Brian Baker: Reflections of a Guitar Mastermind

Considered one of the most dominating hardcore punk bands of all time, Bad Religion has been infusing melodies into the mainstream since the early ’80s, raising blood pressures, igniting the spirit of revolution and contemplation, and electrifying fans with their hard-edged, three-minute gems.

Brian Baker, guitarist of Bad Religion, has been shredding his axe with true punk grit that has extended far before his Bad Religion days with outfits like Minor Threat, Government Issue, Junkyard, Dag Nasty and the seminal band, Meatmen.

Meets Obsession had the pleasure of speaking with the guitar hero and prodigy as he ruminated over his latest projects, adventures on tour and insights on today’s music industry.

MO: Are you on or off the road right now, Brian?

Well I’m actually on a little break from touring with Bad Religion, the band I’ve been in for 17 years, and I’m headed to Europe for six weeks for around 20 shows and festivals. When I get back, I have a little time off, then I get to tour Australia with Van Halen….with David Lee Roth! It’s pretty much the coolest thing that’s happened to me in 30 years! There’s this big festival called the Sound Wave Festival…Van Halen is the headliner and there’s us and Alice Cooper and we’re playing every big population center in Australia. So I’m super excited.

MO: Wow, that’s incredible. How did you get involved with the Sound Wave Festival?

Well the people who do the festival got in touch with our booking agents and it’s pretty much like a moving Lollapalooza or a grown-up Warped Tour if you will. And when they approached us with this idea we said, “Absolutely, I mean ‘Unchained’ every night? Come on!”

MO: That’s going to be cool, have you toured in Australia before?

We’ve been there, I think five times since the late ’90s. It’s a super pretty place and the fans are great. They really seem to dig what we’re about.

MO: How did you get into playing music?

I got a guitar for Christmas when I was in second grade. I think I was 7 or 8 years old and my best friend got one that same Christmas… that was a really fortunate thing because my friend who had gotten the guitar had an older sister who already played… I remember the first thing that I learned to play was “Yellow Submarine” because it was appropriate for a 7 or 8-year-old. My guitar came with a Beatles songbook with all the guitar chords with it. It was something fun to do but I never really thought about it being a job; I was just playing around with it. And eventually, when punk rock started I put myself in a unique position to have really funny hair and I had some skill on an instrument and I joined my first band called Minor Threat in 1980, a local D.C. punk band at the time.

MO: And from there how did you transition into seeing music as more of a career than just a hobby?

Well it kind of happened to me without me knowing it. Minor Threat ended up becoming pretty popular in D.C. and then we ended up touring all around the United States. And we also put out our own records and this is when that was unheard of. The two older guys in the band started a record label and Minor Threat was a record they put out. I mean they were 7 inches, and we were making 500 or a 1000 of them at a time and selling them to our friends at local high schools. It was totally low tech. It was still a “hobby” at that point. When that broke up, then I started a cycle of joining other bands or starting my own. Then maybe around 1985, I realized that I was working playing guitar full-time for a band called Dag Nasty. I had no money but I couldn’t get a job because I was gone all the time so nobody would hire me. The[n]… I was in a band called Junkyard on Geffen and I was on my first real tour bus and it kind of just manifested from there.

MO: Can you give us insight into your creative process?

It…starts with always having a guitar around my neck. I could be watching a movie from 1930…and a line will stick with me and I pick up a guitar. One tenth of the time something comes up and it’s good enough and I write it down. Sometimes the inspiration comes from watching TV or doing normal stuff like going grocery shopping. Then eventually when I have a stack of ideas—I have a recording studio in my house—I go down and […] when something comes out that I can make use of, and when it does, it’s an amazing feeling… It’s the kind of thing that makes me feel more connected to the world, society, and humanity because it’s an organic drug-free adrenaline… It’s a happy organic byproduct of playing guitar and songwriting.

“It’s an organic drug-free adrenaline… It’s a happy organic byproduct of playing guitar and songwriting.”

MO: Do you think that in today’s culture that the record industry and its often-contentious relationship with new technology are contributing to a kind of connectedness or the opposite?

I don’t feel sorry for the music industry or for big labels no longer having the ability to make millions off their artists. I love downloading and the immediacy of music today. I will get a text from someone being like “did you get this new record yet?” and within 40 seconds I’ll be downloading the record off iTunes. That’s… such an advantage than what we had in the ’80s. The downside is that the music is so much more disposable now and there’s so much of it available and therefore it’s harder for a young artist to break the cracks. And the saddest thing is that the hookiest songs I’ve heard lately have been the songs in commercials. In that sense it’s transformed this sacred craft into the best ten seconds that you can put together.

MO: Right, if technology can help connect people and that’s what music should do, it can be a positive thing, depending on how you look at it.

The reality of it is, it’s just not as precious as it used to be. But in a lot of ways, technology has been overwhelmingly positive, but for the craft of songwriting and recording it can be detrimental.

MO: How important is the social and political commentary in Bad Religion’s music?

It’s really an accidental mission. The singer of our band [Greg Graffin] has a degree in biology. He’s very interested in the way the world works and how humans interact with each other, so what he writes about is just what he thinks. He’s not trying to force lyrics into the mold of what’s set up with our clever populist anti-government rant, it just comes out… It’s a happy accident like most things that have happened to me throughout my life.

MO: So this is super random, but I came across an interview over 10 years ago where you said you were driving around Portland looking for spirit photographs. I hear you guys have some interesting adventures while on tour in the different cities you visit.

When you do what I do for a living, one of the downsides is that you’re on the stage for an hour and twenty minutes and you have to fill the rest of the day with stuff… and I’m a little old to get wasted. So when we show up in a city, we always have a mission… like before the show, the bass player and me [will] go out and adventure. And yes, one tour I read a book on spirit photography so I went out looking for old spirit photographs. Another tour, we needed folding bicycles so we went out and got folding bikes. We actually have some waiting for us in Europe! It’s cool because the concert venues are usually kind of isolated so it allows us to get on our bikes and all of a sudden discover this whole world you never knew existed. Screwing around on a bicycle in the South of France was fun.

MO: Do you think that music can save the world? Pete Townshend once did.

No, but I think it can make it a better place to be. I believe that musicians have a responsibility to get those positive messages across.

From the MO print archive: this interview first ran in The Premiere Issue of Meets Obsession Magazine. The tour plans Brian mentions were current when we first ran it.

• Words: Megan Friend