by Morgan Y. Evans
As the humble bard Richard Thompson so ably sang in “Cooksferry Queen” from his Mock Tudor album “It’s a secret, but no secret. It’s a rule but no rule. Where you find the darkest avenue, you’ll find the brightest jewel.” Though of a completely different genre than the renowned British guitarist, New York’s veteran hardcore trailblazers Sick Of It All have embodied the essence of the preceding lyrics for over two uncompromising decades. One of the greatest, truest and all around well-respected punk bands ever, they are also one of the best bands ever, period. What these four guys from Queens have done to spread the hardcore reality, music, lifestyle and vision on a worldwide level is beyond impressive. To put it plainly, Sick Of It All deserve so much more than they’ve gotten back over the years, despite their huge wake. This is a band that after two decades and a killer recent tribute album, Our Impact Will Be Felt, just gets somehow even more relevant.
Sick Of It All are the type of real Americans that, in my mind, make most “Conservatives” such pussy-ass, hypocritical and cowardly imbeciles. Here is a band of hard working, regular guys with their feet firmly planted to the ground, the type of band that can (with perhaps the exception of guitarist Pete Koller’s Mohawk) blend in with construction workers, security guards or average Joes anyplace in the country. Yet, because they speak out and pay attention to fine details and play aggressive and loud rock’n’roll, they are somehow villains in the eyes of the “moral”. Well, fact is, Sick Of It All’s story is more morally compelling and emblematic of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps than any “Joe The Plumber” being exploited by McCain. (And by the way, that guy made much more than most plumbers AND without a license. Not uncommon, but pretty funny as a symbol of the “average” working man.) Why average people would support the Bush/McCain agendas for dismantling the Constitution and what America is really supposed to stand for is beyond me, and yet hardcore and metal bands get the worst reputation? Please! As a recent Sick Of It All song underscored, fear makes us “Strangers in our country.”
As is pretty well known, Sick Of It All was started by brothers Pete (guitar) and Lou (vocals) Koller in the mid-late 80’s HC scene and they’ve never looked back, releasing classics of to-the-quick street poetry like Built To Last and Just Look Around over the years, schooling thousands. Live, they always bridge gaps between age groups and genre snobs simply by force of talent, songwriting and willpower in a way that few bands manage or match. The riffs have always been undeniable and they’ve always thrown in bad ass grooves as well, unlike some stiffer and less versatile acts (Who remembers Sick Of It All’s “The Shield”? I rest my case!). Still, they are pure hardcore through and through and even when expanding into straighter punk territory, never screwed the pooch.
Steve Martin, playing an absurdly pony-tailed CEO/health guru in the recent comedy Baby Mama, told Tina Fey that he wanted to reward her good work with 5 minutes of uninterrupted eye contact. Sick Of It All have rewarded us unwashed masses with years of great, bone crushing yet fun music that most of the time many people didn’t even deserve.
Again, Death To Tyrants in 2006 was just downright amazing. It featured many good tracks but several in particular are among the best the band has ever written. On a political and social level “Uprising Nation” killed, with Lou screaming in his patented gravel-throated street snarl that “It’s disappointing to see another war, like we haven’t learned from all the mistakes before”. Elsewhere, songs like “The Reason” and “Make A Mark” defy clueless newbies or brown-nosing bands; to the point anthems for why it is better to be true than to cater to trends. The line from “Make A Mark” where Lou screams that “It’s so hard to be remembered when you’ve got nothing to say” is something SOIA are the polar opposite of. Even if the albums, live shows and content in songs like “Hello Pricks” and “What’s Goin’ On” weren’t top notch, the band would probably be remembered anyway since Lou has one of the most recognizably cool yet honestly “what you hear is what you get voices” up there on a heavy music short list with the gritty likes of Lemmy, Brian Johnson and the dude from Snapcase, in my opinion.
This feature came about in a cool way. I just happened to run into guitarist Pete Koller with his wife on the streets in NYC one night and we talked a minute and mutually knew some people like Bad Brains and my friend Danny Ilchuk who used to be in this great NYC Hip Hop outfit Roguish Armament and who is well known in the NY scene. A few weeks passed and I hit Pete up and he remembered me so I called him yesterday, the day before this big, fat election. Pete spends his time between NY and a place in Florida these days, perhaps the most contested and controversy plagued state of the last few elections, so it was interesting to get Pete’s take on the whole shebang and music in general. And, the point of this whole article I haven’t mentioned yet is, Sick Of It All have just started writing a new album planned for release in 2009! Remember kids, respect is earned through dedication.
