Barenaked Ladies — The Stunts They Pull

By PAUL CASHMERE, Undercover, Australia, March 1999.

They're the kind of guys who laugh at a funeral. Can't understand, well you soon will.

And so we meet up with Barenaked Ladies. Sorry, I'm corrected... Canada's Barenaked Ladies. Sorry, corrected again... the triple Juno Award winning Canadian band, Barenaked Ladies.

It's refreshing to come across a band that can laugh at themselves and don't take fame all that seriously.

Barenaked Ladies are Canada's #1 band.

While in Australia, they picked up three Juno awards, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy, via satellite.

Undercover Executive Producer Paul Cashmere caught up with guitarist and singer Ed Robertson.

Paul:

Congratulation's on the Juno's. Tell us about the awards that Celine Dion didn't get?

Ed:

Yeah, we picked up three Juno's this year which is the Canadian Equivalent of the Grammy's. It's been great for us because we have been kind of out of the fold of Canadian music for a while. We've been really concentrating our efforts in America, here in Australia and overseas in general. This is the most we've ever won. We won one back in '92 and we've nominated for one other one. It's nice to be welcomed back home.

Paul:

Well that's the niceties out of the way. Now we have to chastise you for making fun of our animals at your gig.

Ed:

You guys have the strangest looking creatures here. The thing is, they don't look different, they look assembled from North American creatures. I recognise various features of them like colouring, front legs, hind quarters. They seem to be like one of those page flipping books where you put a different head on a body. I'm a big fan of the echidna.

Paul:

One of the lines from one of your songs talks about "getting drunk in a pub with some Australians." I take it you have fulfilled your dream now?

Ed:

We meet more Australians around the world than any other nationality. You are a touring bunch. The point in that song was that you don't need to go to Germany to get drunk with Australians. You can go to Australia or stay right at home. They'll be there too.

Paul:

Another marvellous line "Oh Alcohol, I still drink to your health".

Ed:

I like that song because it kind of walks the line. It never really says where we sit on the matter. It's such a touchy subject. It's nice to celebrate the responsible abandonment of alcohol once in a while.

Paul:

Let's get into a bit of a history lesson here, going back to your good friend "Gordon". That album is considered a bit of a classic in Canada now.

Ed:

It's one of the biggest selling band records in Canada which is kind of insane to me. It was a huge record for us. It propelled us into the forefront of Canadian music. It made for a hectic couple of years. It was 9 times platinum at home.

Paul:

Didn't "If I Had A Million Dollars" come from that album? Obviously you have a million dollars now.

Ed:

Um, no! We are still fledging rock stars. We haven't got the giant cheques to show yet.

Paul:

After Gordon came along and went nine times platinum, what effect did that have on the bands egos?

Ed:

It's tough. It's a strange adjustment period. Especially when you are used to being underdogs and you are battling out of being an independent band. Then all of a sudden you are that band that you've been jealous of for years. It's strange. You start to wonder "am I that guy that everybody's screaming at", "am I that guy I used to be in the band". You start to understand you have become someone new. It really does throw you for a loop. It's kind of a nice preparation for what we are seeing now. I think what we are seeing now is effecting us in a much more positive way because we've been through it before.

Paul:

Gordon was successful and the new album was successful but there was a bit of a lull in the middle there.

Ed:

Our second album Led Zeppelin 4 didn't do so well. I think that was because of weak songs like "Stairway To Heaven", "Rock And Roll". It just didn't have the same punch.

Paul:

Was there ever a time that you actually broke up?

Ed:

No. There wasn't ever a moment where we considered it really. There were some really dark times for the band. We had a really ugly falling out with our first manager, a member left the band. There were tough times when we knew the band was really good and that it was worth doing but why is all this stuff falling apart right now. We just put our noses to the grindstone and right from that low point around making "Born On A Pirate Ship", from that point on we just really bared down and things have been uphill ever since.

Paul:

Let me throw a purely fictitious scenario at you and tell me how the band would react. You are playing a gig in New York and one of the band members wives suddenly goes into labour midway through a gig. What would the band do?

