FILTER 42: Black Lips: A Story of When and How Bad, Part 3

As the Black Lips prepared to work with Mark Ronson on Arabia Mountain, they did something they'd never done—write and rehearse before actually getting into the studio. FILTER caught up with the foursome for FILTER 42, just before they recorded, and talked about how they came together and why they keep going for what they want.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

[continued from Part 2]

Waiting backstage before the set, the band keeps a mellow demeanor. Swilley makes conversation with a friend from town who brought some coke and a small amplifier, thinking the band might like to destroy it onstage. In the back of the dressing room, Alexander sits, speaking softly with a natural gruffness that has surely gotten worse with regular wear to his vocal chords. For the third time tonight he apologizes for being “so boring,” but after a day of flying across the continent he’s still nursing a hangover from the night before. 

“Every time I get my ass kicked I feel alive,” he says. “I feel good about it, kind of proud. Some people can go their whole life and have never been pushed down and never had a hard time, and I think that’s a weakness. I think everybody should feel every feeling of emotion, of pain, happiness…you have to go through it all.”

And so they have scars: Near his left eye Alexander has one from where Bradley punched him while on tour. On St. Pé’s right hand there’s one left from an absinthe-fueled night in Belgium where he cut himself deeper than he’d meant to during a set and ended up with 13 stitches. Swilley’s ever-smirking face is slightly misaligned where he got his cheek bone broken by Atlanta skinheads in 2001 after the band used images from the September 11 attacks for a concert poster with the title, “Blowing Up with the Black Lips.”

“We learn the hard way,” says Alexander. “That’s the only way to learn; for our band, at least.”

Theirs is an ongoing saga—as if there’s no beginning or end—filled with tales of danger, adventure, disaster and havoc, all of which are larger-than-life and never seem to stop. On their tour rider the band makes just three requests: Coors Light, Cheetos and a Playboy magazine. Just like their music, Alexander, Bradley, St. Pé and Swilley are relentless.  

And so one gets the sense they will either die in a hail of gunfire or simply head out into the sunset, but you can bet the farm that they will never, ever give up. With only eight months of touring in 2010—compared to nine the year before, and ten the year before that—the band is now relishing a little time off. This is the longest break they’ve had in seven years, using some of it to work on their soon-to-be-released, sixth studio record at a more-relaxed-than-usual pace to make sure they get it right. 

The songs for the new record, Alexander says, have had the band “rehearsing like a motherfucker” all week in preparation to enter the studio with Mark Ronson, the British producer behind a long list of ’60s-inspired contemporary pop hits. This is notable because normally, playing live as often as Black Lips does, the band will never hold practices or writing sessions. Instead, they’ll scrap together what they can during sound checks and on their own and then shoot from the hip in the studio. (“I guess it’s kind of our way not to over-think or make things too complicated,” says Swilley.) Never wanting to repeat past successes, the band—this time—is entertaining the thought of earning some mainstream attention. And even though this may mean turning up the fidelity, Alexander says it will be with hopes of a subversive tapping-in.

“Without Nirvana and Sonic Youth on the radio and MTV, where nine-year-olds could actually see it,” says Alexander, “it could have very well gone the other way with those bands. If they’d stayed underground, I might have never heard of them until I was 16, or older. So I want to give a young kid a chance to maybe get into skateboarding or music or art and just see fucking swampy, not-American-Idol voices, because that kind of inspires people to take more of a left-handed path towards life.”

Still, Alexander says he might like to use a popular photo of a pot-smoking baby for album art. 

Walking down Sunset Boulevard near the Echoplex, St. Pé jokes about getting into standup comedy if the band ever decides to call it quits—a retirement program. 

“I think what I’m going to tell my [future] kid,” he says, “is to live your life, don’t have any fallback plans and live out your dream. Find something that you want and go for it. I did it. My dream was just to play rock and roll and have a little piece of the pie. I’m happy where we’re at. We’re professional amateurs and that’s all we ever wanted to be.

“But at the end of the day, if you don’t give 110 percent, someone else will. And you know who that is? Us.”

“Yeah, us,” echoes Bradley. 

“We’re gonna take it from you. We’re gonna take them all back,” St. Pé continues. “Oh, you’re not giving your girlfriend enough attention? We’ll take that, too.”

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take,” adds Alexander.

“It’s not if but when and how bad,” St. Pé goes on. “These are No Fear quotes. Remember the shirts the jocks wore in school? They didn’t realize we were learning, sitting behind them. You know what I mean? When we were kicking back in the back row and the jocks had their No Fear shirts on, we were learning.”

“Those are lessons that will stick with me for the rest of my life,” says Alexander.     F