Gay for Johnny Depp Interview

The new issue of the UoB student newspaper The Blend is out today. Here's my interview with Gay for Johnny Depp (who are signed to author/poet/journalist Ben Myers' label Captains of Industry):

Recently, I caught up with New York band Gay for Johnny Depp at their U.K. tour gig in the Students' Union Sub Club. I’m taken into the band room -- crowded with members of GfJD and English tour support band Hearts Under Fire -- and directed at one of the members. He says, ‘Hi’, and shakes my hand. Before he gets the chance to ask my name, I ask, ‘Joe, yeah?’ His eyes flick with surprise either at my knowing his name or my using his real one and not stage name Sid Jagger. He asks where I’d like to do the interview -- another band member recommends the nearby toilets and I can’t tell whether or not he’s joking.

We walk out of the room and down the hall, where Joe decides the stairwell is as good a place as any. I can’t stop thinking about how small he is, for someone in a band that makes such a thunderous noise.

I make a bad attempt to loosen him up with some chit-chat, but it’s clear from when I ask the first question that he’s more comfortable in that zone:

Tell us about the new album The Politics of Cruelty.

Sure. The new record is called The Politics of Cruelty, and it’s unfortunately two years in the making. It wasn’t supposed to be, but because all of us have different projects, we got busy with other things, so it was kinda done in pieces: like, I did the music . . . And that’s kinda how we always do our records: I write the music with the drummer and bass player, finish the album, and then Marty comes in and puts his vocals on top of everything afterwards. So usually a four-hour session of him getting very drunk, biting it off a cup and throwing it down.

So, yeah, it took a while, but it’s cool. I think— I don’t know how familiar you are with our records, but we have two EPs before, and the first one was really noisy, the second one’s really noisy as well but it’s a little more kitsch with some of the songs and what it was going for. And I think this full LP is going back to that first EP -- well, obviously it’s a little bit more melodic, the lyrics, other than just, you know, fucking Johnny.

What was it like playing the Download Festival?

It was ridiculous. We played this Snickers-stage in front of all these kids doing BMX tricks and whatnot, which was cool to watch, but we were so separated from the audience, so we asked for a wireless microphone for the singer, and he just ended up jumping in the crowd and going actually outside the venue that we were playing, out where— like, he was kinda watching Coheed and Cambria, I think, while he was singing our set. Which was pretty fun.

But, I mean, those things are just so, ahhh, they’re a bit like a circus, you know: you get thrown around, you don’t know what’s going on, everybody’s clueless. Yeah, it’s fun, but also the bands on it were horrible. Other than, like, Clutch and Fishbone, and a handful of other bands, I was just like, ‘Straight up, this might be the worst music festival I’ve ever heard of’. Like, I told everyone, on-stage, that collectively they had the worst taste in music. It’s abysmal. Every band that came on, I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’.

Like who?

Oh god, all those . . . you know, the . . . I mean, it’s great if other people like it -- I’m not into Coheed and Cambria, I’m not into what is on MTV, MTV2, I’m not into generally what’s on the cover of Kerrang! or whatever. It’s not my thing. You know, some people dig it, that’s cool; I just find it very boring. And I don’t find any stimulus or creativity -- I wanna be challenged as a listener, I wanna think outside the box, and that does not do it for me. It doesn’t turn me on.

Have you had any reaction to the band from Johnny Depp himself?

Well, he said he’s ‘flattered’, but I think he’s never heard us, never actually heard the music. I mean, we used to do stuff— we used to play, umm -- his wife, when she was thirteen or fifteen years old had a song called ‘Joe le taxi’, and we would play that between our songs, and talk about how she shouldn’t be with him. I don’t think if he actually heard the band how psyched about it he would be; but then again, he’s a musician: he was in a band called ‘The Kids’, the rights were signed to Geffen Records before his movie career took off. I have a dream that he’ll hear it one day and wanna come in and throw down some guitar tracks for us.

Besides Johnny Depp, who else would you be gay for?

Well, it depends on the day, how much I’ve had to drink, and how sexy he is. I’ve said this before: obviously the moniker is a bit silly, but I think all of us agree that none of us define ourselves by who we fuck. So, I mean, the gay thing is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I think if you listen to the band, you know, we’re kinda cool for using it and not being offensive, because we encourage all forms of expression, be it sexual or artistic or whatever -- we want people to go crazy -- you only live once. However many people want to believe in Heaven or an afterlife, I don’t, so do whatever the fuck you want with this life, you know, have fun and don’t ever be shy or afraid to do anything, because this is the one shot you get.

You’ve said that the band name is a dig at the hardcore scene.

