Chicago Beatdown: Talking with Screeching Weasel co-founder Ben Weasel (part two)

Part one was about Chicago and the punk scene. In part two of our interview, Ben “Weasel” Foster, frontman and founder for iconic Chicago-reared pop punk outfit Screeching Weasel, talks about his issues with band legacies, his problems with his former band mates (including recently ousted co-founder John “Jughead” Pierson), and why this is one of his happiest times being in Screeching Weasel.

We’ll have more on Screeching Weasel Monday when we review the band’s first Chicago show in five years, taking place the last night of Riot Fest at the Congress this Sunday.

We pick up now from where we left off in the previous post. And word of warning: there’s still gonna be a lot of f-bombs here.

Chicago Beat: So are you concerned about people associating you and Screeching Weasel with some of the things that you hate about punk rock? Are you concerned at all about your legacy?

Ben Weasel: Ah, fuck that. Fucking legacy. Who cares? What does that even fucking mean? People go out and write shit about you, and I’m not talking about the negative stuff, I’m talking about the positive stuff. They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Everybody has their narrative for your band. If you go write a fucking piece about my band, that’s fine, you have a right to your narrative, but don’t ask me to back you up and fucking agree with you on it when it’s bullshit. If you want to go make up some angle to a story about me or my band, well that’s what writers do, and that’s fine. But it doesn’t have anything to do with reality.

The ‘legacy’ of a band is being written by romantics, so it’s all fucking bullshit. It’s all written by people who either weren’t there and are interviewing people who were there who are choosing only to remember the interesting parts and who aren’t being honest about the way things really were, or they’re being written by people who were there and have something to sell and a vested interest in presenting things in a certain way. From my perspective, I have a very clear idea and narrative and perception of what my band is and what it means. Maybe unfortunately, I’m not in a position to be the one to decide what that legacy is. Other people are going to decide that, and if experiences and observation show me anything, it’s very, very unlikely to be anything but total fucking bullshit, whatever people say about us. Even what people say now, I’m sure is just a goofy, distorted version of reality.

CB: Whereas you’re put up on a pedestal you mean?

BW: Any way you want to put it man. There are people who put you up on a pedestal, and I’ll tell you something, 90% of the time, they’re the first ones to knock you off it. Like, ‘Hey motherfucker, I didn’t ask to be put up there in the first fucking place.’ But yeah, I think whether it’s positive or negative is largely irrelevant, it’s a matter of people romanticizing the past. Nostalgia is a huge part of why people are going to come and see my band play. They want to experience something that in most cases they were too young to experience in the first place, and that’s fine but they better not expect me to go out and behave on stage the way I behaved when I was 21-years-old, because I’m not going to do it. (Laughs). I’m me now, and I’m going to go on stage and do what I do now. I’ll play the songs from back then. When you get out on stage you’re entertaining people, you’re taking their money, you better play the songs they want to hear, to the extent that you’re able to put together a solid set list. But I’m not going to go out there and do stuff the way I did the days when I was drinking. There were sort of different phases that the band went through, and I’m not going to go back and try to relive that so somebody can feel like its 1991 again or whatever.

To me there’s a happy medium. When the crowds come out to see the band, I don’t think about things like legacy and what people are writing. The fan band experience is pretty pure. After the show, people have time to reflect; they may have a totally different attitude, but when you’re up there playing, people are either into it or not. To me there’s not really much of a middle ground with live music. I’ve never found that to be the case; I’m either into it or I’m not. So I think from a perspective of a band, getting a record into a fan’s hand or getting up on stage in front of a fan, that’s the most direct way you can communicate with them.

