Ian MacKaye is, without a doubt, one of the most influential characters in punk rock in the United States. Starting around 1980, MacKaye, now 34, built a hugely successful indie label, Dischord, around the District of Columbia punk scene. His two best known bands: Minor Threat, which disbanded in 1983, and Fugazi, which has been going strong for nearly a decade, have each made an indelible mark on the underground music world, musically and politically. With his stubborn refusal to take part in the commercial machinations of the music industry, MacKaye has proven to the next generation of rock bands that it's possible to forge your own path. And dozens of bands have taken MacKaye's and Fugazi's Do-It-Yourself ethic to heart. Fugazi has the clout to demand low door prices and admission for people of all ages, and gets what it wants. In the process they've gained a lot of grateful admiring fans. Their shows sell out on word-of-mouth and Dischord has sold well over a million Fugazi records by mail order without turning greedy (Their latest CD, Red Medicine was $8 ppd). Lest I forget to mention their music, when I first heard their debut vinyl in '88, I knew it was something special. I listened to it every day for months and got Repeater as soon as it hit the stores. Fugazi is so powerful, dynamic and visceral‹you can dig them or not, but you can't ignore their music (well... I guess my parents could). I'll shut the fuck up. This interview took place in early March over the telephone.
Monkey Magnet: Tell us a little bit about growing up in DC? What kinds of music did you grow up on?
Ian: When I was growing up, I was mostly listening to the Beatles and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and that sort of thing. I always listened to records. We lived on this street where college kids lived in group houses so I used to go hang out and listen to their records all the time, The James Gang, whatever, Three-Dog Night, stuff like that. In the early 70s, I really wanted to be in a band and I actually tried to take guitar lessons from this guy who lived on my street. He didnt really know how to play guitar. It was a scam, although he did teach me to play, not the chords, but the notes to "Smoke on the Water" (of course). I only had that one guitar lesson. Then we tried to form bands. We had a band and basically we'd just go out and shoplift toy guitars and then smash them, because we'd seen Woodstock and stuff and we just thought that was the coolest. So actually we never really played music. But it was pretty obvious to me pretty early on that, even though I wanted to be in a band, it wasn't going to be possible because...it was for professionals only. It's not something you were supposed to try at home, apparently. So I got involved with skating, basically. I was always involved with all sorts of little entrepreneurial ideas, like we'd have a little comic-book shop and a little bike shop. We were always up to something, building something, making something, building elaborate go-karts or something like that. Then finally, from all that, we got into doing BMX, which was fun, but pretty expensive, plus there were no real races to speak of around here. From that, we got into skateboarding, which really became the primary focus of my life from age 14 or so until about 18.
MM: When you started out, was it clay wheels?
Ian: When I first skated, they were steel, those Shark boards. That was when I was a little kid. Then when I started getting back into it, around 1974, I guess, we got a board called the Rolling Star, which had some of the first urethane wheels, they were loose-ball [bearings] urethane‹really hard plastic. And it was a plastic deck. Actually that's how I ended up meeting Henry Rollins, or how we became friends, because we were always sort of enemies before that. He grew up just down the street from me. We ended up always skating and hanging out. We formed our own team, a totally unsponsored team, more like a gang or something. We all bought matching shirts, like these mesh black and gold jerseys and we called ourselves "Team Sahara."
MM: Like the desert?
Ian: I can't really remember why we came up with that name, though I think it had something to do with how hot Washington was, although it was actually totally humid. I don't know what the hell we were thinking, but whatever. So me and Henry and all these people were involved, and the more we skated the more we got involved with building ramps and we built whole little wooden skate parks and all that. We had this one place called Cell Block 19, which is an abandoned police station we built all these ramps in. They were really primitive, crudely built ramps, not like the ones you see now. We had one massive one, probably 16 feet wide and 16 feet high and it was completely made out of like scrap wood so it was really...
MM: Dangerous.
