Anthony Hempell: Interview with Rob from NoMeansNo

This interview was recorded in August of 1993 with Rob Wright, bassist and lyricist for the Victoria band NoMeansNo. Rob is about the closest thing I have to a hero: his music and songs have been an enormous influence on me musically and personally. We sat and talked for over an hour, and afterwards he was kind enough to give me a ride to the bus stop. This interview was originally published in the September 1993 issue of Discorder.

Anthony: What has changed for NoMeansNo since Andy has left?
Rob Wright: Andy's not there anymore! (laughs)... at first we just took a break, because we weren't sure how we were going to proceed. I ended up being really bored, so I started doing Mr. Wrong. At the same time, various people influenced us to do a Hanson Brothers record. The Mr. Wrong thing was really good because it was quite different, a challenge, a kind of scary thing to do, and it got me playing every day and I started to write... a lot.
The majority of the songs on the new (NoMeansNo) album were written as Mr. Wrong songs and had been performed as Mr. Wrong songs... which is why I think they tend to be a little simpler and longer and ponderous instead of the faster, more intricate stuff. If you just play with bass, you have to fill up the whole thing with just the bass, chords, stuff like that. When we listened to the new album we said "Oh my god, are people going to sit down and listen to a whole hour of this?" There were even a couple of longer ones that we left off because there wasn't even any room on the CD.
We have been justly criticized for this new album being a little long at points... but you can't worry yourself too much. If you try second-guessing yourself about what people will like you might as well forget the whole thing. I don't think it would have been that focussed if Andy had been there, it would have been more like the other albums in terms of there being a variety of tempos and styles and kinds of songs; whereas for this one I wrote most of the songs and me and John worked on it together... it has a single line running through it, wheras the other albums don't. It was also a lot harder to do: I had to do all the guitar parts, and I haven't played serious guitar in ten years... in was one hell of a pain in the ass for me to try and play guitar up to snuff.
Some people have compared the sound to your first LP, Mama, which was also a product of the band as a two-piece.
I think it does sound that way, but only because it has a preponderance of my material written on the bass, and that's also what Mama was. Which just shows you... I don't change at all! I've been writing the same songs for ten years, kids!
I don't know if the next work will have the same quality to it, because we're starting to work with other people. The next thing we're going to do is a fun compilation album on Wrong Records. It may not even be a NoMeansNo album, with lots of guests and covers and weird stuff... sort of like a CD magazine in music form.
What is happening with Wrong Records? I assume it started out as an opportunity to take more control over putting out your material.
Yeah, people were mailing us, asking for stuff, and we wouldn't have anything we could sell them. So we decided to do a little mail-order business and we'll put out our own T-shirts and sell mail-order and odd singles... and then there were a lot of odd things too, things we were on, like 7 inches that were made around the world, that were available, and people would ask us about them, but we didn't make them. So we ordered a whole bunch of stuff, like the 7 inch from Finland, and various bootlegs.
I don't know if we'll make it into an official "label" with other bands who we'll try to promote and get out there... I mean, that's really hard. You'd have to have a real organization, if it got real serious you'd have to get more people involved and it would have to make some money, which it really doesn't do at the moment. We're not planning to take over the world or anything... it's a fun place to put out side projects and other things to occupy our time.
You've been involved in a lot of side projects over the years: the Hansons, Show Biz Giants, the record with Jello, itch,... how did you first approach NoMeansNo when it started? Was is just another side project?
No, NoMeansNo has always been the central thing we've done. Especially when we started playing two-piece, that was the most focussed thing... we had done four-track recordings and played together in that form, but that was more of a studio thing, really not a band, just two guys playing the instruments and putting the songs out, which is a whole other thing than being a live band. We wanted to be a live band, so we started the two-piece and since then, that's been the core of what we've done. Andrew was a huge part of the band, obviously, but the essential beginning was myself and John, with the songs written with a huge rhythm-section emphasis and with a certain idea and emotional content and direction. And that's why we carried on; when Andy left the band we didn't say "well, we'll go on to something else." I mean, when we write songs together they are NoMeansNo songs... as long as me and John are playing together, it'll always be NoMeansNo.
