Friends since first class, guitarists Brian Baker and Michael Hampton have finally got around to making a record together under the moniker Fake Names - and it's one of the albums of the year.
Legends of the US punk scene, Baker (Bad Religion, Dag Nasty, Minor Threat) and Hampton (Embrace, The Faith, SOA) are in the best of company, roping in singer Dennis Lyxzén (Refused, The International Noise Conspiracy), bassist Johnny Temple (Girls Against Boys, Soul Side) and drummer pal Matt Schulz (more bands than fingers) to complete the line-up.
Together they've made an album to make anyone feel 17 again; a filler-free 28 minutes of hooks and heart that never gets stuck in nostalgia or falls in on itself in a bid to be relevant.
Below, Brian Baker talks about how it all came together and staying young after all these years.
Michael Hampton and I weren't thinking about a band; we were thinking, 'Let's make music and see what happens'.
The intention was not world domination, to say the least! After that first day of messing around with stuff that we both had 'in the bag', we just kind of realised as soon as we put a couple of things together that this was really cool. We didn't even know what kind of music it was, which I love when that happens. 'Is this power pop? Is this punk? What is this? It sounds a little bit like our older bands, but it's different'. It was just a really cool and fun revelation that was like, 'Well, we should probably keep writing songs because, you know, maybe someone would like to hear them... Maybe someone will option this song for a soundtrack or something'.
Why did Michael and I leave it so long to make a record together?
[Laughs] We had our reasons! Scheduling conflicts the last 40 years! We just couldn't quite meet! It's an interesting thing how this has all worked out, and even how it speaks to something to listen to now. Certainly people are more isolated - for obvious reasons. I'm really just happy and grateful that people really like this. It's just so cool to see this kind of response because I really just didn't know. This was a demo that I played for Brett [Gurewitz, Epitaph Records owner, Bad Religion guitarist] to see if he could hook me up with a friend with a cool indie label in, like, San Antonio, Texas! Honestly. That was my idea. 'Yeah, we'll get some guy to put out a seven-inch somewhere. Here's the demo'. And Brett's like, 'This isn't a demo; this is an album. And I would like to put it out'. 'Really?! Weird!'. And that's what happened.
I think the term 'supergroup' is funny.
When they were going to put 'supergroup' in the press release at Epitaph, I did a lot of research to try to avoid that. When I hear 'supergroup', I cringe. I think of Seventies excess! I did some research into it and this is a term that's been thrown around for 50 years. What other descriptor is there that says, 'This is a band with people in it who you might have heard of before from other bands'? It's just trying to find a term to cover that. And whereas I would never really use that term to describe myself, unless I was making fun of myself, I realise that I am not selling music; I'm playing it. If the people that are actually trying to sell this music need to use words like that, I'm not going to stop them. What to me is embarrassing probably doesn't matter. Other people are like, [adopts dad voice] 'Oh, that's nice! It's a supergroup! Well, I'd like to check that out! That sounds super!' I don't think it's a term we're ever going to get away from, and I try not to use it in polite conversation. I wish that someone would think of something a little more humble to describe the same scenario.
All people in our age group who are punk know each other.
It's just a fact. If you're playing the same kind of circuit that we play you know each other. Girls Against Boys was playing Riotfest that same day as Bad Religion and the same day as Refused. And Dennis [Lyxzén, Refused singer] walked by on the way to catering and I think either Johnny [Temple, Girls Against Boys bassist] or I went, 'Hey, Dennis! We have a band. You want to get some music and see if you want to sing for it?' And he said 'Sure'. And we sent him a tape. It would be great if it was exactly that, but honestly we had written a list of people we wanted to talk to. And we had not spoken to Dennis, but he had been on a list of potential people to talk to. We had just not gotten around to it. So it's not quite as pure as just seeing him and a light bulb going off [sic]. We were like, 'Oh there's Dennis. We've been meaning to talk to him and now here he is in person'. I like the more romantic story, if you'd care to go with that one!
He could've received the music and said, 'This is terrible. I'm not going to sing for you. I'm going to stay in Sweden'.
But he liked it very much. At this point we were doing basic rough sketches of songs with a drum machine - so that's what Dennis got. He wrote a bunch of words and a bunch of melodies and we kind of really didn't get to hear what he was going to do until we were in an actual recording studio. I didn't tell him what to do or even suggest anything. It was just a complete, 'Just do what you would do on this'. What happened was that he comes back with this, I would say, relatively hyper-political, revolutionary, aggressive set of lyrics for music that on its own could have been much more light. It's very interesting this combination that he brought. That was kind of the secret weapon. When I head what he was doing I was like, 'Oh my God, I would never have thought about railing against multi-death corporations in a three-minute pop song! It never occurred to me before. What a great idea!' It was just amazing how that happened out of nowhere.
I'm still astonished that I've pulled this scam for this last 40 years.
'What do you do?' 'Well, I play guitar in punk bands'. 'Really? So what's your real job?' 'Well, I don't have one'. It's hilarious to me. I have a lot of friends who say 'Find something you love and you'll never work a day in your life'. My friends who are most at peace are exactly that model. I know it's an old saying, but it's totally true.
What are we here for? Every other day it seems we learn that life is even more tenuous than we thought the day before that.
If you can spend your time here doing something that you can get joy from, that you can sustain yourself with, that really is winning for me.
One of the benefits of being a musician is that it is sort of an endless childhood.
Because you really never have to cross the line into adulthood if you don't want to! You're sort of trapped in amber at the time that people discover you. There's people that still think of me as that 15-year-old kid in Minor Threat. I've been in Bad Religion for 25, almost 26 years and there are people who think of me like, 'Oh, 30-year-old Brian'. Music is so all-encompassing. You're listening to a band from 1989; you're not just listening to the band, you're listening to 1989. Everything that goes along with that, your experiences, your friends, what you were doing in your life - it just fires all these synapses. And I'm very, very grateful to be on the playlist for a lot of people's synapses.
I would like to be able to play music with more of the people that I've met over all these years.
I've met a lot of my real heroes in music. Great example: Jake Burns [from Stiff Little Fingers] is a friend of mine. I would like to record with Jake. Or Captain Sensible [from The Damned]. There's just so many of these people - Mike Ness [from Social Distortion] - that when I was growing up were very important to me, who are just a tiny bit older than I am. And now, at this time in my life, everybody's friends, and it's easy. And how great would it be to be able to go and make some new stuff - and I do mean new stuff - with people like that? Who wouldn't want to do that?
I'm still excited enough about real time and what's coming that I haven't fallen into nostalgia.
Nostalgia's a tricky word. Sentimentality I can totally get. I don't act on nostalgia. I'm not looking to recreate things. I don't ache for the good old days, and I don't want to make music that sounds like the music I made in 1980. I don't know if that's a good explanation. I guess I'm just still very hopeful for the future, and I'm still really enjoying the process of making new stuff.
I get the same electricity from it as I did when I was 15-years-old.
It hasn't faded in any way. I could never have believed that my career would last for 40 years when I was 15 - I was just trying not to have to go to school! To think that it's still here, and still has the power to excite me and motivate me, I'm eternally grateful.
I cannot wait to play this Fake Names album live as soon as soon as a platform develops where we can play live music again.
Whether that takes a year, two years or however, it's going to happen. It's going to be so much fun to play this stuff. It's in my Top 10, 'probably coming in a No 9'!
Fake Names' self-titled album is out now on Epitaph Records.
