by Will K. Shilling
 

Michael Azerrad may not have begun his writing career until the time of D. Boon’s death in 1985, but in his new tome, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American indie underground 1981-1991, the official Nirvana biographer has more than made up for any belated coverage of the bands that made Nevermind possible. Azerrad profiles thirteen bands in his new book, all of which share much of the responsibility for blazing a trail to the indie rock explosion of the early nineties. From his apartment in Greenwich Village, he elaborates on the stories that made up that influential era, and praises one band in particular, The Minutemen, whom he says are “perhaps the most important chapter in the book.”

WILL K. SHILLING: What inspired you to write about the bands in Our Band Could Be Your Life?
MICHAEL AZERRAD: What inspired me to write about them was actually a ten part documentary on the history of rock that I saw on TV awhile back…

Was this the public television documentary series?
No, it was produced, I think, by Time/Life. It's actually in the bibliography of the book.

The one they eventually showed on VH1?
Right. It took about nine sections to get up to punk rock. It got up as far as Talking Heads, and then it jumps to Bruce Springsteen talking about the perils of fame -- which is a natural lead-in to Nirvana. And so it had skipped over the Eighties. I was sitting there thinking perhaps I had blacked out for ten minutes. I just thought that's ridiculous, that's outrageous. What about Husker Du, what about The Replacements, what about Sonic Youth? What about all these great bands who were so influential on music, that we're still hearing today? I thought this is an outrage, someone ought to do something about it. And then the three magic words of punk rock popped into my head: do it yourself. So I started writing up a book proposal.

I remember that documentary, too. It jumps from early punk to The Boss talking about fame, and then Pete Townsend talking about his friends being casualties of fame or the lifestyle or whatever, while they showed visuals of Kurt and moshpits in the Nineties. It completely skips an era.
Not a peep. Although Sonic Youth get talked about later, but not in the eighties incarnation. They get a light dusting, you know. That's about it. This music that meant so much to so many key musicians now, if only for that reason… This music has been almost photoshopped out of rock history. It's like the book 1984 or something. Someone's gotta say no, wait a minute, this really happened.

So why are these bands important?
Besides the fact that they are such a huge influence on the biggest bands of the nineties and beyond, they really demonstrated some things that we shouldn't ever forget. One is that sometimes the best art is not the stuff that's being crammed down your throat by the corporate mainstream media. Another big idea is that is doesn't matter where you are, or who you are, you can make great art. You don't have to be a creation of one of the big media outlets on the coasts to make something meaningful. It can come from anywhere. I think people tend to discount things that come from what is sometimes known as "fly-over country."

In the introduction of the book, you say that Bob Dylan and The Beatles were precursors to DIY. How so?
Bob Dylan and The Beatles did something that was fairly heretical early on, which was they wrote the songs that they sang. Before that, Elvis Presley and people like that didn't write their own songs. So that was a real power grab on the part of the artists. They weren't beholden to the record companies who told them what songs to sing. That kind of autonomy was pretty radical and revolutionary at the time. Very quickly it became the prerequisite to credibility -- for an artist to write his or her own songs.

Now, that existed to some extent in what they used to call "race music" or black music in the early part of the century, right? Didn't those musicians get to record their music pretty much undiluted and without interference?
That’s also true. And folk singers from the Forties and Fifties like Woody Guthrie, also, wrote and sang their own songs. But those weren't as mass-appeal artists as Elvis Presley or the Beatles. So, yeah, of course, people have been writing and singing their own songs for centuries; but, in terms of the mainstream, pop star system, people like Dylan and The Beatles were pretty revolutionary. And later on, Stevie Wonder got a lot of grief from the record company for demanding to produce himself. All that is about the artist retaining his vision and personal autonomy. This music is not some light, piffly thing that they happen to do. With really good artists, this music comes from their soul, it's an expression of who they are. So, to take back control of their own music is a very meaningful gesture.

But you also note in the epilogue how Bob Dylan's heretical plugging in at Newport in the Sixties is analogous to the breaking of Nirvana's Nevermind in the Nineties.
Those two moments were definitely times when things took off in very different directions, as far as eras go.

Our Band concentrates on the stories, rather than the music, of these bands. Why?
A very large part of that comes from bumping into Legs McNeil at a record fair. Legs McNeil wrote a great book called Please Kill Me…

An oral history of punk rock, right?
Exactly. I bumped into him and he asked me what I was working on and I told him I was working on this Eighties indie rock book. And he just looked at me, aghast, and said, 'You're not gonna write about the music, are you?' And, at first, I thought he meant that the music was terrible. So, I asked him what he meant and he said, 'Just write about the people and the music will come out of it.' So I took that to heart. Partially because it's such a quixotic pursuit to try and describe music; and two, because I figured, you know, just get the records [laughs] if you wanna know what the music is like. In the introduction, I say if you really wanna read about the music, pick up The Trouser Press Guide.

Which I already had, by the way.
[laughs] Oh, good. See?

But it did seem like such a validation to have you mention it. You know, the entire book felt like a validation of not just musical taste, but interest in that era, those ideas.
 I think that was really the point of the book: that just because something didn't sell millions of records, that doesn't mean it's not valid. That's a big point: that validity is not measured in units.

Demystifying the process of music was a big theme in the book, right?
Yeah, demystifying and decentralizing the process of music and art are two pretty important ideas -- that egalitarian impulse of punk was really put into action by these bands. That's a very, very empowering thing. If you take it to heart, you can apply it to many aspects of your existence -- and that's why I called the book "Our Band Could Be Your Life." There's no more perfect illustration of that idea than The Minutemen.

