Brendan Brown reveals all on glasses, geeks and acoustic guitars, and what went down with him and Bruce in his mother’s basement Words: Will Simpson
«I really don’t know how we’ve got the geek tag. but it just seems to follow us around.» he snorts. «It’s probably because I wear glasses. I mean I suppose that makes me a geek in some people’s eyes. It’s me, Buddy Holly, Rivers out of Weezer and Graham Coxon. Actually. Graham Coxon told me once that he invented geek rock. So if anyone’s to blame it’s him.»
Brendan might prefer to pass the buck, but there’s no denying that, to British ears at least, his band are emblematic of a certain kind of Americana we don’t really get over here. We’re talking cheerful, punk-pop songs about high school, being shy and getting beaten up by the jocks, all belted out in an annoying high-pitched whine. Of course, the likes of Weezer. Fountains of Wayne and Ween all got there first, but Brendan trumped them all last year with the ultimate geek rock anthem: Teenage Dirtbag. the touching tale of an Iron Maiden fan who plucks up the courage to ask out the girl of his dreams.
Dirtbag became a worldwide hit and was last seen entering the Singapore Top Five. Not bad for a late twenty-something who should know better, Brendan Brown sighs. «Well sometimes that does cross my mind. I mean, I am 28.»
Doesn’t that make him feel a bit fraudulent then? «Not at all. I mean it’s a story, isn’t it? I’m not actually saying ‘I am a Teenage Dirtbag». I’d say 90 per cent of it is fictional. Just 10 per cent of it is true: the background of it and the fact that I used to be an Iron Maiden fan.»
Wheatus’ self titled debut album is full of similar childhood vignettes. «I like to have the story before I have the song, because the emotion of the story should be the blueprint of how you write the music. That’s the way I do it.»
By his own admission. Brendan had an isolated childhood. «I commuted to a boys school, back and forth everyday on the train to New York City. I think a lot of kids have the same experiences, but when you watch American movies, you get this ‘neighbourhood high-school antics’ kind of vibe. I didn’t know anything about that. I remember a lot of staring out of windows.» Things improved when his mother introduced him to the guitar aged 11 (good son that he is, Brendan credits her on the sleeve of Wheatus.) «She showed me the first song I ever learnt to play, which was My Girl by The Temptations. After that I taught myself. I had lessons here and there, but mostly everything I know I taught myself.»
«Early on I learnt Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing, I remember it being a really big deal. Some Huey Lewis songs too. All that Back to the Future thing was happening then — and Iron Maiden Rime Of the Ancient Mariner.»
The first group to really catch young Brendan’s imagination would be AC/DC. «Angus Young, he’s the man.» he swoons. «He is the reason I first picked up the guitar. He has a lot of energy. Just kicks ass all the time. They don’t ever make a bad record, just great streamlined rock music.»
Brendan would join several bands in the New York State area, none of which came to anything until he came up with the idea for Wheatus. «Wheatus only came about when I started writing songs and recording them on a 4-track in my apartment. I decided then that this would be the first band that I was a singer in. I taught myself how to sing and play at the same time, all those things. Then I bumped into Sil and we started recording the album.
«It took us awhile to get the right line-up. We fired one bass player — he’s the guy who played on the album — and. subsequently, we’ve got Mike in to tour with us, and Mike has turned out to be the right guy for the band. From the start my brother was the drummer. It was important that I could talk to him because I wrote most of the drum parts myself on a drum machine. A lot of the time, if you try to express stuff like that to a drummer egos get in the way. But if you’re talking to your brother it’s a lot easier.»
Brendan writes most of the songs himself and in turn wields the lion’s share of creative control. «We have a rule. Whoever writes the song has to be director of the whole thing. So most of the time if I write a song, I write the bassline and the drums and show the guys how it goes. If they were ever to write a song they would have to do the same.»
Doesn’t this create huge swathes of inter-band friction? No-one, after all, likes being told what to play. «No, it’s actually pretty cool,» Brendan insists. «One of the reasons it’s pretty cool is because we’re producers more than musicians. We produced the record in my mum’s basement by ourselves. So we kind of see things from that producer’s angle, not the whole musicians situation, where the bass player wishes she was the guitarist, the guitarist wishes he was the lead vocalist and the drummer wishes he was the bass player. We don’t have that kind of friction.»
