Politically-charged punk rock pioneers Bad Religion are teaming up with long-time friends Social Distortion for a co-headline tour when they reach Australia in February.
“I don’t think we’ve played together since 1982”, says bass player and founding member Jay Bentley. “We’ve tried for 20 years to put Bad Religion and Social Distortion out on the road together, but it just never works. So yeah, we have a history together, we’re all really good friends, but we just don’t play shows together.”
The genuine excitement emanating from Bentley is contagious as he discusses the upcoming tour. “Finally, yeah! We’re going to go on tour, in Australia, and I could not be happier! I could not be happier to take Bad Religion and Social Distortion to Australia! I want that more than anything!“
“I assume that Mike and the guys are going to put together a set probably like ours, which is like Here is everything we have” says Bentley. “I know at least for us, we’re going to continue on with that concept of the 40 year anniversary like, here’s the history of the band; I don’t see us focusing on one decade, but that could change overnight. Anything is possible, because I’ve seen it all happen.”
Bad Religion were last in Australia in 2019 for [the first part of] their 40th Anniversary tour, which saw an abrupt halt when Covid reared its ugly head. “Yeah, we sort of ended our tour – leaving Australia, getting home, and hearing the world has completely shut down, and it was like OK that was the end of 2019 for us!” 2019 Also saw the band release their 17th studio album Age of Unreason. So, is this the album tour finally coming to fruition? “No, sadly this is the continuation of our 40th anniversary tour.” He laughs. “2020 was our 40th year, so when we finally got back out on the road in late 2021 we just decided that the 40 year concept was a little more important, rather than an album tour. At the end of it, it was almost like nothing mattered, we just wanted to go out and play. So Age of Unreason didn’t get buried, it just kind of got pushed out of the way.”
If you’re wondering how a band would go about writing a setlist that encompasses 40 years and 17 albums, the task is no easy feat. “17 studio albums makes it almost impossible to pick – some shows were leaning heavily on a lot of older material, and then other shows were leaning on new material – I think it just depends on how we felt that day, whether or not we wanted to play certain songs. In certain towns I would go back and find setlists of shows we’ve played previously and say Hey, let’s play these dozen songs that we’ve never played here before!”
After four decades together, touring, recording, and the way the band operates are all going to change in one way or another, as Jay explains further. “We don’t really think about making albums anymore; I don’t think that’s something that is going to come back. Is making an album as important as having three new songs on a streaming service every six months? That’s hard to say – that’s for Brett to tell us what to do, because he’s our label!” He chuckles. He is of course referring to Brett Gurewitz – or Mr Brett, founder of both Bad Religion and Epitaph Records, the label responsible for releasing 12 of their 17 albums. “Recording is funny because it’s almost cyclical, you know. We started working pretty small in little studios, and that built up to its crescendo when we worked at Electric Lady in New York City, and now we’re back to small studios again, just making songs for streaming services.”
“I would say the biggest difference between then and now is we have a lot more options of doing what we want to do, and in 1980 we were just doing whatever we could.”
With Age of Unreason not getting the spotlight and supporting tour that would normally go hand-in-hand with a new release, how was the album received by fans and critics alike? “Everybody loved it!” explains Bentley. “To be 40 years in, and have done this much recording, and put out that record in this point of your career is pretty awesome. When we made this record it’s because we were making the record that we want to hear, that’s the reason this whole band exists!”
The freedom afforded to bands with a 40 year tenure in the industry means one thing – the freedom to do what you want, as Jay explains. “You want to do something that you feel is missing from your record collection, like, I need to hear this music with these lyrics, these background harmonies, and this lead guitar, and so you just write that song. This is just who we are and what we do, and as long as we’re happy doing it we’ll keep doing it.I assume that if we put out a record that people really hated (something into the unknown style), I’m almost at a point where I wonder if we would just say We don’t care what you think. Once again, we have options.”
If you haven’t caught Bad Religion playing a festival set, the energy is positively explosive regardless of their spot on the bill. This is not always the case with bigger bands who find themselves playing a daytime slot. So what’s more fun, headline shows or festivals? “I like them both.” Says Jay. “I think festivals serve the purpose of playing to people who may have heard of you but have never seen you. A good festival, what’s in my mind, would be a broad swathe of bands from Slipknot to Taylor Swift and everything in between, and if you can fit in there somehow and get people’s eyes on you enough to say Hey I like that band!, that’s a good reason to go and play festival. Playing headlining shows, people buy tickets who already know who you are and want to come and see you because they like you as a band, so they both have their purposes. I love headlining; playing smaller clubs, because that’s just that dirty rock’n’roll thing that you grow up on, it’s how you cut your teeth, so you always romanticise that, and after 30 minutes on stage you’re like I’m really hot and tired right now but that’s OK ’cause that’s what that’s all about, you just gotta laugh! The truth is, I actually am having the time of my life, and I know that because I’ve paid attention to the fact that I can be walking towards stage in a really crap mood, kicking cans and wanting to punch puppies, and then I get out on stage and say This is the greatest thing ever!, and I’ll spend the next hour laughing and smiling and screaming and then I’ll walk off stage and I’ll be like Nah, I’m still mad about that one thing. I have recognised that, and I embrace it fully.
So, after all these years, at a time where many bands of the same vintage and closing up shop, are we going to see an end to the machine that is Bad Religion? After a moment of contemplation, Bentley replies “I think a lot of bands sort of stop feeling that what they’re doing is relevant, or important, or they just don’t want to do it anymore. But I know us – if we’re having fun and if it feels like what we’re doing is still relevant, we’re going to continue doing it. There’s no reason not to – it’s not something that’s impinging on our lives. We all have a separate lives and then we get to go and do this and have a good time doing it. We’ve realised that the band isn’t the most important thing, so we don’t have these ideological differences. The ideological similarity is that we all want to go and do this because it’s fun! It’s just something that we really enjoy doing together, like playing cards, right? For me, I don’t see us packing it in… I mean, if all of a sudden we sold 100 Million records, then maybe you’d never see us again hahaha. Maybe.
Bad Religion are touring Australia with co-headliners Social Distortion in February. Tickets are on sale now from Destroy All Lines
