HomeBackINTERVIEW WITH GUY PICCIOTTO (fugazi) by Wojciech Kozielski (April '99)

how different is fugazi now compared to fugazi circa '89? Do you think the idea of the band has changed or developed over the years?

sometimes when you are part of something it is not always very easy to perceive the degree of change that is going on - that kind of thing might really be easier to pick up on from an outsider's point of view. From within the cocoon of being in the band it sometimes doesn't feel like very much has changed at all. we basically still run our band the same way we always did - we keep our focus very tight on the work at hand. our primary
objectives have always been to make music and to maintain our autonomy and that hasn't changed. along the way we have been faced with practical circumstances that we have had to deal with (like for example things like the band becoming more popular, or our drummer brendan becoming a father) but we have just adapted to them and continued on with our trajectory.

in the "end hits" period the band seems consequently developing the style you invented in late 80's. but on the other hand it's much more avantgarde / experimental orientated than your early releases. are you satisfied with the sound you reach on the "end hits"? are you going to follow this direction with your next record?

we never self-consciously try to map out any particular direction. we just play together and let the music develop of its own accord. when the band started both brendan and I were later additions to the working unit of joe and ian who had been playing together for awhile, so the first batch of
songs were primarily written by ian and everyone else just kind of learned them. as we all kind of coalesced into more of a real unit, it got a lot more democratic and everyone started contributing ideas. so songwriting-wise there is a real split between the "13 songs" era and everything that followed in that the ideas were coming more from 4 perspectives as opposed
to one. I don't think a lot of people realize how overlapped a lot of our music writing is with brendan contributing bass lines and guitar parts as often as any of the rest of us. every piece of music gets the gangland initiation in which it gets kicked around by all four of us and if it survives the pounding it might make it into a song. so, "end hits" wasn't deliberately an attempt to be more experimental and it certainly wasn't a
reaction against what we've done before- it seems to me more like each record builds on ideas from the one before it and pushes those ideas just a little further. for a long time i think we've been very comfortable playing live but in the studio we would get kind of tight and constricted. a lot of
that had to do with our inexperience in the studio and also because we missed the energy of having an audience to feed off of. more recently i think we've been able to kind of overcome that stiffness- we produce the records ourselves now because we feel more confident with all the technical equipment so as a result we can get a lot wilder with it. how the next record
will sound is anyone's guess - we'll just keep pushing ourselves. when we feel like we don't have anymore discoveries to make that is when we will end the band.

tell us something more about the idea of making the movie "instrument"? are you satisfied with the final result?

"instrument" kind of came together accidentally. we did not initially set out to make a movie. jem cohen, (the guy who directed the film and was responsible for shooting most of it), had been filming the band since it began just out of habit not intentionally with a particular idea in mind. at a certain point we realized he had a ton of footage stockpiled and going
through it all one night we realized it was a good starting point for a film documenting aspects of the band. at that point we started to conceive of it as a project and jem started adding other kinds of footage besides just concert stuff. he came on tour with us, did interviews with kids at shows, raided our video archives for footage shot by other people etc. over time,
after much editing , the addition of soundtrack elements etc., it assumed the shape it is today. as it stands now i think we are pretty well satisfied with it. it is very hard to tell the complete story of any band but i think jem managed to capture a great deal of the experience on film. one of the things i am most happy with is the way we were able to intertwine soundtrack
music written by the band with some of the silent images shot by jem.

do you still relate your music to the terms like punkrock, "diy" or underground? what those terms actually means to you after being involved in the scene since early 80's?

certainly for us personally those words still have an enormous amount of power but we recognize that in many ways those words have been divorced from any specific meanings as they became more useful in the marketplace as tools of the marketers of mass culture. we have no real loyalty to words per say as they have such malleable meanings and it is not that important a battle
for us to preserve terms like "punk rock" or "underground" as signifiers for what we do or as labels for our music. we definitely still feel very much aligned with the ideas that we recognize as associated with punk rock , diy and underground but it is not that important to us if that perception is not
shared. to us those ideals of autonomy, resistance to mass culture, and creative anger are all very much part of what we do - the labels are of not much consequence.

ian said once "the band is the message and I've spent 10 years working on that". is there any general idea you'd like to promote through your music? or are you rather leaving the interpretation up to listener?

i don't think any bands exist to just promote or sponsor any specific or general idea. we don't limit our attack to just one or two slogans – like ian said the band is the message and people's experience of the band is what it is all about. so its all of the songs, the records, the shows put together that add up to the sum of our creative outlet and the various slants of our expression. that is our end of the bargain and if anyone out
there wants to interact with that output then they complete the circuit by putting their energy into it.

does the "long distance runner" lyrics are somehow related to the band and your attitude? fugazi has just turned 11...

i don't think that song was written necessarily with fugazi in mind but i guess in some ways it could be an appropriate interpretation. we have been in it for the long haul - certainly much longer than anyone in the band could ever have expected. and like i said earlier i think we'll just keep trudging along until we find we have no more ideas and nothing left to say.

what we can expect from fugazi in the nearest future?

right now we have two releases coming out back to back - the "instrument" 2 hour video/movie and following that a soundtrack album of a lot of the music from the film. since our drummer brendan is now the father of a little boy named asa we can't be gone from home that much at a time so we are planning
a series of short tours this year. starting with the UK in april, we hope to tour europe more extensively throughout the rest of the year. poland will hopefully be on the itinerary though nothing has been nailed down yet. in addition we are in the middle of writing a whole bunch of new music so at
some point we will be putting together a new album. people interested in finding out about the band, our tour schedules and release dates should visit our web page at http://www.southern.com/southern/band/FUGAZ/index.html. 

fugazi seems to be one of the most important bands of 90's and in some ways influenced many artists and many people. are you satisfied with response you're getting?

yeah- i think we're totally satisfied but i think we've never really based what we do on the response that it generates. it's always great to feel reciprocal energy coming off a crowd when we play and its nice to hear from people who have enjoyed the music or been inspired by it but ultimately music is made in kind of an isolated sphere. we work hard to please ourselves and then if that happens to work for other people all the better.

you and ian are well known producers, brendan is playing guitar in all scars. how your other projects co-works with things you're doing in the band?

in the past we've usually been so busy with fugazi that it has been hard for us to participate in other projects. now that we no longer tour quite as maniacally as we once did its been a lot easier for us to take on other interests and pursuits. joe has really gotten much more serious with his record label called tolotta records and he is about to release an amazing album by the group spirit caravan from dc. brendan is involved in some
production work on the new make-up album as well as composing soundtrack music for a television documentary that deals with engineering (specifically the building of bridges and tunnels). ian is always mostly occupied with managing the band as well as running the dischord label but he also recently did some production work on the new lungfish album which will be out this
fall. as for me i still try to do some production work now and then – the most recent being a tape with a band called deep lust. i also have a label called peterbilt and am working on a co-release with dischord of an old band i was in called one last wish. so even though i think to some degree we may miss the days of constant touring, its nice to be able to do all this other stuff as well.

Interview by Wojciech Kozielski for the Polish magazine BRUM.
Thanks Wojtek for sharing it with  UTOPIA .