Ian: Very Dangerous. And we had this ramp that was a curved piece of wood flushed up against a brick wall. It was only four feet wide, but you could get up on the wall, so these are pretty primitive. We skated for four years and just listened to Ted Nugent all the time. I just loved like, rock. Nugent, I saw him three times and I just loved him. In some ways I thought he was one of the most political guys. I thought he was an animal-rights activist in a way, because he talked about how he didnt buy meat from a store. He only ate the things he killed. And I thought, "Well, that's pretty righteous." And he had a song about the great white buffalo about the buffaloes taking back their land. So I thought he was pretty righteous, plus he was totally straight and his live (shows)... He was just one of the most insane performers, the first guy I ever saw spit on the stage or cuss‹in front of 20,000 people, screaming at people that hes going to suck their fuckin eyeballs out, that kind of thing. So Nugent was definitely the man. We'd listen to Ted Nugent or Cheech and Chong comedy albums, a lot of Monty Python, went to see movies all the damn time. At this point I got into high school. A lot of my friends were sort of getting involved with new wave, or whatever. I'd heard about the Sex Pistols and all that, but a lot of my friends were into the Ramones. David Bowie was quite popular, the Ziggy Stardust era. And also there was a lot of Rocky Horror Picture Show People. And I just kind of ended up finding myself in these immense quarrels with people about like whether Nugent was better than the Ramones or whatever. Eventually, in 1978, my older sister Katie lent me a bunch of records‹Generations Xs first album, a band called the Tuff Darts, the Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bullocks record, The Clashs first album and The Jams first album. And at first listen, I was like, "Huh. This sucks." But I had to go back and listen to it again and I just thought, "Man, this is totally the greatest music," and I really got into punk rock in a hell of a way. And then in January 1979 I saw my first show, which was The Cramps in this completely explosive show where everything got broken, every chair, table and window in the place. People were just in a total frenzy. And for the first time, the music was tenable, it was right there in my face, and I said, this seems right to me. And it was right then and there that I started realizing that I could play music again. Where I realized I could do it myself.
MM: Did you play any instrument then?
Ian: I played piano all along, but in that early period I wanted to be in bands but didnt think I could do it because I wasn't a pro. I totally loved music all along and really wanted to play but it wasn't until punk rock that I thought, "Why not form a band?" Cause it was OK to suck. That was a very liberating realization for me, because other people totally sucked and they were getting up and doing it. I think people totally underestimate the impact of what happened here in the early 80s. You know, for the first time people were just getting on stage and playing, kids were forming bands and writing originals and performing them. They totally took back the music from the industry. It was this really short, totally intense period of time, maybe eight or 10 years. It was then I decided I totally wanted to be in a band. My friend Jeff had played Timpani in the school orchestra, so he was going to play drums. My friend Jordy played guitar along with my friend Mark in a band called Doctor Chaos and the Teenage Lobotomies or something, so I thought I'd just play bass, and I did, and we formed this band called The Slinkies.
MM: How long did that last?
Ian: About three months. Mark had to go to college, so we got another singer named Nathan, and that band was the Teen Idles. We played our first show in December 1979 and we were together about a year, at which point we broke up.
MM: Did you get to play any clubs?
Ian: Yeah, yeah actually we got to play quite a few. Our third gig was with the Bad Brains at this place called Madams Organ, a hippie commune here in Washington that was sort of an art gallery and they were doing punk gigs. It was a really amazing space. There were all these late 70s joints that were really, like small gallery kind of spaces where really extreme, provocative ideas were allowed to be expressed and this was definitely one of these kinds of joints, it was Washingtons version of that. And we played there a bunch. The Bad Brains, of course, at that time, in my opinion, they were the greatest band of all time. And I still think the Bad Brains of that era, 1979-1980, that was one of the best bands that ever existed. We played with them a lot, went to see every show, you know, anything that was vaguely punk rock we'd go see.
MM: Was there a fair amount of that?
Ian: There was quite a bit of shows going on here, yeah. I saw the Cramps, the Clash, the B-52s. I saw the Damned in June of 1979. I saw 999, Stiff Little Fingers, Sham 69, I mean I saw everything I could see. A lot of new wave kind of stuff. I've seen millions of fucking bands. We would just go out every chance we could get to see a band. We'd just go. And at the same time, people were starting to form bands here. In town, we probably played nine or ten different clubs. This was an era where the flier really played an important role, cause the gig was about the band and it wasn't about the venue. Now, here, when I think about shows, I usually just look at the listings in the weekly to see whats playing at one of the two clubs I ever go to. I don't really rely on fliers. But at the time, fliers were everything, because you never knew. We would get banned from virtually like every club we'd play.