What is Andy doing now? The story I heard was that he was walking around Amsterdam with a gram of pot in his pocket and thought "Hey, this is legal!" and just decided to stay...
He developed a relationship with a woman who had tour managed a couple of our tours, and eventually it got to the point that his life was there. He just got sick of the touring, and it had got quite... big. And he wasn't really comfortable with that, especially in Europe. He turned thirty and decided he had to take a left turn and do something different. He's been with us for eight or nine years, which is a long time for a band to be together in one format. I don't really know if he's doing anything musical at all... I think he's doing demos and stuff but whether or not he plans to be seriously involved in the music business again, I don't know.
What do you think it's been that has made NoMeansNo different from other "hardcore" bands?
I think it's because we started a lot earlier than the actual "hardcore"/Minor Threat/American/California kind of scene. The bands we listened to when we started playing music were the Ramones, The Sex Pistols, the Stranglers and then PiL and the "second-wave" in England... a little more avant-garde, where the attitude was to try out new things... some reggae rhythms, funk, try and shake things up. The band was never about actual politics, it was more into the personal politics and sexual politics of person-to- person stuff... and so when we finally got touring, we were in that "scene," but we really weren't going the same way as most of the bands were, which was really fast music, intense, often very political lyrics and a very, very rigid format for the bands... they wanted to be like each other, rules of conduct, things like that, with a very "boys-club dib- dib-dib dob-dob-dob" feel about it. We were just a little too old and too completely politically-incorrect to go along with it.
I think what really makes us different is we've always wanted to be ourselves; to the extent that if you're going to be yourself, you're going to be different from everyone else. And most bands, unfortunately, are always trying to be the band they really like... and unfortunately they usually succeed. That's why music becomes so generic: you get twelve bands who are all like this one band who were really good... maybe some of them are really good, but most of them are terrible. But is any one of them would just be themselves, and play from their perspective, not from the perspective of what they think is cool from what they've seen of other people noodling.
People really appreciate people who do things their own way... that's what people are looking for: originality, that's what sparks interest. It's totally wrong-headed to look at someone else and say "If I write songs like them, I'll be like them!" By doing that you're not going to be true to what's truly inside yourself. That's how personality comes into it as well, not as image, but actual people. Like the Minutemen, Mike Watt and D. Boon, these are individual people, and even if there were things I didn't like, I've always had a huge respect for that band, and for fIREHOSE, simply because they're themselves.
It reminds me of the first time I saw you live, it was at an all-ages show at the Town Pump in '86. There were about 25 people there, and as I was watching the opening band, this six-foot grey-haired guy in glasses came walking across the dance floor, bobbing his head to the music and I thought, "That must be their manager." And then you climbed up on stage and started playing! I thought you would be so cool, but you ended up being geeky like me!
That's what I think people appreciate... it's like, I'm allergic to cool! I mean, we've always been three nerdy guys from Victoria. I think one of the reasons we never got into this style thing is because in Victoria there was never a competitive "scene." There just weren't enough people -- you couldn't divide the audience, or no-one would have anything! Everyone went out to everything that started out, at the beginning, anyway, whether you played really dumb new wave or really strange stuff like we did as a two-piece to begin with or pop-punk like the Infamous Scientists or Pink Steel, which became the Wardells and now the Sweaters. Everyone knew everyone else, so if you put on airs people would just smirk. And not to say that people didn't have the hair and the leather jackets, but for us... I think I looked like a punk rocker for about two weeks a long time ago, and then I thought "This is way too much trouble," people would look at me funny in the streets and I might get beat up by rednecks...
And again, music is music, and it's very important in that function, but in terms of being a status-thing, a hierarchical-thing or a money-maker... it can be all these things, but it really has nothing to do with what music really is. If you go someplace and you're the "rock star," some people think that's cool, but most people think it's just a pain in the ass. I'm just a little to old to be like that anyways... even if I tried I don't think I could be cool, especially now... I'm a forty-year-old man living in New Westminster! I'm your Dad, kids!
Have you felt any urge to try jumping into the mainstream and trying to fuck with things like Sonic Youth claim they're trying to do?
