Joey Shithead of DOA (Cat Rose photo)
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| Kim McAuliffe of Girlschool. (Cat Rose photo) |
By Andy
Interviews are always a journey. You step into the conversations armed with your usual knowledge and questions, but you still never know where things will twist and turn along the path. You just settle in for the ride and listen, but also guide the discussions to a spot where you'll hopefully be offered some key insight. When that occurs, it's a victory for you and the readers. Maybe the interviewees will delve into something that they didn't expect to touch upon and come away from the experience enlightened as well.
Here's some quotes from our interviews from 2011-2020:
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2020
Suzi Quatro on advice for up-and-coming musicians:
First of all, this is not a business for the faint-hearted, it's a hard business. You have to be so focused. It's not sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll -- it's being a professional. If you can't be that, then don't get in the business. Go join a hippie commune or go get stoned somewhere, but don't litter the tracks. And if you're gonna play an instrument, make sure you play it, learn it. You should learn properly at least one instrument. I know two that I read and write and play, which is percussion and piano. I play classical piano, taught myself bass, but once you've learned piano you can learn anything -- it's kind of like your orchestra. If you're on the stage, leave your ego there, 'cause that's where it belongs.
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2019
Brendan Canty on drumming in the Messthetics:
Yeah, well most of it is just about communicating, right? If you're in a moment, if there's non-verbal musical communication, and so Wayne is great at it, Bob Mould's great at it. And Anthony is fucking great at it, so is Joe. So being able to do stuff on the fly, very fluidly. In Messthetics, we've been able to come up with things very quickly (snaps his fingers) and that's a real key -- not just the writing, but you can improvise together. Everybody's excited about it equally, everybody (has) a different but equal job to do in that band. And that makes it really balanced and lovely. So yeah, it's been nice. I really cherish this group for that reason.
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2018
Andy Cairns of Therapy? on writing lyrics:
I've got a certain way of writing and what I do is I write constantly. I've got two or three notebooks and I've got notes on my phone that I write. For example, we finished the album, as I mentioned, just last week, it's all done. So I've started writing other things again. For example, when we go in to do the next record, I'll have maybe, say, a year's worth of little notes, material, songs, song titles and things. And then we decide what the theme of the record's gonna be, so I'll look through all my notes and lyrics and find out what's relevant, and put the rest to one side. And then once we record them, I take every single piece of note that's in my phone, and I delete it and then I get all the booklets and the books and the notebooks and papers that I've written over the last year on one of the new albums and then I throw that in the trashcan. And that's the most cathartic moment, 'cause I know that I can move on to something else. That's done, it's almost symbolic.
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2017
John Haggerty of Pegboy on his guitaristry:
To this day, I try to practice every day and there's really no substitute for it. Some people have more aptitude towards it, but I think in the end, how good you are is directly proportional to how much you practice. I hope that I'm a better guitar player every day -- I try to be. There's always something new to learn. It's really a wonderful instrument in that you can play it all your life and still not know everything. It's always a challenge and it's always fun.
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2016
Brian Baker on playing with Dag Nasty:
Simple is best. That's the thing, the whole excitement for me is being in a hardcore band and doing things (that way). I'm incredibly nostalgic for what I remember as everything being a great time, which of course back then was not true. But now I'm old, so I think, 'Oh it was just this fantastic (thing), everything was so cool. It's so effortless.' So we're trying to just do all the good stuff.
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2015
Kim McAuliffe on playing with Girlschool:
You don't really think about it, you just do it. It's fun -- and what else would we do? Funny enough, when I was having to write for the new album, yeah, I'd be sitting out in the garden going through stuff. We didn't get anything (inspiration) from the trees or anything. I'm not that hippy-ish.
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2014
Carrie Akre of Hammerbox/Goodness on developing her voice:
(Mrs. Woolridge) had us do training. She had you really think about what can you do with that voice of yours? 'Here's what we can get out of it' or 'here's how you sing this song.' A lot of choir parts can be really difficult: it's breath, it's tone, it's projecting, it's how do you make those notes and how do you come up and high and down and all over the place?
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2013
Joey Shithead on DOA's longevity:
DOA is really held together all these years by many rolls of gaffe tape (laughter). It's really a political philosophy, I guess. One of the big things about DOA, there always had to be a sense of camaraderie, being friends with the other people in the band. My philosophy really is just to get up there and try and enact change. One that I really take as my example is one of my heroes would be Pete Seeger. That guy has been going at for a good 70 years doing great things for people from being an activist, to being a great songwriter, to teaching people music, reviving folk music at various times. Just doing a lot of really, really cool stuff with his voice and his banjo and his ability. So if I can end up doing a quarter of what he did, I think I'd be doing really, really well.
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2012
Ian MacKaye on his career:
I don't think, 'Wow, I've really accomplished so much' or, 'Wow, I've really affected culture' (laughs). I just can't think like that, because my work is always in front of me. I think at the time, all we were doing was putting out those singles, because that's what was in front of us. And now I'm trying to finish this record with Amy and work on the archives stuff. It's what's in front of me. I just do the work, that's all I've ever done.
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2011
Franz Stahl on the dynamic when rocking out with his brother Pete in Scream:
I don't think about it too much, it seems like it's always there. It can be really heady sometimes with my brother. Our relationship is a lot different than with the other guys. The other guys are your wives -- your brother is your brother.
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