Fucked Up’s new record, David Comes to Life, is every bit as good as the combustible hype that precedes it. It is, as advertised, an 18-song rock opera – Quadrophenia with shades of Zen Arcade – that never falters; a shiny, tuneful metallic beast that will loosen molars even as it unexpectedly inspires whistling.
No one really expected this, not from Fucked Up anyway. David is so ambitious, so fully realized, it feels like a game-changer, not just for the band but the city’s music scene as whole. Which had us thinking that our interview with the band might demand something more special than the usual music journalist’s Q&A. So we asked Fucked Up’s iconic singer Damian Abraham, he of the carny barker’s sandpaper growl and Wrestlemania theatrics, whom he would like to be interviewed by. At the top of the list came Kevin Drew, co-founder and singer/guitarist of Broken Social Scene. When contacted, Drew quickly agreed. As you’ll see, there’s a bit of history between them. It seemed like a fitting choice; Fucked Up now find themselves poised for the kind of breakthrough that BSS paved the way for almost a decade ago.
Abraham arrived at Drew’s Toronto apartment bearing a vinyl copy of David as a gift. The two hugged and briefly reminisced about partying to excess while at a festival together in North Carolina not too long ago (it ended with them wrestling in a swimming pool). Drew was effusive about the new record. “I couldn’t believe how pop rock positive it is,” he said, “it’s the most incredibly uplifting album. I never thought I’d be saying that when I first heard Fucked Up, this punk rock band from Toronto. This record means at some point I can get on stage and rock my A-D-G chords with them.”
Drew considered writing up some questions before hand but decided otherwise (“Then I’d be an interviewer, man, how boring is that!”). Over the course of almost two hours, they talked about the origins of David, rock operas, drugs, touring, straight-edge, the Toronto music scene and Abraham’s predilection for smashing things on his head while performing.
KEVIN DREW: This is a 78-minute record. People these days they can’t even listen to a whole side, they don’t even know what a “side” is. When I first read that I wondered what you guys we’re doing. And there’s a whole story behind it that’s probably going to go over a lot of people’s heads. What were you thinking?
DAMIAN ABRAHAM: We’re not going to make a song catchy enough to make a ring-tone song. So we’re like why not just go the complete opposite way.
I think it’s ballsy.
You know what the pressure is like, when you’ve just made what people say is your best record, how do you beat that? When people start comparing it to other great records –that’s what it was like with Chemistry of Common Life. We’re not going to beat winning the Polaris. If we do the same thing everyone is going to say they’re doing the same thing again. So we wanted to do something really weird. And if everyone hates it, at least we tried something new.
Is this a rock opera?
Yeah. It can all be broken down into a rock opera. At one stage I was going to ask you and a bunch of other people to sing on it, every part was going to be sung by a different person, and I was going to play one of the characters. Then as we got closer we thought let’s just strip it down and make a Fucked Up record as opposed to a bunch of guests.
Is it part of that history, The Wall, Tommy, Quadrophenia?
Yeah, I love that stuff.
And this rock opera takes place in Britain, in the late 70s, early 80s. Why Britain?
The time period was so exciting for England, because that was the first time you have the manufacture of a product in the hands of the youth making the music. The youth culture had always been generated by the youth, but the actual manufacture and distribution of youth culture had been in the hands of adults. This was the first time you had kids putting out their own tapes, their own records. Hip-hop was forming.
Then it’s also the time you have the death of Old Labour, the unions are going to be broken by Thatcher, you have Reagan in America. That time in England was so exciting, and I guess we’ve romanticized it in this band cause you think of Smiths songs and Morrissey growing up in Manchester… you think Oi songs, Sham 69, even Slade…
England in general has been so great for us to go to, it’s the first place where anyone cared about us outside a punk scene. It was the first place any mainstream media acknowledged us.
We always love going there, people treat us really well. On our last tour we played this show in Leeds and these kids came up to me afterwards. I was looking for weed, and they’re like, we got weed but you have to come back to our dorm room. I’m like, uh-oh, university kids. So I say, okay. We get in a cab go to these kids’ place, turns out it’s all the kids from the mosh pit at the show, there’s like 40 of them in this room. They’re like “What are you doing here?” And I say I’m here to hang out! They go, “Oh my God!” It probably felt twice as good for me as it did for them. Then I see a Ric Flair toy so I ask if you guys like pro wrestling, and they say that’s what we’re going to do tonight, we’re gonna watch RAW. So I say let’s watch some wrestling!
The problem is over there they mix marijuana with tobacco, which makes me feel sick. So I’m sitting there thinking I’m going to puke all over these kids’ house. I’m in a cold sweat. If I throw up at a university kids house –
It’s a bad scene.
A 31-year-old man puking in these kids’ room. So I go to the bathroom splash water on my face, come back out and tell them I gotta go, but they say we gotta take some photos. I’m sure those photos are on Facebook somewhere and I just look like a sick ghost.
