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Words: Ben Blackwell
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Photography: Patrick Pantano
Black Lips are total white trash. Pissing onstage,
singing songs with titles such as ‘Everybody Loves
A Cocksucker’ – they’re sure to offend even the
most liberal supporters of the arts. At the same
time, Black Lips are complete gentlemen, all charm
and grace and sincerity. It’s bands like these, full of
paradoxes, contradictions and sheer unexplainables,
which make rock music exciting, dangerous,
unpredictable – and all those things it has always
promised it could be.
Cole is a dead ringer for Paul McCartney on
the gatefold of Sgt Pepper’s…, complete with
a push-broom moustache and an endearing dark
helmet of hair. Onstage, he’s like a child imitating
Jimi Hendrix. He has mastered all the parlour tricks:
playing with his teeth; pushing the microphone
stand forward with his feet; bending at the knees;
and extending the guitar like an oversized phallus as
it screams out fuzz from the urethra of its pick-ups.
Jared is the cutest of the bunch (they all have
those faces you just wanna make out with). Bred
from a long line of prominent Southern preachers –
Tammy Faye Baker used to babysit him – he was the
main objector to the working title for Let It Bloom,
which was to be a re-appropriation of Lester Bangs’
claim to be “the last of the white niggers”. Giving
the album that title pretty much meant he would
never be able to talk to his family again. They were
big supporters of the Civil Rights movement in the
American South – if you’re adventurous, search out
recordings by The Swilley Family, a country/gospelstyle
act they formed in the Sixties and Seventies
that Jared describes as “not half bad”.
Ian is the missing link. As the band’s fourth
guitarist, it’s clear he’s the one who should have
been there all along. He’s the Brian Jones in the
rock solid Mick/Keef-style line-up of Cole and Jared.
He’s arguably also the most skilled musician of the
bunch (arguably, because Joe is a classically trained
pianist, but I get the feeling he likes to stay behind
the drums just for the challenge).
Ian joined the band the day before the start
of a tour they spent opening for Sky Saxon and the
Seeds. Cole taught him most of the songs in the
back of the van. “This song is E, D, A,” Cole would
say. And then: “This song is a little different – it’s E,
A, D.” All Ian could say to himself was: “These guys
are fucking brilliant.”
Ian is also known for the removable gold caps
(or ‘grill’) he puts over his teeth. It’s such a confusing
merging of dirty Southern garage rock and screwed
Southern hip hop that I can’t help but be enamored
by the audacity and absurdity of it. Oh yeah – and
he supposedly bought the grill with aid money he
received after Hurricane Katrina.
But, before I can get all up in arms, I hear one of
the Lips’ latest compositions, ‘Katrina’, the entire
lyrics of which are as follows: “Oh, Katrina, why you
gotta be mean?/You stole my heart way down in
New Orleans/I can’t believe what I saw on the TV
screen/Oh, Katrina, why can’t you be serene?”
The song is all clumsy drums and whirling fuzz
lines. It is by far the most accurate approximation
of modern day Back From The Grave-style garage
since The Gories busted out with ‘Drowning’ in
1992. Black Lips hope to release the song on a New
Orleans label, and to donate any profits from its sale
to charity.
Joe is the organised one. He drives the van, deals
with promoters and basically makes sure everything
works as smoothly as possible. Up until not too long
ago, he could be found tuning Cole’s guitar in the
middle of a set, because Cole had no idea how to
do so. When he drums, he looks as though he is
undergoing electro-shock treatment. He writes
more songs and is more responsible for the band’s
sound than any other drummer I’ve ever met. But
he’s decidedly in the background.
Black Lips have their roots in a high school band
called The Renegades; all the current members were
in it at one point or another. The only relevant story
about The Renegades I can pull out of them is that
both Cole and Jared sprayed Binaca on their dicks
and set them on fire during one performance. Cole
made the mistake of covering his dick with Gak
(children’s goo – part Silly Putty, part calf liver)
and it quickly turned into a melting mess.
And then there are the most relayed tales
about Black Lips: their insane onstage antics find
Cole vomiting, pissing into his own mouth, spitting
in the air and catching it on his face, and sometimes
using his cock as a guitar pick.
Regarding the pissing, Cole is the first to admit,
“It’s so fucking stupid.”
“It’s lame and I hate it,” he says, “but it gets
such a reaction from the crowd.”
punch-drunk love
When Black Lips get drunk at a Best Western in
Denver, after a 13-hour drive through a blizzard that
has essentially shut down the state of Kansas (and
only to play two songs), they’re unnaturally excited
about watching their limited-edition tour DVD.
