Interviews: Jade Puget (AFI)

As the band recently geared up for the release of their long-awaited new album, Decemberunderground. I had a chance to speak with main songwriter Jade Puget and pick his brain about the new album, the past and the future.

Later this week, Punknews.org will run the second AFI interview, with bassist Hunter Burgan.
You can click Read More to check out the interview.

How’s everything been going in the prep for the record?

Good, just busy busy. 
Every second we’re running somewhere to do something.

With the first major label release,  everyone was kind of not really sure
where things were going to go, but with this one it seems like there is a lot
more riding on it. 

But since then we just kind of do the same things, and you
can’t let that kind of pressure get to you, worrying about what your record’s
going to do.  It’s going to do what
it’s going to do.  You’ve just got
to have the right songs and go on tour and let it do what it does. I sounded
like Ray for a second. (laughs)

Yeah I mean it’s just interesting because you guys kept a
relatively low profile over the past couple of years -

For sure.

And usually when a band reaches the point that you guys
kind of did with your last one there’s gossip and feuds and all that, but it
seems like you guys kept very close to the ground it seems. 

We really didn’t do anything except work on the record for
two years basically.  So we weren’t
out there trying to drum up some press or do interviews or anything like that.
We were just kind of like totally concentrating on the record. 

Right right, and I think you mentioned the Billboard that
you did that you guys wrote a hundred songs for this one.

Yes.

We can just keep doing what we do no matter how the
mainstream views us. We know that we’ll always have at least some fan base
that’s out there to follow us.

How did you kind of boil it down to the ones you ended up
with?

Just, you’ve got to be really harsh on yourself and not hold
on to some song because you wrote it or you really like a certain part.  You have to be like - this song
just isn’t as good as this other one, cause you know that you have to outdo
your last record and that just involves really going through a lot of material
and just cutting anything that isn’t superior.

Right, and as far as the songwriting process, has it
pretty much been the same for the last couple of albums? 

Yeah the last probably four albums.

You guys have been around for a number of years, I
remember seeing AFI a good ten years ago, with Good Riddance in Toronto here.

That was even before my time. 

You came in right after that tour?

I joined in 1998.

There’s been a lot of history with the band.  And I’m just wondering how does that
kind of lead into how you feel about what you do and kind of influence the day
to day?

In some ways its, in many ways its positive because we have
this fantastic fan base that - a lot of these people have been there for
a long time and you know that they’re going to support you in what you do. 

If you’re a new band that kind of blows up out of nowhere
you can’t really be confident that those people really like your band; or just
like your band because they saw you on MTV you know?

We can just keep doing what we do no matter how the
mainstream views us. We know that we’ll always have at least some fan base
that’s out there to follow us.
There’s been that increasing fanbase pretty much
throughout even when you were on Nitro, you were pretty big within the scene
and then with the last album it kind of reached almost mainstream level but
never - I don’t know it’s never been that kind of gossipy situation with
starlets and stuff.

But we can pretty much sit down and do
whatever we want, and that can be an AFI song.  Whether it be electronic or it be piano or an acoustic
guitar or metal or anything, which is kind of nice because it just allows you
to explore so many different areas.

I think in some ways it seems to me that that whole thing
has kind of grown more in the last few years since our last record. Where like
bands from kind of the scene have entered that kind of tabloidy kind of level.

It doesn’t seem like that was, back in when Rancid was big
or the Offspring; there was never any of that kind of gossipy stuff going on
with those bands either. 

I always thought that was because you guys and those
bands came up in a real underground scene in a much more real sense; AFI wasn’t
your first band, you had Loose Change right?

And a hardcore band called Redemption 87.

Of course, I should have remembered that one.  I hear from people that you guys are
still very present in shows around the hometown and stuff like that.  How do you guys imagine that you guys
are going to run things in the future, do you ever think of starting a label or
kind of - since you’re all very in touch with this stuff?

When we signed to DreamWorks they offered us a label.  But we were like - first of all
we were so busy with that record and second of all we knew that the four of us
are so - our tastes in music are so disparate that there was no way we
could ever agree on a single band y’know?

