Ten Acts of Heroism by Black Lips

On the brink of their mighty new album release ‘200 Million Thousand’, I caught up with the intoxicating Black Lips to get somewhat intoxicated for wise words and anecdotes. Here Dazed found out just what gives these garage rocking, Southern gentleman that special sumthin’ out on the open road. Priceless.

10 Acts Of Heroism by the Black Lips

1. Don’t Let Your Friends Get Captured
Jared: After we literally rocked Heaven nightclub to the floor, these big English bouncer dudes brutally captured my friend after our show. They took an innocent girl who doesn’t even drink and locked her away in their weird staff hangout, accusing her of having drugs. I cut loose and freaked out. I stared into the face of adversity and I said “NO, this is wrong, this is injustice!” I pointed at the bouncer who was 5 times my size and said “You let her go right now!”. So they picked me, used my head as a sort of barging pole through a few sets of doors and choke slammed me to the sidewalk outside. However, even though they were holding my head to the concrete of Rupert Street, I continued with “I’ll never, you motherfuckers, I’ll never die” and spitting on them...relentlessly. I mean English Bouncers are big, but I said NO… not gonna happen tonight buddy!” In the end they let her go because our fans saw what was happening to me and started a kind of riot. I won’t lie, I got scared and I got hurt, but they didn’t win and I didn’t die, and that’s the main thing.

2. What Happens On The Road Stays On The Road
Cole: There is a big misconception that the code on the road is all abut being unfaithful to the ones who love you back home, and your band mates keeping all that secret. That’s not it! The code of the road is basically keeping certain things sacred, and when you’re with you boys, on tour, you may see a man down. He may be having a bad day, he may be looking like shit, he may be feeling like shit, hell he may well be taking a shit, but you never bring that stuff to the outside world. When I see a man crying or throwing up all over a toilet eat, that’s between him and me. We don’t want to sound cliché, but there are hard times on the road, and you need to respect an element of privacy even between close friends. You need that trust. It’s cool to share the ups, the up times are for everyone, but the downs, the downs you got to keep sacred, that inner- dark side we all have. It’s not about cheating on a girlfriend, or taking heroine, it’s about respecting your peers, and keeping the dark side between band members and band members only.

3. Absolutely Under No Circumstance…Ever… Have a Fall Back Plan
Ian: When I was growing up, before and after my mother died, my small family, whom I love dearly used to ask me “What are you going to do with yourself Ian?” They used to say to me “You can’t play music for a living, you can play music for fun, but you gotta survive, get a real job, you gotta have a fallback plan!”. After a while of hearing this, I looked in their eyes, I took time out, but I told them the problem was and still is; if you have a fall back plan, you’re setting yourself for failure. If you have a fall back plan, you will FALL back. But if all you have is your vision, your truth and you commit whole-heartedly to it, you’ll be A-OK. I didn’t have a choice and I made sure of that, I’m a musician. You can’t have a fall back plan, even if people tell you it will bring ‘security’; security breeds insecurity man. If you’re full off maybes and what-ifs, it means you’re not passionate. I love Black Lips…but are we the best musicians? No! Are we passionate? Yes! And that counts for something.

4. You Can Take The Garage Out of the Garage Band but You Can’t Take the Garage Band Out of the Garage
Cole: When we first started recording, we started recording in a basement. We used to practice for talent shows in Joe's garage but way back then it was that garage sound we were we capturing and decided we didn’t want to lose. Now we’ve gone on, we’ve experimented with different sounds, we’ve made a few commercial pop songs, so that we can reach out to more people, but it’s the shitty garage which creates the low-fi sound we know and love. We record straight onto vinyl for the same reason. So as much as we travel the world, and move around, we’re always going to have that old quality, like back in the old days when things were crude. We’ll try and go as commercial as we can, but we’re not going to change our fundamental sound to go commercial. Our sound will always sound like we recorded in a garage. Thus, we may leave the garage in the physical sense, but we’re always in the garage in an audio sense.

5. Never Let Grown-ups Win
Jared: I am technically a grown-up, but I don’t think like them. I pay taxes and pay rent, but I don’t want to miss out on stuff because I’m growing older. It’s important to be free spirited and wayward, and I’m not talking wet hippy junk, I just hate the negative way grown ups can think. Just be cool man. You can be 60 and still be a kid, my best friend turned 70 this year and he’s the most fun I know. Grown-ups are the lamest people you ever met, George Bush is a grown-up! Don’t be a lame grown up, they’re bad, be a kid…but not in a creepy Michael Jackson way, because I still dig girls my own age.

6. Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates
Ian: If you don’t put a conscious effort into your action, you will lose. You have to give up dignity and your self-respect to be in a band. You have to leave your pride as a man, at the door, give it all up to live on the god damn floor, eat out of trash cans, sleep with ugly women and like get to a point of madness and poverty to realise, you’re going to make it, it’s going to be alright! Sometimes you might get some really bad tasting candy, and they make you stronger. There are winner and losers, and we are winners here. We as professional musicians are heroic because we stuck to our guns, we stayed behind our M16s and went through the lines, and survived the bad candy…so now we sleep in comfortable beds, with sweet caramel cream cups. Good candy.

7. Do What You Wanna Do…Always
Jared: When I was 17 years old my parents when on a romantic trip to the Swiss Alps, they left me with a babysitter. I was so offended by that, I decided to have a huge house party,
We all got super wasted, and I persuaded Cole to take me and my dog for a drive around the neighbourhood, where I jumped on the roof of the car, surfing as Cole drove, like in Teenwolf, but without the back flips! We get stopped by the cops eventually and they took us home, and let us back into my house, but I was so boozed, I fell down the stairs and broke my leg. My parents had to cut short their trip and come back. So, I ruined their one in a lifetime romantic break and broke some bones, but I don’t regret it.

Cole: When I was two to three years old, right before my parents got divorced, I used to wet the bed. Little Coley used to wet the bed and my dad used to say to me “If you don’t quit wetting the bed boy, I’m gonna beat your arse”. He did, he used to beat my arse till it was black and blue so that I would stop, and you know what? I still fucking wet the bed! I pissed all over my sheets and didn’t listen to that bastard…and what’s more, you know when I quit wetting the bed? When I was good and ready to quit, in my own sweet time.

8. Never Let Your Friends Fall in the of Duty
Ian: It is imperative when you play a show to give it your all. That might involve bloodshed. I once excited a crowd in Brussels with a very gory experience, and looking back, it was worth the pain. What happened was a little self inflicted nick on my hand, turned into a cut, and cut turned into a god damn open wound, as I continued to strum like an animal at my guitar. You see, Marilyn Manson and all those bands use fake blood, we use real blood. So, after I passed out in a pool of my own blood on stage, my fellow compadres’ here picked me up, they did not let me fall. Jared carried me on his back to the hospital. You see this cut, turned bad quickly and I fell fast, I fell hard and I was losing blood fast, but my men, they stepped up. Even when I was fading, Jared kept me conscience with the promise of a really hot nurse at the hospital, and she was god damn it, she was!

9. The Show Must Go On
Cole: There have been many times when a travelling minstrel maybe be unexpectedly stranded or indefinably put out of commission. But the show must go on regardless of the fact sometimes, on tour, you may be a man down because the stranded man is there on stage, in spirit.
Like when I lost my passport in Portugal and got stuck there, the guys had to fly off to England to perform on the BBC, and they did perform with my spirit in mind, so it’s not like I got left behind, we don’t think of it like that. When Jared got kicked out of Canada one time, the show must go on, when Ian cut his hand the show must go on. Our first guitarist Ben Eberbaugh died, god rest his soul, but a day after the funeral we were back on the road, and we haven’t stopped since, because the show must go on.

10. Don’t Forget your Roots En Route
Ian: We’re lucky enough to be from the American South, we have the best music around!
Gerry Lee Lewis burnt his piano…we burn our guitars, but the point is, we’re not originators of the sound we make, we’re just breathing a bit of life into it for the kids. Would I listen to us? I’m not sure, maybe? I listen to the original and it was actually The Kinks who changed my life. The first time I heard "You Really Got Me", it was around the time all of us we’re getting into 70s punk. But when I heard this 60s tune with that rift, I was like “Holy shit! This is more punk than punk!” It’s this 60s heat that breathes more oxygen into my blood, not your sugar coated, hair sprayed, studded belts. I was always that kid who sat in the corner listening to my Stones records thinking there had to be repercussions from that music, it was too good to be contained in that era. Then I discovered a thing called ‘garage rock’ and thought  “Oh…this is perfect!” You see, we had American delta blues, but then our English counterparts who I love, took our American blues and punked it up, you Brits sexualized it… but I’m gonna take it back home now, back to America, because we were raw, and we took your sexuality and your bluesy rock and we made it dirty like rusty knives, and there you have garage rock. The UK and USA collaborated on garage rock and I’m so grateful that we did. We’re like cousins, we can’t screw one another, but we sure can look at each other and say y’all good lookin’.

‘200 Million Thousand’ is out now on Vice Records.