Filmed while the band was on the West Coast in
2005 recording Let it Bloom, it finds them in the van
and in the studio, and captures all the shenanigans
one could expect from a bunch of kids in their early
twenties with a never-ending supply of beer.
But there’s also a terribly heartwarming scene
in the DVD that has Black Lips performing in a small
apartment in San Francisco. All of the attendees are
underage kids who couldn’t get into the Lips’ 21+
bar show. The band
holler lyrics without
microphones; Joe
plays with towels
covering his drums; and the room is packed with
frantic teenagers revelling in the excitement and
generally losing their shit. The gig seems so totally
uncharacteristic of how these guys are perceived,
and it makes me wanna crawl up and give them
a collective hug, tell them they’re doing everything
right, to fuckin’ forget those assholes who focus
on their onstage tomfoolery – to follow their
instincts, as they’ve proven to be spot on so far.
After some brew, Cole and Jared are quick to
name their idols. Tonight, at least the following
were mentioned: Billy Miller and Miriam Linna, of ABones/
Norton Records fame; Los Saicos – a relatively
unknown South American garage-punk band that
Black Lips have taken loads of inspiration from;
Darin Raffaelli, frontman for long-forgotten Nineties
acts Supercharger and The Brentwoods, and better
known for penning songs for The Donnas among
others; and some dude from Seattle punk-scuzzers
The Spits (prominently featured in the DVD).
But all members would say that their initial
infatuation with the Sixties punk sound was via
Van Morrison’s group, Them. From there, a logical
progression came about: they were slowly turned
on to records like the aforementioned Back From
The Gravecompilation series on Crypt Records:
an eight-volume collection of pure outta-tune,
untalented Sixties teen punk howling that is the
most accurate blueprint of Black Lips’ sound.
But other styles creep in unexpectedly. Songs
such as ‘Born to Be A Man’ and ‘Make It’ are good
ole hillbilly country, ŕ la Buck Owens, or an obscure
Carl Perkins B-side on Sun. And on a disarmingly
brilliant cover of the Jacques Dutronc song ‘Hippie
Hippie Hourrah’, the decidedly austere arrangement
proves that these degenerates can transform a song
and turn it into their own. And don’t forget the
crowd favourite ‘Dirty Hands’, a Spector-ish romp
that apes The Beatles and asks – in a tone bordering
on sheer dumbfounded –“Do you really want to
hold my dirty hands?”
makeout city
Their most recent tour ends with an unexpected
spot opening for Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the Detroit
suburb of Royal Oak. The Lips boys are beyond
excited, and Cole’s take on the situation is simply:
“I’m viewing this show purely as a publicity stunt.”
Black Lips hop onstage half an hour after the
doors open and are facing a fairly empty room (the
capacity is roughly 4,500) of a couple of hundred
Day-Glo clad suburban Karen O wannabes squished
up to the front barrier, plaintively waiting for Yeahs.
It is still the biggest crowd they’ve ever faced.
What those hipster teenagers get is 20 minutes
of pure distilled brilliance.
The Lips cut any deadweight from the set.
Surprisingly, all three of the YYYs are sitting stage
right and fully taking in the spectacle. Ending
the set with the quintessential Black Lips song,
‘Freakout’, Ian lights a pack of Black Cats as they
dangle from his mouth, to looks of pure horror from
the unexpecting teens.
He spits up some
blood and then
crosses the
stage to lock
tongues
with Cole.
This homophobe-baiting seems to draw the most
ire from the crowd. And, like that, the show is over.
In a show of irony, self-deprecation, giving the
finger, or whatever you want call it, the Lips boys
venture out back onstage with white towels around
their necks, holding one another’s hands. And
they bow. The classic arena rock goodbye.
YYYs are blown away, dispensing hugs and
praise. But their tour manager and assorted higherups
from the venue are none too pleased. Black
Lips are immediately kicked out of the club, their
gear loaded outside by the union grunts. The tour
manager lectures the guys (“What made you think
you could do this? You ever ask permission? Heard
of a fire code?”), to which they just shrug their
shoulders in a Dennis The Menace ‘sorry, mister’
sort of way. But they mean no apology.
The band sneak back into the club (by lying to
security and saying they were Blood On The Wall,
the other opening band), and are able to witness
Karen O wearing a Black Lips sticker on her chest
during the entire YYYs performance. These boys
are content; everything was worthwhile.
So Black Lips again found themselves in front
of a room of teenagers, but their performance was
the complete polar opposite of the one before, in
the San Francisco apartment. And yet it worked;
Black Lips made sense. In their world, this is
something to behold. Black Lips have learned both
to transcend and to embrace their contradictions.
It is now time for everyone else to transcend their
own reservations and embrace Black Lips. |
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