What we listen to is so drastically different that we knew
there was just no way we could sign someone and have all four of us agree on
it, so we kind of just didn’t take them up on their offer.

The new record is pretty dramatically different and diverse
even compared to the last one which wasn’t exactly a linear,
every-song-sounds-the-same album either. 

Yes

How do you guys define what you think of as an AFI song?

There really isn’t, I really don’t, which is kind of
liberating, just to be able to just sit down and write anything. I mean there’s
some things we probably wouldn’t do like have a ska part or a rap part.  But we can pretty much sit down and do
whatever we want, and that can be an AFI song.  Whether it be electronic or it be piano or an acoustic
guitar or metal or anything, which is kind of nice because it just allows you
to explore so many different areas. 

As far as the lyrical focus, is that pretty much all
Davey right now?

Yeah it always has been, y’know. When I joined the band that
was always kind of like understood, that that’s his kind of domain. The music
is my domain. 

When you joined the band it kind of almost kicked off a
major defining of AFI sound. 
Around that time I think the older stuff, which was when I started listening
to it, was much more Nitro-ish at the time, y’know like you guys could play a
bill with Sick of It All or Guttermouth or something, but over time, and a lot
of people kind of attribute it to your joining - the sound has evolved
dramatically.
 
Do you think you actually have a role in that or it was
just one of those coincidences?

When I joined which was the first record that everyone else
bought because it was a different songwriter coming into the band, so of course
its going to sound completely different. Dave and I working together, it just
kind of - that new sound which was Black Sails that didn’t sound like
anything that AFI had done, that was just Dave and I coming together as
songwriters and that was just the sound that defined modern-day AFI.

Just to go in a different direction, you guys did the
scavenger hunt and you’ve got the Despair Faction and stuff like that and
you’re very involved which a lot of bands aren’t.  And you’re very directly in touch with bands, more so than
anybody at your level I think.

I’ve always kind of had disdain for bands that think when
they reach a certain level that that means that they can take their fan base
for granted and they don’t need to talk to fans anymore. And in fact they try
to avoid fans, y’know, they run by the fans after the show and jump in the van
and go to the hotel or just think that when you sell records there’s a certain
way you have to start acting y’know? 
Which is kind of above everybody and have that certain attitude and it’s
just not necessary and really I mean - who do you think put you there?

We enjoy interacting with the people who listen to our music
cause that’s really why we’re doing this. 

Now as far as the old bands, you obviously have had some
reactions on both sides, like I said, because of the history of the band.  Do you read the reviews from old zines
and do you read Maximum Rock’n’Roll still, that kind of stuff?

No, its like, I remember even from before I was in the band,
like when Shut Your Mouth came out, and
everybody on the AFI message board was like "Oh, what is this crazy, this
sucks, I hate this, this is like" every record that comes out - people
freak out and they have to get so mad. 

Even before I was in the band. When you’re in it, you can’t
worry about how people view your music, you just have to stay true to what you
think it should be.  I’m not sure
if that’s what you were asking but (laughs) that’s where I went with that.

I agree that it must be difficult to satisfy everyone
when you have a decade-long history and there are so much entrenched ideas
about what you should be.

Of course there’s people - amazingly in 2006 -  there are still people who think we
should go back and do some Very Proud of You or Answer That. And its
like - we try to please everybody, and then there’s people that love the
new direction, so even if we wanted to do that, that’s an impossible task to
try to please everybody because everybody has their own opinion of what you
should sound like or how fast your songs should be or whatever.

You guys really kicked off, at least in my view, a real
resurgence of Goth-punk stuff, and I know you guys come from a different
direction because there’s far more of a Danzig/Misfits thing going on than some
of the other bands that are out there with the more overt vampire stuff.  I’m just wondering how you feel about
that?

I think that’s more the product of the band’s image than the
music.  I do think that image has
definitely been corrupted a lot. 
And if it works for you then - great.

When you do something that is at all successful of course
there’s going to be people that take that and use it.  Like when The Killers got big and there was the whole wave
of faux-Killers bands.  If you do
something and it works, then there’s going to be people that do that too. 

