Anton Newcombe — a multi-instrumentalist musician, producer, and leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre (as well as its only constant member) — has been trying to tell you what was going to happen for a long time. A musical savant, autodidact and polymath, Newcombe's spirit has never been broken despite claims that he's merely an imitator, or the theft of $50,000 worth of his equipment.
Famously unwilling to compromise and notoriously pugnacious when provoked, Newcombe's fierce independence has served him well. He owns all of the publishing for his music, Cobra Studio in his home base of Berlin, and A Recordings, the record label that releases BJM’s music and finances its tours. Because of his tenacity, Newcombe has achieved the musician’s dream of being an independent artist and producer who answers only to their artistic conscience.
As a result, the Brian Jonestown Massacre has released a truly staggering output of 18 studio albums, 14 EPs, five live albums, six compilations, and 18 singles. Newcombe has two records on the calendar: the recently released Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees and The Future Is Your Past slated for 2023.
With the release of Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees, Newcombe has issued a passionate and musically complex call to arms. After more than two years of death and despair, Newcombe is "trying to give comfort and support to the listener in a very matter-of-fact kind of way," he tells GRAMMY.com. "The beast can be overwhelming darkness. It's absolute madness. We are in for a tough ride — have no illusions."
On a summer break ahead of BJM's European tour, GRAMMY.com spoke to the musical firebrand about his creative process, the entertainment industry, what music means to him and why you should always read that contract.
You've been in bands since the '80s and you started the Brian Jonestown Massacre in 1990. Has your approach to your work changed over the decades?
Not really. A perfect example is when things really started to get cooking and every A&R scout and agent in the business, from every division, were trying to sign us, I kept saying, "Just buy me a studio. I’ll just make crazy records." But at a certain point, I said, "I'm the producer,” and got the same thing. You just figure out a different way to do things.
In the '90s, I bought all the band equipment, all the guitars. That was because I wanted the sound to stay the same, no matter who came or went. I'd figured out by my teenage bands that there was no way you can invent or refine some unique sound, and depend on some industry-standard person to execute it.
They’ll make it sound like what they think it should sound like.
That never really worked for me. So I always thought that it was better to take the hit fidelity-wise. But it’s also this whole thing that you're creating audio worlds. If you ask Eric Clapton, he's going to tell you that Robert Johnson is one of his favorite artists. The guy was just singing against a wall in a hotel room with a wire spool recorder. It has nothing to do with the fidelity, but it has to do everything with the world that he's creating, his songcraft, and his singing.
You’re communicating what’s really important about the music.
Some popular music now is just based around the dancers and the lights and the low end — we're just playing music. Even last night, I was singing a song that was important to me. I got a little bit into it. I was closing my eyes and started mumbling and missing the words. I stopped it and apologized and said, I actually want to sing this song better. Because I felt it was important, and everybody was happy.
What are your thoughts on the new albums, Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees and The Future Is Your Past?
I love both the new albums, but it was very hard to mix them. Everything slowed down so much because of COVID, and being busy with all of my projects, I lose perspective and I move on to other things.
All I know is that this music sounds amazing live, I’m looking forward to touring for the next two years and sharing it. The work is as good or better than my best, and that is quite an accomplishment. Furthermore, it is timeless — and that is a feat in and of itself.
What does the title Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees mean to you?
You know the saying "Money doesn't grow on trees?" Neither does moral character, selflessness or courage. [I'm referring to when] you are compelled to do the right thing or you live by some internal code. When you don't shy away from standing up, in the face of adversity, against the man, no matter what that might mean to your fame or prospects. It's doing the right thing.
For some, it might be taking a knee, or even a baton or bullet. That's a fire inside you, and it doesn't grow on trees.
In the song, "It’s About Being Free Really" you sing, "How free could you be, Well I wonder and I want the world to see," and in "Ineffable Mindfuck," you also talk about being "Everywhere that’s free." When you talk about freedom in these songs, does it relate to your insistence on freedom in your career? Do you feel free?<
It is also about being free from fears, the mental chains that bind and limit you. I never thought about moving to Europe mainly because it never occurred to me that I could live anywhere. I don't have a trust fund, but when I found myself with no money, and no idea what to do, it never crossed my mind to give up — you have to jump into the fire, never give up.
I noticed on your Twitter bio that you consider yourself a mixed media artist. So you work in different media?
I do all kinds of things besides graphic arts and sculpture. I've done stuff with Oculus: three-dimensional, virtual fields. Not only do I do soundtracks and compose and produce, play and perform, but I also conceptualize a bunch of stuff and bring it into being. It doesn't matter what it is: designing T-shirts, or posters. But I'm always coming up with ideas. I am creative. [Laughs]
Do you find that it kind of keeps the tap open with creative ideas to continually create?
Yeah, and a good example is with music. I play like 80 instruments; I can pretty much play anything. Not like a virtuoso, but I understand what good examples of things are. All the different ways you play these different instruments. I never really needed any kind of lesson. I understand. I intuitively know what it's about. I'm always working on a bunch of different musical projects.
When you compose for film and television, how is it different from your other work?
On "Masterpiece Theater," they're showing "Annika" now. I did the whole soundtrack with my friend Dot Allison. It was a whole season and we did all the music and the theme song and that's real composing.
In my mind, when you're actually composing, I look at the film, the segment, and I look at the speed of the cinematography, of how it's going, and then identify what the tempo is. I compose just for that length — could be 15 seconds, it could be whatever it is — that fits with the mood of it. I also do symphonic stuff that I am interested in.
