John wright nomeansno interview within punk zine

JOHN WRIGHT TALKS ABOUT HOW IT WAS AND HOW IT IS AND OH YA BEING INDUCTED

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN WRIGHT / NOMEANSNO

BY TELEPHONE

AUGUST 30,2015 COURTESY OF

MELANIE KAYE PR

JOHN WRIGHT? PHOTO

Nomeansno to Be Inducted into Western Canadian Music Hall of Fame J.B: So I’m talking with the legendary John Wright of the iconic Canadian punk rock legend “No Means No” So how’s it going?

JOHN: Ah you know it’s going fine!

J.B: So you’re getting inducted in the Western Canadian Music Hall of Fame how about that?

JOHN: I know it’s quite bizarre! (Laughing) I didn’t know what to really make of it you know our whole career we have really been outside of the music industry and we were not really part of the mainstream media and mainstream music of Canada. So it was quite out of the blue that we’ve heard about this and that it happened.

J.B: Is it because they are inducting you for your contribution on influencing and pioneering what is considered as Math Rock but what I classify more as Experimental or Jazz foundation with the time signatures and shifting tempos?

Do you find it weird that they are classing as Math when in fact anyone that learns Jazz as a foundation knows that the classical method is comprised of it.

What do you think? (Charles Mingus, Roach) JOHN: (Laughing) As far as we were concerned we weren’t really experimenting with anything really. We derive from a lot of different musical pasts really and I started playing with my brother in the early seventies and he listened to a lot of Jazz when he was younger and the late sixties and seventies and the Blues rock. I went through school learning the Jazz program and I listened to a lot of the cheesy pop rock of the seventies but then came along punk rock and you know I just got caught up in the energy of it and the weirdness and the fun.

But we also had our music and our own path to draw on with our writing so I mean you can’t help but have your past experiences influence what you do.

O MIKEY HANSON

J.B: That’s what I’m saying is the foundation Jazz - that’s where the Tempo shifts and time signatures come from right?

JOHN: Well for us our music wasn’t really experimental or even crazy time signature stuff (Self Pity/Sex Mad) a lot of songs are really simple but we didn’t approach music from that first verse chorus formula you know right from the beginning. When we started my brother was on bass and I was on drums but without a guitar you have to do something different like vocals in there and rhythm so I had to do more on drums and so with experience with other music I could get ideas you know and the drums were more musical. In some ways though what we were doing in the seventies and

eighties were rudimentary drum and bass you know or Dub Step you know.

With just riffs that would repeat and songs that would build with energy rather than arrangement changes.

J.B: Do you feel having that background helped with the foundation and what you could do as it appears nowadays that the foundation of most new music coming out is more metal based. Do you find it’s important to have that classical foundation?

JOHN: Ah I don’t know if it’s important, it’s just different. Music has become more formulaic now and has become far more experimental and far more challenging. Punk rock and Metal has really settled into a more of a formula and everyone’s trying to write that chorus you know and it’s not that one thing is more important than the other, it’s just things are different now and times are different so people are exposed to music in a different way.

J.B: So coming back to it you guys have had a quite a serious career with amazing albums over a decade from “Mama” to 89’s “Wrong” to 94’s Mr Wright & Mr Wrong: One down & two to go from the heart of the eighties where it really built to the explosion in the nineties and even did the side project like “The Hansen Brothers” to the last studio “All Roads..” and the E.P “Old”. Do you feel you’re getting old and it’s getting hard to keep up these days?

JOHN: (Laughing) Well no not really, Rob has turned sixty one now and there’s no question of we’re the grandfathers of punk rock in some way when actually there are some people (Pause) OLDER THAN US! (Laughing) [Henry Rollins, Keith Morris] But you know right now my brother’s got a family and he started very late so

“ It’s about being honest with yourself and if you’re honest with yourself it shows in the lyrics”

“ back in the day it was the true hardcore definition, not what it is today and it has changed”

he’s been very much focused on just being a dad these days. I never felt at any point and even now that I don’t have new ideas and new songs and things to say and play. And most certainly when I play and even play live I feel as though it’s the same energy still as when I played in the early eighties.

J.B: Yeah talking about Vancouver and the West coast there’s a lot of good bands coming out of Vancouver like The Real McKenzie’s, you guys, D.O.A and - talking about D.O.A I grew up in Burnaby for a bit and as a kid we always hung out at the Burnaby Bowls which was some empty pools that people skateboarded and bmx’d in and it was a punk gathering spot at the time and I got influenced by a guy who I swear was Joey Shithead and he used to just sit around and get shit faced all the time.

JOHN: (Laughing) J.B: and one of the bands out of Victoria that I know of that never got acknowledged is Alternative Tentacles label mates “Face Puller” JOHN: Ahh yeah!

