At Home With Bad Religion
Words and Photos by Brad Oates

I loathe the greater Los Angeles area. Los Angeles has always been my “are we almost in San Diego yet?” If there is a hell on earth it is the Los Angeles basin. The traffic. The smog. The culture. In this town, everyone is a star, looks like a star, diets like a star and I fall into none of these categories. Okay, so sometimes I binge drink and puke. Does that count?
AAnyways, I’ve been to Los Angeles once before today. I was twelve. My parents, my bro, and me did the whole Universal Studio tourist thing on the way back from San Diego. I saw the big fake mechanical Jaws jump out of the water, saw the Bates Motel from Psycho, and heard some prostitute on the corner of Hollywood & Sunset yell out, “I’ll suck your dick for crack!” I had expected to see movie stars and paparazzi. All I saw was prostitutes and transvestites. They were wearing make-up, acting and all, but a 6 ft gal with a mini-skirt, an Adam’s apple and a boner is not appealing. I buried this all deep in the past and got on a flight to Burbank this morning and now I find myself sitting poolside in the Hollywood Hills at the home of Bad Religion guitarist/Epitaph Founder, Brett Gurewitz. The Los Angeles basin looms amidst a layer of smog in the distance.
“Can I say something that’s just kind of freaking me out? Brad here looks like the double of my best friend in Junior High School whose name was Brad. That’s really bizarre, because you could be his son,” says Gurewitz.
Someone’s son? Body double? What was even more bizarre was the fact that Gurewitz was sitting to my right and my feet were propped up on his sofa. This seemed so Barbara Walters with a Southern California flare. Only a year ago and this would have seemed impossible. Gurewitz hadn’t been a part of Bad Religion since the early 90s.

“Back in 1994, when things became so overwhelming, something had to give. Bad Religion and Epitaph were blowing up at the same time. I had to choose between the two and I chose Epitaph. There’s tons of dirty laundry that we could go over obviously, but in a nutshell that’s why I left. In a nutshell, why I am back, is Epitaph is really established now, we have great people, I feel comfortable with how it works, and so now I am at a time in my life where I can step away from Epitaph and leave it to people I trust, and be able to come back to Bad Religion and what I love, which is writing music,” says Gurewitz.
The Bad Religion story at times reads like a bad VH1 Behind The Music. Yet, unlike all those sad, sordid tales The Bad Religion story is one of triumph and perseverance. Just look at the last few years for the band. They fulfilled their obligations to Atlantic Records and said sayonara. Drummer, Bobby Schayer had to leave the band earlier this year due to unforeseen circumstances involving a torn rotator cuff. Guitarist Brian Baker explains, “It started on our Japanese tour a couple of years ago. He talked to a couple of doctors and it was the usual. One doctor said you’d never play drums again or be able to write your name. Another said that with therapy he’d be fine. After therapy we went out on tour last March and after that tour his doctor said forget it.”
“He can’t play professionally anymore. I am not saying he can’t play drums, but he can’t tour anymore. It was a shock to us, because Brett and I had begun writing the new album, ” adds lead singer, Greg Graffin.
Major label assholes, the loss of a close friend and unbelievable drummer, Gurewitz re-entering the picture and the search for a new drummer, Bad Religion had to dig their way out of the manure pile with a fork once again and they’re still here. Looking slightly out of place sitting across from me is self proclaimed, “drum prodigy” Brooks Wackerman. Stints with Suicidal Tendencies and the Vandals warmed him up for the new gig but he looks slightly less menacing than your average punk rock warrior. He looks like Southern California meets Buddy Holly. He likes to wear sweaters.
“Just write that the drummer is an asshole,” says Wackerman. Rumor mill has it he started jamming with Suicidal Tendencies when he was 10. I bet he got made fun of with a last name like Wackerman.
Okay, so I don’t think Bad Religion just invited me down here to rehash 1980 with them. “We weren’t that good then,” says Graffin who co-founded the band with Gurewitz and bassist Jay Bentley. No. The movement of progression has continued for Bad Religion and, The Process of Belief, something like their gazzilionth release is an album rare in it’s time.
“The process of belief that we acknowledge on this album is a biological process that is common to all humans. You don’t need a religion to tell you what to believe because you have that capacity yourself,” explains Graffin.
What Bad Religion mastered, thousands of bands have followed but you can’t phase their intricate three guitar punk assault or replicate Graffin’s intense voice. These guys have stayed true to their roots while embracing the future—all along the way creating meaningful songs and an open-ended dialogue with an audience thirsty for intellect and salvation in an increasingly vanilla punk market. Graffin explains, “It shows that the music goes beyond the band members. The music has a life of it’s own. The fact that we made that music is personally rewarding, but it’s not that relevant to the discussion.”
“What I think it is, yeah, the music is part of it, but I think the main reason for our longevity is the stuff we write about. It was stuff that was really important to me as a teenager and that’s why I was writing about it, and its still stuff that is on my mind today, and why? Because I never outgrew it. Possibly because the name Bad Religion inspires these themes. We’ve continued to write about the same kind of themes. Challenging the status quo, questioning the belief systems, what are the answers to the ultimate questions, and we incorporate these things in all our songs and these are things teenagers think about. Always has been. That wasn’t calculated when we started a band, like, “Let’s make a band whose name inspires us to write things teenager’s think about.” But the fact is, it’s what we do, and it’s not hypocritical because it’s what we still think about as well. That’s why I think generation after generation, we strike a chord and continue to be relevant and those themes exist on our new record as well as on our first, “How could hell be any worse? They continue to be relevant and I am an old fuck,” says Gurewitz, who isn’t that old of a fuck, but is starting to show wisps of gray amidst his black hair. He likes to drink Diet Coke with lemon and snowboard. He was also the only one during the course of the day to drop trow. I guess photo shoots will do these sort of things to you.
Greg: I want to point out that the themes aren’t teenage themes.
Brett: I disagree. I think these are teenage themes. I think teenagers dare to be concerned with the most important issues and as they grow older they tend to get jaded.
Greg: Let me correct that. I don’t think we do disagree; it just came out wrong. These aren’t limited to teenagers because these are things kids start thinking about young and then most kids go to college, get a job, and have a family and they forget about the big questions and start looking at the immediate things like how am I going to feed these new mouths? How am I going to pay for this apartment? And they forget the big questions. We’ve been lucky enough that we’ve been able to keep hammering on the big questions cause they perplex us everyday and maybe it’s because we haven’t had to have jobs.
Are you going to run for president in 2004?
Greg: I have no political aspirations. I would feel an overwhelming sense of duty if people put me on the ballot though. Then I’d feel like I had to run but until that happens I won’t be spending any money to campaign.
Jay Bentley (bass): Besides he smokes weed, he can’t be the president.
Are you a pothead, Greg?
No. I don’t know what the hell Jay is talking about.