MM: Why?
Ian: Contextually, what was going on with punk rock then, the idea of young kids playing really fast, aggressive, loud music, plus being kind of bad guys, tough kids who didnt take a whole lot of shit, for most clubs, that was not at all what they were expecting. It completely just turned them off and they were like, "Never again!" Our first six months, we played One Flight Up‹got banned because there was a fight. We got banned from Scandals because the drummer worked at a drugstore here and they were throwing away a huge case of Carefree chewing gum. So we threw out like thousands of pieces of gum and everyone, of course, chewed it and then ground it into the floor. That on top of the fights that happened at that gig, so we got banned from there. We got banned from Reeks because of fights. Mostly fights were getting us banned.
MM: When did Minor Threat start?
Ian: Well, Teen Idles broke up in November of 1980 and we had saved up money all year from all the gigs. We never split it up. We just kept putting it in a pile. So at the end of the year we had a tape we'd recorded and we decided to put out our own record, so that was Dischord #1. We knew we were going to break up a month before we played our last show, so I'd already written the song Straightedge and the song Stand Up and I had a couple of other songs I had been writing and because we were breaking up I didnt bother giving them to the Teen Idles.
MM: Did you write both the music and the words?
Ian: Yeah. I wrote a lot of the music for the Teen Idles, and a lot of the words. So I felt like, being the bass player and having written most of the lyrics and a lot of the music, I kind of felt like I wanted to sing the songs. I sort of felt like Nathan, although he was a great singer, he just didnt sing the way I wanted him to sing. I knew how I wanted it to sound. And so, when the Teen Idles finally played our last show, Jeff, the drummer, and I found this guy Lyle, who was a really young kid from a band called the Extorts and asked him if he wanted to play with us and he was well into it. At first I played bass with him playing guitar and Jeff drumming, but then we were looking for a bass player and found Brian, who was even younger. They were all these kids who went to this private school called GDS, Georgetown Day School. Teen Idles were all public school kids. We went to Wilson High. These kids were all like the private schools like punk rock scene. But actually, it was a pretty massive scene, because out of that scene came Lyle and Brian, Mike Hampton and Wendel Blow who were in S.O.A., which was Henry Rollins band, and even Guy from Fugazi went to GDS. They were all like best friends, all the GDS punk kids, and we were all the Wilson punk kids. We formed in November of 80 and played our first show in December of 1980. That was Minor Threat. Our first show was December 17 at this house party. It was S.O.A., Minor Threat and the Bad Brains, and I think the Untouchables played that gig too.
MM: So when you started Dischord, it was just to put this thing out. Did you ever imagine it would become what it has?
Ian: No. Initially, we just wanted to put out a record and we thought, "We should put out a single," because we were buying singles all the time. In the time period between when the record came out, which was at the end of the year and when we started working on it, which was probably October‹in that time period so many bands formed: S.O.A., the Untouchables were still together, the early version of Government Issue, this band Youth Brigade was forming... There was so much going on we decided if we ever make any money back from this thing, instead of putting it in our pockets, we'd use it to put out another band. In early 1981, Henry decided he was going to put out an S.O.A. single, so he just put his own money up and put out Dischord #2, which is the S.O.A. record. The money came back from that and from the Teen Idles single and that's when we put out Minor Threats first single, which is Dischord #3. And it goes on and on. The only thing about Dischord at the time is that we'd made a decision to document the punk scene, which at the time was all of our friends, so it kind of meant, "Lets document our friends bands." Now as the years have gone by, the punk scene has gotten way, way bigger than my friends, here. It's so far reaching and there are so many different factions and fractions and so forth, which I think is fine. It's totally cool. But still, our basic tenet is that we document our friends bands. That's why we only put out D.C. stuff.
MM: The way Dischord has obviously changed is that it's gotten much, much bigger as far as money coming in. How has having a really successful label and a lot of money changed your life?