No one wants to see dad puke. Why did you leave straight-edge?
Because of the anxiety from touring. I hate touring.
Maybe it’s something people won’t understand, but when you’re touring you need something. At the end of the day, it’s about coffee, or finding the things that will make you relax. Because you’re in ridiculously close quarters with people all the time. Obviously, drinking is horrible for your liver and you don’t want to be drunk to take the edge off because you’re not conscious of your thoughts. So there’s something to be said about smoking a joint and staring out the window.
You also need something to fixate on. I collect records and that’s my fixation. So when I’m on tour I fixate on finding those records. But you get to these towns, late at night, especially in Europe, everything closes at five o’clock. You’re at this club, you’ve played this same club before, same part of town, everything’s closed. So you’re limited to that back room. At least now I have something to take my mind off things… I completely admit, back when I was straight edge, I didn’t want to do drugs, I didn’t want to escape. And now I do, I want to escape. I’m using drugs as an escape. My philosophy hasn’t changed, I still view drugs the same way, except now I embrace it.
But it’s also something that works in reverse if you’re not in the right mind, it can totally give you an anxiety attack.
I’m not going to take anything away from straight edge. It was awesome. Being straight-edge in high school allowed me to focus on things that became important to me.
When I got into music, I was getting $20 a week for refilling vending machines from my stepfather. So I could buy one CD, because I didn’t know about indy record stores and I wasn’t buying 7”s yet, or I can buy a mickey of vodka because I’d have to pay someone to buy it for me. I’d sit there and agonize over that decision until finally music just won out. I was never that interested in drinking or doing drugs anyway. Plus being straight-edge was an alternative, you could not drink and still be rebellious and dangerous. It was a natural thing to transition into. I’d probably be straight-edge still if I wasn’t touring. I like marijuana now and I’ve embraced it, but I wasn’t yearning to try.
When you’re on tour it really is about good coffee, good food, good wine and a joint while playing cards now and again, that’s what keeps you sane. It’s up to your own discipline what your intake is.
I don’t drink coffee or wine, for me it’s about fast food, soda and as much marijuana as I can find on tour. This all sounds very negative and dark…
It doesn’t…
But it has improved the band’s relationship with one another. Everyone in the band has had that release valve for a long time and I’ve never had it. So I was just like a wound-up top ready to go off at anything. Like we weren’t going to the right fast food restaurant, weren’t going to make the record store on time. It could be anything. Because of smoking pot I’m off my anti-anxiety pills. And the side effects are far less severe than the pills. The trade-off is you wind up looking like Cheech and Chong when you open your mouth.
I’m glad we talked about that. Because the thing about this lifestyle is it’s generally put in a negative light and you constantly find yourself defending it. And no one can understand it until they go out and do it, then they realize how much work it entails, how hard it is. The road is definitely a place where your body gets beat up because it’s very difficult not to have a repetition, the only repetition you have is what you do every night for two and a half hours… then everything else is just getting thrown around all over the place. But it’s also amazing and I’d never take it back for a second.
I’d take it back. If I could be in a band without touring I’d do it.
I never wanted to tour but then it became the only way you could actually make a living.
You cannot be in a band nowadays without touring and make a living. You always have to be touring. Which has also ruined touring, because every band is now touring all the time. On any given night you’re competing against five different bands.
You’re the partier in the band, right?
No, please. Out of the 17 people in my band you point at me.
But that party in North Carolina, everyone else was going to bed but you.
I was with you! There was an indoor swimming pool. We’d never hung like that before. North Carolina didn’t see it coming.
That’s true, they did not. That hotel, we wrecked it in a very peaceful manner.
And I paid the kids for their booze.
Kevin carries me wherever we go together. I was at SXSW, standing outside an International House of Pancakes at 4:30 in the morning. I didn’t have a place to stay and I’d lost my cell phone. And there comes Kevin, walking up with Melissa Auf der Maur. Kevin bought me breakfast. He let me use his cell phone to call my wife, sleep in his hotel room, got up and moved rooms so I could have the room to myself, and got me extended check-out.
Life is to be tour-managed and that’s just the way it is.
Here’s the thing, before I’d met you I had a totally different idea of what you were going to be like as a person. It wasn’t even based on anything I’d read, just what I’d interpreted. It was completely constructed in my mind. So when I finally met you, I thought you must be insincere, there’s no way he can be like that. Then we hit it off, when I realized it wasn’t a pose.
I have this solo project band called Pink Eyes and we had a song called “How to Rob an Indie Rock Superstar” based on the 50 Cent song about robbing an R&B superstar. The chorus is “Small-time jacking is how it begins/ Stick up the Hidden Cameras and pawn their violins/ I stuck up BSS and Metric, DFA 79/ Outside of Wavelength…”
It’s obviously a joke song because I’m the least frightening person, but it was based also on my insecurity with these people I didn’t know and suddenly everyone was becoming famous from that world. These people I’d seen walking the streets or at shows for years were famous, and this was my reaction to it. I was super defensive. Now that I’ve since got to know members of BSS, Metric and DFA 1979 I consider them some of my closest friends.