Well, yeah, the idea is that, you know right off the bat, if you call a band ‘Gay for Johnny Depp’, I don’t have to worry about any jock knuckleheads showing up. I mean, it’s an aggressive-sounding band, but right off the bat I’ve already ruled out a particular unintelligent contingent that I don’t wanna have to deal with. And being that I was from, uhhh, I’m originally from Boston, Massachusetts, where there’s a lot of tough guys, hardcore, and it’s not my thing. I never associated hardcore music with gangster-type behaviour; I always associated it with art and expression and turning people on from using concepts of film and literature and music. Music is music; I listen to so much different stuff -- I don’t even really listen to music that sounds like [Gay for Johnny Depp] -- in fact, no-one in the band does, which probably makes it interesting, or horrible, depending on your point of view.

What kind of music do you guys listen to, then?

I’ve been really into the new Blonde Redhead record. I like the music of Hearts Under Fire; I think they’re a pretty cool band. I was really into— like, I always go back to my Slowdive records, my Swervedriver records – early mid-nineties Creation Records-era stuff -- I love that stuff.

You know, Jeff [Samanen], our drummer, is a music therapist; he works with kids in a high school and does therapy music. He’s got a crazy avant-garde side that he brings to it; like, he’s into -- I don’t know if you a German band called ‘Gas’? Our singer [Marty Leopard] listens to a lot of King Diamond and early weird metal [laughs], as well as Britpop. You know, there’s just loads of stuff that we’re constantly listening to -- if it’s good, in any genre, I’m cool with it. There’s no— like, people say, ‘Oh, I don’t listen to country music’ -- well, actually, you know, some Hank Williams is fucking awesome, some Johnny Cash is fucking awesome. I don’t like cheesy music -- if it’s a sincere band, I’m all for it, I wanna check it out.

At your first UK gig, with Million Dead, singer Marty was punched by a crowd member and had to get stitches. What happened with that?

I really need to find this kid and thank him for giving us unbelievable amounts of free press [laughs]. Yeah, I mean, basically, it’s a bit of a violent show, not in that anybody wants to hurt anybody else, but it’s chaotic, very chaotic, and Marty is in the crowd a lot and basically what happened is this kid who was a fan -- he was wearing a Gay for Johnny Depp t-shirt, uhhh, I think Marty got to him, maybe put his arm around him, or whatever -- he just, he pushed his comfort zone, which I think is great -- that’s what art should do. But, he kinda lashed out, and he essentially hit him with the microphone in his mouth; like, he was doing his thing, and he was right here [motions that his arm was around the fan], and he punched the microphone into his mouth. So he ended up— he got stitches on the inside of his cheek, and he had to do the rest of the tour with stitches on the inside of his mouth. So, I mean, fuck it, whatever, life gets bloody, it’s not a big deal. [Leans over to the dictophone] Thanks, whoever, for giving us some free press.

I was wondering how hard he would’ve had to be punched to get stitches . . .

Yeah, I mean, it was a kid: he was maybe nineteen, twenty -- like, he wasn’t a strapping guy that came to beat him up; he just hit the microphone and that’s what caused the whole thing.

Why was Nick fired from the band, and what do you think of him starting a new band called ‘Gayer for Johnny Depp’?

[Voice becomes slightly grave] Umm, I’ve been in touch with this kid -- he was never actually in the band; he’s just an obsessed fan who has altered the info on the Wikipedia page. [Curtly] I’ve never met him. He’s just a kid with a lot of time on his hands. So . . .

Are you serious?

Yeah, certainly serious. And I’ve actually wrote him -- I was like, ‘Dude, you seem pretty bright, I bet there’s a lot more important things you can do with your time than parody my band. Form your own thing, I’d love to check it out’. But, he loves to spend his time . . . wasting it, apparently. So, I don’t know him at all.

So who played kazoo on your albums?

I played kazoo.

Why did your previous band Garrison split after six years?

We just— it was time to go separate ways. I mean, I love all those guys, we’re still in contact: Ed [MacNamara], the other guitar player/singer is in a phenomenal band called ‘The Campaign for Real-Time’, which you need to check out; they’re like Elvis Costello meets Prince meets hip-hop -- it’s beyond cool. I’m in another band called ‘God Fires Man’ with the singer . . . You know, you just reach a certain point— well, they’ve been up in Boston, I moved down to New York a couple years previous . . . And we still enjoyed each other, but it was tense at certain points -- you know, you spend six years in a band— I mean, we did . . . over the course of five-and-a-half years, we had thirteen ex-members, and we did three-hundred-and-fifty some-odd shows, and did six records, so we were really busy and around each other all the time, and at a certain point, you don’t wanna have to ask what the other person thinks about what you wanna create, you don’t want their approval -- you want to be something else; and I think that we just reached a point where we wanted to explore different avenues.