Ian: There's a lot more money coming it, but I live pretty much the same as I've always lived. You really have to come look at the place to understand. (laughs) Were pretty low-key.
MM: It was in your moms house originally, right?
Ian: No. When we started the label I was still living at home so we used that address. We moved to the house I'm sitting in right now in Oct. 1981‹the Dischord house.
MM: The song "Birthday Pony" seems to me like it has to do with Dischord. Am I way off base?
Ian: No. Actually, I think the use of the word "accounts" makes people immediately think about money, and even though it's obvious, I can see why. It's sort of a loaded metaphor that has more to do with people. It's like when you go travel and as you get older and live longer, you meet people and you create new lives, separate lives. ... For me I have a life as the guy who does Dischord, I have a life at the guy in Fugazi, I have a life as the son of my parents, whatever. The only way to maintain any kind of sanity is to try keep these lives separate, so I just keep opening up all these different accounts, but ultimately there's so many of em that I lose control. I start to lose the perception of who I actually am. The "account" reference actually comes from my grandparents. My grandmother made more money than my grandfather did at one point and she was nervous that it would, in some ways, make him feel shitty (this was in the 30s). She was a published mystery writer and he was just a newspaper writer. So she was opening up all these secret accounts to put the money in and then she would clandestinely slip the money into the joint account. Meanwhile, they were traveling all over the place and theyd kept opening accounts everywhere, and they had all these damned accounts and they lost track of them. After they died, they had like 30 different accounts across the country and we don't even know where half of them are. So that just made me think about my own life and how I make all these friendships with people and then go away. Like I'm in a town for one day and I may never go back. Or I might go back four years later and be like, "Oh yeah! I'm in that life again." But most people see the word "accounts" and think it has to do with money, and I guess it does in a weird way.
MM: I was thinking more about how when things get big, it's hard to keep them under control. You don't want them running away from under you.
Ian: Perfectly applicable, absolutely applicable...
MM: Do you have any problems reconciling business with your personal ethics. Do you have to make difficult decisions?
Ian: Sure, on occasion. Mostly it's hard because I work all the fucking time. It's Saturday and I'm working right now. See, I think people don't have any sense of it. People say, "Gee, it must be great to have such a successful label." Yeah, it is, and at the same time, it's eternal. I live and breathe this shit every fucking day, and even in the early days when we were small and didnt have so much money, at least I had to go work. I had to go work somewhere else, so I had some other kind of existence other than walking down to the bottom of my stairs and answering email or whatever I have to goddamn do every fucking day.
MM: Sorry, man. (about all the emails we'd sent)
Ian: Back then there was a lot more free time because there was a lot less to do, but now what I'm finding discouraging is I'm spending a very large amount of time, most of my time on what is generally maintenance.
MM: Yeah, trivial stuff, I know all about it.
Ian: Just maintenance, and that's fuckin bullshit. Just maintaining the organization. Not that I think people who do that are fucked, but as some point I'd like to not have to do that. I'd rather be doing something else. I like to build things, make things, be a part of things that are new. But actually, I am still very enthusiastic about new records we put out, the idea that provocative music, or interesting music or challenging music can still be created and documented. That, for me, is what this label is about, so for me it's totally worthwhile. Also, I have a rather large feeling of responsibility to the many, many people whove invested in this label in one form or another.
MM: Lets talk about Fugazi. A lot of young kids and bands look up to the band and you in particular, a lot of people would consider you a role model. Is that something you think about and are you comfortable with it?
Ian: I'm aware of that. At least, I'm aware that people think that other people think that (laughs). There are occasional people who I run into who are really infatuated with their perception of me.
MM: Do you think that's a false perception?
Ian: False is not the word, but the thing is, they can never know me. They just know their own perception of me. For them, it's like they have a relationship with Ian who's in the band and whose picture is on the record cover or is in interviews they read or whatever, but their relationship is not whole. It's a relationship with their whole take on things, which is legitimate. And it's the same with me. I have a relationship with the artists I follow, whether musicians or writers, and I have to create a character for them, a personality to some degree, to really kind of appreciate them. Most of the time, when I meet people whom I've admired, they're not at all the way I expected them to be. That's not to say they're not admirable. They're just different. So I think, most times I meet people, I think they're a little struck by how I'm a bit different than what theyd expected, but people are only really off base when they're disappointed in me because I'm not as much of a zealot as they are, or something.
