It’s almost an appropriate time of the year to get involved in the festive season, and Bad Religion have given us Maniacs the least-cheesy way to get involved in some Christmas action with their album Christmas Songs. If you don’t know much about the release, check out this interview that Diffuser.fm had with founding songwriter and guitarist Brett Gurewitz.
Just looking at the cover of Christmas Songs, the reaction is that something must be up. Why would your band do a Christmas album?
I think the main reason is that we all thought it would be super funny and perverse. Over the years, weve played a lot of festivals that fall around Christmas, like the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, so wed already worked up some live versions of Christmas songs for those events. And we had joked that one day we should do a whole Christmas album, if only because it would be so out of character. And this year, it went from being a joke to not. We had so much fun making the True North album, and it was such a successful recording session, with everyone getting along great and wanting to record more, so we thought wed do that Christmas album.
Youve also mentioned a desire to have the songs heard outside of a religious context for their beauty. But, some of these songs are inextricably linked to religion theyre about baby Jesus being born.
Oh yes, they are deeply religious lyrics. Let me clarify: A lot of people were shocked that we werent making jokes out of the songs, and they are either reading too much or too little into that. For Bad Religion to perform these highly religious Christmas songs is, frankly, a desecration. We dont subscribe to any organized religion. We dont believe in anything supernatural. At all. Quite the opposite, in fact, so for us to perform the song, to me, that is comparable with a heathen taking the pulpit and giving a sermon, or a black metal band burning down a church. What it says is there is a fly in the ointment. Thats the point of it. To me, it is fairly obvious.
So for me, to make jokes out of the lyrics would lose some of the power behind the songs. It wouldnt make it more of a desecration; it would make it less of a desecration. We would just be acting like buffoons, and who is going to take the buffoon seriously? Treating the songs respectfully and playing the shit out of them in our Bad Religion style is our way of saying a church is just a building, holy water is just water and a Christmas song is just a song. There is no magic there. Oh, well, there is magic there because it is music, like the magic of poetry, but theres nothing supernatural or metaphysical going on.
One thing with Christmas songs, or even Christmas in general, and that its just one part of the Christian tradition. On the other side of the spectrum, you have war and some truly awful consequences of religion. You guys are kind of speaking to that with what you are doing with the charitable donation from each album sale.
The donation is, if anything, just a little reminder for the folks who are really not getting it; they can look at the charity we chose and know that we are the same old Bad Religion that they grew up with. But its been interesting. I thought people would hear it and get it instantly, but there have been some really surprising and confusing reactions about it, some people really up in arms on it.
Check out the rest of the interview here