You’ve got to go up there with the idea of giving them what they want in terms of the music and stuff, but you don’t want to get up there and be a clown for them. And that’s a hard thing maybe to sometimes negotiate, but I think in my case, I’m fortunate because I have a pretty large body of work to choose from, so I’m able to come up with a set list where I enjoy going up and doing it. I get a bang out of seeing fans who never got a chance to see the band come and hear these songs and get into it and experience that. And a lot of times when I was doing it when the band was active, I didn’t enjoy it, for a variety of reasons that would take forever to go into. I was kind of overworked and I had to wear a lot of hats. By the time I got on stage, the music always kind of came last. By the time I got on stage, I was beat and I had been arguing with promoters and the doorman and my band mates (laughs) and on the phone arguing with people at the label and dealing with merchandise and everything. So when you get up on stage, it’s almost an afterthought. Now I don’t allow that to happen. After sound check, I go back to my hotel. I don’t fucking hang around the venue. If any drama and bullshit is going to happen with the promoter, it’s going to happen without me fucking being there. Somebody else is going to have to deal with it, and I don’t designate anybody to deal with it. I’m fucking unavailable. Don’t call me. Leave me the fuck alone. And I’ll show up 20 minutes before it’s time to go on stage. And the result of that has been that I enjoy playing a whole lot more.

I think that’s really all I’m concerned about is putting on a good show with the fans. If you do that, everything else I think is going to fall into place, and down the road, people will write what they want to fucking write, and people will say what they want to say, positive or negative. My goal has always been to a band like The Ramones or Motorhead or AC/DC, where you had a loyal fan base and you realize the importance of giving them what they paid to see. You’re not going to fucking go off on a fucking limb and start doing songs with a bunch of fucking strings in them and shit like that. We all make mistakes like that, but basically you’re going to go out and still give them what they want to hear, and you’re going to focus on what you do best and just do that. That’s what I want as a fan of a band. If you do that, the fans really fucking appreciate it, and they kind of get to be the legacy.

In the wake of The Ramones breaking up and three of the guys dying, there’s been so much written about them. But really, if you want to find out about The Ramones, you’re not going to find out by any of that shit. Just go ask a fan. It doesn’t even have to be a fan that was there, it could just be somebody who discovered them. But they’re going to know what the band was really about if it touched them, because that was a band that could change your life. It certainly did for me.

That was what I strived for: if somebody came to see my band play or bought a record, that it would have the potential to change their life. And I’ve been extremely fortunate to find myself in situations often where people have said that to me. It’s just about the coolest thing to come out of playing music, to be in that position.

CB: So you still enjoy the lingering effects of what the band has brought for people, even though you complain about legacy and that some of that nostalgia is bullshit?

BW: Oh yeah. I love music and I love doing what I do for a living. Fucking love my job man, it’s the greatest job in the world. It’s a pain in the ass a lot of time, but its terrific. I have a blast doing what I do for a living. I just don’t like all the fucking bullshit that comes with it. But you remove as much of the bullshit as you can. Frankly you can eliminate 95% of it if you just do your best to stay out of scene politics and drama. (Laughs).

You’re always going to have to deal with business problems, but if you just let the fan zines write what they want, let the fucking punk rock scenesters hate my guts or whatever, and just don’t concern yourself with that and don’t fight that, which can be a really hard thing to do. But if you do that and just focus on doing your fucking job, then it’s much easier to go directly to the fans and to have that kind of experience where you get off stage and you’re like, ‘Fuck man, this is great.’ If you think about it, how many jobs in the world are there where you can go up, you’re the center of attention, everybody’s basically fucking looking at you thinking you’re the greatest thing in the world, and then when you’re done doing your job, they all want to shake your hand and get your autograph and have their picture taken with you? That’s a pretty nice fucking gig. So if you’re in a position where you’ve got that, you really ought to appreciate it. And those are the people that you’re doing it for.

I think the problem that I made for a lot of years, and that I see a lot of other bands make, is they cater to the scenesters. And those fucking people, they don’t give a shit if you’re able to put food on your fucking table. They don’t give a shit if you live or fucking die. You’re only of any use to them to the extent that you can help their fucking bands. Fans aren’t like that man. All they want are good tunes. That’s all they fucking want man. They want to go to school or go to their jobs, and the real fans they don’t give a fuck about the scene politics man. They want to have a good time. And a lot of times they just want to come up to you and shake your hand and say, ‘You know what? You fucking made a difference in my life. I was going through a rough time, and this record helped me through this rough period.’ That stuff is great. And I’m not remotely jaded about that or cynical about that. In fact, I would say I appreciate it a lot more now at my age than I did 20 years ago when I was a lot younger, because I realize a lot more that’s what’s important. So I try after I play, if I’m not getting bogged down in business stuff, to get out to the merch people and say hi to the fans and hang out for a while if they want to take photos and shit like that, because that’s their opportunity. I don’t think you’re obligated to do that, but I like doing it.

