At every gig last fall, the house lights came down and the crowd started cheering and Peter Hayes would walk onstage, alone. Hayes — guitarist and singer for the band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club — would begin softly, with just an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, playing a couple of quiet tunes from the band's most recent full-length, Howl. The album had been a surprise to a lot of the people who had heard BRMC's two previous records, both of which relied on feedback and drones.
While Hayes did his solo bit, Robert Levon Been (credited as Robert Turner on the first couple of albums) — bassist and also a vocalist in the group — would sneak into the house. "I would go out in the crowd and listen," Been says over the phone. "I would hear people talking, 'Are they going to fucking show up and play?'"
Been laughs as he tells the story, but the crowds — for reasons explained below — had good reason to wonder if the band was still together, and if the rockers they had come to see were the same ones who kicked out the jams not so long before.
Asked if he appreciated the honesty snatched from his vantage point in the audience, Been says wryly, "A little too honest sometimes."
Been is doing his fourth interview of the day, toward the end of a break between his band's last tour and the Feb. 4 kickoff of its new one. He sounds tired, but still has plenty to say. The bassist speaks in a soft voice, casually and off-the-cuff, letting the conversation wander wherever it will.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club sprang from the San Francisco scene back in 2001 with a debut record that blended the heavy stomp of punk rock with more long-winded and fuzzy tracks that referenced shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine.
The band's sophomore disc continued the trend, but with album number three, Howl, they seem to have abandoned — temporarily at least — the noisy antics of before. The record has a loose, back-porch folk feel to it, as if the group had just gathered around the mic and let the tunes fly.
Been seems mystified that critics and fans have considered it such a sharp departure from the band's past. "You can still hear all the same tones and qualities that our approach has," he insists. The biggest change, in his opinion, is the listening experience itself: "[When] something's stripped down, something gets through easier. You can find the story and find the words. There's a lot less to fight with."
Going back to BRMC's early work, you can see what Been is talking about. While Howl has gotten attention for its hootenanny throwdowns on salvation, the devil, Jesus, et al., a lot of these themes were present on the first disc, 2001's B.R.M.C. "White Palms" includes the memorable closing refrain, "I wouldn't come back if I'd've been Jesus/ I'm the kind of guy who leaves the scene of the crime," and "Salvation" drops this one: "So, Jesus left you lonely/ Feels like nothing's really holy."
So while on Howl the band certainly incorporates new sounds, with its slide guitar, autoharp, piano, congas, tympanis, harmonica and trombone, it's tough to argue that it's an entirely new direction.
In fact, BRMC has simply stumbled upon the realization that the gap between "Man of Constant Sorrow" and "I'm Waiting for the Man" is not all that wide. The folk, country and gospel to which Howl pays homage was born in the same dark corners of the soul as punk and post-punk.
The band was certainly in the midst of a despairing stretch when Hayes and Been set out to write Howl (named for Allen Ginsberg's famous poem). In fact, there really wasn't even a band. Drummer Nick Jago had hung it up in the middle of BRMC's tour to support its second record, Take Them on, on Your Own. There wasn't really a record label either. The band and Virgin parted ways after sales for Take had faltered. So Hayes and Been recorded with the help of friends, still unsure if BRMC was dead or alive.
Toward the end of the sessions, Jago rematerialized, and was quickly welcomed back, although he was able to contribute to only a handful of the songs.
Talking about the near-breakup, Been is vague about what exactly went down, blaming it on the group's "behavior on the road."
"We were exhausted and losing sight and the main problem was losing appreciation," he says. Before the group's most recent tour, all three members sat down and agreed to be "respectful" to each other while on the road.
If it's odd to hear a member of a band named after a motorcycle gang — Marlon Brando's in The Wild One — speak about respect, it's more unsettling to hear Been's commitment to sincerity, particularly since the band is pegged by some critics as image-driven genre scavengers.
Asked about Howl's lack of the leftist lyrics that popped up on Take, Been disagrees: "Every song's a protest song. Every time you can stand up and sing about something you really believe and care about. Getting in and making music is that important."
Later on, he adds: "Getting up in the morning and getting out there and making art and being a singer is political. You have to realize you're doing something that's not welcome."
It's this seriousness that Been believes is a rebuke to critics who spend more time talking about BRMC's black leather jackets than their songs. He bristles when asked about those who characterize the new record as little more than a plundering of a different set of styles. "I have no fucking clue where [Hayes' songwriting] comes from," Been says, adding later: "He's not emulating someone. That's just him."
Been's defensiveness isn't nasty at all, nor really surprising. BRMC members have always seemed to take pleasure in not holding their tongues and just plain fucking with folks. Talking about the amped-up rage on Take — a record he characterizes as "just complete madness" — Been beefs about music's sad role as background filler: "We wanted to piss people off and not let them listen to it in the background."
The album's final track, "Heart + Soul," closes with an extended, high-pitched drone. "[It's] the most annoying sound in the world. It was like a flatline squeal and you couldn't listen to it on your shuffle," he says proudly, and laughs as he continues. "It's probably my greatest accomplishment: making you get up off your ass … That's my greatest contribution to music."
This article appears in Feb 22-28, 2006.