MORGAN Y. EVANS: You guys are very influential but one
thing people don’t always talk about is that the lyrics can be very
motivating. You’re not self-help gurus or Dr. Phil. It’s realistic
and angry but there’s a hopeful thing in some songs.
PETE KOLLER: Yeah. Definitely. A lot of people, for instance, if you look on the MTV website and type in Sick Of It All…they have a whole alphabetical thing for looking up bands. If you look up Sick of It All it says “Angry music with hateful lyrics.”
MYE: Really? Hateful? Angry, sure.
PK: Yeah. That’s someone just from the outside looking at a photo of us and not being actually into the band, but over the years we have had tons of people coming up to us saying we helped them through the worst times of their life. Paying bills or divorces or anything. Even some of our songs are used at weddings a lot which is very strange!
MYE: [laughing] Wow!
PK: That song “Sanctuary”, so many people have used it as a song at their wedding. Someone sent us a photo of their wedding cake with the lyrics on it! Last year, I think It was, two times people got married on stage to “Sanctuary”. To the outside people it might be angry and hateful, but…it’s not.
MYE: I was thinking about your song “No Apologies” from the Yours Truly album, a great song and record. It talks about personal failures but also looking inside for larger truths or how the world operates. Making each day count.
PK: Yeah. That song was mainly written because there’s a journalist in Europe we know who is a fair-weather friend who can’t wait for us to fail. It was written for him ‘cuz he’d say, “Now Hatebreed is big. You should do something like this,” or now this or that person is big and we should try that. Well, we do whatever the fuck we want to do and don’t need to apologize or ask permission. We just do what we want. It was aimed towards him but in an open way that people could use it for their things in life.
MYE: You guys recently hit 20 years as a band!
PK: [Modestly] Yeah.
MYE: “No Apologies” could almost be an anthem song for that because I don’t think you’ve ever compromised your band along the way.
PK: We found our little niche. This is what we play and we don’t wanna do anything else. When I write a song, I sit there and think about, well, what would make me scream along or run around in the pit or jump off the stage or grab the mic. When I write a song I have to feel it musically or lyrically and whatnot.
MYE: Death To Tyrants, your last album from 2006 was one of your best records. “Uprising Nation”, that song was a powerhouse protest song. I’ve been playing it to death lately. The band has been around a long time but is still so relevant. You’ve been at it since the Iran Contra Scandal! There are samples about it on Just Look Around.
PK: Yeah. [laughing]
MYE: That shit is dope!
PK: I really agree with you that our last record was probably one of our best records ever. Production-wise, songwriting, and lyric-wise. Y’know, these are angry times so it just came out that way. “Uprising Nation” is yelling for a change. I hope things change for the good in the next few days.
MYE: Well, you’re in Florida now which is definitely a hot spot state in the election. What are your thoughts about Election Day? What’s the vibe like down there?
PK: I think Obama has won the electoral vote, I think. I’m not sure. I go back online every few hours and check on the polls and see whose doing what. We live on a little barrier island right off Daytona Beach. It’s split between very rich people and middle class. It’s really funny, just driving down the street. The huge houses on the beach have McCain posters in front and the regular people have Obama posters. I have a friend who is very, very well off. He said he has to vote for McCain because if Obama becomes President he is gonna get killed with taxes on his properties and whatnot, but, it’s like, dude, it’s not gonna hurt you that bad.
MYE: It’s worse if we really get killed for other reasons! Not to mention the world perception of our nation.
PK: People should vote for the good of the country not because their team is Republican or Democrat. It’s not about “my team won”.
MYE: It’s not football.
PK: [laughing]
MYE: Can you hear me alright?
PK: Yeah. It’s a little windy. I’m out by a lighthouse right now.
MYE: Oh, you’re down at a lighthouse right there?
PK: Yeah, it is a very picturesque place.
MYE: That’s cool. I just watched that old John Carpenter horror movie THE FOG last night and smoked a joint.
PK: Oh, cool.
MYE: It’s got a pretty awesome lighthouse in it, but anyway, I was thinking about another movie I saw recently that brings to mind the issue of hardcore and metal as a way of life. I just finally saw that documentary Heavy Metal In Baghdad that Vice Magazine did. It is about these Iraqi kids who love American and worldwide heavy metal and they are pretty damn good and honest. They wear Slipknot shirts and shit and could be killed for it.
PK: Yeah, yeah. My wife saw the end of it and I was like “We gotta see that”. Haven’t seen the whole thing yet.