J.B: But they were also Hardcore and back in the day it was the true hardcore definition, not what it is today and it has changed. What do you feel about that?

JOHN: You know Hardcore to me was just about the energy of the music and the aggressiveness of the music and you know I feel maybe more of the songs are more moody and maybe some of the songs are more raw and some are more…well I don’t know what you call it I guess more complex and that high intensity and you know we always have that adrenaline power and energy on stage and which is what hardcore really epitomized it was sort of full barrel and we weren’t about the speed we had some songs that were really fast (Teresa, give me that knife, It’s catching up) so we got lumped into that so. I think it was more this is the new you and that’s what we played and we got onto Alternative Tentacles and it was all about alternative punk rock and the West Coast alternative punk rock. And these are the people that liked our music and came and saw our music, so you kind of fall into what other people view as your peers and Hardcore was the thing in the early eighties. The fact that we were really loud and really fast well that term kind of came up I don’t think anyone has had a great success of trying to label us. I mean Math Rock was another label that people saw us as and I’ve never seen it that way. It was really about sitting around and playing music and having a fun time doing it and whatever the songs turned out to be is what the songs turned out to be or it was what kind of energy that you put into them that defined them. I think our energy on stage is what really defined us.

J.B: Well it’s hard to put a label when every album and every song is different.

Talking about Alternative Tentacles what happened there?

JOHN: Well you know when we left Alternative Tentacles it wasn’t because we weren’t happy it was an amicable departure it was really about us having trouble with distribution in Europe and Alternative Tentacles wasn’t going to change their distribution and we really needed distribution over there since our listening base became more and more Europe centric and living where our big audiences were. We were really more concerned that our music wasn’t available over there and decided to go with Southern Records over in England and decided to go with their distribution and we had fourteen years with A.T and we thought a change was needed and it had nothing to do with Jello or them or anything, they still remain to be an amazing label.

J.B: Yeah like I said Facepuller was also on Alternative Tentacles also.

JOHN: That’s right!

J.B: Being inducted into the Music Hall Of Fame. I mean, do they actually listen to your Lyrics? (I’ve got a gun, Dad, I’m An Asshole) JOHN: (Laughing) sorry go on!

J.B: Like really how do you come up with such awesome humor and the lyrics?

What’s the process there?

JOHN: (Still Laughing) ah you know it’s my brother it’s all him he’s the lyricist for sure and he’s a great writer I mean sure I write a lot of the music but I’m not good at the text. But he’s the one that wrote most of the lyrics to our songs, so it’s a really difficult answer to say he draws a lot from his experiences in his life obviously and a lot of reading and living and a lot of insight and no fear of repercussions in sight. It’s about being honest with yourself and if you’re honest with yourself it shows in the lyrics. It’s tough you know there’s just people that are good at it and I’m not one of them. I can write a few songs but he managed to get to the heart of things and it’s also the way he sings it’s not just about how it’s written but how it’s sung.

J.B: When I heard the news of it I was like wow that’s amazing really?

JOHN: Yeah I know right it’s surreal one fellow who I’ve been in contact with he was a big fan of ours back in the day back in Victoria and we were part of his past and now that’s he’s part of this organization you know for him we were a big influence. And he carries that now and you know there was people like yeah “No Means No” and they influenced a lot of people and I’m not sure how they decided to do it for us but it’s nice to be recognized, even though it’s coming from an odd place considering where we come from.

J.B: Whenever I talk to people about “No Means No” they immediately say “Wrong”. What do you feel is the best album that you liked the most?

JOHN: It’s hard to say every one is a new project and you know when you kind of finish an album and then you’re kind of looking forward to the next one. And then with every album something interesting happens and then you’re kind of approaching it like your new baby. “Wrong” came out just at the right time it was when that sound and the bands playing them were becoming very popular at that time in Europe. And doing that album and then going

and playing in Europe and that was in 87 no wait 88…

J.B: 89 JOHN: Yeah in 89 and that is when we went over for our first tour and made a big impression and after that album came out it was just good timing. I like the album I don’t think “Wrong” is our best album I think it really captured the energy at that time and it really came out at the right time. I’ve always been fond of “Why do they call me Mr Happy” (“The River” wow).

I think as an album some of the strongest writing but I really like the last things we did like “ Old” and the last wo E.P’s we put out. I mean I never really put anything out that I was disappointed in.

J.B: Do you like doing E.P’s over full Studios?

JOHN: Well no we meant to do four of them and only got two done before it got kind of slowed down, right now we aren’t really doing anything at all my brothers a pretty much full time dad. So it ended being two E.P’s and they were pretty much recorded around the same time of each other. I guess it was viewed to be a full album but it came out as two E.P’s in that retrospect but we are definitely writing and recording albums a lot more rapidly in comparison to throughout the eighties and nineties. It was like six years apart from “One” and then Ausfhart and then another four years till we released the E.P “Old”.