No... because the mainstream will fuck with you. I think Sonic Youth and others are good examples of that not doing anything for their music, and they've certainly put themselves in alien positions which don't fit what they do... y'know, I don't really know them at all really, I like some of their music, but I'm not a huge fan of the band. Most alternative bands who've gone to mainsteam labels don't end up too well... we'll see what happens to Nirvana and people like that, and the Chili Peppers were always basically a pop band with an alternative attitude. For us, I don't think we're ever going to write the kind of music that's going to sell 150,000 or 200,000 records, and if you don't do that on a major label, you're nothing. So why put yourself in the position of all this pressure... for what? So you'll sell a few more records and not see any money out of them?
I think we make more money now selling our 20-30,000 copies of each album than bands who sell 90- 100,000 on a major label and who spent $350,000 making it. The only people who have to do that are the people who are making full-scale commercial pop music... like Prince. I mean, what would he be doing on Alternative Tentacles? I have nothing against major labels, I don't care... they're in their world and we're in ours.
What does playing in NoMeansNo do for you personally? What do you get to express through the medium of the band that you might not communicate otherwise?
I get to say "fuck you" to everyone in the world! (laughs) All those little simmering things that most people carry around as ulcers 24 hours a day, I get to spit them out on stage to people with some applause at the end and a few dollars. It's a way to communicate, and way to get in contact with people on a certain level that most people don't ever get the opportunity to. I have people who write me from Texas who I don't know, who talk to me about their personal lives and say things about the music that they've related to, and you begin to realize that you've made a connection with this person, and you've never really met them. That's what music is about; the purpose of music is not to make you rich and famous nor is it a platform for whatever political axe you've got to grind, which I find even more oppressive sometimes. It's about making a connection with people and sharing what you have in common with someone.
If wrote a song that comes out of some sadness in your life, and someone feels sad, you realize you're sharing some of that sadness, that you are connected. Otherwise, they wouldn't feel anything. That's how music has always been... people have got together, they've beat on drums, they sing, usually among people they know, in a close, tribal or communal relationship, and express in one voice whatever one is feeling... their desires, their fears... music doesn't need any other justification than that. It doesn't have to have a "message," it doesn't have to provide a lot of money for a lot of people...I'm not saying you can't write political and meaningful songs, a lot of people have. Some people make a good living and have made a big difference, it's not necessarily bad. But the more you move towards either of those ends, the more you're moving away from the central part of what music is, which is to be with people, and through playing music, everyone comes together. That's the feeling you get when you're at a great concert... it's like "wow!" And those concerts I'll remember all my life... and in that moment, you don't have to further the progress of mankind... that moment, that's what the value of it is. And that's what the value is for me personally, I get to be the vehicle for that.
How does that relate to your songwriting process?
Songs that are really good, that really move people do not belong to the artists that wrote them. They're the person who managed to bring them out, but if you see the effect they have on people, you realize that they're a common thing. It's a little spooky, and I don't mean to get mystical about it, but I really feel that great songs and great music is a gift that comes through an artist, and the individual really doesn't have anything to do with it. A lot of people confuse themselves with their music, and that's when they begin to get fucked up and think they're God Almighty because their music is so powerful, but it's really not them Ð that's where they get confused. They're not the ones who are doing it, they're the ones which it's coming through.
Oftentimes a great artist will suddenly stop producing great art... why? Are they a different person? No, it's just that what they're saying, the things they're trying to bring out aren't being communicated anymore, or they're no longer what people are interested in, what people are going through. Which is when you find people who do things in their lifetime that no-one gives a shit about, and a hundred years everyone goes "Wow! This is so great!" Whatever that artist was touching on, everyone else didn't clue into it until a hundred years later... unfortunately for them! And there's something sort of religious about music in that sense. Religious communities have always had music, because it's a spiritual thing -- it's a way which people, on levels you really can't specify, can connect. And everyone who wanders through the dark on their own, y'know... an individual, the great... ME... that's really not the valuable part, where you get the things that drive you in life... the things that drive you in life, the things that are really important and deep... they're shared by everyone, and everyone is connected by those things. And that, to me, is the purpose of music: to bring that connection out.
