The Brian Jonestown Massacre: An Interview with Anton Newcombe

"I got offended. I was like, 'Well, you mean the two records, the two EPs, and the four singles we’ve released since the last time we played Paris? Like that, you mean?'"

Psychedelic rock outfit The Brian Jonestown Massacre have seen it all. Since releasing Methodrone in 1995, the band has gone on to record close to 20 studio albums, their newest—as of 2019—an eponymous release. The Brian Jonestown Massacre is also the brainchild of the Anton Newcombe, an expat-turned-German who has found refuge in Berlin. Remains are his heavy southern California accent and muttonchops. He is usually adorned in jewelry and denim.

Anton Newcombe has seen the band go through over a dozen former members. The lifestyle of a Jonestown member is not one for the timid; it's classic rock 'n roll. This is best exemplified in the documentary Dig!, which follows the band alongside the Dandy Warhols as they tried to strike big. Their paths were dissimilar: Warhols frontman Corey Taylor-Taylor kept it casual and non-confrontational, his eyes on the prize of a corporate record label deal; Newcombe combative, albeit determined. The frontman rebukes aspects of the film, claiming false portrayal. Nonetheless both are prolific, and—in every sense of the word—"true" musicians. I spoke with Newcombe in 2017 following the release of Don't Get Lost.

Oh, no. I’m not really sentimental for any of that stuff. It all goes really quick. I’m not a person that believes in resting on your laurels. When I make something, and if I am excited about it, that goes away rather quick—and then I’m onto the next thing.

I’ve been fucking around with Korg’s and Moogs since the early 1980s; I’ve been doing that for a long time now. I’ve been playing the ultra-low end before I played guitar. I played them when I was in my friend’s groups and my own bands  as a teenager. I have always been into that stuff.

It was just the first one that I came upon; it is a schematic that was printed in such a way that looked so random, you know? When I was looking at different images of them on Google I thought, “this one looks cool. I know what I can do with it. I’ll just use this image.” It doesn’t really represent anything. It’s not like, “oh, this is something inside a TV or Atari.”

I recorded all of these songs and all of the TWP songs at the same time and then went on tour. I’ll write a song like “The Sun Ship” and then write something completely different on the same day. It doesn’t matter. When I’m writing—especially when I’m writing 40 songs in two weeks—I’ll write as quickly as possible, because I can visualize a song. I can then move onto the next. For instance, I’ll tell the neighbor next door—the drummer— to “just play this beat for a second.” I’ll pick up my acoustic guitar and play Spanish music; I have another song right there! I can tell a person to play like Neu!, or to play a beat really fast with me. Or we can play like Neil Young and Crazy Horse. It goes on like that.

Well, I can visualize it as I’m writing it very quickly. It became apparent that it was a new album. We were about to go on tour and a promoter said, “I’ll book you guys, because you sell out everywhere you play. However, you’re not releasing a record right now, and that would really help.” I got offended. I was like, “Well, you mean the two records, the two EPs, and the four singles we’ve released since the last time we played Paris? Like that, you mean?”

It’s really an abstract concept, when you’re in a band that has been around for so many years. Once you have 15 albums, and when you're consistently releasing new music, it really doesn’t matter if you have a new record out that fucking second or not. I just read an article in the French press and the authors were like, “He’s probably going to come to Paris and play the same songs he played five or ten years ago.” The last time I played Paris, I played two new songs that weren’t even out, so to say that, in a three-hour concert, we’re only going to play the same songs—there’s no way you can make everyone happy. For a band like us, with that many records, how are we going to go out and make everyone happy?

Even if I was to go on tour and say, “I’m only going to play the first album I ever did,” I am not going to make everyone happy.  It would make some people happy, though. So I was like, “Okay, I’m just going to record a song in French and release it as a single.” It wasn’t done to piss them off, but doing so was effortless. I don’t even speak French. Musically, a lot of modern French music is hit-or-miss, in terms of how they sound. This manner that they have with words—they sacrifice any musicality. They’re not singing in some really cool way.

Anyway, once I recorded that album I did not stop. I started to hammer through. It got to the point of, “I just need one more song.” Then it was, “I think I have an entire album.” I could visualize that it was a totally different style of music. This is a totally different style, and that kind of style is every style. On the other hand, I can vaguely see how people will say this is run-of-the-mill Brian Jonestown Massacre and vaguely '60s. I was hoping that I could put Don’t Get Lost back in December, so it would be Third World Pyramid in October and another one following in a couple of months. I was hoping for people to look at Third World Pyramid and be underwhelmed—except I’d put "Sun Ship" on it and be like, “Well, look. I’m 49 years old and this is one of the best songs I’ve ever written, so fuck you. If you think I’m stuck in the 60’s or something, fuck you again." That was my goal, though it didn’t really happen that way.

