HARD ROCK THE VOTE

The leaders of the freak world convene to discuss why politics matter so much to them, to the nation—and to you.

By Mikael Wood
Photos by Travis Shinn

You might be relieved to know that Dave Grohl has a career plan in place in the event that the bottom suddenly drops out of the whole Foo Fighters thing. “We could totally be the next Rock Star Supernova!” he announces as he poses for Revolver’s camera alongside four of his fellow hard-rock heavy hitters: Serj Tankian of System of a Down, Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows, Davey Havok of AFI, and Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe.

We’ve gathered this most motley crew on a soundstage in North Hollywood to discuss something even bigger (and possibly more important) than music: the world we live in and what’s in store for us as we head into November’s presidential election. Syncing up these guys’ schedules wasn’t easy. Grohl showed up straight from a rehearsal with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones for the Grammys, while snags in Blythe’s cross-country trek from Virginia earned him a half-day’s wait inside Newark International Airport.

But as soon as the members of our newly minted Rock Star Supernova sat down to hash out their ideas on the complicated nature of our current social-political-economic moment, it was great passions—not small details (or hard-rock supergroups)—that came to the fore. Well, Grohl did think of one more hard-rock supergroup as he and the rest of the panel finished up our cover shoot. But it’s an appropriate one: “We’re like fucking Mount Rushmore, dudes.”

REVOLVER Let’s begin by figuring out exactly how important each of you is to the human race. Does a musician or an artist have a responsibility to engage with the politics of the day and to express his or her views?
RANDY BLYTHE To quote the mighty Steve Albini, “It is ridiculous to expect social responsibility from a goddamn punk rocker.”
DAVEY HAVOK I don’t think it’s a responsibility. It’s very positive if someone feels strongly about issues and can voice them. But I think it’s the responsibility of politicians to be involved in politics. That said, I would assume that everyone is here today because we feel that we’re at a time when it’s really important for the sake of our world—not simply of our country—that a lot of the issues at hand be addressed in a way that can be presented to people who do in fact look to us for our opinions.
DAVE GROHL I think you have to look at us not as five musicians but as five American citizens. During the last election I went out and supported John Kerry on the campaign trail not as the guy from the Foo Fighters but as an American citizen concerned about the future of this country. And one of the reasons I did it was because the Bush campaign was using some of our music at their rallies, and I didn’t feel like the songs that they were using made sense in the context of the message he was delivering. I couldn’t stop them from using them; you can ask, but there’s legally nothing really you can do. So I thought, Well, I’ll go out and perform at the Kerry rallies and sing those songs where they seem to make more sense—songs about love and hope and compassion. And while I was out there I was performing to veterans and schoolteachers and factory workers, and nobody fucking knew who the hell I was. But when you sing a song like “Times Like These” or “My Hero,” I think they sort of understood what I was trying to say.
BLYTHE Our drummer made the analogy that music is like a pickup truck. Some people put bumper stickers on it to express their views. That’s what Lamb of God is for us. It’s not a responsibility, but I certainly do like it when people say something about what’s going on instead of vacuous boy-meets-girl bullshit.
SERJ TANKIAN I think our only responsibility is to be true to our own hearts and the inspirations that we have. I’ve always felt that what we do is take whatever’s in the universe and reflect it. At best, we’re skilled presenters. And so I don’t think we have a responsibility beyond what an electrician or a schoolteacher has. I think everyone has the same responsibility as a citizen to be able to speak their minds and help envision the type of world that we want to live in.
GROHL It is a fucking beautiful motivation, though. The music that inspired me to start a band of my own was all a response to the Reagan years, from 1980 to 1984. Every Fourth of July you’d have Dead Kennedys and Jello Biafra fucking staring at the Washington Monument and calling it “the great Klansman in the sky.” On the Fourth of July! On the fucking Mall with 500,000 people! That energy was so amazing; it felt like there was a revolution. And when Bush was put into office, I thought, you know what? This is gonna be great, because there’s gonna be some really good fucking music.

REVOLVER Has that been the case?
GROHL Yes and no.
HAVOK There’s not a lot of artists coming out and speaking politically in regards to the times.
GROHL With something like the Reagan years and the hardcore scene, there wasn’t any careerism. No one was afraid to step out and say something about the state of America. But it seems like these days there’s a lot of people who are afraid to come forth with their personal beliefs out of some fear of retribution.
TANKIAN Maybe in the few years after 9/11 I would agree with you. But today I think it’s a lot more open, and there’s a lot of artists talking about stuff. I’ve seen in the last six or seven years people who’ve gone from supporting Bush to going, “What an asshole.” My uncle and aunt, who always vote Republican, just called me and said they think they’re voting for Obama. I looked at the phone like, “Wow!”