Ma Brown’s pad was chosen for several reasons. «We couldn’t afford an expensive studio,» he admits. «Plus we were reluctant to hand it over to anybody else as far as the production of the record was concerned.»
Ensconced in their makeshift studio they rushed through Wheatus in less than a month. «We had three weeks to deliver the album or else Columbia were going to release the demos that we had been working on up until that point. The benefit of that was that we weren’t able to go over and make things perfect. So it’s a raw-sounding album. There is a certain vibe on there that I don’t think we’ll be able to catch ever again, but on the other hand there’s a lot of other things that I want to change.»
He is thinking of one track in particular, the irksome semi-rapped Punk Ass Bitch.
«It sucks! We’ve never played it live. That is not me singing! That’s not me playing the guitar!»
Punk Ass Bitch, like most of Wheatus’ songs,
is the product of Brendan’s acoustic Martin. «It’s a 00016R. I bought it in Los Angeles. I really like the feel of it. I use a lot of digital signal processing to get the sounds that I get. I don’t use speakers on stage.»
«I’ll always use an acoustic because of the way it feels. Most electrics feel stiff. I can’t get a vibe from them. They’re just solid planks of wood that have very little resonation and very little tone in general,» says Brendan, «Having an acoustic is much easier because you can write on the same guitar you perform on. I used to play electric, but when you write a song on acoustic and transfer it to electric it can sometimes be difficult. Now I never have that problem.»
Live, he gets round the acoustic’s limitations with a small mountain of kit. «I use a lot of stuff. I have about five channels running at the same time. My signal is split five ways. Four of them are stereo — separate stereo pre-amps — and one of them is a clean acoustic sound. With each of the pre-amps I have different patches that I can trigger with the foot pedal and I have two volume expression pedals on the floor so I can change channels and fade in certain effects.»
For the next album the band are planning to return to the basement, but Brendan promises a decisive shift away from nerdy schoolboy reminisces. Do not expect Teenage Dirtbag Part Two. «I don’t want to release a song that sounds anything like it. The next record will be different. I’m not looking to get into the whole love story thing. I want it to be more realistic.
«It’s going to be an album with a wider range. We’re running a lot more sampled stuff and loops. We’re getting songs that have a bit more of a folk base which we will be recording a bit more folkier than on the first record. I guess we’ll be over-accentuating whatever is the defining characteristic of each song. The funky songs will be funkier, the heavy songs will be heavier. Bigger, faster, better, more!»
And don’t expect him to don a baseball cap, tattoos and hurl Wheatus aboard the nu-metal bandwagon. «I try and avoid taking myself too seriously as a lot of other American rock bands are doing now. I can’t stand all those angry rap-rock bands. If you’re talking about being fraudulent you should start with them. This whole heavy, brooding ‘I hate my parents’ vibe, I’ve had enough of it. At the moment it’s the easiest thing to get a record contract in America if you have an attitude problem and you’re a little fucked-up. I find it so boring.»
All well and good, but the downside is being seen as too lightweight, which, with their chirpy songs about teenage life and kerrazy Erasure covers, is an image Wheatus are in danger of being saddled with. Not that Brendan minds. «That’s fine. If people think that of us then that’s alright ‘cos the environment is so serious.»
«We don’t compare ourselves to other people anyway. My idea of a fun day is to watch the lighting crew set up ‘cos I’m fascinated by the gear they use. We’re fascinated by a lot of stuff that other people find boring. We’re kinda gear heads. We don’t get into whole ‘What is the other band doing?’ kind of thing. We’re not friends with many other musicians.»
A recent exception to this rule is Bruce Dickinson, a man whose only brush with the charts in recent years has been, well, his old band being namechecked on Teenage Dirtbag. To cement the Wheatus/Maiden alliance the diminutive vocalist leant his dulcet tones to a new version of Wannabe Gangster with Brendan’s boys. Brendan could hardly believe it.
«There were times when we were sitting in the same room I had to say to myself ‘Yes, this is indeed happening.’ He was so good,» he gushes. «He came in, talked about flying planes, then went in and sang the track for ten minutes, came back and talked to us for another two hours about planes. He’s a wealth of strange information, which makes him a perfect friend of ours.
«And the good thing is he liked Teenage Dirtbag. He gave it the thumbs up.» Sometimes geeky teenage dreams really do come true.
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