CB: Even if you’re feeding into a nostalgia that might be phony?

BW: I think everybody has their own perspective and their own reasons for doing things. These people pay my salary; I don’t know if it’s my job to judge them. I don’t really care why they’re there, I’m just happy that they’re there.

Yeah, I have to be honest with myself and recognize I haven’t made a new record with Screeching Weasel in nine years. So obviously they’re not coming out to hear me tour behind my latest record. Once your band has been around for a while, nobody’s coming out to hear you tour behind your latest record. They want to hear the old songs. That’s just a fact of life in rock and roll. You can either fight it or you can embrace it, and I choose to embrace it. I’m immensely proud that I wrote songs that still hold up after 20 years. As somebody who is really driven to constantly do new things creatively, I have to balance that desire with the fact that a lot of fans just want to hear their favorite songs. And the way I balance it is by trying to work out a set list that makes them happy and me happy, that I can play songs that I can get a bang out of too. I’m thrilled with our set list and I think the fans will like it. It covers songs from almost every album, and there’s stuff on there that we just weren’t playing for years when we were touring, and then there’s a lot of stuff we never toured behind that we never played live. And that works in our favor as well, that we didn’t tour after ’93. There are a lot of songs that were never played live, so for me its almost though it doesn’t seem that old, because I never got on stage and played them night after night after night. That’s how it can kind of start to get monotonous.

CB: So bottom line, why is Screeching Weasel back and what do you hope to still accomplish under the Screeching Weasel name?

BW: Fucking fish got to swim, birds got to fly. That’s my band, that’s what I do, you know. The band’s broken up several times [but] I’m resigned to the fact that I’m going to be doing it until I die. There might be long stretches again where I don’t do it. There might be times where I swear it off completely. But this is it man, this is my job. It’s what I do. I’ve got my other band [The Riverdales], which I love doing, but playing this music is what I do, and it took me a long time to come to terms with that and to be able to say, ‘That’s ok to do that for a living.’ It’s actually pretty cool to be able to go out and your job is simply making people happy. And in a way that doesn’t harm them. (Laughs). I mean you could say people who deal cocaine are making people happy too (laughs), but I don’t know if that’s a morally defensible line of work.

So why am I doing it? Because it’s my band. I didn’t have any interest in it for a long time, and I got involved in this legal tussle over ownership because we never wrote anything down or signed anything. I always assumed that it was understood that this was my band. It was never in question with any other band member except the one I had this disagreement with. It went on for a couple of years, and by the time it was resolved, I had really realized this was important to fight for this. Somebody else was coming along and trying to not only take that from me, and by the way wanted me to never do the band again. He actually wanted me to sign a piece of paper saying, ‘You will never do this band again without me.’ Man, you don’t fucking have the right to do that. This is my band, these are my songs, I named the albums. I did all the work. This is fucked up. And I started to realize after it was resolved and everything was signed, sealed and delivered in my name, all these things that I thought I felt about the band, hating seeing the name and all that stuff, it wasn’t the band, and it wasn’t the fans. It was working with people that I didn’t want to work with. It was working in situations where frankly people behaved like they were doing me a fucking favor by showing up and allowing me to pay them. So I said, ‘Well I’m going to go out and I’m going to hire people that want to be there, and I’m going to pay them well. But it’s going to be people who want to fucking be there, not people who are looking to further their fucking career in punk rock by associating with me.’ I’m in a situation now where if somebody doesn’t work out, I’ll part ways with them and replace them, and hopefully no hard feelings. But I’m not getting back in this thing where I’m going to allow people for one second to think that my band is their band, or that they have certain rights to ownership of things that they don’t.