MM: Do you see that from time to time?
Ian: Of course. Because I have opinions, and I don't have any real problem sharing them with people, and because I believe in free expression, I think people have mistaken me to be intolerant, but I'm not intolerant. If anything, toleration is what I think is the most important aspect of life, to tolerate other peoples ideas as they have to tolerate mine. I insist they tolerate mine. So, I think people pick up on a few things, as if I sit around all day thinking how people shouldn't be doing one thing or another, which is total fucking nonsense. I've never really been interested in what people shouldn't do. I'm much more interested in what people should do, what they can do. It's about construction. A lot of times, when I speak out against something, it's because I feel like it is subduing peoples creative process and their ability to do things, against things that are holding people back, and I think it's a bunch of fuckin bullshit to be held back by stupid things.
MM: In that Fugazi show review in the first Monkey Magnet, [Spam Boy] was talking about how the Fugazi fans sat around and glared at the funk bands like Dub Narcotic.
Ian: The irony of that, of course, is that those are my best friends. My brother is in the first band. Those are bands I love (laughs). But I also think that [Spam Boy] was looking at too few people, frankly, because I saw people watching. I'm sure there were a few people glaring, but it's like, who cares? If someone didnt like the bands, who gives a fuck? I liked them, and the crowd overall, I think, enjoyed them fine. Also, it's interesting how people read that. When I see a show and everybody is just watching the band, and afterwards the band is like, "That sucked, everyone just stared at us." Well they weren't talking and they weren't walking out. They're just checking it out, man. But I mean, obviously, in my mind, great music demands visceral reaction. It's very rare that I see a band and feel attacked with that kind of strength. Most bands, I feel, are non-committal, and so as an audience member, I'm non-committal. But I like them and definitely watch them. But only a few bands I ever see hit me on such a guttural level that I have to react in a physical manner. Obviously, if you know the bands records it's a lot easier, because you have a relationship with that music already. But if youve never seen a band before and they're just playing and you're just checking em out, there's nothing wrong with that.
MM: What does Fugazi mean?
Ian: It's a Vietnam-era military slang word meaning "fucked-up situation."
MM: The first record came out in what 87, 88?
Ian: Joe, the bass player, and I started playing together in 1986 and we played together with this drummer Colin Sears who was in Dag Nasty. We played together about five to six months and then he went back to Dag Nasty, because they were re-forming. And we asked Brendan, who at the time was in a band called Happy Go Licky, to sit in with us. So he sat in for about six months. At the time, we were totally content just to play in the basement. We weren't really thinking in terms of becoming an active band.
MM: Now that youve put out all these Fugazi records, what are you most proud of?
Ian: (laughing) I have no fuckin idea. The last one was the best in a lot of ways, because it's one of the few records we can listen to without cringing.
MM: Why, because you're sick of the old stuff?
Ian: No. We always felt like the recordings were never good enough. I think we played live so much that we have really intense relationships with all of our songs. Every one of the songs that has ever been released, weve done better versions live.
MM: It's hard to get the live sound in the studio.
Ian: Right. It never was jacked up enough. It wasn't powerful enough. I know the first record is still considered the "classic" one, the best one or whatever. But in a lot of ways I'm just like, "Huh. That's interesting." From my point of view, those songs seem really kind of subdued compared to the way I think they should have been recorded. We couldn't figure out how to record them so it sounded like...us.
MM: Bands can have a recorded sound and a live sound that are both good.
Ian: Absolutely. But you also have to remember that I don't really spend a lot of time listening to my records. The last record, compared to the others, was not rife with tension. We didnt have bad vibes in the studio. We didnt succumb to the pressure. We take our shit seriously and we will work really, really hard. We worked for a year on that record in one shape or another. It took us two weeks to record, but it took us easily a year doing like basement demos (we have an 8-track), and just fucking around with ideas and rewriting. Some of those songs have been rewritten like 100 times before they made it to the fucking record. So it was really satisfying to come out of the studio thinking, "Man, this actually sounds pretty decent."
