Going Gray With Bad Religion by Mic Holwin originally appeared in Smug Magazine Vol. II Issue#1 (1996) "I wanna play Bad Religion like I play hockey." Jay Bentley, the towering bassist of Bad Religion, raises his already-booming voice to make an enigmatic point with an analogy to his favorite sport, which he plays in his new homebase of Vancouver (where there are enough stick-wielding punk rock musicians to compose exactly two teams: Jay's, and team D.O.A.). We are in Studio B at New York City's Electric Lady studios, where Bad Religion has been for the last month to record and mix their new album, The Gray Race. Recording in New York is a first for the previously L.A.-centric band, but Gray Race producer Ric Ocasek likes to work at Hendrix's haunt. Also here is singer Greg Graffin, guitarist Brian Baker, and drummer Bobby Schayer; guitarist Greg Hetson has already flown back to L.A. Bad Religion has plowed through the album, recording 17 tracks in 13 days. Graffin has been nailing the vocals, sometimes with one take; only five days were spent on both lead and backing vocals. But one man's run is another man's crawl. "'Five and a half weeks,'" Jay says they thought, "'Why is this taking so long?' While other people are like 'Wow, how quick!'" After all, Suffer was recorded in ten days. Things have happened to Bad Religion in the last year or two: founding member Brett Gurewitz left the band and fully committed to his record label, Epitaph; the band left Epitaph and committed to Atlantic; Dag Nasty/Minor Threat guitarist Brian Baker joined the band in Gurewitz' place; Greg Hetson had not-quite-a-comeback tour with his other project, The Circle Jerks; Jay Bentley left L.A. and moved to the wilderness of British Columbia; Greg Graffin didn't go back to school in the fall for the first time in his life. The Gray Race doesn't specifically discuss these personal and communal upheavals, concentrating instead on tried and true Bad Religion topics like overpopulation (advice not personally taken--both Graffin and Jay have two kids), mass stupidity, and the blind leading the blind into extinction. With Gurewitz gone, the songwriting duties fall squarely and--except for a few collaborative songs with Brian--solely on Graffin's shoulders. This is Greg's album, from the huskily more assertive vocals to The Cars and The Mamas And The Papas references. It is another great Bad Religion record--and, for once, one with a large sonic space--but Brett's absence is noticeable. The freewheeling anger is reigned in by a more tolerant rationality. Bad Religion has come to see in shades of gray. [meeting my Religion] Three days earlier we are in the stairwell of Electric Lady for a Smug photo shoot. The band has just returned from a one-week home break to do a week of mixing. They seem tired. Graffin turned 30 a few days ago, and looks a bit down--his blue eyes have more lines around them than when we first met on the day he returned from Ithaca. Jay has dark circles under his deep-sunk eyes. I will come to know this as Jay's normal appearance, but today he also wears a layer of mopeyness. "Went home and never got over it," he says about his mood. Graffin notices that they were arranged similarly in a photo taken last year. "But you weren't wearing the same clothes," I say. "Jay was," they all respond in unison, referring to what I also will come to know as Jay's normal appearance: faded blue jeans with a ripped left knee and a gray hooded Nike sweatshirt. His shoulder-length hair is scraggly. You can picture him striding through the Canadian woods. In neat contrast, Graffin wears a new buttonfront charcoal wool sweater, given to him just moments before by Ric and Paulina for his birthday. The gray brings out his paleness, and he seems almost slight, hardly the stocky chap photos would make him seem. He turns sideways for the next shot. "What a great profile," I say. "He looks like Caesar." Graffin keeps a straight face for the camera but silently gives me the finger behind Hetson's back. It is a moment I'll cherish forever. Brian complains about turning 30 and getting waist spread. "It's lame, man." Perhaps liquid calories are the culprit. The silver Coca-Cola cap pendant hanging from a chain around his neck is more than costume jewelry: a Coke in his hand is as ubiquitous as a Marlboro between his lips. Brian's acerbic wit makes him a gloriously likable smartass--but as soon as the camera is on him, he puts on the Serious face. After the shoot, Bobby sits on the couch with a guitar, playing song after song, Beatles to punk. "This is why we don't give Bobby a guitar," Jay says. "He knows every song. And if he doesn't know it, he fakes it so good you think he knows it." He's the one who taught Brian all the Bad Religion songs. Bobby is a inexhaustible font of knowledge, musical and other. He's played or roadied or teched with seemingly anyone you mention, and from this has probably learned to take ridiculous scheduling with a shrug, e.g., his plans for that night: subway to JFK Airport to meet a German Sony rep, back to the city to see bands at Irving Plaza and Brownie's, ending with the midnight Dictators