It’s kind of natural; it’s the way it’s always been in
music. 

A lot of people have been really talking and debating
your new video.   And some of
the imagery and some of the whole thing together.  I’m just wondering how you guys put that together?

We were trying to go for a kind of Evita kind of feel.

But there’s a whole plot element with it.  With the female protagonist or
antagonist. We really kind of came up with a loose plot and just wanted some
really striking imagery and Mark Webb the director of course had a big hand in
that too, and that’s how it just kind of ended up.  What is the debate?

There has been speculation about the way Davey looks
mostly.

And how do people think it looks?

I think there’s just like some dictator thing going on
there.

Yeah; well ,Evita. (laughs)

Once you said that it kind of clicked for me, but up
until that I think people were thinking about another dictator. 

Oh (laughs). 
No.

I didn’t think so but -

I wouldn’t say that that’s a direction we’d ever try to go
in. 

Well I thought maybe you were trying to do a Reagan
Youth  ironic thing. It could
happen.

Not really, I love Reagan Youth though.

When Shut Your Mouth came out, and everybody on the AFI message board was like "Oh, what is this crazy, this sucks, I hate this, this is like" every record that comes out - people freak out and they have to get so mad.

After what is a very busy summer, any plans to go abroad
or anything like that?

This summer we’re going to be going to Japan and at some
point we’re going to Australia, and we’ll probably be going back to Europe
later on this year.  We’re going to
be all over.

What kind of reaction you guys get when you play in
Europe?

Europe’s good, I mean some parts are a lot better than
others.  In the UK its great,
there, it’s like playing in the States. And in Europe all the years we were on
Nitro they didn’t really have distribution or distribution worth a damn there,
so that was always kind of lagging behind the rest of the world.  So in mainland Europe we’re still kind
of building there, even now, we’re still trying to come up and we could
headline a tour there for sure, but it’s definitely an area where we have work
to do. 

Its cool, we definitely play shows at these little tiny
clubs where you get to go back to that kind of vibe again.

I was going to also ask you if you could tell me what
kind of music you were listening to while you were writing and recording?

That’s the thing; I really get everything that comes out, in
pretty much every genre. Everything that comes out, well not everything, but
the vast majority of stuff I’ll check out, I’ll at least listen to it once. So
its hard to say that I go through so much, to play stuff for such a long period
of time that there was no particular thing that was really inspiring me during
the writing of this record.

Is it daunting when you have to take such a long stretch
of time to write something?

It’s daunting to sort through that much material and distill
it down to the tracks that you want to use. But I guess it would be more
daunting to be forced to write an entire record in a couple months. 

I just can’t imagine that, a hundred songs, it’s like
trying to pick your children.

Yeah, well we didn’t write a hundred and then go "Ok we have
a hundred songs let’s choose the ones we want."  It was along the way that they got cut, as they were
written.

Are there a lot of B-sides that you expect to see pop up
anywhere?

Its funny, we actually don’t have many B-sides because we
didn’t record any of those songs. 
Even though a lot of them I really like and they’re good songs and I’d
be happy to see them come out at some point but we didn’t actually record them.  We’d write them and then if they
weren’t good we’d not even bother to record them. 

I hope you guys do release some of them; B-Sides are
always interesting, because sometimes they’re not bad songs, but they don’t fit
within what the band’s concept for the record.

We have some, like we’ve done a couple covers, that will
come out as B-sides, and there actually is kind of a demo song that we didn’t
end up recording but that there’s a really good demo version of it that will
probably come out as a B-side, which is an original.

There’s even a song from Sing the Sorrow that hasn’t been released yet that could come out at
some point as a B-side.

One of them just came out recently right, the Rabbit
one? 

It’s nice to have the songs; I mean I really like that song
and I’m glad it finally came out.

Right right. 
One of the things - how long - what kind of longevity do you feel
like you guys have as a band?

I don’t know, I mean we’ve had a pretty good longevity so
far.

Do you feel like you could do this for another ten or
fifteen years?

We could, I mean we’re going to do it until - we’re
going to do it as long as it’s a viable thing you know?