MYE: Well, I was thinking of Sick Of It All and how you call out sort of fraudulent bands in it for the wrong reasons. These Iraqis, their band Acrassicauda lived 15 minutes away from each other but didn’t see each other for 6 months at one point ‘cuz it was too dangerous and then after they fled Iraq and got foreign press they couldn’t go home ‘cuz they feared death! How different from the U.S., y’know? We take things for granted.
PK: Yeah. I mean, it takes someone born with a passion for music to do that. We see bands come and go every year and even every month now. Someone is being pushed like crazy and then they disappear. You’ll talk to younger bands when we play festivals in Europe and we play with every kind of band. For some reason they all come and see us play. All they talk about is “Yo, I can’t wait to get this big deal. I can’t wait to get a car.” We’re like “Who cares”! ‘Cuz you know those people won’t be around anyway next year. That’s the thing, we play all these festivals every year or every other year and there’s a huge headliner that is a new band and then next year nobody remembers who they were. [laughing]
MYE: It’s ‘cuz they aren’t concerned with keeping going for the sake of making a mark.
PK: For us, this is what we want to do. I don’t really want to have a job or someone telling me what to do. I’m sure my parents don’t like it, but they were the ones who bred it into us to be very defiant. We don’t do what everyone else does and it actually worked out for us. Like we were talking about before, we stay in our same style of music because it is what we love. We didn’t jump all over and change.
MYE: You held your ground and dug in and made a mark and it has really meant a lot to all of us listeners.
PK: I like to think a lot of people stick with us because they know we are regular guys. Somebody goes to work construction or work a band and we play shows.
MYE: You rode it out and still stayed Sick Of It All.
PK: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I tell everybody that this is all we know how to do. Now, it’s been twenty three years of playing! What are we gonna do, get jobs?
MYE: [laughing]
PK: An entry level mailroom job. [laughing]
MYE: Growing up, did you and your brother or the other guys ever think you’d get to see the world so much?
PK: No, man. That was the best part. Sometimes I sit there and think that if it wasn’t for me going to my first matinee at CBGB’s and seeing Agnostic Front play their fourth show at CBGB’s or something like that, I never would have seen the pyramids in Mexico. I would never have been to Iceland or Indonesia. I have lifelong friends that live in Argentina! We see them every seven years and have seen them grow up and get married and now their kids are getting married. Through music we have gotten to see the entire Earth. People I went to high school with, some have never left Queens. Or they get two weeks off a year and say “Ok, let’s go to Disneyland.” Something they think they have to do like that.
MYE: Yeah, man. That’s the event. It’s sad if they can’t think of it themselves.
PK: I’m not putting down the working man.
MYE: No, not at all. Me neither.
PK: But, I’m really glad I wasn’t bred to be in that one spot like that. I can’t even stay home from tour! I’ve had time off and am freaking out! I have to, like, move!
MYE: How long have you been living in Florida now?
PK: Well, we have an apartment in Brooklyn, too, so we go back and forth a lot. On full months off I come here. My wife and I have been here about three years, I think. We live right across the street from the beach. Florida, the people are nice but the place sucks if you don’t live on the beach. There is zero culture and all that shit. Living in New York your whole life you come here and are like,”What the Fuck!??” There’s Targets and Wal-Marts and that’s it. That’s why I am glad we are right across the street from the beach.
MYE: Yeah. In New York City it is a trek out to Brighton for most people.
PK: [laughing] Yeah.
MYE: This is a vaguer question, but recently you had a tribute album in your honor and are about to make a new record again. Through this whole crazy ride over the years, is there anything you discovered about yourself or that you didn’t know starting out? What has changed your perspectives?
PK: Keeping friendships close to you. Me and my wife, also. I’ll do anything for her. I’ve learned to be stronger in fucked up situations. Or stronger with my brother. Stuff like that, we’ve learned. I don’t know, family and friends, mostly.
MYE: Not sweating things that aren’t important.
PK: Yeah. Pick and choose battles. Being in a band this long with four guys where my brother is the singer and it is a drummer we went to high school with and the bass player we knew growing up. It’s like being in a marriage with three other people for twenty three fucking years!
MYE: Most real marriages don’t last that long. [laughing]
PK: [laughing] My first one didn’t! But you always gotta get the first one out of the way and get to the good one.
MYE: [cracking up]
PK: [laughing] But you gotta pick and choose. Our drummer likes to be the so-called manager. Certain things you don’t like about it, but you let it slide. We’ll talk about it later. There’s certain things you’ve gotta keep the peace about.
MYE: Dude, how do you manage to jump around so much onstage and not fuck up playing your instrument?
PK: Years of practice. It’s just something where I can’t go into the crowd and dance and so I do my thing on stage. Some people like me learn how to play like that. So I just do my thing, you know what I’m saying?