show at CBGB's. Greg Hetson, wearing tortoiseshell horn-rims now that the photos are done, is quiet and seems preoccupied. His sweater, obviously not something he gets to wear much in L.A., is so big and so red, it nearly swallows his tiny head. Joking now about each of their various magazine appearances, Brian makes sport of Graffin's alter ego: "We should get him on Modern Paleontologist." Later, as I sit in the control room and watch Greg re-record one handclap that's not ferocious enough in "Come Join Us," I realize it's no leap to picture him methodically researching minute yet essential phenomena. [10 in 2010] "How many people are on the planet right now?" Greg's voice has dropped in volume to a carefully modulated softness, but retains the familiar firmness and conviction of his singing voice. He has drawn us (naturally, I'm convinced) into a teacher/class scenario. I feel my spine straighten. "6 billion," I volunteer. "5.7," Jay says simultaneously, topping me in accuracy and getting Greg's approving nod. "But how many have ever bought records?" Greg poses a stumper. To me, at least. The question doesn't faze Jay. "We can safely assume that 60 million people buy records." Greg agrees (where do these guys store this stuff?) and goes on. "So what is 60 million to 6 billion?" Great. Percentages. Jay, obviously teacher's best student, doesn't skip a beat: "One percent." "Now," Greg says, looking at me, still with that professorial enunciation, "Don't you think one percent of the world population is stretching it for saying you're changing the world?" My face warms. All I did was ask whether they believed making music could make changes in the world. When's the bell gonna ring? [why Bad Religion didn't go metal] Early '80s punk bands. Some died. Some died and came back. Some died, came back and died again. And some never stopped. Why? Jay summarizes succinctly: "Because we're SICK." Further, why not mutation, as is nature's wont? To illustrate, I use 7 Seconds, who tried to be U2 in the late '80s and Bad Religion now in the '90s. "But you guys have always been Bad Religion," I say. My mention of 7 Seconds' spot-changing has piqued Greg's interest more than the discussion of his own band. "What are they trying to do?" he asks. Jay cuts in. "Is it WHOA-OAH-OAH!!?," doing a fairly good Kevin Seconds imitation to applause from his bandmates. "C'mon, help me out here!" Greg and Brian join Jay in bad harmonization of WHOA-OAH-OAH!! "That goes to show you people don't follow their instincts, they follow what's trend," Jay says. "If speed metal's popular, how many people do we know personally that were like, 'I'm growing my hair out and joining a speed metal band?'" MH: But why didn't you guys do that? JB: 'CAUSE I CAN'T FUCKING PLAY THAT FAST! GG: [quietly] So you would have? JB: You know, I didn't like the clothing, I'm sorry. BB: I'll tell you why I didn't. I think that speed metal was directly stolen from punk rock. Directly. There would be no speed metal if it were not for punk rock. At the time speed metal was happening, I was still in Dag Nasty and I thought it was smarter to stay the course in that situation. Of course, I blew it later in my career, but at that point I made a conscious effort not to make a metal record when all the people Dag Nasty hung out with were doing their metal albums. We never did it because it was too obvious a band wagon to jump on. GG: It's better to remain influential but not as popular. It comes down to personal constitution. You're asking a pretty simple question: why didn't you do this? Because we were never motivated by what was popular at the time. A lot of bands grew their hair long and became postpunk in the early '80s because punk wasn't getting the recognition it deserved. And these people were hungry for recognition. I was. MH: Didn't it have anything to do with personal taste changing? People go through musical phases. JB: Let's say Greg and I are talking about "wouldn't it be kind of fun to play at this club just acoustically, but not Bad Religion, just write other material"--yeah, that's fine. But you don't go under the name Bad Religion. MH: But you guys haven't done that either. You haven't done side projects. It's not like we have the Greg Graffin solo album. GG: That's because Greg Graffin has felt that he can share what he needs to share within the context of Bad Religion. BB: I thought it was 'cause Bad Religion was Greg's solo alb--oh. [On Becoming A Classic] Even though Bad Religion could have pulled off a switch to heavy metal (Greg's opinion, not mine), the fact is, they'd rather be classic. Arrogant, maybe--but classic is what Greg believes Bad Religion has the ability to be. Classic is also, according to Greg, controllable. "You can't control if you're good or not, but you can control the route that you take, the way to become a classic... First of all, you don't sell yourself out and you don't worry about what's popular, and that's what we've done. And it doesn't mean that we are a classic, but at least we are taking the steps." "We have a roadmap," interjects Brian. "We respect bands that are classics a lot more than we