The Brian Jonestown Massacre started out at the beginning of the 90s and have an enviable discography with such classic albums as “Give It Back!”, “Take It From The Man” and “Bravery, Repetition & Noise”. They found themselves the subject of the movie documentary “Dig”. The film may have focussed on the fights and the tensions but band leader Anton Newcombe has remained true to his artistic vision down the years and consistently challenged himself as an artist.

Apart from one album for the large indie label TVT, they have remained part of the underground, releasing records on psychedelic label Bomp! and on Anton’s own label, the intriguingly titled ‘The Committee To Keep Music Evil’. They are about to release “My Bloody Underground”, their ninth studio album for March 2008. I called up Anton during a press visit to London and asked him what he was up to?

“I’m hanging out with my Welsh wife and doing phone interviews.”

Oh, I didn’t know your wife was Welsh. How did you two meet?

“Well, I play in a band and she likes music. We’re attracted to each other and have a mutual appreciation for a lack of fear of death. That and we don’t eat very much. We also like cash in the attic, there’s a Cornucopia of things”

So, where are the rest of the band right now?

“Everybody is doing their own thing for a little bit, because we anticipate more work coming. You have to understand how big the world is. When we get going, it wipes out our whole year. A US tour for Oasis is 8 shows, for us it’s 4 and a half months! Every day, we play every place, every city. It takes months and months and months.

The concern right now is with my son, he’s just a toddler. I have to make sure he’s being looked after, his Mom is great. There’s just real life concerns right now. I don’t have a day job besides this, so I switch around my responsibilities. I’m writing now, I working on 5 records. I started another project called ‘The Serious Matters’, but I’m not ready to spill the beans. It’s like summer camp for incredibly gifted musicians, people who want to let off some steam. The rule is don’t worry about your career and let it rip”

The new album seems like quite a radical departure, was that an intention or a lucky happening?

“That’d be drugs. I kind of got pissed off about the state of the world. Normally that expresses itself in flip around/ back around, over the top, angry music. This time we did a bunch of knotty speed, mushrooms and MDMA and knocked it our off the top of our heads, Viking style and made it up on the spot. It was really, really fun. Iceland is great. I got to get some stuff off my chest that I’d been thinking about for a long time. Since my son is half-Icelandic, I thought it was important to support his culture, very few people speak that language, to do part of it in that language.”

So you’re keeping your outlook international?

“Oh yeah, the record I’m working on now is all in French, for the hell of it, to support the fact there’s a lot of great French bands that rock. There’s Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Brel.. I don’t know what else, like ridiculous shit that’s insular and I’m egalitarian. Instead of going towards commercialism, uniform, like a Wetherspoons pub, it’s me looking into other languages and however I see fit. It’s worthy of art but can also involve commerce. It can be revolution, everyone can pop Prozac and jack off to their Playstations but I’m more interested in exploring the theatre of space.”

What have you been listening to recently?

It’s really complex. I would like to encourage everyone to go to Youtube before they shut it off. Watching Marvin Gaye playing “What’s Going On” when he whipped it out in Chicago live. That puts to rest anything Simon Callow said. Who cares about anything else? I listen to that for inspiration but I don’t copy music. I like Richie Havens live at Woodstock, a band from Brighton called Ives. I’ve been DJing off Youtube, Sikh guru, Pakistani stuff, all over the map, Chilean, weird stuff.”

I also write songs, that I swear to God are better than any Coral or any other stuff. For this one, we just wanted to do that shit. We just had the best time of our lives. I had Mark Gardener up who was in Ride. It was just amazing watching him, a beautiful thing. Why should you work your ass off selling millions and being a miserable **** for the rest of your life. You can have fun, I’m not saying everybody can do it.”

How important to you is your independence?

“We’ve got The Committee but I’m running my stuff from the UK. I got a couple of labels. I’m trying to create some jobshare and we’re doing it. I like the people that I work with here. I was always inspired by the British home-spun music industry, the traditional one: Rough Trade, Cargo and all of those. It goes way back before that to the reggae with Virgin, Island, Up and Down, Creation.”

Labels that are run by enthusiasts rather than as an industry

“You have to go back to after the Blitz, pub records before the Beatles. The Beatles was an industry. You could tell, cause it ain’t John playing sitar or tabla, everything’s an orchestra, go to lunch guys. That’s an industry. Go to Liverpool, that’s an industry, one of the anchors of that stuff.”

You’ve been very vocal on political matters through your myspace site, regularly forwarding articles critical of Bush and his foreign policy.

“This is just the way I would state it - Outraged. None of this stuff has to go down this way. There’s a lot of people getting killed over bullshit because the oil is for sale. It doesn’t seem to me that they’re chasing down terrorists. In this country, they’re stepping up hunting down people at home. That’s not what I see going on. I don’t even want to get into the civil liberties aspects of our society, but the international aspect is bullshit. It’s about oil and it’s hilarious to watch them backtracking every day. They have to change their opinion every day. The outrage part is everybody is dancing around like nothings going on. They’re going to change the interest rates here in the UK, that’s cut out some of your pocket. This is the financial capital of the world, it’s going to hit worldwide. All the pensioners and social programmes will be hit.”

Do you think things are going to get better?

“They have to. Bad government fails always. Read “The 12 Caesars”. They moved Rome to London and it’s name was Londinium. Some things never change and we’re at that point again. We’re getting sacked again. I will never give up. I’m a humanitarian, it’s a crying shame to watch it go down like this. You can’t brainwash everybody and expect them to defend your country and be cannon fodder. You need a certain amount of people to be intelligent and free-minded within reason. I don’t see it happening too soon, but I could be wrong. I’m not going to call Doomsday.”

Interview by Ned Netherwood
My Bloody Underground is out March 2008