Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Men In Black

“It’s just over information, I don’t know if it has that much to do with MySpace, it probably has more to do with punk rock actually. Because as beautiful as it is, it is the greatest and worst thing that ever happened. Everyone thinks they can play a guitar and write a song, be in a band. The problem is, you’d think that this is the greatest time in music and it’s not. I barely listen to anything new, nothing really inspires me.” Black Rebel’s bassist Robert Levon Been tells Gigwise while crouching precariously on top of a chair in a tiny suite at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel. 

Slumped on the sofa opposite, guitarist Peter Hayes sucks on a cigarette then stubs it out only to relight it moments later; watching the room through half-closed, contemplative eyes, occasionally offering the odd cough, shrug or breathy chuckle. Both guys wearing their trademark black denim, Levon Been’s leather jacket (held together in places with duct tape), may well be the same one he’s been wearing since the band’s debut burst onto the music scene fuelled by Gallagher-based adoration and the chaos of NME’s vacuous hype-machine, back in 2001. While in appearance the band appear today the same as they ever did, its clear that these six years have had their ups and downs, with more than just jackets getting patched up along the way.

While Hayes describes being caught up in the feeding frenzy of the new rock revolution as quite simply, ‘****ing great!’, the band admit that they had suspicions about the British press. “You know the game, and especially the NME was quick to take on a band and get excited; and the more excited they get you know it’s only a matter of time before the other shoe drops.” Levon Been recalls. “But that’s rock and roll music. It’s hard, but it’s kind of this moment that happens and its beyond everyone’s control, this emotion takes over. It only happens for a year maybe where it’s really vibrant, so you’ve kinda just got to let it be what it is.”

While their debut arrived to rapturous clapping of hands and stamping of feet, their second album ‘Take Them On, On Your Own’ saw the press that had hailed them as gods unceremoniously set them up with a stunt involving an inflatable cock at V Festival 2004. The band also “amicably” split with their label, Virgin before British-born drummer Nick Jago walked out following an argument with Hayes in Edinburgh, fuelling rumours of addiction and instability. This led to the conspicuously stripped down country stylings of 2005’s ‘Howl’, the band seeming to scrap the pretensions and posturing that had overshadowed their previous records. Levon Been used his real name for the first time, appearing on previous albums as Robert Turner, an attempt to diffuse any obvious link in the press, between himself and father Michael Been of The Call. It seemed that along with Jago the band had also lost some of that swaggering confidence. “The spirit of ‘Howl’ was the exact same as all four of our records.” Hayes states, “They all came from the exact same place which is, we’re gonna do whatever the **** we wanna do, and our hopes were that the fans of our music were just fans of music and that they were gonna get it.”

The album was named after a poem by Beat-poet Alan Ginsberg, the first line of which reads, ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness… dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.’ Introspective, soulful and recorded without Jago, the drummer eventually rejoined the band in time to record on ‘Promise’. The use of Ginsberg’s work prompts the band to discuss the current battle between Kele Blocparty and the Gallagher brothers over whether or not it is cool to be clever or just ‘a band off University challenge’ prompting the most enthusiastic outburst from Hayes.