MM: Youve been together 7-8 years now?
Ian: Our first show was in August of 87.
MM: Do you guys enjoy playing together as much as you used to?
Ian: I think playing live is as great as it ever has been. Writing is a lot more difficult for us, because we always want to keep pushing ourselves and challenging ourselves, but it's really hard because as you get older, things keep pulling you in different directions. Anytime you're involved in a partnership, you end up having to renegotiate. It's a lot of work.
MM: You used to do all these little side projects, like Egg Hunt and Pailhead. Are you still doing anything like that?
Ian: I don't have time. I don't have any fucking time at all to do it. I don't even have time to write songs for Fugazi right now, even though I practice every day. That, to me, is why I think I might need to do some rearrangement. Because I don't play music really, unless I'm practicing, and that's fuckin bullshit. I literally don't have time. I'm booking the band right now. I've got all kinds of stuff over at Dischord.
MM: Couldn't you relinquish some control?
Ian: I have. It's just a lot of work. A lot of stuff I'm doing now is the result of having to take stuff back on because I relinquished it and things got fucked up. I have to fix some stuff. I'm working on it.
MM: Let me ask you about straightedge. Whats your personal view of what it means to be straightedge?
Ian: Well, first off, the song "Straightedge," it was just a song. It wasn't really about being straightedge. When I wrote the song, I was in high school and I was straight and I was being made fun of perpetually by all my friends, because virtually everybody I knew, with the exception of a few tight friends, was just a stoner. They were just dope kids, that was the 70s and everyone was like that. I was just ridiculed for being straight, and it just enraged me to the point where I'd just say, "Fuck You!" You know, this is my life and if I don't want to fuckin get stoned, then that's my business. So I wrote a song about that right to decide what you want to do with your own life and that people have to respect that. So it's ironic to me that, years later, there's this movement that in some ways is extremely fundamental, where it's not about the right for people to decide to do with their own lives. It has more to do with the evils of alcohol or drugs or whatever, which was really not at all what my intention was. If you read the lyrics, I think youll find it's all about personal decision.
MM: I'm aware of that. At the same time, there's been this whole movement in which people kind of..
Ian: Yeah, but as you know, I play no role in that movement. I wrote the song. I coined the phrase (straightedge), but I never was a part of it. I was never down with any of it. On the Out of Step record, I say, "This is not a set of rules." It's like, for me, every interview I've ever done, it's like, "Nope, it's not a movement. It's not about that." And I just stepped off of it, because I'm not into militancy. It just sounds too military, and I'm not down with that.
MM: We interviewed Heckle, this band from New Jersey and they were ripping on the straightedge scene there, saying that people were doing it just to conform. Have you seen much of that?
Ian: I think there's far too much attention being paid to all of this. As silly as kids might be for being straight, I'd also say the guys in Heckle are pretty silly for spending the time making fun of kids who are straight. I mean, who cares? Growing up is like a fucking difficult, scary as shit time. People are just trying to get a leg up, something to hang onto while they try and figure out whats going on. Some kids get into dope, some kids don't. Some kids ride bikes, some read books‹who gives a fuck? Who cares? They're just trying to get through. If anything, I'm glad I wasn't singing a song about being a junkie or whatever, because I feel like a lot more kids can come back from being straight than can come back from being a junkie. It's just a fact. I don't know why people are so concerned with what other people do with their lives, including people who make fun of straightedge kids or straightedge kids who make fun of other people. Who gives a fuck? Live your own damn life and respect other peoples right to do the same.
MM: Lets switch gears. Fugazi has been in a unique position to do things pretty much on their own terms, like establishing price limits on shows and only doing all-ages shows. Do you feel like youve had to sacrifice much to do that?
Ian: I think the only sacrifice really would have been money, because we could have made a lot more money, maybe, had we not sort of stuck to our guns about these things. At the same time, who's to judge. Maybe if we hadnt cared about any of that stuff, we wouldnt have been as interesting a band and people wouldnt have wanted to buy our records in the first place. People tell me that we might as well make T-shirts and all that kind of stuff, and I tell them we didnt do it in the beginning so why should we want to do it now? And they say, well, it doesn't make a difference now. Well, my feeling it that it does fucking make a difference. Maybe it's true that we could have made more money if we hadnt been funny about the low door pricing, but at the same time, maybe that's one of the reasons were so popular, because we are funny about these things.