Ed:

It's happened. It was actually in Atlanta. It was early in the day we found our Steve's wife went into labour so we bid him goodbye. He just popped on a plane and went home. And then we thought let's just do the gig anyway and see what happens. Steve sings three quarters of the songs, but I sing as well a number of the songs that people would recognise. Then we had some of crew guys come up and start playing with us, and then we started pulling people out of the audience to sing Steve's parts. We just had a good time with it. I think if people just wanted to hear the record they would stay at home. I think all of those people got something really special that night even if Steve wasn't there.

Paul:

The band does a lot of name dropping in it's lyrics. You have the song "Be My Yoko Ono". Has she ever made contact with you?

Ed:

I have never met her personally but I've heard her talk about us in interviews. I know Sean. He came out to a couple of gigs we did in New York and he was really cool. The name dropping is ... well, they are modern day reference points. There are literary references. As Sting would refer to to Shakespeare, I refer to Sting and I am alluding to the Shakespearian.

Paul:

That song "Be My Yoko Ono" mentions the word "barenaked". Is that where the bands name came from?

Ed:

We actually tucked it in there as a reference to ourselves but we were BNL before that. We didn't ever intend to be a band when we named the band, we were just having fun. We started recording tapes in our basement originally to amuse ourselves. Then we started handing them our to friends and we'd tell them "we have this band called Barenaked Ladies". They would say "are you doing any gigs" and we would say "no, we'll never do gigs". We just starting having such a good time with it. We just started writing songs and having such a good time with it that we became a band called Barenaked Ladies.

Paul:

More name dropping. You have a song titled "Brian Wilson"?

Ed:

Yeah, what a guy. It's also a strange story. That's what that song is about, it's just trying to identify with that kind of scrutiny and that kind of pressure. Steve was 18 when he wrote that song. It felt like "I'm 18 and sometimes I don't feel like getting out of bed". It feels like you are Brian Wilson.

Paul:

The song that knocks me out is "One Week". How do you remember those lyrics?

Ed:

I don't know. Knock on wood, I haven't screwed them up yet. I have the distinct advantage of having written them in the first place. Steve and I do a lot of dance hall style improv rap and that's how that song was written. When I first wrote it I couldn't remember it because it just came of the top of my head. We recorded it and it was just kind of nonsense. Then I just had to relearn it.

Paul:

And do you laugh at funerals?

Ed:

I do. I tend to find the lighter side of everything. I had a lot of pretty dark situations in my own past, losing relatives, losing siblings. Sometimes you have to realise you are not immune. We were on the top of our career, we were touring in England, we had the biggest record in Canada and we were on our way home to play to 30,000 people in Vancouver and then off to Spain and I got a call at the airport to say my brother had been killed in a motor cycle accident. I had to fly home, I was in such a daze, I was thinking "I don't need to go to my brother's funeral, I'm a rock star dammit". It was such a weird moment and eventually you just have to put it into perspective and for me it's always been humour that makes sense of those things. He died in a motor cycle accident and the priest, a 60 year old priest actually quoted Lynard Skynard in my brother's eulogy. I couldn't believe it. I had to laugh. He said "a passing like this reminds me of the words of rock group the Leonard Skynard. He said 'If I leave here tomorrow will you remember me..." I turn around to Tyler and we are just both snickering and couldn't help but laugh.

Paul:

"It's All Been Done". That's a statement in itself. Has it all been done?

Ed:

I think it's all been done but that's no reason to not enjoy it all over again. I think there are various archetypes. There are only six plays, there are only eight songs, whatever it is, it's not going to stop me enjoying the new variations on those themes. The beauty of the music of the society that we live in now is all the mixture of the various kinds of music. I would like to see more and more elements embraced of different kinds of music.

Paul:

Well you guys do everything from Elaine Paige's "Memory" to The Offspring's "Pretty Fly For A White Guy" in concert.

Ed:

We enjoy music and just because they are not our songs doesn't mean we are not going to do them on stage.