Set To Explode

03/23/2001 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Gail Worley

At a few minutes past noon, the phone rings in a Las Vegas hotel room occupied by Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson. Last night was a late one in the hotel's casino, and Nelson is jonesing for his morning coffee, even though it is, in fact, already afternoon. "It's a little early for me to be having a conversation," he offers, but that is the only time he bemoans his waking state. Nelson is a charming, very funny and--make no mistake about it--brutally direct guy, and he loves to talk about Buckcherry, the L.A.-based hard rock band he founded with singer Joshua Todd in 1995.

Buckcherry's remorselessly rocking self-titled debut, released in 1999, made a big dent in pop music consciousness, foreshadowing the band's prime candidacy for reclaiming rock's lost throne. The phenomenally popular first single "Lit Up"--a party anthem for all seasons with an addictive singalong chorus of "I love the cocaine! I love the cocaine!"--may have, according Nelson, led to what he considers the biggest misconception about Buckcherry: "Judging from fans' reactions," he surmises, "they think that we're all like Tony Montana, the guy from Scarface, because of [that] song." And the fans' imaginations, Nelson adds, "are a lot better than our reality." One would never think so, however, to give a listen to Buckcherry's new album, Time Bomb (DreamWorks). And fans who might approach Time Bomb with some trepidation need only scan the lyrics to "Porno Star"--a gleefully blue romp through a day in the life of an adult film stud that makes "Lit Up" sound like "I Want To Hold Your Hand"--to be rest assured there's been no toning down of the outrageousness on the band's sophomore outing. Buckcherry improves on and polish the many facets that make the group one of L.A.'s brightest stars on this explosive collection of fist-shaking, melodically bombastic rockers (imagine some kind of Aerosmith-AC/DC-Stones monolith of howling guitars, and add more tattoos) with a hefty helping of Monster Ballads B-sides loaded with many surprisingly sensitive lyrical turns ("There's a princess in my arms," sings Todd on the brilliant "A Place In The Sun"). With the ballads tempering the otherwise freewheeling guitar mayhem, Time Bomb is a hormone-activating boost up from the gutter to the good life that's a thrill ride from start to finish.

Nelson was originally a drummer, but switched to guitar in his late teens to feed his desire to write songs. He moved from Pennsylvania to L.A., where he and Todd met through their tattoo artist. Bassist J.B. and drummer Devon Glenn quickly completed Buckcherry's lineup, and a second guitarist, Yogi, came on board just after the band's first album was completed, giving Nelson the two-guitar lineup he'd always envisioned for the band. "I'm not a really schooled musician by any stretch, so I tend to go for something that feels better, more than what's technically right," Nelson muses. "Everything about playing the instrument in this band needs to be about serving the song. To a degree, it's a chemistry thing, but I think, most importantly, it's that the five of us are really determined and we all have the same goal. I know that we're all really focused and I know that where we all meet, in the middle, is this band."

Here's more of what Nelson had to say:

LAUNCH:
How was recording Time Bomb different from recording your debut, considering that this time you had Yogi on board?

NELSON:
It was actually cool, because having another guitar player, I think, really freed me up to concentrate more on the songs. At the same time, working with [producer] John Travis pushed me as a guitar player more than, I think, working with Steve [Jones] and Terry [Date]. [The experience with] Steve and Terry was more, "Hey, this is cool. Let's capture it. Let's maybe do a few overdubs, but let's just capture the band." Working with John Travis, we really got a chance to have the record be a bit more produced. Some of the songs that I kind of had a vision for, and really wanted to take in a certain direction, I got to do that. But, as far as being the only guitarist before [Yogi joined], all of my favorite bands have two guitar players, and I think that the two different voices are really, really important. It doesn't matter how good the one guitar player is, I always find myself hearing the other person's take on it and working together. I like having another guitar player. And it's louder.

LAUNCH:
What's the whole "time bomb" concept about?

NELSON:
Well, the song itself, "Time Bomb," is about starf--kers; it's pretty obvious. So I can just leave it right there. But I think that, not to get too deep--because, God, we wouldn't want to do that!--Josh and I had a friend who had "Time Bomb" tattooed on his knuckles, and he passed away a while back. If you knew the guy, you knew he was a time bomb. You know, one of those guys you looked at and you just knew he wasn't going to get old. I think the image of the girl, if you've seen the cover art, as kind of a sheltered youth and that [indicating] the breeding ground for a time bomb, it all tied in together and it just kind of worked. We'd actually called the record something else and, at one point, Josh turns to me, as he often does, and says, "Dude, what do we do?" And I say, "Well, we call it Time Bomb, goddammit!" And we push on!

