SERJ TANKIAN

With the release of his first solo album, Elect the Dead, System of a Down's frontman contemplates a return to nature

By Dan Epstein

To get to Serj Tankian’s house, you have to take a long, winding, and occasionally very narrow road that snakes through the verdant hills of Calabasas, California. It’s a beautiful and peaceful place, with bushy trees and rolling canyons as far as the eye can see, and it seems a world away from the toxic sprawl of nearby Los Angeles.

But like so many once-remote areas of Southern California, Tankian’s secluded neighborhood is beginning to feel the fetid breath of encroaching development on the back of its neck. Nearly three years ago, when Revolver came up here to interview him about System of a Down’s twin albums Mesmerize and Hypnotize, the area seemed to be home to more horses than humans; this time, as our car makes its way past one new building site after another, it’s apparent that Tankian will soon have more company up here than he’d probably prefer.

“Well, what can you do?” he shrugs, sipping iced tea on the couch of his sparsely furnished but comfortable living room. “I mean, it’s the same problem everywhere,” the Beirut-born, Hollywood-raised singer says, speaking in the calm, slightly accented voice that makes him sound half like a college philosophy professor and half like the brainy, wiseass kid who sits in the back of the classroom. “We have an accelerated decrease in natural resources on the planet and an accelerated increase in population. Now, you tell me how that’s gonna be sustainable!”

To Tankian, this profound paradox is emblematic of the impending end of civilization as we know it—a process which, he suspects, may well play out before most of us are even aware that it’s happening. It’s a topic that’s been hanging heavy in his mind since November 2005, when System of a Down won the “Best Alternative Band” statue at the MTV Europe Music Awards, and Tankian—who hadn’t thought to prepare an acceptance speech—simply blurted out, “Civilization is fucking finished. Let’s figure out a way of carrying on together in peace from now on.”

“Then I sat down,” he says, chuckling at the memory of his impromptu outburst. “And I thought, What the fuck did I just say? And why did I say it?”

Having finally given voice to a topic that had obviously been rattling around in his subconscious for awhile, Tankian began actively exploring the concept (and ramifications) of civilization’s end through his songwriting. The theme runs through most of Elect the Dead (Serjical Strike/Reprise), the System singer’s first real solo album—his 2003 release Serart was a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Arto Tunçboyaciyan—most obviously on songs like “Feed Us,” “Honking Antelope,” and the record’s first single, “Empty Walls.” That the record also contains several righteous, System-ic rants against the political and economic status quo (“The Unthinking Majority,” “Money,” “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”) won’t shock anyone, given Tankian’s long history of committed activism. But the fact that Elect the Dead truly sounds so much like a System of a Down record is indeed a surprise—a welcome one for System fans who were severely bummed out by last summer’s announcement that the band would go on “indefinite hiatus” following their headlining appearance on Ozzfest 2006.

“Hiatus” notwithstanding, Tankian clearly has no intention of taking time off in the near future. After playing most of the instruments on Elect the Dead —System’s John Dolmayan and Bryan “Brain” Mantia of Primus/Guns N’ Roses fame split the drum duties—and producing the record himself, he’s currently assembling a band to promote the album. “I can’t tell you the lineup, because we haven’t actually practiced yet,” he says. “Larry [LaLonde] from Primus is definitely one of the guitarists, though.” Expect to see Tankian on the road in late 2007 and much of next year—or at least as long as civilization holds up.

REVOLVER Given your work with Serart and your 2002 book of poetry, Cool Gardens, I was expecting that a Serj Tankian solo album would be more of an “art for art’s sake” type of thing. But it really is a straight-up rock record, isn’t it?

SERJ TANKIAN Yeah, it surprised me too, to be honest! [Laughs] Because when I wrote everything, I wrote it on piano and acoustic guitar, and I didn’t know I was going to arrange it as a rock record. But I felt that the songs wanted the dynamic instruments; it was like, “Yeah, we’re gonna need drums and guitars here.” And with drums and guitars, you’ve got a rock record. But now I’m getting more into scoring, strings and acoustic arrangements, and I’m planning that my next record will be an orchestral, symphonic record, with all acoustic instruments. The last song on the record, “Elect the Dead,” that’s more in the vibe of where I’m going.

REVOLVER So you’re already thinking ahead to the next Serj record, instead of the next System record?

