Robert Been of BRMC Talks To The 13th Floor (Interview)

0

On July 23rd, 2010, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club performed a stunning show at Auckland’s Powerstation. Less than a month later the band was shaken by the sudden death of Michael Been, father of the band’s Robert Been and former leader of The Call. He had been on the road with BRMC acting as their sound engineer. Now, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is due to return to The Powerstation on November 20th in support of their latest album, Specter At The Feast.

The 13th Floor spoke to Robert Been recently. BRMC had just performed at a series of large European festivals and was looking forward to playing smaller venues. The conversation began discussing the virtues of playing festivals as opposed to their own gigs.

Listen to the interview with Robert Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club here:

Read a transcription of the interview with Robert Been here:

MD: As a band are there any advantages to doing these festivals? As a person who goes to these things you imagine there must be an amazing interaction between all these acts backstage, having a good time backstage, trading stories and hanging out with each other. Does that happen? Or is it pretty much you’re kinda on your own and you do your thing and leave?

Robert: Uh, I always had that fantasy too. I remember always thinking oh this would be so cool with all these bands and we can share stories and meet some people. I got my bubble burst really bad on the first couple of records, like no one talked to anybody and everyone was really in their own world and wouldn’t even go to their dressing room or they’d be somewhere else, you know at the bus or whatever. I dunno, I don’t think it’s a competitive thing. I think most bands just can’t stand to be around each other, let alone the thought of other bands. That’s the harsh reality. You just, uh, we’re not the most highly functioning social entities in the world. And sometimes that’s where the best music comes from. But, yeah there’s not the community you kinda dreamed there’d be. But there’s, some of that’s to blame, a lot of festivals have a very business-like kinda corporate feel. It’s a completely different thing where you play a more kind of home grown ones. Psych Fest, we played a couple of months ago and everyone was hanging out, like sharing drinks and drugs and everything else. But everyone was kinda around the same spirit. You know, when you’re in these festivals, there’s so many different  kinds of worlds that people come from. Any maybe they’re not as far off as they think they are but everyone assumes the worst about everyone else I think.

MD: Have you had any particularly memorable meetings with any other artists while you were doing this? Anything that sticks  in your mind?

Robert: The only guy that blew my mind in the beginning was Joe Strummer at Fuji Rock Festival on our first tour. He just was the most beautiful, glowing person; there was a spirit to him. It wasn’t just cus…I don’t get a celebrity kinda thing. I grew up, my dad was a musician, I didn’t have that. Some people just, fucking literally are on fire. Like they’re just real, they’re something special, it’s just genuine. And he had that and radiated it. I remember walking up to the stage where we were about to play, and he just played with Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros. And they just went on and I couldn’t understand why we were playing after them. I was like the absurdity of like British festivals you know. And so they were playing and we were walking up and they squeezed ten in this whole van, like a little little passenger van. And he was sandwiched in between all these people and he opens the little bay window just enough to reach his arm out and he’s like “Have a great fucking show, get out there and kill em’ and come meet me for a drink afterwards.” And I almost passed out. And, yeah, then I had to play after that. Yeah, he passed away shortly after that. That was a big deal for me.  He’s just a good artist and a good man, a good soul. There’s a few people you try to think like and he’s one of them.

Robert+Levon+Splendour+Grass+Day+1+SuseR2aUl7fxMD: You mentioned earlier how a lot of bands are rather dysfunctional and don’t even want to hang out with each other, let alone other bands. You and Peter Hayes have been together for a good while now. I was wandering what kind of relationship you guys have evolved into after almost 15 years of making music together?

Robert: Yeah, I can’t for the life of me understand how it works because every other band I see that has two writers, let alone two singers, it’s always a nightmare and they don’t last very long. Or they do and they’ve arranged a weird contractual agreement to only be on stage at the same time. I don’t get it…we kind of grew up a little bit together before it felt like we were in a band, so he ended up living at my house because he had a really bad home life and he couldn’t really go back. So my father and me you know just gave him a place to crash, which was really just a driveway because he never wanted to get out of his van. He just needed a place to park his van and he slept there for a year and then finally convinced him to come in the house and he had a room there for the next couple of years. So it was kind of like a family first and then we were always making music but it was kinda for fun and um, then uh, maybe that’s it. We are kinda opposites. We don’t really hang out socially, but we have a very brotherly relationship. You don’t hang out with your brother all the time but you love him and you’ll do anything for him. There’s a frequency we’re both on; it’s not just about what’s your favourite colours.

