Gimme that old-time Bad Religion
Los Angeles punk veterans remain true to their convictions, even 25 years on
John Kendle


Flashback: It’s June 2004 and Bad Religion has just released The Empire Strikes First, its 13th studio recording.

The album is likened to a musical Molotov cocktail, a call to arms in a U.S. presidential election year. It sharply criticizes U.S. foreign policy, the war in Iraq, and the hypocrisies of capitalism and religion — all long-serving themes for the band.

The Warped Tour beckons and the Los Angeles group is heavily involved with a voter-registration campaign called punkvoter.org, which aims to register the half-million American voters who might tilt the election away from George W. Bush.

In those heady days of just over a year ago, a giddy optimism pervaded liberal America. Many people thought the Bush administration was actually vulnerable to electoral overthrow.

Fast-forward: It’s late October 2005, and Bad Religion bassist Jay Bentley is on the phone from Vancouver, a town he calls his second home. The group is resting and rehearsing prior to launching a new North American campaign in support of TESF, and I have to ask him what happened last year.

“Oh, we were so wide eyed and optimistic back then, weren’t we?” Bentley says. “(The fact that Bush won) doesn’t make me any angrier; I’ve kind of peaked out in my anger at this administration. I don’t really have any more hate for them.

“I think right now, thinking about the aftermath of all this, the inevitable phrase that comes up is ‘Hey, we get to clean this up now.’

“The Empire Strikes First was a very sharp statement from us of ‘This is wrong and we don’t agree with this.’ But realistically, now, as human beings on the planet Earth, we’re gonna have to clean this mess up, and so we’re right back to square one again: ‘How do we all get along?’”

How indeed. Within the punk world there are almost as many views on how this can be achieved as there are songs with ‘whoa-whoa’ choruses. Most Winnipeg fans know what Propagandhi thought of punkvoter.org, and Bad Religion tourmates Anti-Flag certainly have their own thoughts.

Bentley and his bandmates have honed their views by playing through 17 years of Republican presidencies.

“Since the beginning of this band we have always thought of ourselves as a sociopolitical band, and not necessarily a political band like Anti-Flag or The Clash, but more about what it’s like to be a human being,” he begins.

“When we were on the Warped Tour and hanging out with Fat Mike (NOFX bandleader and co-founder of the Rock Against Bush movement) and doing our punkvoter thing and registering 80,000 kids over the course of this tour, and after election day we just thought ‘Whoa, we were wrong.’

“Not so much wrong about George Bush but wrong about what the people wanted. We really honestly thought, ‘Wow, you just don’t really know what’s happening,’ and you can’t educate people beyond, ‘Well, here’s what’s happening.’ But they go ‘You know what? We really don’t care.’

“My son is like this because he’s 12 and that’s what 12-year-olds are like — his eyes just glaze when I start talking to him. Have you ever seen a 40-year-old’s eyes glaze over? It’s a scary, scary thing.”

That realization doesn’t mean, however, that Bentley and his bandmates intend on giving up. Ever since he, singer Greg Graffin and guitarist Brett Gurewitz (aka Mr. Brett) co-founded the band in Los Angeles in 1980, Bad Religion has been known as a humanist, enlightened punk rock band. Even when the group’s songs were the hardest of the hard, the lyrics of Graffin, who holds a PhD, were hailed for their insight and conviction.

That resolve has held through 25 years and several lineup changes.

Bentley himself left the band for a few years in 1983, returning on the 1988 Suffer album; guitarist Gregg Hetson joined in 1984 while still a member of Circle Jerks; and guitarist Brian Barker, formerly of Minor Threat and Dag Nasty, hooked up with the group in 1994, initially as a replacement for Gurewitz, who had reportedly left to run the band’s record label full time. When Gurewitz returned to the fold for 2002’s the process of belief, Barker remained (though Mr. Brett is not travelling with the group on this tour). Drummer Bobby Schayer left the band in 2001 due to a shoulder injury, and Brooks Wackerman (Suicidal Tendencies) has been with the band since.
As the years have passed, Bad Religion has been likened to America’s version of D.O.A., the Joey Keithley-led Vancouver punks who remain, even now, bloodied but unbowed. Unlike D.O.A., though, Bad Religion’s ’90s albums, four of which were released by Atlantic Records, made them stars — not Green Day stars but certainly comfortable. Bentley last held a day job (at Epitaph) in 1994.
Some 25 years after forming as teenagers in the San Fernando Valley, Bad Religion is even called ‘the conscience’ of American punk rock.
So, what now?
“Realistically, the American corporate mechanism is way too big, way too strong and way too fast for anyone to stop it, and realistically it’s what people want,” Bentley says. “I don’t really want it, you probably don’t really want it, but that base culture of people who wake up in the morning, go to work, come home and go to sleep, they want McDonald’s, they want Wal-Mart, and they want George Bush — they voted him in.

“I can scream and shout, ‘This is what’s right for you,’ but what the fuck do I know? I’m not a doctor, I’m not anything. I’m a bass player in a punk rock band.

“(But) people like me are given a forum, whether we deserve it or not, and I might as well use it to the best advantage I can think of — so I don’t say, ‘Hey, fuck hookers and smoke crack,’ because that’s not really a positive message to be sending out,” he says.

“When you’re given that position, you want to educate yourself because you feel as though people can go to the next grade of education, rather than thinking they’ve finished high school and never have to open a book again.

“You have to remember that this is something you do because you really enjoy it — but you certainly can’t expect results because that’s just failure waiting to happen. If people get it, then cool.”

And what will be the task of the next U.S. president?

“Whoever it is, the first thing that person will have to do is stand up and say, ‘I’m sorry. We fucked up’ to the rest of the world.”

So there you have it. A taste of Bad Religion in 2005.