It was just the cost of the tapes, it was the cost of the materials. Basically, I set up two microphones and pressed record. I asked a friend if I could record on his machine. It was like, “just let me press fucking record.”

I think we got just got together in Los Angeles and decided to do some shows in Texas a few times, because of what happened with the last Levitation Festival with the weather and safety. It was a shame. I mean, even in the early '90s Texas was our biggest market. We used to sell 60–70 records a week at Bill’s Records in Dallas alone. It was a crazy amount of records for an underground band. There’s been a lot of support—and I really love Texas.

I understand that normal, simple people are cool. There’s a looney tunes element in Texas, which I’m fine with. Sometimes I wonder if your average Texan really falls for Trump’s bullshit. I don’t have a problem with there being a conservative in office, if they share your values. That’s not what I’m talking about. I could live with that, because I’m living in Berlin, so why should I care? I’m talking about all this bullshit; this guy is not what he seems to the people that are so happy about him. It really has brought out a strange time in American politics. You’ve got to understand that there is a large part of his support base that are preparing for the apocalypse, because they believe they are going to be raptured up. They want the end of the world, because it means Jesus is coming 10 minutes before it. They want the craziest guy!

There are groups of Baptists who go every year on holiday and pack ammunition and gas masks for the Israelis for war—and they do it on their own money. There a lot of people rooting for the end, so you need to understand that demographic. People are like “it’s your turn to suffer for eight years, because we suffered for eight years under Obama." How does America even think like that? So that kind of stuff drives me nuts and I’m hoping that I don’t run into too many of those people.

I have one right now that's called Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany. It’s all about how the Nazi’s were on drugs. I have another I’m taking on tour called Jumpin' Jack Flash, which is about a guy who is a gangster in performance. He was hanging out with the Rolling Stones in London.

Well, I don’t find it that interesting. I don’t know if people will study this new form of authoritarianism. All I know is there is no "reverse gear." What's happening in the United States, if that’s what you’re talking about, has no reverse gear. I know that it's labeled as a "populist movement," though. People disenfranchised under Obama rose up, and they were so tired of Washington. As if! The people that are entrenched are there! The swamp is all of those fucking republicans that have done nothing except veto and take bacon from everyone. It’s not just Clinton’s mafia connections or whatever. That is all a scam.

Talking about the deep government, they’re letting Trump come out in the open. It has already come out, do you see what I’m saying? The first WikiLeaks thing—they knocked down the whole Middle East at once and people were on Facebook cheering that “democracy is coming!” People don’t vote democratically in Arab countries; they vote tribal. What’s happened now is that you have guys like Rex Tillerson. So, traditionally, it was the oil guys that influence politicians. Now, these guys are up in front. They are the face of the government. They don’t have to deal with some puppet in front of them.

I have no problem being open. The thing is, I have never understood why people remove themselves like they’re so important. The ‘fake celebrities have me laughing with their elitism and artificial realities. It’s such a joke. Like, “I’m on the Power Rangers, but you wouldn’t know me. I wear a mask on  television, but I only hang out in the A-list clubs, and I don’t have to stand outside with the velvet rope."

You have no idea what kind of guy he is! He was caught up in this spying scandal of the newspapers in England. His trashy magazine [the Daily Mail] got into everyone’s shit. One of the papers even had to go out of business due to them. There was this thing going on—you see, the laws there are very strange. The law and the corporations are taking turns doing things. When they can’t necessarily do anything with technology—it’s like the corporations do the things that the government can’t do so legally, and vise-versa. There’s a thin line with technology. It’s like how the NSA doesn’t spy on people anymore; the corporations do it. The head of the NSA, a couple of years back, said. “We’re no longer in the spying business like you think we are.”  The corporations record every single fucking thing we do.

[Morgan] is just a real shit, that’s what he is. He’s like a fascist lapdog. He’s a  really strange guy. A lot of crap that guy does doesn’t sit well with Trump—or does it? When he has nothing else to talk about, he whips up stuff in America, like, “you need to ban all guns.” How does that sit with Trump and his voter base? That’s the opposite! I mean, you can possibly get shot at a fucking Trump voter rally, or something. It’s more likely to happen there than anywhere else.

Oxfam and MSF, an organization of doctors who donate their time internationally to help people in war zones around the World, help people. Oxfam was founded in the U.K. and they try to figure out the solutions to the problems, really. They’ll bring goats to families in villages, because you can make all of your milk and cheese with it. They do all kinds of stuff to help people. I think they only use 5% of their donations on the logistics—the staffing and housing—which is amazing.

I figured out a way to do these raffles where none of the money touches my hands. Basically, send proof that you donated on your end and you’ll be entered into a contest. I once give away 50 vinyl records at once. I’ve probably raised 70,000 quid, which is around $80,000 doing that, and I’ve never had to touch one dollar of it.