How to Sabotage Your Way to Underground Legend Status
A couple of days ago, on Thursday evening to be exact, I found myself somewhere in Tilburg, standing in a venue that felt like it was holding its breath. The crowd around me was a patchwork of vintage leather jackets, faded band tees, old men in their fifties with long grey hair, and people my age, all emitting an energy that was one part excitement, two parts doubtful anticipation. After a mind-numbing train journey that felt like it crawled through every forgotten corner of the Netherlands - two and a half hours of existential questioning and mild travel-induced madness - I had finally arrived. We were about to see The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Even though the concert wasn't sold out when I checked this morning, the venue felt cramped. Everyone seemed to be swarmed together around the stage, the air that lingered between the audience thick with anticipation. Despite the fact that all of these people have bought tickets to the concert, uncertainty still seems to dance through the air. My friend and I had been building this moment up for weeks, our excitement tempered by a running joke that became our protective charm: "I hope they're still together by showtime." As the stage loomed before us, you could almost cut the tension with a knife. Welcome to the Brian Jonestown Massacre - where the only thing more volatile than the music is the band itself.
It seems almost ironic that I start off my story about the Brian Jonestown Massacre with this tension, this exceeding reputation that seems to stick to the band as a shadow. A shadow that in the past has overclouded the focus on the band's music itself, and if we would pretend to live in the fantasy parallel universe where Anton Newcombe (the bandleader) would read a local amateurish article on his band, I'm sure he would irritatedly denounce that I don't know shit where I'm talking about. And he is probably right. However, this crackling tension—this feeling of waiting for something without quite knowing what, seems to be an integral part of the band and their music (whether they like it or not).
So, where else could I begin?
After all that buildup and all that tension, I have to be truthful and admit that their entrance was pure anti-climax. When the opening act had finished, the crowd collectively seemed to tiptoe on the edge of expectation, waiting…until they just walked in. Anton and the band drifted onto the stage like they were wandering into their own living room, instruments in hand, looking about as interested as someone picking up groceries on a Tuesday afternoon. They didn't so much "enter" as "materialize" - one moment the stage is empty, the next they're just... there. At least until they started playing.
The music dripped into the room, psychedelic guitars swirl like smoke. Some songs were shaded light, others tinted dark. The music bouncing off the walls seemed to descend over the room in a dreamlike haze, trapped between fantasy and disturbance.
This limbo-like state seems to capture the essence of The Brian Jonestown Massacre (although I'm not a music major or musician, so don't come at me pls)—a sound caught between nostalgia and innovation, between controlled chaos and deliberate disorder. While often labeled a psychedelic rock band with heavy 1960s influences, BJM's music has morphed through countless phases and reinventions since its emergence in 1990, blending multiple styles through the 20 albums they brought out.
Even their name seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy as The Brian Jonestown Massacre is a fusion of two references: Brian Jones ( founding member & guitarist of The Rolling Stones), known for his multi-instrument talent introducing diverse influences into their sound (a mission the BJM seems to share); and the Jonestown Massacre, a chilling nod to cult-like devotion and self-destruction— something that appears to be an integral part of the band.
The story of the Brian Jonestown Massacre reads like a cautionary tale of talent versus self-destruction, yet somehow transcends into something more complex. In the first 10 years of BJM's existence, the band seemed to be the perfect textbook example of that 90s lawless wild west rockstar life many of us imagine to be bound to that time. Rough and chaotic, with band members that ran through like a perpetual revolving door, fighting each other (and the audience from time to time), and a whole lot of drugs. When you went to see the BJM, it was almost a dice roll, whether they would experience an insane performance, see how the band members stumbled over the stage in an intoxicated state, or just end up with a bloody nose that night.
Luckily for us (or for me in this case), these stories I am telling you are not solely passed down tales carried over to us by sentimental (or clinical) old roadies and music fanatics. This is all portrayed in the documentary ¨DIG!¨, a film following the band and their frenemies the Dandy Warhols for over seven years (1996-2003). Directed by Ondi Timor, the documentary ¨Dig!¨ tells the tale of the two young rock bands and their once intertwined paths diverging like forked lightning. In a reverse enemies-to-lovers type of beat, the two bands both start out in the early nineties, united by a passion for 60-psychedelic rock music and their mission ¨to get a full-scale revolution going¨.
"1995, this is the year I met Anton and his band the BJM. Anton is the craziest and most talented musician I have ever met. Anton was my friend and my enemy. The greatest inspiration and ultimately the greatest regret." (Courtney Taylor, band leader of the Dandy Warhols).
In those early days, the bands seemed somewhat inseparable, crashing at each other's places, influencing each other's music, and performing together. However, soon, this friendship turns into rivalry when the Dandy Warhols navigate their way out of the Portland clubs to European stages, score record deals, and hit songs whilst they watch their former friends be stuck in the underground scene from an increasingly distant vantage point.