You’ve had some beefs with other people.
We had some beefs.
But they’re all in the past.
They’re all in the past. Except [BSS co-founder] Brendan Canning, I fucking hate that guy [laughs]… But you guys were the first band I knew that got out of Canada as an indie band. Before you guys Canadian music didn’t leave Canada. Which is why regardless what people say about Drake, watching that guy blow up is really fun because that’s never happened to a Canadian hip hop artist. And before you guys it had never happened with a Canadian indie artist.
I think it did. We had DOA, NoMeanNo, we had Sloan… Hayden.
Those were definitely great bands out of Canada that had credibility in the U.S., but they never had success. If you talked to members of DOA they played some big, great shows down there, but I don’t think they ever…
We were lucky. I remember our first label, Noise Factory, this gentlemen there Joe English, Sigur Ros was breaking at the time when we were starting to get Feel Good Lost going, and we had a couple KC Accidental records… He kept saying to me it’s just about the right place and right time. That’s the key to success. It is based on luck, and then getting it forward. I’ve said it many times, we got as many people as we could in Broken Social Scene so we could kinda win the lottery. It’s like getting 40 people at a factory to buy a lottery ticket and see what happens. We were also part of the internet age, that helped.
Anyway, that only lasted for a few months because all the other bands started pouring out. Suddenly the doors were open and it was let’s go. I love it when I hear Austra’s getting signed by Domino. I love to hear that there’s American labels coming here. What happened ten years ago brought the eyes on the city, and it brought it on the basis of a lot of bands.
Something else I wanted to ask you about David Comes To Life. Was it a conscious decision to make the whole record so positive sounding, even as you lyrically are going through highs and lows and dark places?
If you look at those rock opera musicals, they’re always major chords. It’s meant to be poppy and anthemic because that’s the form we’re playing with. Fucked Up records are written on the guitars. And then Jonah, awesome drummer, he comes in and makes his own space.
It’s never as calculated as we’d like it to look. We’re always fumbling around in the dark hoping it lands in the right place. With this record, they went in wrote all the music, and in such a way there was a pattern of action, they had a climax built in musically. So when it came time to write the words, we had that framework to apply it to. We knew certain songs would go in certain places. It was a new way of writing a record for us. It’s not boring – making a record can be really boring.
I don’t know what that’s like, I really like making records. But let’s just say this is a very pop-rock throwdown.
I think this is the last one with me as the main vocalist. I think we’re going to do a BSS and get some other members. For real. I think I’ve said what I can say in this band.
I understand that. Timing is everything in life.
I want them to still go on, and I’m still going to be involved. It’s not like I’m leaving tomorrow. I wanted to be open about it. After a record like this you can’t go back, and do another old style record. It won’t be like I left, and they need to get a new singer, I just want it to be something that keeps evolving.
Tell me how that works out, because I’d love to know.
We can’t scale it back. It’s not like the next one can be straight up… it’ll have to be something new again, and that’ll mean something’s gotta change. We’ll figure it out.
Last question. Can I get personal for a second?
Yeah, let’s get personal.
You got a wife?
Yes I do.
You got a kid?
Yes I do.
You got a house?
Yes I do.
How long you going to keep smashing things across your head?
I don’t know. It’s not like I really control that. I mean, it’s not like I get on stage and I’m a man possessed, but I think like it’s part of the show. Not like every time I have to smash something on my head, because the last time was pretty disastrous.
Do you not feel you have a responsibility?
I do, but I also feel I have a responsibility to the people that bought the tickets to see me.
And you have to bleed for them? Isn’t that like a gimmick that’s gotten out of hand?
It’s not a gimmick. In the Mormon religion there’s the thing called the Blood Atonement. There are some sins that are just so egregious the only way to atone for them is by the shedding of blood. It’s pretty vain what we do. Making people pay to see you pontificate on stage is pretty vain. I feel like I owe these people in the crowd who paid to see us, if they don’t like the band they can walk away with something.
Is that the wrestling aspect of it?
Yeah, sure, in part it’s from the wrestling thing. You and I know. We’re like the Toronto Secret Indy Wrestling Alliance.
We are.
I don’t smash things every time, it’s more like if things just goes there. It’s like, will we play that song tonight? If it goes there. Will I smash this piece of glass against my face? I don’t know, if it goes there.
Well, I can tell you, when you go out there, and you tour David Comes to Life, that night, wherever you are, it’s going to be owned by you guys.
Thanks, buddy. Things are going pretty good right now. It’s like that song we wrote “The Other Shoe” – we’re waiting for it to drop.