MM: With the success of Dischord and Minor Threat and so on...
Ian: Relative success.
MM: Anyway, it seems that it opened up a doorway for Fugazi to do things on it's own terms. Do you think it's different for unknown bands. Would they have to sacrifice more?
Ian: It depends on the band.
MM: Lets say you're a young band and you're offered a great tour with some well-known bands, but you know therell be promoters along the way thatll be putting on show where they charge $15 at the door...
Ian: Every band has the power to say no. People always wonder what would happen when the promoter wouldnt [agree to price limits]. Well, we just didnt play. People judge our record by looking at all the things weve been able to accomplish as though we were able to demand our way through all of it. They don't have any idea of how many things weve had to say no to. Every show weve played, weve turned down 20, easily. And weve had incredible offers from labels that most people...I mean, it's just absurd. Million-dollar deals. Millions of dollars. And we just say no, because from our point of view it's just not interesting. The way we look at it is, if the band set out to do something, then stay with it and go all the way. But if a band is just like an independent band that wants to be autonomous and run it's own affairs and do everything on it's own for like seven or eight years and then on the ninth year signs to like, Sony, or something... Whats interesting about that? That's just another fucking loss. My point of view is just see it through. Fuck it. We already know bands can sign to major labels and do that, but we don't see enough examples of bands who don't sign to major labels, who just stick it out and carve out their own existence. And were certainly a band that's well-known. It goes to show. There's bands that I think‹I'm sure they're nice people‹but there's not that much substance to them and they're selling millions of fucking records. It's totally absurd, and it's just proof of what everybody already knew, which is that advertising works. Duh!
MM: You mentioned something in an email about ethical disputes contributing to Minor Threats breakup. Could you elaborate?
Ian: Yeah, we became sort of estranged as a band. When we first started playing, I was 18, Jeff was 18, Lyle was 16 and Brian was 14 or something. From 1980-83, During those first few years, everybody just wanted to be in a band so bad, we didnt really give a fuck. And we quarreled all the damn time. We did not agree on a lot of different things, but most of those were moot points, because they weren't even accessible to us. It wasn't until we started becoming successful that things like having managers or being able to make demands on clubs or signing to labels‹that's the first time any of that had ever come up. Once those things are possible, once peoples ambitions really came into play, the difference in our ambitions were highlighted. So pretty early on, by 1983...I was a really stubborn, underground kind of guy and those guys, their parents were telling them we should have a manager and get a contract and all this kind of stuff, and I was like, fuck that! I'm not interested in doing that, there was no way. My opinion was, "Why change now, that's ridiculous?" It just seemed pretty clear that if the band was to continue, we'd have to change the fundamentals of how we had worked up to that point and it would make the band suffer. I personally think the power of Minor Threat is that we were able to stop it at a time when it was still vital. We didnt just keep using the name and just destroy it. Earlier, I talked about the Bad Brains, and notice how I was being so specific about how it was at a certain point that they were the greatest band. And I have to say it like that, because frankly, in the years since, they've reformed in one form or another and done things and they're no longer the greatest band in the world. The later versions were not as monumental to me, and some people only have a relationship with the Bad Brains from that later period. I might say the name Bad Brains and they might think of some band with a different guy singing, because they had a different guy singing for them other than H.R. But if you talk about Minor Threat, it is clear and distinct what Minor Threat was, and shall always be. It can never change. It's like, a good book has a last page.
MM: Yeah, I hear you. Hey, what exactly are Fugazis conditions for playing a club?
Ian: We just tend to do low door prices, five or six dollars maybe. It depends on the overhead. We just do percentage deals, which means we don't have any guarantee. People would say, "Well you're fucked because you have a guarantee and then force people to do a low door price." That's total nonsense. We do a percentage deal. Nobody loses money on Fugazi shows. In our existence, weve probably done 700 fucking gigs and maybe weve had like 10 that didnt make money, and that was for various odd reasons too tedious to talk about at the moment. It has to be all-ages, of course, because we think music is for everybody. We wouldnt discriminate on somebody for their gender or race any more than we would for their age.