It’s one of those situations where you’re put in a position where you’re forced to evaluate the worth of something to you, not the financial worth, but how much you value it. And I realized this is really important to me. For many years in the ‘90s especially, but even when we were starting in the ‘80s, that was my job, seven days a week, often into the wee hours of the morning. I don’t think anybody in the band even understood how much time I spent working on it. I did it because it was important to me. To me, the result of all that creative work mattered, even when maybe it didn’t come out all that good, or the production wasn’t that good, or the performances weren’t that great. It was something that mattered to me, and I didn’t realize that for a lot years. I think I took it for granted and was even hostile towards it. It was a lot of misdirected anger, when what I was really angry with were some of my band mates and some of my own frankly stupid decisions that I made in regards to my band mates.

With that all behind me now, I’m able to look at it and say, ‘Wait a second, this is really cool.’ And one of the coolest feelings in the world to me is being able to go in and do these fly-ins and playing these shows. I’ll go on Twitter and MySpace and some of these things and the fans are just totally thrilled to be able to go see us. It’s a really cool thing. Before the Internet you didn’t have that immediate fan reaction, so to be able to see that now definitely makes a difference. And a lot of people don’t know because we never talked about it, but after we split up in 2001, we talked about doing a tour again in 2004. And the reason we talked about it is two of the guys in the band had tried to convince me for several years to do it. They finally said, ‘Look, there’s a lot of money to be made.’ Well we got a booking agent and there was no money to be made. We weren’t getting offers. We were getting offers that would have us breaking even on a 10-day tour. So I fired the booking agent and hired someone else. Same result. And then it was the bait and switch, ‘Well, we should do it anyway.’ Well wait a second, I thought this was all about that we’re going to make money. Now you’re saying, ‘Don’t worry about the money. These promoters don’t know what they’re talking about. They’ll only guarantee such and such, but we’ll make a ton of money. People will show up.’ You know, promoters make a living knowing what they’re fucking talking about. And there were issues with money, and certain people felt they weren’t going to get paid enough, and blah blah blah, so the whole thing fell apart. But it was obvious to me that the timing wasn’t right, and now apparently it is, because we have a booking agent now and we’re getting some really flattering, generous offers. And I think it’s amazing that after this many years, people still give a shit and I’m really grateful for it, and I don’t want to waste that opportunity, and I felt that we did in the past. I have my responsibility and culpability for that, but there are other people in the band who do as well. I have no problem owning up to my shit, but I think maybe some of those guys from the past aren’t ready to yet, and I hope they are some day, because I think they’ll be a lot happier for it. But in any case, it is my band and I’ve moved on and I’m having a lot of fun doing it for the first time probably since we started out in the ‘80s.

CB: Obviously the elephant in the conversation is John. Any other comments about him specifically and moving on without him and what fans might think?

BW: I’ve known John since I was 12 years old. I’ve said in other interview s I’m not going to trash the guy. I mean he’s a good guy, he’s talented, and I think he’ll do well in whatever he chooses to do. And I’m certainly not going to discuss details of our business dealings and so forth.

When he heard that the band was reforming without him, he decided to go out on the Internet and put a statement up that this all came as a shock to him. That was a little bit disingenuous. He neglected to mention that we had been at loggerheads for two years over ownership of the band and its assets. And to me, there doesn’t need to be any more detail about it than that. But the long and the short of it is we’ve known each other since we were kids, and we were in a band for a long time, so there’s bound to be conflicts.

I may be wrong about this, but my perspective is that in the early days I was so grateful to have somebody who didn’t drink or use drugs, and who was willing to take on a little bit of work, that I cut him a ton of slack. He was the constant guy in the band, and it was only at the end of the band when we did get some really responsible, professional people, that maybe some of his deficiencies began to show. And I don’t even mean that personally. I think that was bound to happen in any situation, and I’m partly responsible for not having maybe looked at my problems with him honestly from the early days on. Basically I looked the other way on a lot of stuff that I shouldn’t have. At the same time, I think that he got very good at making me feel obligated to give him more money than the other guys, which was a constant sort of friction with them, and things of that nature. I don’t know that I should have done that.