respect bands that go for the gusto and then become outdated after a year," continues Greg. "And then have to scrounge together some kind of a hapless reunion." Jay and Brian make muffled noises, holding back the names of such hapless bands. I'm unwilling to put them in an uncomfortable position with their absent bandmate, but Greg goes there. "[Interviewers] don't want to say anything bad about the Circle Jerks 'cause they think they'll insult us, but believe me--" It's about time for a smartass comment from Brian, and he delivers. "The existence of the Circle Jerks is far more insulting than anything anyone can say." Anyway, aspiring to classicality requires some responsibility to style continuity, New Coke a case in point. "People have to be able to predict something when they spend money on your art," agrees Greg. "People want the Bad Religion style." Doing something other than Bad Religion within the context of Bad Religion is like "bringing a baseball bat to a hockey game," states Jay. [who's that blond?] MH: Why didn't you introduce Brian the first time you played New York after Brett had split? GG: Why should we? This is Bad Religion. It's not the Brian Baker show. BB: I initially thought when I first joined that [not being introduced] would be a good thing because I didn't want to be thought of as Brett, and I thought--I really did believe this, it sound very altruistic--that it would help the issue if people knew that it wasn't just some kid that they hired off the street. I thought that the things I had been part of would actually ease the pain of losing Brett. And I realized that that was not the right angle. The thing to do is to not attract attention to the issue, and also what proved itself to be is that anybody who is going to be satiated with me as Brett's replacement because they know of me is going to know me when they see me standing on stage. MH: We couldn't figure out why you were trying to sneak him in. JB: No! It wasn't trying to "sneak him in"! It's not "sneaking him in"! GG: It's just the Bad Religion way. We don't call attention to ourselves. [I start to laugh at "The Bad Religion Way," but realize they are serious.] JB: Plus we all got a kick out of everybody staring at him. [I certainly did, trying to remember where I'd seen him years ago--with that same blond hair.] BB: Fifteen years of bleach and still going strong. [the new guy writes] Brian has written five songs on The Gray Race. Jay gets excited talking about absorbing new ideas from Brian, like "the DC shuffle." The most obvious occurrence of Brian on the album is a saucy do-re-mi guitar line opening "Streets of America." Brian explains that he, unlike the man he replaces, is a collaborative writer, bringing riffs or sections of songs to Greg for what he calls "Graffinization." ("One-hour Graffinizing," says Greg.) "I don't write an entire song and then say 'Oh Greg, would you mind singing these lyrics that aren't nearly as good as lyrics you would write because you're better at it than I am?'" Brian sees himself as "coming out of nowhere" with writing Bad Religion songs, arrogant to think he could do anything more than contribute instrumentally since, when it comes to lyrics, Greg has "written 120 Bad Religion songs over 15 years" and he "doesn't even know what a fucking index fossil is." [Jay's buttons] Jay, an eager talker regardless of what topic, has, however, two big buttons, one of which I pushed inadvertently within the first five minutes of meeting him. In relaying my skepticism of Ric Ocasek producing The Gray Race, I brought up keyboards. This pushed the "Into The Unknown" button, and his response was immediate: "Fuck that! I've been through that! I LEFT the band, man!" The other button is more obvious. I press "Brett." His response is instant, like a slot machine: "If you had 14 million dollars, you'd quit the band, too!" [You're worried about that Cars guy, too.] MH: Another thing. Ric producing. JB: You were worried about it, admit it! MH: You better believe I was worried about it. You had the same reaction! He called and said "I want to produce the Bad Religion record" and you said "that's nice." What made you decide to go with him? I would be afraid he'd put in organs. GG: Part of it was the comfortability. You remember the stereotype of Ric Ocasek, which came after the time that he was influential to me, personally. I was very strongly influenced--before I was into punk--by the first two Cars records. If you go back and listen to them, it's not about synthesizers and keyboards. There were a lot more straight forward songs. And then 1980 rolled around and I cut my hair and I denied the fact that I ever liked The Cars. JB: I don't care what anybody says, 'cause people now can slag The Cars and Devo, but that shit was the avenue to punk rock. Okay? So everybody that can sit around and say "fuckin' new wave," you weren't there, so fuck off, you know what I mean? [What Happened In The End by Jay Bentley] I'll tell you something. A lot of people don't understand the dynamics of what happened to Bad Religion after Stranger Than Fiction. Why did all this shit happen? I'll tell you exactly what