TANKIAN Well, yeah. I’ve written a lot of songs—I’ve got 400 or 500 unreleased songs, from classical pieces to electronic pieces. I could do a whole record of fucked-up obscenity, Frank Zappa–type of pieces, like the song “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”; I have a whole record at least of that kind of stuff. I have a lot of electronic music; I’ve been writing crazy jazz tracks with sampled horns—some of it for films, some of it for licensing to videogames. But to me, this record, Elect the Dead, is the strongest record I’ve ever written in my life. I had the same energy as on the first System record; I’d wake up and the songs wouldn’t leave me alone. They were haunting me every moment, totally dominating my life, in a very positive way.

REVOLVER There has been some speculation that you made this record as a reaction to System guitarist Daron Malakian taking some of the lead vocals on Mesmerize and Hypnotize. Is there any truth to that?

TANKIAN Not really…I welcomed Daron’s vocals on Mesmerize/Hypnotize. I’ve been wanting to do a solo record for a long time, even before the last two records were made. In fact, I told the guys, “Hey guys, after the next two records, I’m gonna take time to do a solo record.” It wasn’t a surprise, really; I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile. The beautiful thing about a partnership with a band is that many people can do many things; this beautiful energy of music and art coming from the universe through us can be distributed and interacted. The tough thing about it is that you can’t get everything that you want to do through that project, and you can’t control it. Even Daron, who brought in a lot of material for Mesmerize/Hypnotize, I’m sure he had a lot more he would’ve liked to bring in. I had a lot of material that I wanted to bring in that I couldn’t bring in; Shavo [Odadjian, System’s bassist] did, as well.
I was talking to a journalist recently who said, “Maybe, in retrospect, you ended up making a record that you wanted System to make.” And that’s possibly true. But to be honest with you, if I sang on a rock song the way that I sing, and the way that I write, there’s going to be a certain similarity with System. If there were no drums and guitars, you’d say, “Oh, it’s the guy from System, but it sounds different.” So it’s the rock thing—if I didn’t make this record rock, you wouldn’t make the comparison. On this record, there’s definitely a new intimacy to my lyrics that I didn’t have as much with System. Because, you know, when you’re working in a partnership, you’re representing more than yourself—you’re representing the band. But when you’re doing a solo record, you’re not representing anyone but yourself.

REVOLVER When you originally told the guys that you were going to make a solo record, were they cool with the idea?

TANKIAN Yeah. I think everyone’s always been cool with the idea of everyone doing their own thing. We’ve never been the kind of band where nobody should do anything outside of the band, where it’s threatening or anything like that. I’ve never been like that, and neither have any of the guys. I’ve always encouraged them to do more stuff; I’ve always thought the more they do outside of the band, the more richness the band will have because of those experiences. And if you’re not trying to make the same music over and over again—which we never were—then you’re going to appreciate and need those extra, outside experiences. I think part of what we did with this “indefinite hiatus” is give each other breathing room to do those things. It’s hard to do a major project between records of a major band. Serart was a project I could do that way, because it was seven days in the studio, a collaboration, a more world/electronic record; I didn’t tour for it, I didn’t even play a show for it, so it was easy to do that between records. But if you want to launch your own primary, strong record, you’re going to need time for that.

REVOLVER Was that the main reason behind the “indefinite hiatus”?

TANKIAN Well, you know, I think we all needed the space to do our own things. And I think if we hadn’t taken a hiatus, the label would be breathing down our necks and wanting us to start the next record. There were a lot of considerations going into it. We’ve never been a corporate band, so we don’t want to go with those kind of corporate schedules. Plus, we’ve been a band for 11 years, and we’ve put out five records. That’s longer than the Beatles, longer than the Doors. [Laughs] Most classic-rock bands weren’t together for that long, though they often put out two records a year in those days. If today’s marketing structure was different, I’d prefer that, to be honest. Jazz guys used to put out four records a year! I think it’s sad that we have to saturate a market with marketing to try and sell a record so many times, instead of [having] more art coming from these artists. You look at Zappa, or Miles Davis, these people who had so much music to give, or someone like John Frusciante, and all these records he’s been putting out. It would be great to be in a situation where that’s the norm, instead of the way it is now.

REVOLVER The end of civilization is a theme that seems to run through most of the album. Can you talk a bit about what that means to you?

TANKIAN It’s a concept that’s been haunting me for a number of years. “History” sounds so big, but it’s only been 10,000 years in this life of millions of years that man, scientifically, has been on this planet. Civilization as we know it started when people went from being hunter-gatherers to settling down and growing crops. At the time, settling down may have been a noble idea—“If we grow crops, we can feed more people”—but the fact that we settled in one spot changed the world. Protecting the resources became important, which led to the growth of villages, city-states, borders, walls, flags, etc. But if you look where our agricultural surplus goes now, it’s not to the hungry; food is used as power.

