By Steve Tauschke

On the back of their sublime self-titled debut album, LA’s rock renaissance men Black Rebel Motorcycle Club knocked us out with a brief tour here in July. On the eve of the band’s visit, Steve Tauschke spoke with 23-year-old bassist/guitarist/vocalist Robert Turner, on line from Germany.

You’ve been on the road promoting the record for quite a while now. How are you holding up?

"We’ve been going really well, actually. We’ve been doing a lot of the festivals so to do some club dates has been kind of nice. We get off on the clubs shows where everyone is hot and sweaty and pushed up against each other so much they can barely breathe. We get to hide in a veil of smoke and lights and forget about everything else. It’s the greatest thing in the world."

Sounds as though you’re quite focused on stage.

"Yeah, I just think about the music and nothing else, you know. It’s like losing all your other senses, other than your hearing. Sight is usually the hardest one to get rid of because there are so many distractions and diversions. Leaving your senses and getting outside your body a little bit – that’s when it’s really going well. You can’t do it every time but we try to get the crap from the day out of our heads. Whatever’s been f@#*ing with you, it can all disappear."

Are you as dark and brooding as your songs, some of which I notice have drawn comparisons to the Stooges and even The Doors?

"It’s all one and the same to us, how we are as people. We’re not rays of sunshine usually and we not trying to pretend to be some happy pop band that’s going to make everyone feel good. But each one of us tries to keep a bit of optimism and hope in everything. We try to keep a good head about it because the music’s for a lot more people than just us."

I’ve understand the band were heavily inspired by the British shoe-gazing scene of the late 80s.

"Yeah, I used to get lost in bands like Ride; it was an escape. I can’t think of any bands who are doing that now. Most bands are into the garage-punk set up and while I respect it musically, it’s more about style and vanity."

You were very hands-on with regards the album’s production. You obviously felt quite strongly about it.

"We wanted to put something out with good intentions, basically. And right now we’re pretty certain we’re going to make the next record the same way we made the first. We made $100,000 worth of mistakes on the album …well, maybe $100,000 worth of education. We’d been in studios before but we’d never been in a real studio. We just got shook up in the beginning and that cost us time and money. After that we gained our confidence and spent the rest of the time trying to fix what we’d done wrong, and I think we did a really good job of fixing it. This album isn’t perfect but it’s good though!"

I believe your father, who played in 1980s outfit The Call, offered you some advice on dealing with the industry?

"We tried to have him come down as much as we could to see if he had anything to contribute. We had a lot of good people around us, people that we trust who we could bring into the circle. It was also hard because as much as my father had a good take on things, he’s also my dad so I don’t listen as much as I should, as much as any son should.

Haaaa! But his main advice was that nobody knows what the fuck they’re doing and not to trust anybody. There’s a lot of exploitation in the music business and he told us to just trust what feels right for you and what makes sense. Anything else is just getting in the way."

Have you had any clashes with bikie gangs over the name?

"We get motorcycle gangs, usually the Hell’s Angels, coming along to the shows all the time. We were in Brooklyn playing a show just the other day and a gang called the Bridge Runners Motorcycle Club came to the show in force, rode up right in front, walked upstairs and asked what was going on. They have the same letters as us and they even have giant gold belt buckles that read BRMC, which I kind of wanted. From what we were told, they all stood in a straight line up the back with their arms crossed watching the show. But they were really cool. Really nice guys."

What sort of gear do you use on stage?

"We use Ampeg bass and Fender guitars, amps and reverbs. Nick (Jago – drummer) has a Pearl kit. I can’t say too much because me and Pete (Hayes - bassist/ guitarist/vocalist) try to keep a bit of mystery to that. I don’t even know everything he uses but mostly it’s just hollow-bodied guitars, three or four distortion pedals laid on top of each other, including a delay and wah wah. We have a keyboard that drums too. We just stick matchbooks in to hold down the keys for different songs because we don’t want to add a keyboard player to the band."

"Pete also does this thing where he splits the signal using three amps; one a clean sound, one an affected sound and then a third amp which we I can’t really tell you about. But it’s a good trick, it fills out the sound and makes it appear like there are three or four guitar players. We don’t use any DATs or anything. That’s been our rule from the start."

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is out on Virgin.