J.B: Talking about recording do you find it easier now with Pro tools and digi design rather than actual Studio time?

JOHN: Well definitely Pro tools is the industry standard and for instance our last album was entirely digital from beginning to end, but those processes are exactly the same except for one song that we approached more of an assembly line and you know it was deliberate and it was just going into the studio and banging out the songs and mixing them. I mean Desktop writing and Desktop recording I’m involved into that right now I’ve written for a band called “Robots” called “Compressor head” and essentially I’m doing everything on computer and everything is programmed and all of the demo-ing I’ve been doing the last couple of years, it’s all on computer. And you can write good music that way it’s how you use your tools. If I wanted to write a new No Means No again then no we would sit down and learn the music, and practice and then go into the studio and record it probably not in analog because that doesn’t exist anymore (Laughing).

J.B: Actually John it does, it’s just over at the Blasting Room with Bill Stevenson.

JOHN: I’m sure it’s out there I know for years you couldn’t even get two inch tape and It was really difficult to record in Analog and it was so expensive and that’s the thing, digital is so cheap now. You can get an entire studio now on Logic pro on Apple for like $200 bucks as compared to a two hundred thousand dollar studio you know like thirty years ago.

J.B: Qbase used to be free years ago!

JOHN: Yeah oh yeah! But then again it’s what you do with it and there’s a lot of dull boring music that’s done with it and produced but you know there’s

been a lot of dull boring music being produced forever (Laughing). There’s nothing new about that! It just seems like there’s more it of it now because everyone has a computer (Laughing).

J.B: So what’s next maybe another live, maybe another best of?

JOHN: I have no idea I mean my brother on hiatus and he’s spending time with his kids now and we will see what he wants to do, He’s got a family now he kind of started a little bit late. So he’s not doing anything right now except the family thing and I got myself completely involved with this robot band and its going and it’s really fun. Check it out on Youtube it’s called “Compressor head” and we are going to be putting together an album next year. So I’ve been going over to Germany and basically my job is to make them a punk rock band (Laughing). We’re going in the opposite direction, we are taking high tech and making it as low tech as possible (Laughing).

J.B: Punk Rock!

J.B: So everybody talks about the Bitches Brew (Miles Davis) cover ever think about being able to play that again on a small tour?

JOHN: Ah we actually really did play Bitches Brew a couple of times and the best time to play it was at the Vancouver Jazz festival and that was like 2007 or was it earlier than that I can’t remember now. And this crazy band from Italy was invited and they asked them how to get ahold of us and we ended up playing it and they had this amazing baritone sax player and if there’s any time to play it, it would be now with this baritone sax player at the “Commodore”.

Whether or not we play it again or not who really knows and that was a fun project and again my brother was a huge Miles Davis fan and we completed that with a Ramones cover.

J.B: If you were to release another one what label would it be? On your own?

JOHN: If we were to release now we would do our own thing maybe I know Southern is pretty much done now and Joe with Sudden Death Records wanted to carry us and Jello was like ‘hey you want to come back come on back’. So we would have to cross that bridge when we cross it so we would have to see what happens.

J.B: So what do you think of the scene now?

JOHN: I guess in some ways I’m not really part of it you know when I was growing up in those early punk rock days the music was so much different than anything that was going on. And now I have two sons one’s coming up on being sixteen and the other is nineteen and you know punk rock is no different, it’s still fun and exciting and interesting to listen to but it’s not on the edge it’s not on the fringes anymore and it’s become more mainstream now.

So how punk rock has changed and appealed to people from my generation at that time and now you have to understand it from how other people see it, and see it how I seen it as something new and exciting and really kind of anti-establishment. It was really breaking away from the music industry and becoming political and now it’s just another form of music.

There’s always great bands playing though. I always like to plug “The Inva-

sives” from Vancouver because they’re just awesome and they put their heart and soul into it and rock out but its good music.

J.B: We always end with a famous book or a famous quote that inspired your life anything come to mind?

JOHN: Ah man now you put me on the spot ah good lord! Em I can’t think of anything, that’s a good question.

J.B: Okay so any good advice for those looking to stay in it for the long haul?

And getting into the scene?

JOHN: The best advice is the best advice that goes for anything “Don’t worry about playing big shows just play for friends and just playing and putting yourself out there. “And if you truly want to do something you just have to go out and do it yourself and make it happen because you’re guaranteed something will happen” -- JOHN WRIGHT

NOMEANSNO

NOMEANSNO ALL ROADS LEAD TO AUSFAHRT

AVAILABLE NOW ON