MD: Yeah well bands that have brothers in it are notorious for not getting along with each other, so you must have transcended even that one.

Robert: Well maybe because it’s not in the blood. Somehow we fell in right in between the two problems. I dunno. We definitely tried to kill each other a few times but we’ve never been really successful or you know with that passionate about the idea.

MD: The last time you were at Auckland, you played at The Power Station. It was July 2010 and you’re returning to the same venue here in November. What would you tell people how the band has changed in the time you were here last? It was an amazing show last time. I’ve seen you several times and it was definitely a highlight. What’s the biggest thing as far as you’re concerned with the band?

Robert: I hope it hasn’t changed too much you know. I hope it’s just more songs for people. We try and stay away from the entertainment like gimmicks and things that are you know, come out this time cus we have giant inflatable…

MD: So you won’t be twerking on stage or anything like that?

Robert: … things that we won’t be running inside of. So it’s just a simple show so it doesn’t lost what people gravitated to in the beginning and what we gravitated to in the beginning. A lot of bands kinda lose what they’re great at because they start thinking they’ve got to change and be something different. It’s a difficult thing. Musically that’s another story in your heart. You’re inspired to go to different places. But as far as live shows go I dunno, I think have the same boots, same shirt. There’s no wardrobe person, not just yet.

MD: And the drumming situation seems to have settled into Leah Shapiro. Is she in it for the long haul now?

Robert: Absolutely, we’ve been a band with Leah nearly as long as we were with Nick. Yeah, like when we started making the first record with her, Beat The Devil’s Tattoo, we weren’t really sure it was going to feel like a band it was the way before. We knew she could play the old songs great. We knew she was the best drummer, in a lot of ways better than Nick was. But we were so nervous if we could write with her. We did a tour first when she first jumped on board and it went great. But it wasn’t until later that we actually sat down and started writing. And so much what we do comes out of that free form natural, just a jam or whatever someone’s feeling at the time and we all kind of run and follow it. And that was Nick’s strong suit. He had a great sensibility for listening and what to add and what to take away. And we were holding our breath until that moment. It was actually Mama Taught Me Better, that track off the last album. It was just like, in six minutes the song was done, like not all the words, but just the arrangements part. It’s a fast, complicated song and I was blown away. And it felt like, this doesn’t have to be some studio project or something we would create and try and replicate later. And we thought that was probably what we had to do. We thought about changing the name of the band for a while and we’ll just kinda keep on doing what we do in a different nature. And with her it felt like the real band.

specter_at_the_feast_cover_600x600MD: You seem to have a way of closing your albums out with epic songs. On the new album, the song Lose Yourself, is like eight and a half minutes long and it’s kind of a mind blower. I was wandering if you could tell me how that track came about when you were recording it? Was it a jam thing or was it worked out?

Robert: Um, that one was kind of…We did this thing for a long time, none of us really wanted to start really focusing and writing a new album, like we didn’t really know where we wanted to go. None of the older songs we had halfway done kinda felt right. And emotionally at the time we all went through this loss. My father passed away. We’d just all come together without a plan or concept. It’d just be six of seven hours of just sound. And no one was really shaping it yet. And Lose Yourself was one of the first songs that came out of that sound, like starting to pinning it down in places. And I guess eight minutes was as much as we could pin it (laughs). It was originally about 30 minutes long. And then there was a fifteen minute version. Lullaby kinda had that. There was a time where we needed to just be in the same space and let music be felt and not thought about for a while and that’s really important. Later on when we had a memoir mental capability we starting taking some of those and reining them in and kinda sculpting them. I’ve actually never described them quite like that, but yeah it felt like a bunch of sculptures that were way too rough rock and we would just keep whittling them down in places; it took forever. It was two years of work. We needed that time. A lot of the other records felt rushed and didn’t have that same feeling. I really like that; this one holds a different weight to that.

The 13th Floor
Latest posts by The 13th Floor (see all)