All That Jazz

How familiar are you with the straight edge punk movement? Well, I think if you really examine the phrase “Straight Edge Punk,” you’re probably on the phone with the father of that right now. I have no inhibitions and I pretend I’m Little Richard every night, and I’m inspired by the most outrageous, audacious, and defiant musicians who ever walked the earth. Little Richard perfected defiance. He escalated defiance into an art form.

What makes Rock ‘N’ Roll so uniquely American? You can’t come up with this stuff unless you have a Constitution. You need to have a guarantee that you won’t have a king or an emperor coming and taking your productivity away. I don’t know how much history you’ve studied, but that’s the difference between the rest of the world and America. We are based on an experiment in self-government. I gotta tell ya, every meaningful, inspiring, driving piece of music ever has come from a black guy who either dreamed of being free, or celebrated coming free. And that’s where that unleashed ferocity and defiance that created Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters and certainly Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix and James Brown—all the black guys, they were shackled. And then they did, and when they got their civil rights all hell broke loose. God bless ‘em.

One of the most badass parts of the live record is when you fire off this guitar solo and say, “You can’t get a solo like that in Canada! You can’t get a solo like that in France!” You can’t. Well you can, because a lot of Canadian guys and French guys and English guys picked up on that black influence that I mentioned. All the English bands—the Stones, the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks—played soul music, and then they started copying that spirit with their own compositions. That’s why the music had so much uppityness.

How do you feel about hip-hop, then? Hip-hop, I think, is anti-black. Even James Brown was a bit upset by the rap and the hip-hop as not being a genuine musical force. I think it’s a cool bebop, and I think it’s a cool groove sometimes, but it doesn’t have the effervesce and the uplifting defiance factor. I know the rap guys think they’re being defiant, but it’s almost like sheep music to me. I just don’t appreciate it, I think they glorify the worst aspects of the worst people. I try listening to it, but then I turn it off because I’m waiting for something to happen. Then I go put on James Brown.

limitede submitted 

——

In the darkness you will meet your creator