Instigation,
nation by nation

Hallucinogenic Atlanta garage punks the Black Lips cook up chaos from Berlin to Israel, Montreal and India—from which they barely escaped

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS: The Black Lips

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Tales of drunken debauchery follow Atlanta, Georgia band the Black Lips around like toilet paper clinging to their Chuck Taylors. They have a history of spicing up their live shows with nudity, vomitting, band members making out, drum kits and guitars set on fire and even urination into their own mouths. This would be all well and good, as such theatrics alone would’ve garnered them enough attention, but their blazing brand of lysergic garage punk backs up the bite.

After preaching to the garage rock choir with three releases on Bomp! and In the Red, these miscreants finally got a leg up when they signed with Vice Records in 2007 and released Good Bad Not Evil. With the Vice muscle behind them, they became the toast of the 2007 SXSW festival and were praised as the best live band by both Spin and Rolling Stone. Their latest, 200 Million Thousand, is easily their crowning achievement, sporting even rawer production and deeper delving into their psychedelic side.

This past January, just as the tales of on-stage mayhem were beginning to subside, the Black Lips found themselves in a media shitstorm again when their tour of India was suddenly cut short and they had to flee the country, staying just out of reach of the long arm of the law.

The Mirror caught up with Black Lips bassist/vocalist Jared Swilley over the phone as he was in the middle of hopping over a fence to take a dip in an unattended pool. Mirror: So what exactly happened during your tour of India?

Jared Swilley: We have a friend from Halifax whose family lives in India, and he has been living there over the past few years. He thought it would be a good idea to have bands play there. He asked Jay Reatard, Deerhunter, King Khan & BBQ and some others, and we were the first to take the bait. When we got there, we realized we were playing this kind of American Idolstyle competition, and we would play at the end of it. Ian [Saint Pé, guitar] and I were actually on the judge panel, and all of the bands were these kind of heavy metal or modern rock bands.

Our sound didn’t really translate too well. The first couple of shows were really sterile and the audience just thought we were four crappy white guys with shitty equipment. To kind of put it in perspective, the cool bands over there are like, U2 and Metallica, so they weren’t really ready for a band like us. After about three shows that were kind of shitty because you couldn’t smoke or drink, and they were really early, things kind of picked up.

When we played in Chennai, I ducked out and bought a bottle of whiskey, and we drank a bit before the show. We were kind of holding ourselves back and being respectful but we also wanted to do a show where we went crazy and had a really good time. I didn’t see anything happen out of the ordinary at that show, but I guess Cole [Alexander, guitar/vocals] and Ian made out a little, and I guess that’s supposed to be a big deal in India, as you aren’t allowed to even kiss your wife in public or hold hands. They told us to just act like ourselves and do our regular show and we really didn’t know that would be such a huge thing.

I guess we kind of spooked the promoters, who called the police on us while the sponsors pulled out and kicked us off the rest of the tour. We went back to our hotel to try and figure things out and the promoters said we had to drive for 10 hours to Bangalore in the middle of the night to get away from the cops. When we got to Bangalore, the promoters there just kept telling us how we owed them all of this money and they took our passports from the hotel reception desk and held them ransom. That’s when we really started getting nervous because things started to get really heated. They locked our passports in their trunk and we almost had to take them back by force because there was only two of them and six of us, so the Vice cameraman who was filming the whole thing kind of had to threaten them with legal action if they didn’t give our passports back.

CHAOS AND FUN

M: You must’ve been scared to death.

JS: We just didn’t know what they were going to do with our passport numbers, and when we were going through customs, we thought we were going to get stopped on the way out and that was pretty nerve-wracking. I’d say that was the most stressful 48 hours of my life.

M:Were you a bit taken aback by the tidal wave of Web and major media coverage you received as a result of getting kicked out of India?

JS: I thought it was a little overblown, but the weirdest part was, a lot of people thought we actually faked it.

M: You’ve toured Israel and you’re gearing up to play in China in February. Is touring off the beaten path a goal for you guys?

JS: Oh yeah, I just love travelling to places I’ve never seen and if you can do it for free and with a rock ’n’ roll band, that’s the best way to see the world. It just provides the perfect opportunity to meet cool local people that you might not have met travelling any other way. It’s just so great that we get chances to play places like Israel and realize that the music scene over there is really thriving, and that there are a lot of really cool kids there.

M: Do you ever worry about your more outrageous live shows overshadowing the music?

JS: That’s fine, most of the stuff that’s been written about us are things we’ve done on stage when we were teenagers, and usually there was barely anybody in the audience at that time. Some stuff still happens when we’re on stage but we really don’t put a lot of focus on it ourselves. In the past couple of years, I’ve noticed that kids come out to the shows just to go crazy because they figure they can just get away with it, and that’s fine with me. The only time it goes wrong is when we get bad bouncers. In the past, we’ve gotten banned, but all of the places that have banned us have asked us back. We’re not an aggressive band and we don’t ever do anything malicious. It’s just about having fun and making sure other people have a good time. If people are just smiling and dancing and girls aren’t getting rammed up at the front of the stage, you really can’t ask for anything more. If people can make the balance between chaos and fun at our shows, then we usually consider that a good show.

PROFESSION: TRANSGRESSION

M: After the India debacle, you hightailed it to Berlin and recorded a record with [Montrealers] King Khan and BBQ, as a band called the Almighty Defenders. Are there other Montreal bands that you’ve taken a shining to?

JS: I really liked the CPC Gangbangs and really like Demons Claws, the Sunday Sinners, and Bloodshot Bill is just awesome. I love Montreal, it’s just such a great place for music.

M: A lot of people talk about your drunken performances, but you really do work it hard.

JS: Well, I believe in giving it your all and putting in the hard work. A lot of people don’t understand why we tour so much, but that’s cool because I don’t really understand a lot of other people’s jobs. This is really the only thing we do, so even when we’re not on the road, we’re usually recording or working on other bands. People complain about life on the road being hard but it’s still better than any other job.

M: It seems that bands that clock in over 200 shows a year usually get burned out. How do you keep the spark lit?

JS: We all still really get along well and we’re all able to write songs, so that keeps things interesting, and there’s still a lot of places we haven’t got to yet. There’s still a lot of momentum behind us and it’s been a real slow climb over the years, so there just doesn’t seem to ever be a reason to stop. I guess why it’s still fun is that nothing really happened too fast for us. We just kind of take things as they come.

WITH DEMON’S CLAWS AND
BLOODSHOT BILL AT STUDIO JUSTE
POUR RIRE ON SATURDAY, AUG. 8,
8 P.M., $18, ALL AGES