In any case, I think there was a lot of unspoken hostility, especially on his side. I mean a lot. I think he was very angry with me that I decided I wasn’t going to tour anymore. I think he was very angry when we went and formed The Riverdales; I think he felt like we were doing Screeching Weasel essentially without him.  I think he was extremely angry that [The Riverdales] opened for Green Day [in 1995], and were playing stadiums, and he never got that opportunity. I think there’s a lot, a lot, a lot, of fucking hostility on his part, and I can understand a lot of it, but he would never say anything about it. When you don’t do that, that shit festers.

I’ve probably said too much. People are going to have their opinion, and nothing I say is going to change that, and I don’t really care. I’m happy to be the bad guy. It adds to my fucking mystique, so that’s fine. But at the end of the day, John did not always act like a great guy, and I did not always act like a great guy. And the same is true for everybody else who was in the band. And it happens in every band. It came to a head with us, and it resulted in this situation where I was just not going to work with him anymore. And I told him during the dispute don’t keep doing this, because its going to jeopardize your future with whatever the band does down the road. He, I think, felt it was important enough that he was willing to risk that. And I respect that, that’s his prerogative to do that.

But the one thing that I take issue with is this idea that it all came out of the blue. It didn’t. It didn’t at all. And so I’m not sure why he portrayed it that way. I’m sure maybe it felt to him like it came out of the blue, but to me it was kind of disingenuous to present it the way he did. I think John’s a good guy at heart and I think he’s a talented guy and I wish nothing but the best for him. We ended up in a situation where he receives a cut of merchandise sales and perpetuity, and I’m happy to pay it to him. And then obviously he gets his royalties on the records. I had to move on and do my own thing. There was no way it was going to work with him. And I realized that I really wanted to do my band again, so I had to move ahead, and I had to move ahead in spite of having said, ‘Hey, the band is me and John.’ Fucking things change man.  And I’m not going to not put food on my table for my kids because I said when I 19-years-old and living with John, ‘Hey, its always me and you against the world.’ And that’s really what it’s about. For those people who are so quick to judge me for that, fair enough. But I hope you never have anybody judging you for things that you said when you were fucking 19-years-old, because you’re going to have to a lot to answer for. (Laughs). But be that as it may, people came and left Screeching Weasel a lot over the years, and I’m sure that will continue to happen, but I’m going to keep doing it for a long time now.

CB: What do you hope to accomplish still with the band going forward?

BW: I don’t know man, I don’t think of it in those terms. I will take things as they come. If in three years nobody wants to pay to see us play anymore, then I’m not going to be playing anymore. I’ve been saying this for many years. I’m always going to be writing tunes and whatnot, and now that we have GarageBand, doing my little demos and all that. As far as releasing tunes and being able to play them in front of a crowd, that is not in my hands. That’s entirely in the hands of the fans. If they want to hear a record, well, I’ve probably got four records worth of stuff sitting around ready to go. I’d love to go record it and release it if they’re willing to buy it. If the fans want to see us play live, buy tickets. Ultimately it’s in their hands. To the extent that I’m able to afford to do those things, then yeah, I’m going to keep doing them. But if in a few years down the road or many years down the road people lose interest and they don’t care anymore, well, I’m still going to be sitting here doing my songs, but I’m probably not going to be able to do it on the level that I’m doing it now.

But yeah, this is what I do for a living. And it took me a long time to come to terms with it and to realize that this is something that I love doing and I’m proud to do. So I’m not going to worry too much about the future or accomplishing things or whatever. I’m just going to try and enjoy it.

CB: So would you say this is one of the happiest times that you’ve been in Screeching Weasel? Was it difficult overcoming issues of agoraphobia and things like that?

BW: Well, I mean, Jim DeReogatis did an article and made it the focus of the article, and Jim had to do his thing, and I understand that and I’m not mad about it or anything. But it became a point of contention with me because it became an excuse for other people in the band, ‘Oh, that’s why Ben doesn’t do this,’ and they didn’t have to take responsibility for their part in why we didn’t tour. And when my problems with panic attacks were at the worst I was touring the most. To say that it prevented me from going on the road is utter fucking bullshit. Ultimately take enough prescription drugs and you can get out on the road and do what you need to do.

