BAND PEOPLE: Josh Freese

“Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music” is out in ten days on University of Texas Press. I’ll be doing a series of book events over the next two months:

September 14 @ Austin Public Library, Austin TX (in convo w/ Austin Kleon)

September 16 @ Brookline Booksmith, Brookline MA (in convo w/ Ryan H. Walsh)

September 18 @ P&T Knitwear, NYC (in convo w/ Stuart Bogie)

September 19 @ Politics and Prose, Washington DC (in convo w/ Travis Andrews)

September 20 @ The Head & The Hand, Philadelphia PA (in convo w/ Benny Horowitz)

September 26 @ Morton Library, Rhinecliff NY (in convo w/ Joe Hagan)

October 4 @ Criminal Records, hosted by A Cappella Books, Atlanta GA, 5:30pm (in convo w/ Jay Gonzalez)

October 8 @ Popular Music Books in Progress (Zoom event) in convo w/ Steven Hyden

October 11 @ Riffraff, Providence RI (in convo w/ Josh Kantor)

October 17 @ Subtext, St. Paul MN (in convo w/ Michelangelo Matos)

October 18 @ Seminary Co-op, Chicago IL (in convo w/ Kelly Hogan)

October 19 FRANZ NICOLAY (solo show) @ Burlington Bar, Chicago IL (early show, 6pm doors, with Micah Schnabel & Vanessa Jean Speckman)

October 20 @ Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee WI (early event, 2pm)

I’m using the opportunity of this newsletter to highlight expanded versions of selected interviews from my book research; previously Nels Cline and today Josh Freese.

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         I am 43 years old. This is Josh Freese, and I am a drummer. [Music has] been my only source of income, except for when I was about 11. I had a paper route for about four months. I can say that I officially started professionally when I was 12, because that’s the year I had to join the musician’s union. I got a job playing drums and I paid taxes that year, and every year since I was twelve. I was making money performing and playing drums. It’s real easy to pinpoint. It’s not like I started doing gigs kind of around here and there, and played a couple bars. I literally had to join the union and [was] an upstanding tax-paying citizen since seventh grade.

         I grew up around a lot of music and my dad having conducted the Disneyland Band. He hired all the music out there. So I was always around; I was exposed to a lot from day one. I gravitated toward the drums—we had a bunch of musical instruments lying around the house and bass and drums in the attic, and my parents would take them down. I always say I was about 8 or 9 when I started, just started by playing the records in my basement and then getting lessons down the street. I learned some of the fundamentals of it. I started playing in a cover band when I was 12, and I left high school in the 10th grade. I did the GED when I was 15, and I have been touring and making records ever since.  

         There was a time when I was about 14, I really had my heart set on going to a music college. I’m going to get out of high school and I’ll go to Berklee College of Music in Boston where all these drummers that I love had gone. And I even took a tour of the Berklee School back in Boston with my family when I was there visiting friends; I guess I was in the eighth grade. At the time I was 15 I had this chance to go on tour and start recording, and I did, and then I never looked back. There was a time when I said, “Ah man, maybe I should go back. Maybe I should go to school, you know, in my twenties.” And I thought, man, all the guys who are at that school want to do what I am in the middle of doing right now. So, you know, why stop? It’s working out so far and I just kind of never stopped.

         I [went] through the same delusional teenage thing of I want to be a rich rock star. I want to be rich. Every kid goes through that, even if it is just for a minute. You’ve got these dreams and delusional ideas of how it was going to work out. But as a teenager ,a lot of my heroes weren’t really rock stars necessarily, as much as they were well-respected musicians and well-respected drummers who made a living doing it, and didn’t have the big house on the hill and the sports cars and stuff. By the time I was 18 I like, who cares if that happens?

         My parents brought me up that if you can do something you love doing, it’s such a huge plus; and you are going to be ahead of most of the rest of the world if you can wake up and go to a job you enjoy, and not some thankless thing or a dead-end situation. And that’s what I’m trying to teach my kids. My heroes ended up not being multimillionaire rock stars, as much as just the guy who wants to make a career they go to, to pay their rent, eat and support their families, doing what they love doing. That’s the bar for success. And also, when people ask me “Who are the favorite people you worked with?” and “What’s your favorite stuff you’ve done?” On a personal level, my own successes have been getting to work alongside, some of my biggest heroes—being Devo and the Replacements-slash-Paul Westerberg solo stuff. I grew up a huge Devo fan since I was eight, I got into The Replacements when I was about 15 or 16. But both of those bands, I used to dream of meeting—like, really in the top five or top three of my favorite bands. They were my favorite bands. So it’s strange; I talk about it with my parents. God, it’s really bizarre, your own weird positive visualizations you had going on when you were 9 or 10 or 12 or 14.