Has the music business changed at all?
Absolutely. Every single thing has changed. I think [about] the collective power of AEG and Live Nation: People used to get a 30 percent advance on these shows. They just said, "no, we don't do that anymore." They've just completely eliminated anybody who doesn't have some sort of label or corporate backing [from being able to perform at their venues].
Prices are just going up like crazy. I think the last tour, our bus was like $42,000 for over a month and now it's like over $70,000. But thankfully, we can make all this stuff work, as an independent business.
How did music become an independent business for you?
That's what we call getting all your ducks in a row. You have to have all that stuff figured out. It's a shame people don't know anything about contracts. They don't look and it always boils down to the same kind of song and dance for young artists. Where somebody comes and says "I'm going to make you famous and make you rich." [And they end up] Chewed up, spit out.
They don't even own their song. You'll hear them complain that they only make enough to buy a seven-layer burrito at Taco Bell about twice a year on Spotify or nothing.
Yeah, they get under a penny per play or something?
But this is funny because all the contracts and all that stuff is right out in the open — but people never look. They never chose to read about the music business and the deals.
Some guy could say, "I want to give you a record deal and it's a 50/50 deal." You're like, wow, that sounds fair.” But that guy might be talking about splitting 50/50 and then say [to you] here's your 3 percent because I'm getting 6 percent to sign you up. All this stuff's really simple if you just take the time to learn about the history and business.
Is that what you did?
I love the history. I found it incredibly fascinating that Creedence Clearwater Revival could have so many hits and never make a penny. Then all of a sudden, Fantasy sued the singer, John Fogerty, when he went solo. Because they were so excited about getting a record deal.
When I met Rick Rubin, it was because he was producing Johnny Cash. I wrote this song [for Cash] and it was really weird. Because they were like "John, he wants 100 percent of the publishing. It’s still your song, but we own it. Oh, Anton, you want to keep 100% of your publishing?” It was such a BS story.
They were the same way when it came time to talk about producers for Dig!. I was talking to Cary Woods, and he said, "We're gonna make you bigger than Kurt Cobain, but we want to own all the music in the film." I’m like, you’re crazy, first of all. Second of all, you want to make me like Kurt Cobain? He's dead. I hope you don't try because I'll fight back because that doesn't sound like a good deal. But um, bless his socks.
But really, your job in business is to get the best deal for your team. Nothing personal. Ruthless all the way and that's how they all are. That's why you have to come to terms with the history and the facts.
What are you really concerned with on a day-to-day basis in your work? Was your work affected by the pandemic?
It's really odd. Ninety-nine percent of the stuff that I was playing on this tour is from this last sort of reflecting time that the world had superimposed on it with the pandemic. But making up a song and recording it each day was what I was interested in.
Part of that was because a lot of these events that we keep going through that seem slightly existential. But we're at the point where it's almost like a general shrug [in response].
What was the recording process like when you were recording a song a day? Where did you find inspiration?
I hear things. If I pick up a child’s recorder, and I'm playing, it kind of lends itself to something that I can imagine around it. It provides me with inspiration. The same thing works when I'm playing my 12-strings through the old amps, they just chime out. I can sort of move a cable around something and the minute I hit something, it's every note that I play off that just seems like a song to me because of the way the old instruments have the sound.
It always fascinates me that you can just sit back down at this thing that you've touched a thousand times and, all of a sudden, inspire you with the same note.
Where does the inspiration come from?
Sometimes if I'm mixing vocals, I want to get this overall composite, let’s say on a woman's voice and I’m looking for this overall bossa nova feel. Sometimes I'll just grab two words in that section of the song and just let it loop, so I can get the levels properly. Then you'll discover whole ideas out of that when you just select some area. A lot of songs are just a few notes over and over again for a while. Which is the basis of all sampling of music in popular music.
I read an interview that said that while you're playing, you are composing something else.
Even when I'm playing concerts now, I can write music. My brain can still pick up and write a whole song, something completely different. Sometimes, it's very strange, because then it's a race because you're not free. You can write all the songs you want, but if you can't remember them, it's worthless. [Laughs] That’s why I work every day because you have to document it somehow. Sometimes, if it was an emergency, I have my phone. I have little dictation apps. So I'll just hum it. I've got perfect pitch.
You do have perfect pitch. I remember what happened at the Wiltern: a tech handed you a guitar and in just a second, you knew it wasn’t tuned right.
I can be slightly annoying. We play all these old 12-strings. I try and tell people, trust me, you're gonna prefer three and a half or four minutes of something in tune with all the strings, to something out of tune. I think you're born with that. Even my son has it, you know? He sings in tune and stuff when he is making up his little songs.
At your show, at the Wiltern, you created something of another world, because I didn't notice that time was going by; I was trying to figure out the music. I was staring at the speakers listening to it like it was a physical thing, trying to hear more of it.
When we're playing with that many guitars and the different rhythms, right, with all those strings, it creates these harmonics. It creates these harmonic melodies that aren't even there. Symphonic music does that too. It's also a way of creating melodies, and then you move on. I like to do that too, hint at things or just little tricks even from the drums, from everything. It’s just patterns.
We never know what's going to happen, but what is your plan for the future?
It is my hope that I can continue to create and share music until I die, but there are no guarantees. Most people crap out because they were chewed up by the business or they get really shitty and hang on doing shit music. I want to try my best to push myself to stay real as I grow.