon
- rocksound.tv, 2008/9)
"Where we're from, if we come back
to our home towns with some kind of attitude, we're not going to be taken
back. We try to be real people inside of all this."
(Benny Horowitz,
St
Joe News, 17 April 2009)
"I could care less about ever having
a No. 1 single. I would just like to be able to play and have people who
grow old with you, and you stay with them through their life. We've got
a few sentences, maybe, to say what life's about. Hopefully, we'll get
a chapter later."
(Brian Fallon
- The Boston Globe, 30 May 2008)
"After parties are not my forte.
I'm a meat and potatoes guy, famous people scare me. I'm much more
comfortable around construction workers and screen printers."
(Brian Fallon
- NJ.com, 28 July 2009)
"The real consistent thing with us
is that we're still trying to stay the same guys. It would be cool
if we were the biggest band in the world... that people were like, 'You
know what? Those guys are still cool. I remember them when they were playing
in a basement and they are the same guys playing in whatever big arena.'
That would be the coolest thing for me. That they hadn't changed."
(Brian Fallon
- ExploreMusic.com, 2 March 2010)
Life
"Nobody needs me to tell
them that times are hard right now. There are bands [...] who will
raise awareness about the political and social problems that you need to
be aware of, but we're here to remind people not to loose sight of themeslves
and to take time away from it to actually live their life. I know
everything's weird and messed up right now, but don't let that take anything
away from the joys of being alive."
(Brian Fallon
-
rocksound.tv, 2008/9)
"But that's life, you know?
A weird mixture of bitter and sweet."
(Brian Fallon
- Reax Music Magazine, September 2008)
"I think we need to learn to take
care of each other better, I think people have lost human kindness. We're
all in this together really. Nobody's better than anyone else [...]."
(Brian Fallon
- Backpackrock.net, March 2009)
"There's safety and dignity in tradition.
This generation is about instant gratification. I don't like it."
(Brian Fallon - Q
Magazine, December 2008)
"I do find that I tend to write about
big questions. Why are we here? What are we doing? How
do we relate to each other? I guess I'm very young to be writing
like that, and I may not find the answers in the whole of my writing career,
but those are the questions that move me to song. Sometimes I wish
I didn't look so deeply into everything, but I do. I can't do small talk
- I never talk to people about the weather or what I've seen on TV.
I'm much happier writing about bigger topics, heavier stuff, because that
is where the communication is. That's where you can talk to others
and discover: I'm broken and so are you."
(Brian Fallon - The
Guardian, 12 June 2009)
Misc.
On playing with Springsteen
at Glastonbury:
"He just showed up. That was it.
Nobody knew about it, nobody said anything, and he showed up and went,
'Can I play with you,' and we were, like, 'Absolutely. Yeah. All right.'
It was literally three minutes before we went onstage. I asked him if he
had a guitar, he said no, and I'm like, 'Well, OK, I've got one. Here.
Play this.' The funny thing is the guitar I gave him I got that day and
I'd never played it. So he was the first person to play that guitar. .
. . And he uses these big, massive picks and he really jams on the guitar,
so he scratched it - on the surface he totally put scratches on it, but
it was hilarious because it was him. If somebody's going to scratch
your brand new guitar, it better be him."
(Brian Fallon
- The Calgary Herald, 22 September 2009)
Wacky
quotes
"This song's about stealing
from pirates."
(Brian Fallon
at the Area 4 Festival introducing 'We Came to Dance', August 2008)
"We sold a bunch of our internal
organs to get the gig; it was tough to pull off without a liver, but we
did ok."
(Brian Fallon
on performing on the Late Show - Backpackrock.net, March 2009)
and here's that
liver-less gig:
for scans of Gaslight Anthem magazine
and web interviews and reviews, see the Press
page at SideOneDummy
This site is
not for profit. If you hold the copyright to any material on this
site and consider its use here an infringement of those rights, ie. as
being outside fair use provisions, then please contact webmaster@gaslightanthem.org
and the material in question will be removed.
Site based
in England and maintained by Alexander.