REVOLVER You mean like denying a country grain shipments as part of an embargo?

TANKIAN Exactly. And that’s the problem, that’s where civilization went wrong—food became a source of power. And now, we are running out of resources, we have an exploding population, and we have global warming and all these other problems. It’s like this giant wall with water gushing out through all these holes, and we’re putting little pins in each of the holes. We know that the wall is going to come crashing down, but we can’t do anything but put little pins in the holes, because we have no idea what to do when that wall comes down—we can’t conceptualize life without the wall. Civilization is like a little city that no one’s been out of; and when that city stops working, we don’t know what to do, because we’ve never been out of that city. All of our modern religions—Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism—were established within this city of civilization, so none of them have the depth of perception of indigenous cultures.

REVOLVER As someone who’s deeply interested in history, is there another period of time in which you would have liked to have lived?

TANKIAN Before history. In prehistory, in indigenous times. I’ve read a lot of Native American history and a lot about the Maori and Aborigines and the Hawaiian Kahunas, and the way that they thought of things was completely different from the way we think of things. It was very nature based; they would hunt and gather things that they needed for themselves. I’m not being completely naïve or utopian in thinking that there was no war or aggression; there was. But primarily, people’s intuition was intact from birth, and as they developed that intuition—whether through suffering or through experience and knowledge—they became more wise. In some ways, I think, they kind of knew why we were here.

REVOLVER So what happened? How did we lose touch with that?

TANKIAN When civilization started, we gave our power to our intellect, to our brains, to the left side of our brains instead of the right—the more creative, more intuitive, more female side, if you will. You had patriarchies starting, and modern religions, and everything for the left mind; it was all about thinking everything instead of intuiting everything. Now you have technological advances galore, yet you don’t know why it’s raining; you have all this technology, yet you don’t know why you’re having a hurricane! And that’s what we’re living in today; we’ve got all these left-brain smarts, but we don’t know why we’re here—we’ve lost it! We’ve forgotten. I say we’ve forgotten, because we were human beings before civilization, and we knew. I’m not saying we can go back, though; I’m a city boy, and if I had to forage and try and find the right food to eat, I’d probably die tomorrow. [Laughs]

REVOLVER If civilization really has reached the breaking point, then where do we go from here?

TANKIAN I think we have to redefine everything, and that’s the key. I don’t know how the future lies, and I don’t pretend to know; but I think we have to say, “Wait a minute, we’re not on the planet because of this reason—we’re on the planet because of this reason.” We need to reframe our lives, reframe what we’re here for, what we’re doing with our lives on a daily basis, our interactions with people, our interactions with spirituality and religion, our interactions with nature. I believe that the biggest problem that we have is a disconnect with nature. Believing that everything is not one—that is the biggest evil in the world. Because if you believe that everything is one, then you don’t want to hit yourself on the head, you know? You’re going to be the guy opening doors, and letting people ahead of you in traffic, and being nice to everyone, and not hurting a fly; if everyone did that, then it would be a better place, a nicer place to live in. People say that there is going to be a separation between good and evil; I say that there is going to be a separation between those that in their true hearts believe that everything is one, and those that don’t.

REVOLVER But it can be difficult to think that way in a world that seems to be getting more harsh and unforgiving by the minute. How do you deal with it?

TANKIAN Well, one way I deal with it is that I always remind myself to convert everything into a personal situation. I’m sitting here with you, and I’m not just talking about my record; I’m talking with a friend, and someone I can learn from—someone I can have a good time with, and someone who can open my mind about something. If I go to a city to tour, I’m not just there to play a show; I want to experience the culture, I want to hit a museum, whatever. I’m trying to grow with the opportunity that I’m given, to do what I do for work.
It’s important for me to not only understand everything with my mind but also to feel it with my heart. If we’re talking about war between two countries, I think about my house as a country, and how I would deal with this other country—this house next to me—and what’s the best way of dealing with that situation. Like, the way to make my house secure is definitely not to have a lot of guns and walls; it’s to make sure that Bill next door likes me, and I like him. And if we’re getting along and having a good time and enjoying each other, I know that he’s not going to climb into my yard and kill my dog. It’s, like, that simple—but it’s also national. I think of things very much that way. I always think that if you let someone in traffic, if you open a door for someone, it creates positive change. It’s awesome, it’s free, and that’s the way to change the world, man!