J Mascis interview
HUCK talks to the legendary silver-haired, distortion-loving singer songwriter.
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As the front man of Dinosaur Jr, J Mascis has been amassing a cult following for over two decades with his brand of melancholic noise grunge. As well as being an established presence in alternative rock, his sound has graced many a skate film over the years with Mascis recording some exclusives tracks for Alien Workshop’s 2008 film, Mindfield.
Now having released his first solo album, Several Shades Of Why, Mascis has moved away from the overdriven sounds of Dinosaur Jr to adopt a fresh, stripped-back acoustic tone. Featuring Ben Bridwell of Band Of Horses and Kurt Vile, the album was recorded in his home studio and took eight years in the making.
HUCK sat down with famously silver-haired musician during his recent tour visit to London to talk about going solo, skateboarding and the influence of hardcore punk.
HUCK: You recorded Several Shades of Why in your own home studio, why was that?
J Mascis: At some point I just didn’t record at the studio that much and I didn’t get much done. I never really wanted a [home] studio but at some point I just couldn’t record in a studio anymore. I remember sitting on the couch looking out the window [feeling] paralysed. It takes longer [to record at home] but last summer I had a pretty good routine going; I’d get up, ride my bike to the coffee shop and come back, spend a few hours and then record from about midday to five o’clock.
With such a huge back catalogue of records you’ve written and appeared on, does playing music still feel fresh?
Yeah, [playing solo] is kinda hard... kinda nerve-racking. It’s a lot harder to entertain everyone by yourself and keep it going [but] it’s easier to record it.
Who influenced you for this record?
A lot of English folk stuff like Fairport Convention and all the offshoots from them and then also the 1960s kinda Crosby stuff. [And modern stuff] like Kurt Vile who played on the album. He’s an inspiration.
In your earlier days, you played hardcore punk shows with bands like MDC and DOA. Did this influence the bands you were in?
Oh yeah, definitely. [It influenced Dinosaur Jr] playing loud and I guess just doing what we wanted and not really worrying about being popular... just doing it ourselves. I listen to all the same stuff that I used to listen to, [like] Negative Approach, Rudimentary Peni, Discharge and Minor Threat.
For you, is hardcore punk rock more about the lyrics or the music?
The music. I didn’t have any context, I didn’t know that many other punks or anything and if I liked the music then I just liked it. So I could like oi! bands, I wouldn’t see them as people but I would just judge them on a music level so I could get into a lot of stuff that other people wouldn’t.
How did you discover these bands?
From friends, college radio... there were five different colleges and people would play stuff on the radio... find some magazines in a record store. I remember getting this magazine called Punk’s Not Dead which was put out by Sounds which had the 100 Best Punk Songs so we were trying to collect them all. I heard of all of it by that and a lot of fanzines. I’d order a lot of records from the label, like I’d order stuff from Dischord and Touch And Go and wherever there was a distributor I’d just order stuff through the mail.
You were straightedge when you were younger. Why was that?
I lived in a town where there were a lot of hippies and everyone was on drugs. I saw a lot of acid casualties and I thought just drugs were really lame. I was kind of rebelling against that. I was into punk but I thought [punk bands] were all junkies and stuff like that so then when I heard Minor Threat singing ‘Straight Edge’, that was exactly where I was at. It was like ‘I’m sick of hippies, I don’t do drugs, I’m not sure why I’m angry because I’m a middle class kid with no problems to speak of but I’m still pissed with something!’ So hearing that was amazing... that was exactly where I was at.
Have you remained straightedge since then?
Um, most of the time. I had a period of drinking.
Dinosaur Jr has always had a big skateboarder following. Why do you think that is?
I think because Neil Blender came to a show with some other friends after the Bug album came out [in 1988]. We became friends with him and we were hanging out and he put our music in a video.
Did you ever skate yourself?
Yeah.
Was it ever more than just a hobby?
Yeah I was really into it, probably when I was 12 to 15. I did it every day but I never thought about making money [from it]. I would go to the skate park that was half an hour away and it was indoors, but other than that we would just skate in [Amherst, Massachusetts]. You know, I’ve skated since. No one from my town became a big skater. After I stopped skating it kind of died down for a bit, people weren’t skating when I was getting into hardcore. It seems like a lot of hardcore people in Boston are [into] skateboarding, but the general sense of skateboarding died down then and then it got bigger again.
Your home town sounds quite small, did you escape it quickly?
No I still live there! But it’s definitely a bubble, like, you know it’s really a college town and they’re all similar in the States. The surrounding areas are backwoods, bearded people but the college is an oasis in the middle of it. But I escaped through touring and I also moved to New York at some point and would go back and forth but then I just went back. New York is two hours away and Boston is three hours away.
What do you usually do when you’re not on tour?
I have a kid, so a lot of it has to do with that and it also depends on the seasons. It was a pretty rough winter - the worst one in a hundred years, so it was just getting out of that. I ride my bike a lot when it’s not winter and I ski a bit in the winter.
Several Shades of Why is out now on Sub Pop.
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J Mascis interview (text) by Giles Bidder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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