Last week you would have readabout The Used’s new album when singer Burt McCracken did an interview with Loudwire. Here we have part two of the interview where he reveals a few more details about the band’s new album as well as getting a bit spiritual. Read below!
One thing Ive always noticed is that the word time keeps showing up in your lyrics. Whether Its our time to shine, It isnt worth my time, Time takes us all, Its my time to burn etc. What is the significance of the word time in your life?
Since I was really little, Ive been obsessed with time, the subjective and objective time. Learning about Einsteins theories of relativity and understanding that time actually does speed up and slow down and the fact that we have to justify linear arrangement of time because its the only thing that suits our human misunderstanding. Maybe the majority of the time I would use the word time is a bit cynical. Well notice how when were so low or what we believe to be low, how time slows down and minutes become hours. And Time flies when youre having fun, and its actually true. Ive always been really interested in that and the philosophy and perspective of time.
In the past, youve had a few issues with your voice and you actually needed surgery. How was your voice feeling during the Imaginary Enemy sessions and how has it felt on your most recent tours?
Its great and its changed a lot. The recording process, first going in with John Feldmann, we wanted to dissect everything and we had a very different approach at recording music. I would literally do hundreds of takes when recording a song for 4 or 5 to 8 hours. With Imaginary Enemy, it was a one take jake kind of business. Thats where the emotion is. I find that we dont want anything to sound perfect, we want it to sound human.
Theres a fine balance because we do want our songs to sound good, and I love production and I love thoughtful music and I love good-sounding music. We took a chance with Ocean of the Sky and it sounds like st. Thats cool for the moment, I didnt want to remake it, but this record plays around with singing out of tune and leaving things a little bit messy and maybe a little more noisy than what you might like to hear, but thats what I wanted. Things that sound really nice too, and produced with real strings and the sound that was kind of preconceived and worked on, but theres real kind of impulsivity on the record that makes it feel more real to me.
Having followed your career, youve led such an interesting life with many highs and lows. Have you ever considered writing an autobiography?
Yeah, but Id love to make it I guess an autobiography, for me, the best autobiographies Ive read have been written late, late in life. Who knows how Im going to feel? Maybe Ill be a Laissez-faire capitalist in 40 years. [Laughs] I doubt it.
Ive written three essays for this new record that will be in the record and Im trying to get them published somewhere. Maybe Huffington Post will pick them up; essays about the War on Terror, the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty. Im a bit of a perfectionist and I have a lot of compulsive tendencies. I kind of feel like I have to read every 40 zillion books in the world before I actually write one. There are a lot of pieces Ive been working on and if you take the time to read these essays in the new record, youd be stoked. I know I can put words together as good as the next guy, so its exciting prospect in the future.
Being touched by a book is an incredible thing. Youre time traveling. Thats why the Bible to me is crazy and interesting. Ive scrutinized and gone crazy on it. One thing we know for true is that it wasnt written by some sky dictator. [Laughs] But its definitely the most profound and interesting book in the world. Its the most influential book in the world. Just reading old words, itd be crazy to learn Greek and read the original New Testament or learn Hebrew and read the Old Testament. Im just obsessed with how religion has ruined the world, maybe because I grew up Mormon. [Laughs]
Looking deep into what people believe, you have to find a sort of respect for beliefs in general. I think thats how we will find peace in the world. I think its important for people to discuss what they believe and then have an argument and then have a hug after. How important do our opinions have to be in a world of 7 billion people? How deluded have we become?
Imaginary Enemy, I was inspired by a book of essays by this really incredible professor of semiotics in Italy. His name is Umberto Eco. He wrote this book of essays called Inventing the Enemy. Ive been really influenced by Salman Rushdie and both sides of religious beliefs and secular beliefs and how they sometimes clash in the most awful ways.
Being American or embracing American patriotism, if you will, just means being terrified of the rest of the world. Who taught us to hate all these people? Our founding fathers; the idea for the country was to eradicate everyone who was poor and brown. Thats how the war on drugs started. All these policies and prohibition laws came into place to eradicate ethnic cultures. We just need to move on. Any culture that wasnt taking from the Earth was quickly sorted out, if you will.
Who are your personal heroes? Who do you personally look up to?
We put a lot of emphasis on heroes, I guess, but understand that people are people. Even though some of the best people in the world or the most influential people in the world like Gandhi, he has a sordid past if you look deep. Malcolm X is a great revolutionary, but he had one too. Even if you go back to John Brown and the whole revolution of the Civil War, it started through anarchy. People taking the law into their own hands and assassinating slave owners.
I think that our heroes are just as confused as we are and are as just as insecure as we are. Its more important than ever to have the courage and the confidence to be wrong nowadays and to continuously learn from our mistakes from empirical evidence and from the world. If you believe like I believe, were all connected in some way. Humanity is my responsibility. Theres a lot of time to have fun and goof around and theres a lot more time to take things seriously as well. Finding that balance, I think, is whats important.
If I had to pick people, the historical Jesus that we know of, who was a political anarchist and ready to tell people to pick up the sword against the Roman Empire. These type of people who questioned authority and questioned the world we live in and questioned the idea of control, should be heroes. No one came back from the dead and was born out of virgin vagina, all this other crazy nonsense. As humans, we always take things too far because of our own ego. How is it that after I die its nothing? I cant accept that because Im far too important! Its a little sad.
The thing thats great about science and theory is that were constantly looking for the next truth. Things are always up for debate. Things always subject to be disproven.
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