I’ve been told conversations with Anton Newcombe can be perilous things. “If he doesn’t like how an interview is unfolding, he’ll just give up,” is one of the more benign warnings.
Another interviewer claims he is actively dangerous to know. In the very least, The Brian Jonestown Massacrefrontman is a difficult subject.
To be fair, there is certainly evidence to back up such hyperbole, and the man we saw depicted in 2004’s controversial documentary Dig! is certainly, well, colourful. While it would be an impressive feat to sense danger from Newcombe over the phone, the confrontational or indifferent figure I’ve tried not to anticipate is utterly absent. Instead, he is engaged, erudite and quite funny – if pessimistic for the future.
“I’m not enthusiastic for the children of tomorrow,” he says. “It was such a minefield before. Now? It’s only gotten crazier. Anything could happen. Your child could go to some kid’s house to play, and they could be watching jihad videos. You wouldn’t even know. They could be in Snapchat with any of these pedo-whatevers. It could be anything. There are an infinite number of minefields out there now, and who could say what might set it off? You just have to focus.”
Newcombe is speaking from Berlin. The Californian expat has lived there for several years with his wife and two young children, and as such his concern for the fate of future generations is not an abstract thought. Nor is his trepidation limited to family; as our conversation unfolds, the overriding impression you get from Newcombe is one of bewilderment. Watching the Syrian crisis unfold from Germany, which anticipates accepting half a million refugees annually for some time to come, Newcombe is in an ideal position to witness humanity’s potential for both generosity and apathy.
“Well, there’s a massive problem, and there’s only a couple of ways it can go. One is the Austrian/Hungarian approach, which is basically saying, ‘There’s no fucking way you’re getting in here.’ There’s the UK approach, which is like that movie Children Of Men – it’s exactly like that, there are thousands of people camped beside five levels of razor wire, people are burning tyres in the street. But you know, the other way it can go is if the most intelligent people on the planet start talking about real solutions. But you never get to the bottom of these problems. How are we going to solve the Syrian refugee crisis when we created it?
“There’s crazy, crazy stuff going on all over the world,” Newcombe sighs. “And the blame for it gets shifted everywhere. I think that these are serious times, and the players of this grand chess game go right back to American strategists against the Soviet Empire. A lot of these old white guys said this was going to be a walk in the park, and that’s not how it turned out, but they’re still stuck in this old plan.”
It prompts me to ask Newcombe’s thoughts on the role of music in all of this, given these are concerns many musicians have attempted to address in the past. Benefit concerts like Live 8, the work of Band Aid and the like, have all endeavoured to use music and the muscle of celebrity to eradicate hunger or calm aggression. Newcombe doesn’t hesitate in his response.
“No. I’ll tell you why. You can’t want for other people what they can’t want for themselves. You just can’t. Democracy is kind of an illusion. You look at how often people like Bush have been in power. Look at Rumsfeld and Cheney, who were pulling strings from back in the days of Richard Nixon. And their prodigies are out there working now! You see these guys from Eton or wherever sitting around looking like Duran Duran, except there are 14 members, and that’s the whole UK government. And you’re like, ‘Holy cow – what a democracy.’
“So I think you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and the arts is a great way to tread lightly. You can make something from all this stuff that would otherwise be a stimulus to hide your head in the shadow of Kim Kardashian’s ass, this search for the perfect Porsche, your dream home in Byron Bay, whatever. Art is good as something there to be interpreted in different ways, but whether we need it … the question is, do you need it, do you need a filter for all of your feelings and thoughts? It has to be enjoyment of the activity, and that’s something that I’ll always have.”
At 48, you don’t doubt that Newcombe still enjoys what he does. He is still pushing his creativity – in part to keep his filter of the world churning; in part to keep the delusion of relevance and addiction to acclaim far at bay.
“I watched this constant rise and fall of so many bands. You see them in Rolling Stone, MTV, tell everyone in their hometown who hated them to fuck off, they get the record deal, go to LA, they got the model, and gone. I mean, where the fuck are the Goo Goo Dolls? You watch that movie Sunset Boulevard, and Erich von Stroheim is writing [Gloria Swanson] these fan mails because she thinks she’s still important and famous. I know so many people like that. They were so distant to everyone, so detached. I can’t imagine ever being that sad.”
The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s gigs are at Factory TheatreWednesday November 18, andMetro TheatreThursday November 19.