MM: Todd wanted me to ask you a couple questions: A commercial San Jose rock station is playing Fugazi in rotation with Bush and Stone Temple Pilots. How do you feel about commercial radio picking up on Fugazi?
Ian: There's something going on with this. I don't know what it is, man. KROQ started doing it and 91X (both So. Cal stations) or some other station. For some reason "Waiting Room" is in high rotation, which I cannot understand.
MM: A little late.
Ian: (incredulous) Yeah! I mean it's totally bizarre to us. I don't know why all of a sudden it's in rotation. I can't understand that. Am I comfortable with it? Well, it's kind of gross. It's absurd. It has nothing to do with our work. For me, what I hate about those stations and so much of the top 40 stuff is that it's so obviously the result of Madison Avenue people‹song placement, hit-makers, king makers, all that kind of crap. It's like, so many songs are on the radio because someone has placed em there, decided that this is the band were gonna break. There's all sorts of nefarious...
MM: It's prostitution.
Ian: Yeah, and it's sort of disgusting in a way to be in there because it makes it appear as though were also part of that, which I definitely guarantee, we have absolutely have no PR person whatsoever. Like you know. You're a magazine and you emailed me or called me and eventually you got me on the phone.
MM: We wrote you a letter.
Ian: Whatever. But no one called you trying to get me in your magazine. One of the main reasons we stay so far away from Spin and all that it's so obvious that most of the bands...It's no coincidence that every music magazine has the same goddamned artists on them every few months. It's because it's a very concerted effort on the part of that persons PR firm. It's like, "New release, so lets get them on the cover and an interview in every fucking magazine." It's just the machinery of the industry, which is fine. I would never begrudge an industry it's right to exist and propagate itself. That's fine, but it's just not what I do. It's a different line of work and I don't want to be a part of it. I'm much more interested in what people can create and what can be sustained naturally. I like to get somewhere on my own steam. So in one way, I guess it's kind of cool that "Waiting Room" is being played on all these radio stations because...people were asking for it is the only thing I can think of. I don't have any clue why it's being played. I can't stop it anyway, so I don't really give a fuck. I don't pay any attention to it, honestly.
MM: Todd also had a question about Lollapalooza. Could you describe what happens when they approach you every year? Would Fugazi ever consider such an endeavor and what would your conditions be?
Ian: I don't think we'll ever play it. I can't imagine it would ever happen. The first time they asked us, they were nice and said theyd like us to play and I said, well, if you make the ticket price five dollars, let us headline the main stage, we pick the other bands and there's absolutely no corporate sponsorship, then we'll consider it. And they just said like, that's absurd, and I said, "Of course." And I said the same thing every year. Until last year, where they actually said they might consider doing what we said. But at the time, it was a sort of in-between person I was talking to, and I said that was insane. It couldn't be done. It's impossible for them to operate an event that large with a five-dollar ticket. And the only way they possibly would do it would be for rep, or something like that. Something to get some kind of credibility through us, and we'll be goddamned if we'd trade our credibility to somebody. Again, I don't think Lollapalooza should be blown up and gone to hell. I just think it is what it is. It's a legitimate event. I don't have any beef with that. But we play Fugazi shows and were just not a part of that whole other thing.
MM: Right.
Ian: I got to tell you. I think we just always want to be on our own and be with our friends. That's where we came from. We started playing music in the band, all of us, all of our early punk rock experiences were all about our own community, and it was completely ignored by, and had nothing to do with the majors. We were as close to the rock industry as we were to the wrestling industry. It just didnt have anything to fucking do with us. So now, years later, why should we get started with them now? I don't see any reason to. I don't want to. (laughs) I'm not trying to stop anybody else from doing it. That's fine. The people who want to, I think it's good that they do because it leaves room for the people who don't. Nothing worse than a punk rocker that doesn't want to be one and is just embittered about it. That's a fuckin bore.
MM: Why don't we just leave it at that, Ian.
Ian: Cool, man!
MM: Thanks a lot!