Have the progressions in your lyrical content and themes been a product of changes in on a spiritual or emotional level?
I think it hasn't progressed so much as it's been refined, if you listen to the songs on Mama and you listen to the new songs, you find... the same songs. And I think I've been literally writing the same song with different words and music since that time. All I try to do is maintain or refine the understanding of what I'm doing, and by "understanding" I mean the emotional as opposed to intellectual; in a song like "Kill Everyone Now" or "Machine" or "I Need You," you'll find the same direction in songs from Mama like "Red Devil," or "Real Love" or "Victory." They're all trying to get to a place in the human heart where people are sad and hopeful at the same time, angry and needing love at the same time. These things are all fused together... I think the only thing different now is that I'm starting to lose a little of the crap, the mental crap, that goes along with lyric writing. Songs I've written that have been failures are songs like "Hunt the She-Beast," it's this real sort of intellectual little pompous thing about sexual politics, and I listen to it and say "eeww, it's such a lot of crap!" And it's because it's all thinking - with a song like "Kill Everyone Now," there's no "thinking" in that song, there's no "idea." It doesn't explain anything and it really doesn't make much sense, but it has an emotional content and understanding. I could analyse it and cut this or that out, and say "it's about indivdual suicide translated into mass suicide" or whatever, but the less I do that when I'm writing, the more you just go "Blat!" and it comes out from somewhere... who knows. The only craft involved is putting it together so the impact of what you're saying is heightened instead of debilitated.
What would you say is the difference between songs such as "Metronome" and "Long Days" and even "Victory" which to me symbolize an attempt to draw strength from inside oneself in spite of the outside world, as opposed to songs like "Joyful Reunion" or "The River" which are more outstretched, accepting of the circumstances that flow around you...
A song like "The River" deals with the contradiction: you're alone, and you're a part, and that situation where neither is really complete is a very hard one to take because it doesn't seem to be any meaning to it. "Joyful Reunion" is also that, in terms of what drives you in your life is the thing that might rip you apart. The violence of the songs is usually a recognition of the violence that's in life, which in the sense that no matter how comfortable your life is, you're eventually going to dissolve into a pile of bones, the end is always destruction.
"Metronome" I think has a lot in common with "The River" in the sense that they mean two things at the same time, "The River" is saying that we're always alone, we really can't talk to each other, and we're definately just going to be swept away from each other. But it also implies that we're all on the same river together, even if we can't really see or understand each other in the flow of things, and even if the beginning and the end is not quite clear, it's a pretty violent process.
"Victory" is the same thing, it's really about defeat. It's about the only victory being the face you shoe to that defeat, and perhaps the question of "what is defeat?" I mean, we're all going to die, is that something we should be trying to avoid? Maybe the issue isn't whether we live or die, it's how you live. And maybe the issue isn't to rid the world of all evil, but how you deal with evil. Human beings will always have one foot in hell and one in heaven, and if you try to avoid either one, all you're going to be is a caracature of a human being -- you're going to be pretending, you're going to try to be getting away from life. The more you avoid the evil things, in terms of facing up to them as they're there, as they present themselves, the more you're going to alienate yourself from the good things in life as well.
"Metronome" is like "Machine," in that you are controlled, you are part of a machine, and you can't escape that, and in some cases you never would want to, because in a way, that machine is the structure by which you live. There's that band called Rage Against The Machine, it's a very chichéd attitude to be "against the powers that oppress," but if people were really faced with the dissolution of that order, they'd be grasping for a new one! Because that's what you hang your hat on, how you get up on time in the morning and stop at the stop sign... so all if this stuff you don't want to throw out... it keeps you safe and gets you through the day. And a lot of people realize they are the machine; everyone carries within them the rules of conduct, and in many ways we're not individuals, we are communal creatures, part of a huge human machine that we all carry with us. These are contradictions which sort of whip around... this is the source of the inspiration that these songs end up coming out as.

Last updated May 26, 1996 by Anthony Hempell anthony AT anthonyhempell.com