Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Slideshow and Interview
Intrepid Pitch photographer Scott Spychalski ventured to Lawrence this past Saturday to shoot Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's show at Liberty Hall. He also got to chat with front man Peter Hayes.
View a slideshow of the concert here: Go Go Gadget Slideshow.
Read the interview below.
Scott Spychalski: You have put out a lot of music in the past couple of years and have toured relentlessly. Do you ever get worn out, or do you look at it as feeling lucky to be where you are currently, being so creative and having lots of fans?
Peter Hayes: Honestly, yeah you get a little tired, but finally it's grown out of that, and holy shit, we're able to survive without huge record sales and record companies ... they left us again anyway. Yeah it comes down to fans keeping us alive. There is a certain pride in it now. It's really sinking in.
Are you where you thought you would be when you first started out as a band? Where do you think you will be 10 years from now?
Ummm, I guess I imagined it would somehow, I don't know what I imagined ... now I'm kinda just happy as fuck. For awhile it just bugged me that we were just judged as outcasts. All the albums have been pretty well recieved. I guess I just look at it as being proud to be an outcast and that we haven't really caught on with everyone. Somehow we are the biggest little band around, a lot of people know the name but maybe they don't know the music.
Find out what commercials BRMC has turned down after the jump.
Your music is used a lot in commercials and television shows. How closely do you follow what is used, and is there anyone you have turned down?
Yeah, from day one we turned down just about everybody. I don't regret that, but that's one of the main reasons we don't have a record company right now. I don't really much like talking about it but I guess it will get out one day. We turned down at least three million dollars from commercials ...at least that, from the first two albums. Hell, we turned down Miracle Whip. They wanted to use the song "Spread Your Love" -- can you imagine that? Record companies can't understand why we wouldn't want to do that.
"Whatever Happened to My Rock 'n' Roll" was supposed to be used for a car commercial for their new rack and pinion steering or something ... We did the TV shows and stuff like that. I think the only one I regret doing was The O.C. -- no offense to them, we actually got some fans from that. We would rather support things that aren't really pointless. We were up for one of those iPod commercials a couple years ago, but it went to the Fratellis or someone like that got it. It's kind of depressing going out on tour for a couple years and some bands get to be huge off one song. Next thing you know they are playing to 30,000 people at a huge festival and they go apeshit for that one song.
Since you say now you don't have a record company would you ever do anything on your own kind of like what Nine Inch Nails did, releasing music from their own Web site?
Thats basically what we are looking at right now. Putting it on our Web site as a higher quality file, don't charge people more money for it like fucking iTunes ... how they make you pay more for a higher quality download its crazy. I saw that one coming. Bands are going to need press and people to talk about them, but why not straight from the band? You could sell it for five bucks. iTunes sells it for $9.99. Why, I don't know.
What have you been listening to lately? Or who would you like to see live?
I wouldn't mind seeing the Raconteurs or Nine Inch Nails.
What are your plans after the current tour?
Not sure really, since we don't have a record company. We have a few new songs we have been working on. I don't know, we might do something with Live Nation, but they want part of your merch and all that. I would really just like to put a download on the site for five bucks, ya know?
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