         I’ve got family in Minneapolis. I used to go back to Minneapolis when I was 16. I would be bored in my parents’ basement or my grandparents’ basement, I’d look through the white pages—this was pre-internet—I’d look for Westerbergs or Stinsons in Minneapolis to see if I might be able to find a relative of one of the Replacements. And years later I ended up being friends, and working with them for years and years. I’ve gone through pinch-myself periods, and then I’ve got to pinch myself years later, going “I’m so far past the pinch-myself period with those people that it’s so normal.” Once in a while, I’ll go, “God that is really weird, that it’s so normal.” People I used to dream about meeting once, I’m looking down on my phone and they’re calling me, and I’m like, “Ah, I can’t answer that right now. I’m going into Starbucks. I’ll call them later.” And then two days later I’ll go, “Oh my God, I never called Mark Mothersbaugh back last week, shit.” You are going from dreaming to meeting them, to letting it go to voicemail because you are busy watching an episode of House of Cards.

Was it ever important to you to have that “gang” quality of being a long-term band member?

That’s probably a little more fun when you are younger. I watched friends of mine who have been in the same band and worked with people for years and years and years and end up turning into some weird marriage—where as adults, you harbor resentments, and you love each other deep down, but you can’t really stand each other anymore, and you don’t want to hang out with that person at all when you get off the road. And so it goes from “We’re a gang” to an old grouchy married couple-slash-business partners.

         For me, I guess where I felt that the most was probably with the Vandals, who I played with since I was 16, and still play with. But the great thing about the Vandals, and why we never had our friendships and relationships totally completely soured, is that at this point—and for years and years now—the band was kind of like a labor of love for all of us, and it is not something we do 24/7. It’s not our main source of income. There’s not millions of dollars being made to fight over. So the stakes are so low with the band, that we can really enjoy just doing it sometimes. We all have our quote-unquote real jobs outside of the Vandals—if it means playing in other bands, or someone else being an attorney, or what have you, but it’s like that. Also Devo in a similar way. I have worked with Devo for twenty years now. We did a small little thing a couple of nights ago; first time we have played in about a year. It’s a lot of fun. As much as they are older; they have been around each other longer, I really feel at home with those guys you know, and have for ages and ages. Then there are the other situations where I come in and out of other people’s gangs. And sometimes I can be envious of their relationships, and sometimes I go “God, I’m glad I’m not in the middle of all this mess. God, I’m glad I’m stepping in and out of this scene.” Because it can be a mess, and it can be poisonous sometimes.

         I gotta tell you, I’m going to say, every band I’ve ever worked with—I’ve got some friends, and I’m not going to name the band, but they are one of the biggest bands in the world, I’d say—and at the end of the day the singer is in charge. They really pride themselves on, “We all get our say,” and “It’s a democracy,” and it’s like, it’s so-and-so’s band really. Yeah, they all write songs for the record and they all have a say; but when it comes down to it, it’s this guy over here. There’s got to be a head chief, you know?

         I have another friend’s band [who] are largely successful, and they sell out arenas around the world, and they pride themselves on being a democratic band, And they are constantly fighting, because no-one has official control and they are so the four of them—maybe not all four, but definitely two or three of them are constantly at odds with each other, because no-one has official power. They pride themselves on “We’re splitting everything four ways, no matter what.” It gets kind of weird, and they’re working on a large scale of dealing with tons and tons of money and lots of success. I watched that get weird;  and I’m not in the band, I watch it from afar. But I think there kind of has to be—I’m about to quote someone who I can’t stand. But Gene Simmons—I’m not much of a Kiss fan and I’m not much of a fan of his—but he once said something about “A family owns a car, right? It’s the family’s car, but someone has to drive it. There is always two people in the front and two people in the back.” I went, “Okay, I understand what he is saying; and whether I agree with it or not, I get it.” He is right, to a degree.