At any point we did not get along on the road. Some bands do great with it, some bands split up because of it. We’re a band that split up because of it several times. We did not get along on the road. And I had to finally come to the point after The Riverdales’ tour in ’95, we were on the road for three and a half months that year, and I came home at the end of the year and realized that if I keep doing this, I’m not going to make music anymore, because I’m going to burn myself out. I hate doing this, and it ruined my friendships with the guys in the band. I came home from tour and I just hated these guys, and they hated me, and we didn’t want anything to do with each other, and it drove a major wedge. I never became friends with my drummer again, and [guitarist/bass player Dan] Vapid and I didn’t talk for many years. We were in a band for a couple of years after that, but we were very distant, didn’t really talk, didn’t really get along at all, and after that we didn’t talk for four years or something after that. And that really killed me, because we had our disagreements, but he was a friend. I really liked the guy.

It became obvious to me if I keep trying to do this, the whole thing is going to blow up, and I’m going to have no career and no opportunity to make music because I’m going to go live in a fucking cave somewhere, because I can’t stand what this does to me and my band. And there were other issues too. There were people who frankly got greedy. There were people who were so desperate for attention that they actually made it difficult to be on the road because they had to be around the fans. You’d literally be trying to leave a club to go and play your next show and you’re running late because somebody has to sit there and be surrounded by fans. Everybody in that band played a part in making it difficult to tour. So it sticks in my craw, that this narrative, my problem with panic attacks, and a very, very brief bout with agoraphobia, somehow was the reason for all this, is just fucking utter bullshit. I wouldn’t say anything about it if it weren’t for the fact that there were people in the band who have latched onto this with an unbelievable tenacity in an attempt in my opinion to absolve themselves of responsibility for the massive, massive, massive problems in that band, the massive fucking huge problems that we had with each other and our ability to get along and people’s willingness to work.

For example, at the height of our financial success in the mid-90s, I would set up a band practice. We were going to practice once a week, that was the goal, which wasn’t very much for a band that’s doing it for a living. But we usually practiced once a month, because every week, the other three guys would have an excuse. And this was their job; this was their only job. They didn’t go out and work anywhere else. They didn’t fucking have the time for [the band]. They would show up to practice looking like they had to just fucking force themselves to be there. And I’m sitting there going, ‘We’re the luckiest motherfuckers in the world. We just fell fucking ass backwards into a successful band, and you guys are taking it for granted.’ It really pissed me off, and it really pissed me off more because I was working like crazy. And they weren’t doing anything. So when we’re recording an album for Fat Records, and I got one fucking guy who can’t show up to do his parts because he’s getting his refrigerator delivered, another guy who’s not showing up to do his parts because he’s got play practice for some play he’s doing that he’s not getting paid for. I mean, really, that’s your fucking priority, instead of working on your record that you’re getting this huge advance for? It got old really quick.

For those guys to latch on to my personal problems and say, ‘That’s the reason why the band didn’t do more,’ the only fucking reason that the band did as much as it did is because I fucking did everything I could to keep it together. It’s really easy for those guys to complain about me, but left to their own devices, I’d like to see what they would have fucking done. Yeah, I get fucking pissed off about it, there’s no question. But like I said, I think that happens in pretty much every band, and people find their ways to deal with it. But it didn’t get dealt with in our band. It just didn’t get talked about. And I have responsibility for that because I should have fucking stood up and said, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ But I managed to fucking think too much and convince myself, ‘No, I’m not going to be able to start with new guys, and if I do the fans won’t accept it,’ and blah blah blah. I always found a million reasons to talk myself out of having these really difficult conversations and confrontations with those guys. And also I found that on those occasions when I did, it always ended really badly. It always ended with people leaving the band. So I was a little bit gun shy about it. 

But you know I’ve got to take responsibility for not being ballsier, by not saying, ‘Hey man, I’m doing the work here. I’m running the fucking show. And you guys have got to hold up to your end of the fucking deal.’ When you don’t do that, you end up in a situation where you start feeling like a fucking martyr, but you’ve only got yourself to blame. You can ultimately only control yourself and what you do, so if other people aren’t cutting it, you’ve got to have the balls to cut them loose. And I didn’t. It really ended up being a problem of my own making.