REVOLVER Serj, you said it’s a musician’s job to reflect what’s in the universe. Should music present things the way they are or the way they should be?
TANKIAN It can do both. You can take a Bob Dylan song talking about the plight of the people in that time or you can take “Imagine” by John Lennon, which visualizes some type of better future. They’re both successful.
GROHL I think music can be idealistic. It can definitely document, but I think more than just being a snapshot of what’s going on now, it can inspire people to change.

REVOLVER Is it difficult to express hope in a song without resorting to clichés that have been sort of drained of meaning through overuse?
M. SHADOWS You have to be good with words; you have to be a good musician. That’s why a good song is a good song.
GROHL At the same time, I believe when you’re writing a song you shouldn’t worry about anything like a cliché. You should just fucking say what you wanna say. You should keep from editing yourself as much as possible. Second-guessing and feeling self-conscious about your writing will sometimes keep you from saying what you feel. For years I was afraid to say a lot of things for fear that people would take them the wrong way, and finally I got to the point where I was like, I’m almost 40 years old. I’m gonna be dead in 15 years, so I might as well just say it.
HAVOK It’s a matter of honesty. If you mean it, people can tell.

REVOLVER Does your awareness of the world around you increase with age?
HAVOK Yeah, it probably has a lot to do with mortality. When you’re younger you have this feeling of invincibility, and that’s a different perspective than when you become comfortable with existence and recognize what really is going on.
GROHL When you’re an 18-year-old nihilistic pothead, you’re not really too concerned with the future. Now I have a baby girl, who will outlive me, and I’m not thinking about my future so much as hers. So every single decision I make in my life now has more to do with my daughter than with myself. Who’s gonna be the president? Who’s gonna be taking care of my daughter when I’m gone? That’s a pretty heavy dose of mortality. It’ll change your perspective a lot. I’m seeing the world through her eyes for the first time.

REVOLVER: Has that led you to…
GROHL …Change my life? Entirely. Every single decision I make comes down to that. So when I go to play something like Live Earth and some fucking cynic questions my intentions for being there, I wanna put his teeth down his throat. I’m there for my daughter and her rights and her future and our country that I’m gonna hand to her someday.

REVOLVER Everyone running for president is emphasizing the need for change. Why has that become the buzzword?
HAVOK If you look at the state we’re in now, anyone who’s concerned with the welfare of humanity realizes that we cannot maintain the way we’re living right now—whether that’s a matter of the economy, which is a wreck, or the war, which is clearly an abomination. Nothing’s working. We’re spiraling downward as a nation and as a species. The hard reality of our modern culture is just hitting everybody on all sides.
GROHL We could be doing a lot better.

REVOLVER What’s the primary issue you’re thinking about when deciding who to vote for?
GROHL I have to pick one?
SHADOWS Mine right now is the economy. And I don’t wanna America to be hated by the rest of the world—that’s a very close second.
GROHL That’s a big one. The first time I went on tour in 1987—just a punk-rock kid doing a van tour through Europe—I remember it was so much fun to be an American overseas. You go to Italy and Spain and Holland and France and everybody wanted to know what America was like. Even the most radical fucking punks wanted to see America for themselves; they wanted to know what it was like to live in America. God, how that’s changed in 20 fucking years.

REVOLVER What’s the vibe now?
SHADOWS Real bad. You might get into a fistfight with somebody at this point.
GROHL When I walk into a cafe to order a fucking baguette in Paris, they don’t see my face—they see George Bush’s face. It’s hatred, man.
SHADOWS Our drummer got thrown into jail in Amsterdam for being out of his mind, and they started saying, “We’re gonna send you to your stupid fucking war.” They don’t like us, they don’t like what we’ve done.
TANKIAN We got duped by our own government and put into the place where our interests have been increasingly negative against what our real interests are. That’s what’s really horrible. I didn’t vote for Bush, but the majority of Americans did, so we are responsible. We can’t say that he’s not our president. I take responsibility as an American citizen and say, “Yeah, we were duped.” But what do we do now? That’s the important thing. And to me the strongest issue to imagine is how do we deal with the ending of civilization? It’s not a president that I depend on. A president is not going to reverse trends around the world that are going to make a strong impact on my life. We have the ability collectively to create that change. The accelerated rate of decrease in natural resources compounded by our increasing overpopulation—we can’t proceed this way. It’s scientifically unsustainable for us to be on this planet and live this lifestyle.
HAVOK Who recognizes the inherent flaws in our civilization and who’s going to make steps to address the cracks in that foundation? The overwhelming greed and religious warfare that will destroy the world—who’s going to help address that and move beyond that?