LAUNCH:
Considering that all this hip-hop and rap-metal stuff that's all over the radio has lyrics dealing almost exclusively with sex and drugs and violence, did it seem at all hypocritical to the band that the media or whoever might jump all over a song like "Lit Up" because, God forbid, it glorifies drugs?

NELSON:
No, it didn't, and let me tell you why: Because on that song--which we thought was a good introduction to the band, but we never thought it was a number one single--we got overwhelming radio response. We got really great responses at the major video networks and we had no people protesting outside the venues, we had no "Mothers' Groups," no one tried to shut us down. It even made the "clean" version of our record. So I think it flew under a lot of people's radar. Not as many people protested it as you would think. Given the new record, people that have heard it and reviewed it and talked to us, they're making a bigger deal out of "Whiskey In The Morning." The drug and alcohol question is coming up more on this record than on the first record, for whatever reason. Just goes to show you who's listening.

LAUNCH:
Why do you think "Lit Up" struck such a chord with rock fans?

NELSON:
[Adopting cockney accent] Because it f--king rocks, mate! No, I don't know...because it's got a good guitar riff and it's got a cool lyric and it's short, simple, and to-the-point. It's the kind of thing that didn't really require a lot of thought. The first time you listen to it, you're either into it or you're not. High energy, low IQ. You know, it's weird--when we play that song live, something happens to the crowd. It's really odd, something comes over them. I've just seen people do the most f--ked up sh-t to that song.

LAUNCH:
Like what?

NELSON:
I don't really want to go into it, but...people having sex and just really random acts of weirdness.

LAUNCH:
When your first record came out, Buckcherry got a lot of credit for saving rock 'n' roll or signaling the return of real rock, or whatever you want to call it, because "Lit Up" was such a party song. Still, a lot of rock musicians I talked to who were also fans of your music would say to me that they loved Buckcherry, but wished the band "would go even farther with their image." What are your thoughts on that?

NELSON:
Well, who the f--k says that, first of all? [Names are exchanged.] I've heard of them...I think that, as far as image goes, we have to operate within the boundaries of where we're comfortable, as guys. I can't put on a f--kin' dress and devil horns, and run around and go, "Yeah, this is me. This is real. This is who I am." It's bullsh-t. So there's a fine line between entertainer and doing something that's within the realm of who you are. Some people, like Brian Warner [Marilyn Manson], don't worry about that sh-t, because they can be two completely different people. I don't want to say we're any more real or not real than the next band, but...we're not really characters. We're definitely connected to our music. I guess the gist of it is, yes, it is entertainment, but putting on a dress is not who I am.

LAUNCH:
I think by "going farther with your image," they meant "shoot up onstage" or something, I don't know. How do you go farther?

NELSON:
Well, I mean, we've already had guys arrested, we've had children out of wedlock, we've wrecked cars, we've bought Harleys, we've gotten tattooed, you know, we've pierced body parts, we've been written about on all the websites where they talk about guy's c-cks, we've got porn stars in the camp, we've got Playboy bunnies, we've done every cliché-dumb-rock thing that you can possibly do, we've done more drugs and spilt more booze than some bands have drank and...what else do you have to do to be more rock? Die onstage, I guess. You know what? F--k those guys.

LAUNCH:
Compared to the first album, there are a lot more of what you could call "sensitive" songs on the second, such as "Open My Eyes," "A Place In The Sun," "You," and "Helpless." Was there a conscious decision to move more in that direction, or was that just a natural step in Josh's songwriting?

