Bad Kids No More - The Black Lips

However, although the band have become known for juvenile misdemeanours at gigs – including vomiting, urinating, nudity and most notably a girl masturbating while she was on stage – Joe admits those incidents are becoming less frequent. “It doesn’t really happen anymore and it hasn’t for a while, but we’re entertainers as well as musicians.” He describes how some of the wild situations first came about: “We didn’t know how to play our instruments and things would be breaking so you’d have to find some way to make up for the lack of music.”

The conversation takes a careful prod back onto the subject of the band’s most recent album ‘Good Bad Not Evil’ and more specifically death. A standout track is the rugged grace of ‘How Do You Tell A Child Someone Has Died’. With lyrics about a drink drive accident I ask if the song is about the tragic loss of their former member Ben Eberbaugh. Jared says not directly: “It’s just a homage to the old country genre like trucker music where they’d just tell really sad stories…a dark country narrative.” Joe approaches the subject of Ben’s passing with an optimistic outlook. He says: “That shit happens. You got to move on because if you let things get you down you’ll never get anywhere. Not that we don’t remember him because of course we do – he was our buddy.”

So will there be any new music around the corner anytime soon? Of course, Black Lips are heading into the studio this summer to record their follow up to 2007’s record. “We’re planning on recording in July for our new album. We’ve all got tons of ideas and I wanna pump them out so they don’t get too stale in our minds,” explains Joe.

Touring has been an incessant part of Black Lips lives and they admit a change in the mechanics of a gig would be more then welcome in the future. “We want to do a show with Chubby Brown and have him up before us,” reveals Jared. We start talking about the surf movie ‘An Endless Summer’ to which Joe enthusiastically professes: “I would like to go on that tour. If we could be a backup band for the Endless Summer tour that would be awesome.”

And so comes the end of another chat with Black Lips. With it being a big football night we start chatting casually about sports, Jared declares: “In America sports are really gay.” Joe jokes: “ It’s like wars. They don’t fight wars over here anymore so they fight it out on the football field.” Inevitably Mr Beckham soon gets an earful as Jared says: “I think it’s hilarious that they spent all that money on him and he finally scored his first goal like two weeks ago. He’s horrible – he’s like 35 or something.”

With our second chat in half a year, Black Lips are beginning to feel like an old friend to Gigwise. We’ve learnt yet more about the playful debauchery of their younger years, their loves, their hates and how although their age maybe growing their will to perform and entertain is equal in maturity. They might not be the bad kids anymore but dreary contemptuous old men they’ll never be.