LAST NIGHT A RECORD
CHANGED MY LIFE
Anton Newcombe
The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s leader screams for PiL’s Second Edition (Virgin, 1980).
Back in the early ’80s, there was this shop in Newport Beach called Peer Records. The guys that worked there ended up being in The Abecedarians, the only American band on Factory Records! These people were in the know, and they had an import section that was crazy. A lot of that stuff you judged by the covers, and because you’d paid all your pocket money, you learned to like it no matter what it was. So I bought PiL,
Second Edition
– people’s melting faces, that was enough for me. I put it on and it was absolutely immediate. Poptones – Keith Levene’s guitar technique is like a go-to for me. I grew up on the ocean, and there’s this thing that happens with big waves, you get tumbled under the surf, and you’re swimming and somersaulting, trying to reach the surface, and instead you hit the bottom because you’ve been swimming down because you’re disoriented. It has that same sort of tumbling effect, like in a dream. When I’m playing bass either I’m playing like Paul McCartney or Jah Wobble. The drums are mad, switching up from polyrhythms to disco to Krautrock. It was like a school education. I grew up listening to ’60s music, but to me post-punk is very psychedelic. The only thing I’m not influenced by in a musical sense is the vocals, but that’s part of it too. You can’t emulate John Lydon, you have to grow up to be yourself.