This trajectory almost seems paradoxical as it is no secret that Taylor viewed Anton as the more talented one - a whispered truth that echoes throughout the documentary, spoken by many different voices (although with various levels of respect and disappointment). So why didn't BJM break through beyond its cult status? In an interview with the Boston Globe (1998), Anton states, "I have done a lot to sabotage that¨. Capitol Records ( the same label that scooped up his pals The Dandy Warhols) dangled a seven-album, $2.5 million contract in front of him, but in that, he saw a potential debt that could accumulate, a monster in the making. Whether that was the whole story is anyone's guess. Although various labels initially seemed eager to work with the band, these deals had a habit of vanishing into thin air as quickly as they appeared. Maybe it had something to do with the band's tendency to turn gigs into boxing matches, cut shows short after 30 minutes while stumbling off stage intoxicated by various substances, or break up for the 50th time. Throughout the documentary, a chorus of record labels, managers, ex-band members, and fellow musicians all sing the same tune: BJM was insanely talented but about as manageable as a hurricane.
This left me wondering about the changing idea we have about what being a musician entails and the struggle between staying true to artistic values whilst being bound by the demands of consumerism. As we move forward in time and plunge deeper and deeper into the sinkhole of capitalism, the world around us (and the relations we have with it) seems to reduce to a state of alienated products. Music (and art in the broader sense) is no longer an expression of a self but a product to consume. A phrase that stayed with me ever since I watched the documentary a couple of months ago, a sentence that lingered in my mind and echoed through my thoughts, is that ¨ Anton thinks that success and credibility are mutually exclusive terms. As a musician, you want to reach the biggest audience possible, but as an artist, you want to impact culture.¨ And even though the Brian Jonestown Massacre may be an extreme example in this case, (as I would argue that even though you don't want to be tied to the golden handcuffs of fame, attacking your audience is also not the way to go either), the broader struggle they bring forward is only becoming more and more relevant in a time haunted by cancel culture and social media, a time where being a musician is inescapably intertwined with being a public figure and success seems to be something that is plotted against Adam Smith's graph of demand and supply.
The performance that Thursday night lasted for two and a half hours -two and a half hours of music that felt like both an eternity and a fleeting moment. Even though my friend and I had been jokingly hoping for some classic BJM drama, a hint of their legendary reputation (strictly for journalistic reasons of course), that didn't seem to be on the menu tonight, or at least not for the larger share of the evening. For the first two hours, they seem to play in a state of underlying agreement, if not somewhat stoic (to each other as to the audience), except for the tambourine player (my new spirit animal), Joel Gion, who waltzed over the stage through a dissociative musical cloud. However, this seemed to quickly turn around when the opening act singer joined the band on stage for a song and received enthusiastic applause from the audience. A moment of tension seemed to flicker, and Anton's irritation was clearly visible as he withdrew himself to the back of the stage, a subtle shift that precipitated the band's sudden exit only a few minutes later. They left the stage with the same suddenness as they appeared, walking off without so much as saluting the crowd clustered around the stage -except for one guitarist later returning for a hasty thank you -. Throughout the whole performance, the band seemed to forget that there was an audience in the first place. Only when someone from amid the crowd called for a particular song, the band produced a reaction. The answer given by Anton was drenched with simple honesty; they couldn't make everyone happy.
The performance that night seemed to exhibit the core of the BJM. Rather than putting up a show, they played as if they were jamming in their living room instead of a packed venue. When the band switched or transitioned into another song, the close observer would even catch Anton flipping through the thick lexicon of songs he brought upon the stage, deciding at the moment which songs he wanted to play rather than making a selection beforehand.
When I was speaking with a BJM veteran afterward, he jokingly uttered his disappointment about the fact that the band didn't fight this time. When I asked him, however, if he would have preferred that, or even if there was a secret part of him that had wished to have seen that violate side of the band, the reputation that was undeniably part of their core, he pensively answered that he wouldn't have wanted that, ¨No I came for the music¨, music that he described as some form of a natural force - like a wind or ocean current that carries you along, drifting on the rhythm of the waves, immersive and beyond control. Just like the rest of the audience, he didn't seem to mind that the performance had been cut short. They had come here for the music but understood that this was on Anton's terms.
Perhaps this is the essence of the Brian Jonestown Massacre - a band that defines success on their own terms. They've burned bridges, rejected conventional paths, and created something purely their own. Some argue that they are stuck within the same repressive loop, doomed to the fate of Sisyphus, pushing his rock of suffering forward and forward but never reaching the mountaintop. However, as Camus once said, one must imagine Sisyphus happy, as he finds a kind of freedom in embracing his struggle, transforming what might seem like self-sabotage into a form of pure artistic rebellion. And just as Sisyphus starts at the foot of the hill, again and again, Anton ¨ is exactly where he was before.¨ Courtney Taylor notes at the end of DIG!, ¨but he was never really interested in having a professional career. He just wants to play rock'n'roll.¨