MYE: Yeah. Keep the timing and everything. What can you tell us about the next record? Any songs or titles goin’ on yet?
PK: No titles yet. We’ve had the last two months off so I have two full songs written and a bunch of other parts.
MYE: Last time around you did a lot of pre-production, right?
PK: Yeah. The way we did it last time was really strange. Usually when we write a record we’d go to practice every single day for a month and see what we come up with. If you don’t feel like writing nothing good is gonna come of it. Just crap! Last time, I was down here in Florida and our drummer was living in Wisconsin at the time. We’d all meet back in the city and rehearse for a week. But, being away from everybody, I was able to write ten times more. I wrote “Make A Mark” and “Take The Night Off” and “Uprising Nation”. Different, but still Sick Of It All songs. The way I would write down here was when I’d go running or at the gym or swimming in the ocean, a riff would come to me and I’d be like “Oh shit!” I’d go home and play it and send it to the guys and that way taking time away from each other it seemed to work out better that way. We aren’t a band that could go right into a recording studio and jam. Nothing would come out of it. We’d sit there and talk for hours if we did things like that, which we do anyway if we are apart for a long time! We get to a practice and will talk politics for hours and be like “Well, what the fuck are we gonna do?” and then start writing.
MYE: [laughing] Well, this new way you can draw it from your life. How would you describe the tunes you have so far as far as faster or slower?
PK: Well, I wrote a very punky sounding one. That was the first one. I’d had this little riff for months and woke up humming it and finished the whole song. I sent it to the band and they all seemed to like it. I don’t set any guidelines, but I can only write a certain way. Things are coming out sounding like Death To Tyrants right now, which is good. [laughing]
MYE: A few more questions. Scratch The Surface was the first record I got into of yours, showing my age, with some good friends. Any memories of what you were going through as a band, at that time, you’d like to share?
PK: That was a strange time. Well, it was a great time, because we were signed to a major label. Not too many hardcore bands were ever signed to a major like that. Those days it actually meant something bigger. These days being signed to a major or an indie label doesn’t mean anything different because nobody is buying records anyway. But, there was more advertising for Scratch The Surface and Built To Last. Touring Europe in ’93, we did really well, but coming back with Scratch The Surface being out, there was so much more advertising it touched regular people, not just people into hardcore and metal. People wondered what the band was about because they’d see ads in a regular magazine, not just a fanzine. It pushed us into a different realm and the good thing is that these people we touched then stuck with it. When we play shows it is mainly about heart, not about being a tough guy or gangster or a Satanist or something. It is about being a guy with these emotions. If you are pissed off about work or have school or whatever, come to the show and go crazy, and you laugh and you go home with some bruises but had a good time. Or you hang out with the band, whatever. So, back then, it kind of pushed us into, I don’t wanna say the mainstream, but that was as close as we got to the mainstream, so it was pretty exciting. It definitely helped out with the longevity of the band, especially outside of America. In America everything changes like that and not too many people stay loyal to a certain style of music. People think as they get older they can’t like the style of music they once did, which is very strange.
MYE: Yeah. You learn more styles, but you should still see the value of things you came up with.
PK: I can still listen to things I loved as a kid. “Yeah, this is fuckin’ great!” I’ll put it on my Ipod if it wasn’t there already, but a lot of people say “Oh, I liked that as a kid.” I liked the Bad Brains as a kid. You NEVER stop liking the Bad Brains because they’re FUCKING GREAT!
MYE: Yeah, man. P.M.A.
PK: How can you not feel the Bad Brains? How can you not feel Agnostic Front or the Cro-Mags? If it gave you chills then, what better time if you are struggling to pay your bills to listen to Age Of Quarrel.
MYE: You opened minds with your music and you mention those bands and you guys also, it’s almost like street poetry in a way. It’s not Lord Byron, but it does the trick.
PK: My brother Lou always explains it as the college kid looking through the used bin, and it is a jazz section and he finds Coltrane and says, “Yeah. THIS is the real shit.” And twenty years from us some kid will look through a used bin or the internet and find us and say, “This is the real shit!” So, hopefully we can live on forever through music.
MYE: Yeah. How are you looking towards the future with the next record?
PK: We’re going to try and make the best record we can and as good or better than Death To Tyrants and tour. Sick Of It All is best live. So we’re gonna keep on keepin’ on on the road. As long as the people still keep showing up we’ll be playing.
MYE: I’ll def try and catch you guys next time around. It’s really cool we did the interview like this after I just ran into you a few weeks ago. I’ve loved the band for years.
PK: Yeah, it was cool. Thanks, man.