happened at this point in time. Greg Graffin makes the statement "I'm not going back to school. I want to spend more time with the band touring and making records." Greg Graffin. And this is a guy I've known for sixteen years, has always gone to school, school is number one for him, for him to make that statement is huge. Okay, that's Greg's statement, number one. Jay's statement, within this week--it's a one week time frame I'm talking about here: "I'm married with two kids, I've got this band that takes up a lot of time and then I've got this job that's just my 9 to 5. I can't do all three. I'm not leaving my wife, I'm not quitting the band, I left my job. I left Epitaph. It was the right thing. At the same time, Epitaph as a label is taking off. You see Brett's head ticking. We're all making choices right now. This time frame I'm telling you about was a time frame of choices of the individual members of this band. Greg: I'm not going back to school, I'm spending more time with Bad Religion. Jay: I'm not going back to work, I'm going to go with Greg on this one, I think he's right, I think it's time. Brett obviously made the right choice. Some people might think not: "How could you leave Bad Religion? Bad Religion isn't the same, etc., etc., etc.," but look where he is now. Right? That was the right choice for him. So all these choices honestly took place within a matter of 11 days. That short. It was like dominos. It was time for everyone to make a commitment to something. And we all did. We all made our commitments. That was how everything unfolded. And so now here we are. We did the tour with Brian. MH: Was there any question of stopping Bad Religion because one of your key members was gone? JB: [without hesitation] No. Brian was in the band within an hour. Within in hour. MH: Well then, obviously this was something that had been percolating, subconsciously or not, since you were able to make a decision like that. 'Cause if it came out of the blue, don't you think you'd be shell-shocked by it and go "Is this it? Should we end it now? What do we do?" JB: [That's] a pretty good point I guess I knew to be true, but hadn't really thought about. [Problems Of The World Solved Within This Package] Greg Graffin may not open the New York Times and pick out a pressing world problem to write about (Brian: "It's not like we go, okay, it's time to write a song--what other enormous global issue can we ponder now?"), but I believe he and Bad Religion are motivated by a deeper sense of mission than seeing their name in Billboard. Our discussion has led us to the sticky dichotomy of keeping your art pure and talking to yourself, or making concessions to reach a larger audience and people who could really stand to learn from what you're offering. GG: [his voice at its quietest in this interview] Within Bad Religion my goal is to try to help people. But I'm not willing to destroy our integrity so that we can reach more people. I feel we offer something, and people who discover it can be helped by it 'cause it forces them to think--and not enough people do that. So you might argue: if you really want to help people, you would mass market it. But the problem is, in order to mass market it, you'd have to dilute it in some form. MH: But you are mass marketed. And you haven't diluted it--have you? BB: That's not kind of mass marketing he's talking about. [He's] talking about actually being successful. MH: You mean, like Greg Graffin singing the anthem at baseball games? GG: Yeah, or like mass marketing in the way that Michael Jackson is marketed. There are different levels of marketing. JB: That's a hard argument because what happens if--and this is the biggest, stupidest if and I won't go beyond this--this record does the five to seven million that you would consider mass marketed, then are we saying that well, we didn't mean for that to happen? GG: If it does, it just means that a lot more people are being challenged if they're really listening to it. And that's good. It achieves our goal for last year--to reach more people. MH: How many has Stranger Than Fiction sold? GG: Eight hundred and fifty thousand. MH: Not even a million? GG: People don't want to hear it. But that's good. BB: Did I just hear that? "Eight hundred and fifty thousand," "not even a million yet?," "yeah, people don't want to hear it." WHAT FUCKING PLANET ARE YOU PEOPLE ON? JB: I'm not sure. I kinda just let that one slide. BB: Yeah, it's no Circle Jerks, but... GG: It was in the context of Michael Jackson. JB: You're talking about a medium that a lot of people don't use for thought, they use for relaxation. It's an art form. Okay? It's not politics. Bad Religion is not running for president. [He ponders.] I want the album cover to say "Problems Of The World Solved Within This Package." GG: "Open carefully." BB: [aside] "Bosnian Bar-B-Q" didn't make it on the record. GG: We genuinely care. If Bad Religion became a huge pop sensation, we might be so tired after our tour that we'd just have to recuperate for four years. And we'd lose all of our abilities to be infectious. BB: And I'd be impossible to deal with in restaurants. Back