What made a band like the Minutemen so emblematic of that era?
One big thing that made them really emblematic of the whole ethos of that movement was their incredible dedication and incredibly articulate expression of this idea of pragmatism and frugality. As Watt says, you don't have to play the princeling, the pampered rock star, to make good music. That whole idea just flew in the face of that Eighties, material excess mindset that really ruled the entire decade. It was a radical thing to 'jam econo' in the age of Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous. They were very iconoclastic that way, and very inspiring to people who were incredibly disgusted with that whole era.

How enthusiastic was Mike Watt in talking about it? Was he excited or did he see it as just so much nostalgia?
Watt was very proud to tell his story. He is very proud of what he's done. And he is extremely proud of D. Boon. There's not a trace of nostalgia. He's completely at ease with the fact that, you know, he did something great. And he's still doing great things now. So I think maybe that's where his comfort in discussing it comes from… Um, I really want to say that they made a connection -- and it sounds a little far-fetched, but the Minutemen and their  pragmatism and frugality really hail way back into American culture to Thoreau. It's a very old idea. Make do with what you got, and your true essence will shine through. I really do believe that. And Mike Watt still does that. It's wasn't some sort of pose, that's the way he really is. He's a very inspiring character, and I think the Minutemen chapter is perhaps the most important in the book. I'm so pleased that he cooperated with it, 'cause it really did make all the difference.

Do you see any corollaries to these bands and this philosophy today?
I'm sure there are about two hundred bands riding around in vans right now who have picked up on some aspect of The Minutemen's philosophy, whether directly or indirectly. Watt's famous dictum, "If You're Not Playin, You're Payin" -- I'm sure is something that a lot of bands follow. Play every night, otherwise you're losing money. Learn how to fix your own van. Advance your own gigs. Don't bring a roadie if you don't absolutely need it. All that stuff -- serious nuts and bolts stuff -- maybe the Minutemen didn't quite pioneer it, but they really articulated why it’s a good idea.

I see the same thing here in San Diego every week, when a band comes through one of our best indie clubs, The Casbah -- so much so, that when a band like Mudhoney comes through and they have two vans, it's a big deal.
Well, to be fair to Mudhoney, those guys have definitely paid their dues. And if they wanna get two vans, by god, let's let 'em get two vans.

Besides, it didn't actually look like much of a luxury. I mean two vans are still vans, not busses.
Exactly, they're not riding around in a bus, so let's put it in perspective.

How has indie and underground rock changed since the Eighties?
Immediately after the Nirvana explosion it really changed because people who never thought they'd get a major label deal, or become rich and famous, suddenly had that possibility open to them. That really changed the whole scene, top to bottom, left to right. Later on, when things didn't really pan out as much as people thought in the post-Nevermind euphoria, things kinda got back to normal. But what's left is this infrastructure that all these eighties bands and early-nineties bands created, which is even more radio stations, even more stores, more places to play, and most importantly, even more labels and bands than there were in the eighties. There's just tons and tons of indie music and there are venues for it everywhere. It's arguably a lot easier for indie bands now that it was then. Even though you have a lot more competition, there's still more avenues for a band to reach an audience.

Have you noticed what I like to call the "You Stole My Band!" phenomenon among the fans in the post-Nirvana scene -- this idea that it's not cool to like a band after they've become popular? Wasn't that common even back in the eighties underground?
Well, that goes back even to Dylan. I think obscurity is often tied to authenticity. And authenticity is the coin of the realm in the indie world. Basically, you are supposed to be doing this as an unfettered, uncompromised mode of  expression, and corporate-ness is inextricably tied up with selling out, with compromising. Some people assume that if you do go to a major label that you've compromised your art. But, that's ironic that people from that scene think that, because the whole idea is to remain open-minded and not think in this kind of knee-jerk way. So that's kind of a tragedy. But then, there are other people who have a philosophical objection to filling the coffers of multinational corporations.

Like the guys in Fugazi, who -- no matter what -- wouldn't go to a major.
Exactly. But if you're going to talk strictly about the music, the music doesn't necessarily get compromised just because you go to a major label. You might compromise your political beliefs, but it's not necessarily true that the music automatically gets compromised.

You mentioned earlier the ideas of frugality and pragmatism. Do you think that, once again, those are incredibly out of fashion ideals in today's music industry?
Well, there is this blockbuster mentality in the major label world. These record companies are owned by progressively larger and larger multinational corporations and they just want to maximize profits. They're less and less interested in actually making interesting music. But, I wouldn't discount the aftermath of recent events. People are really rolling back, big time. You hear a lot about people who are just trying not to be so ostentatious anymore, they just think it's tacky now. And since music tends to be at the cutting edge of social trends, I wouldn't surprised if you see some bands scaling back on their over-the-top-ness.

The book takes place during Reagan's eighties, his conservative "Morning In America" decade. Do you think that politically conservative times lead to creative explosions in the underground? Is there a connection there?
That's a very popular notion, but it should be pointed that punk exploded during the Carter administration. So, I'm not so sure of whether that's true. It may come down to economics, where it's actually cheap for artists to live and make their art. For instance, when punk started in New York City, it started because many artists could live cheaply and work on their art. Same thing with jazz and bebop in the forties. An artist like Charlie Parker could work some dumb job and pay his thirty or forty dollar rent, then the rest of the day play scales for twelve hours. So whenever that kind of thing happens -- that's when, I think, art really blossoms, it doesn't necessarily matter who's in the White House.

When the mainstream is ignoring a certain portion of the populace -- like say, when mainstream disco was ignoring the kids starting a hip hop underground -- do you think maybe there's a connection there?
Yes. When the glare of the media spotlight is off a certain region or genre, um…

Then it's free.
Then it's more free to work in peace and it can really flourish. It can get build up a following and get quite good without A&R scouts checking out all the shows. That's when good things happen.

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©2001 Will K. Shilling