NELSON:
Well, if you notice carefully, there's actually fewer slower songs on this record. We have two slow songs on this record, and the hidden track ["Open My Eyes"]; we have "You" and "Helpless" and then "Open My Eyes." But if you look at the other record, you've got "Borderline" and "Baby" and "For The Movies," and "Check Your Head" is kind of slow, and there all these midtempo songs. So, first and foremost, the goal on this record was to kick more ass and rock a little harder. After we came up with "You" and "Helpless," we stopped writing ballads and made sure everything rocked after that, or was uptempo and could get things rolling. I think that the basic philosophy was landing somewhere between Pump and Back In Black, but still having it be very 2001...very Y2K-friendly! And the ballads, I don't know, I think that was just where Josh was with his lyrics. The thing about this record is, we wrote the first record as four f--king idiots from Hollywood that had never been on the road, never saw the world, made $5 an hour at their day jobs and were just kind of happy to be in a band that finally got signed [laughs]. Then we made the next record as guys who have toured for two years and found out who some of our real friends are, got into the ring of the music business and did that whole boxing match, and just went through some stuff. A lot of things are different for us going into this record. I don't want to say we're different people, but we've definitely had some life experience; more so on the way to making this record. All of that is reflected and I think it comes across angrier, musically, and that would definitely be [adopting cockney accent again] because I've got a bit more anger, Ian. It would definitely be a form of expressing that. At the same time, the personal things that Josh has gone through, and his ability to connect [with that] lyrically, I think he hit a really great stride on this record. The reason I say that is I'm close enough to the guy to know of the things that he goes through day to day. I'll have a conversation with him and then we'll be in the middle of writing songs and I'll see parts of his life, parts of my life, parts of the lives of the rest of the guys in the band, popping up in the lyrics, so I know how he's making that connection. I think he hit a really great stride on this record. I'm really proud of him.

LAUNCH:
He's a very talented songwriter. The way he can go from something like "Frontside" to a killer ballad like "Open My Eyes," it's just amazing.

NELSON:
I think that, from a songwriting perspective, we never really want to pigeonhole ourselves as to having to write a certain way. At the same time, we have parameters that we put up for ourselves on what we would consider a Buckcherry song. We could sit down and write country-pop songs all day long, but they're not really songs for this band. Ultimately, when we write a song, we know, "Yeah, this is us," or "This ain't right."

LAUNCH:
Are there any songs on Time Bomb that are really special to you?

NELSON:
"Helpless" is one of my favorites. "A Place In The Sun," I'm really proud of that song because we took the long way to get there and it paid off. You know, it changes every day. I love "Time Bomb" and I love "Underneath." I love so many of the songs on the record. And that's another thing: Just because a disc is 75 minutes long, we didn't want to have to fit that much music on it. We wanted to make a 45-minute record with 11 or 12 songs, keep it really simple and straightahead and make you want to listen to it again. As far as the hidden track is concerned, Josh came up with that song when we were in the studio recording, and we tried it a couple of different ways, with the band and adding other instruments to that version of it, and none of it really seemed to work. Ultimately, the most striking, best-sounding version was the piano/vocal. We put that on the end there as some kind of incentive to stick around and...see if you can find out where the bodies are buried, or something.

LAUNCH:
Does it freak you out at all that real hard rock music is suddenly the new "alternative" music?

NELSON:
It doesn't freak me out, because, from our inception, we were the alternative music. We were the underdog, and we were not the most acceptable thing. I'm sure you've heard the story of us playing shows with people laughing at us, when we first got together in L.A. Even when we did these multiple-band bills, where we did these radio shows, we were always the only band like us. I mean, if you're in Godsmack or Limp Bizkit, then there's lots of other bands like you out there, but when you're doing what we're doing, at least for right now, there aren't a lot of bands like us. And by no stretch do we think that we invented it [laughs]--it's just good ol' rock 'n' roll. But we definitely have a different tone to us than a lot of other bands.

LAUNCH:
There was this quote I found from one of your old interviews, where you said, "Everyone is served up the hottest thing and there's not a lot of reverence for what came before. There's little sense of things past." I can appreciate that there is a deep sense of history in your music, and the question here is: How does the band so successfully bring the past into the now and keep it viable?

NELSON:
[Extended pause] Well, I think that the past has to be your inspiration, not your destination. [Pause] Whoa! That was good. Maybe I should just step back from that burning ember, and let that one cool off. Hit me! [Laughing' I just think that, to a degree, that's true. Those records inspire me, but I don't want to make those records again. I already have Toys In The Attic and Rocks. Josh already has the Prince Black record and we already have Lynyrd Skynyrd and AC/DC and the Sex Pistols, so to make those records again is ridiculous. But, to draw inspiration from those records, and make our own music, I think that's really the key to showing some sort of reverence. The reason I think that quote, that you're referring to, came out is because it really bums me out when kids today hear the name Beck and they think of the skinny kid from Silver Lake and not the really amazing guitarist from England who played with Rod Stewart. It just speaks of the lack of a history lesson that's going on in music. Not that we should be stuck there, but I think if you can't go from Rage Against The Machine and follow that all the way back to Robert Johnson, you don't really know what's going on.