REVOLVER Do you think most people are cool with what’s going on in the world?
HAVOK Globally speaking, I think that people outside America are more aware than Americans. I think when you travel outside the cultural epicenters of the United States, people think things are okay. I don’t know why—maybe because they’re not paying attention or they don’t care?
GROHL I also think this country’s caged in fear. We’re being sold so much doomsday and war and death and murder. “If it bleeds, it leads”—that kind of shit. I think that most people are horrified and they think the end of the world is coming. We just did a tour through the South, and watching television in some of the Southern states and seeing the evangelists and seeing the message of religious hatred and fear that some of those people are placing into people’s minds—it’s so dangerous. And it’s hard for people to imagine change. That’s what’s people are talking about in this election. Sure, both parties are gonna come out and say, “OK, there needs to be change, because shit is fucked up here.” But you know that someone is gonna be flying the war flag, with fear and terrorism and death. “If you don’t look out there’s gonna be a dirty bomb at your doorstep!” And it could work again. That message could win another election, because people are fucking horrified.
HAVOK Fear is such a powerful emotion, especially when you tap into that emotion for your own interest and your interest is, “I wanna make sure I’m making my oil money that all of my friends and family have been making for years and years and years.”
TANKIAN Just to clarify, it’s not because America needs oil from the Middle East. Most of the oil we get is actually not from the Middle East; it’s from South America and Canada and from other resources. It’s about controlling other people’s oil; it’s about strategic control over world politics—that’s why we’re there. Everyone needs that oil, and that’s where it’s at, so if we have some type of control over it, then we are controlling everything. And that kind of psychology, we can’t live like that anymore.
SHADOWS These issues are really complex. When the Twin Towers get bombed, it’s gonna cause fear, so it’s gonna be easier for President Bush to say, “Hey, this could happen again—you just saw it and a bunch of people died.” Americans are proud people, and no one likes that feeling. At the time you had most senators giving Bush the power to go in there and stop terrorism. I was one of those people at the time that was like, Fuck them. I don’t want any of my family members or anyone I know dying. And now the war’s gone wrong—I can admit to that. But there are so many complex issues in all these things we’re talking about. I’m definitely not as one-sided here. I’m a little bit in the middle. I agree with some things and I disagree with some things.

REVOLVER Politicians seem more interested in hammering home a more black-and-white message that doesn’t allow for that kind of complexity.
SHADOWS Of course they do—that’s how politics are. If you’re a Republican, you run with the Republicans all the way down the line; if you’re a Democrat, you run with the Democrats all the way down the line. It took me until a few years ago to break out of that myself. I’m only 26 years old; I’m learning as much as I can. But as you grow older you realize it’s not that cut and dried. I may be a Republican, but I don’t agree with this, this, and this, so I’m not gonna vote for that. I’m gonna vote on this side. You’ve gotta look at every issue head-on and decide for yourself.
BLYTHE I have to agree with you on that, man—there are little gray areas everywhere. We’re in a mess in the Middle East right now, and I believe in the regrettable necessity of a strong military. And John McCain is a man of impeccable military credentials. He did five years in the Hanoi Hilton and he could’ve gotten let out. His father was the top dude in the Pacific theatre in Vietnam; six months after they found out who he was, they were like, “Yo, dude, you can peace.” And he was like, “No.” He was tortured; he can’t even raise his arms above his head to this day.
SHADOWS I don’t like hearing McCain say we could be there for 100 years. That makes me crazy. But at the same time there’s a lot of Republican leanings I have. So someone like me is gonna have to give up some things. Change does sound better at this point.

REVOLVER Do any of the candidates speak to you completely?
TANKIAN They’re all running a beauty pageant. You know what would be great? If their websites had all of their points in specific detail: “This is exactly what I’m gonna do on the war and this is exactly what I’m gonna do on health care.” Nobody does that.

REVOLVER Why not?
TANKIAN Because we elect people based on what we think they’d do after they get elected, not what they really say. We have high hopes for who we elect. And we don’t vote by issues; in the television age we vote by faces.

REVOLVER How much change can we expect the next president to make in four years?
BLYTHE I think it would take a miracle right now to clean up the situation we’re in in the Middle East within a four-year span. It’s fucked. McCain of course is a hawk, and I think there would be a lot of bombs dropped and mass troops sent over there. But we’re in the middle of the desert; these people have been there for thousands of years. We can’t just cruise over there like Archie Bunker: “Hey, it’s all good—America’s here!” I think the economy could be cleaned up a little bit quicker.
HAVOK Certainly if something happened to take our military involvement out of the Middle East, there’s 200 billion dollars a year. There are decisions that can be made that will have a very large impact, that will change the foundation.
GROHL I think people have a hard time imagining that things could get better right now. And I think that if change were initiated it would almost be perpetual; there could be some momentum to it and things could get done. We’re caught in this grip right now, and it almost seems like there’s no way out and there’s no one to help. But it almost doesn’t matter who’s the next president. As long as this one is gone, it’s gonna be this sigh of relief—like, “Let’s just start somewhere.”