Aaron Bedard, most well known as the vocalist of Bane, has been involved with the hardcore music scene longer than most current fans have been alive. After a round of Wii golf, I took the opportunity to sit down with him and pick his brain a little.
How did you get into the hardcore scene when you were younger?
I got into hardcore when I was younger pretty much through skateboarding, I guess. I had a friend in the neighborhood who was into skateboarding, and he had an older brother who was into the Sex Pistols, Adam and The Ants, Black Flag, and stuff like that. We would raid his record collection, and we were just really stoked on that. You know, when you’re 15 and 16, it’s just cool to find something that’s so angry and so rebellious. You just want to piss your mother off so much. I don’t know; it just really clicked for me at that age at just such a total gut level, and then the older I got, the more I got in the message and the camaraderie – the whole thing that sort of comes from the hardcore scene.
You said you were 15 or 16. Did you start going to shows around the same time?
Yeah! It’s funny because, you know, I think of back then, and it feels like the amount of time between finding the music and starting to be really become immersed in the scene – going to shows and making more friends – it felt like years, but it was way less than a year. It’s like, when you’re 15 years old, time is an eternity. It’s so funny. I think before I was 16 years old, yeah, I was traveling to shows in Boston with kids who were much older than me, and I was apart of a group of people that were putting on shows in Worcester, MA, which is where I grew up. I would say it all happened within a year. It’s just so funny; the time between discovering the music and like starting to meet people that really knew more about the music seemed like forever, but I’ll bet it was four or five months at the most.
Which bands were the important to you in the beginning?
From the real early days, it was just bands who played as fast and as hard as possible. Bands like DRI and MDC and the early Meatmen records – just stuff that was just so abrasive. I was just at that age where I was just looking to rebel, and the only thing I had to rebel against was my mother, and for any reason; whatever would just set her off, I gravitated towards. Then, as I got a little bit older, I was introduced to Minor Threat, 7Seconds, Uniform Choice… bands that had more of a message – that weren’t just there to piss off anyone around them. They had things to say. They had a moral stance that I really connected with.
I know it was a short amount of time in between, but were you playing music before you started going to shows?
No. Nope.
So, prior to Bane, what bands were you in?
My first band came along right there between 15 and 16. It was called Aggressive Hate. There were like two metal heads and two hardcore kids. I swear to God, I can’t believe how little I understood. I didn’t know anything! I didn’t know the difference between a guitar and a bass. I just didn’t know anything. I would just grab the mic and just scream as loud as I could… bounce off the walls; I was just the most hyper kid. That turned into a band called Raging Hope once I sort of discovered a lot of the youth crew bands that were a little bit more positive. We became Raging Hope, which had more of a message of unity and straight edge, and we were very influenced by Youth Of Today and things like that. I did that, and then that became a band called Backbone, which was way more New York City, Sick Of It All, Breakdown, Raw Deal influenced. That band went for a few years. It was actually pretty talented. Got to play some great shows, and stuff like that. Backbone broke up in maybe 1990, maybe even ’89, and then I kind of walked away from hardcore for a while. I started drumming in more indie rock type bands. I did that for about four years, and then I did a year where I didn’t play any music; that would have been ’95. The summer of ’95, Backbone did a reunion. It was really fun, and I was starting to get into a whole new wave of mid-nineties hardcore bands. Somehow word got out to the guitar player of Bane that I would have been interested in singing in a hardcore band.
So, you’ve been in a bunch of different bands that sort of vary across genres both inside and outside of the hardcore scene. Do you think that was just because of things around you changing or were your interests changing?
Well, the stuff in the ‘80s was definitely just about the kind of music that I was gravitating towards. The stuff in Aggressive Hate was just fast, and I don’t think it had hardly any music structure to it at all. Raging Hope was super influenced by youth crew hardcore bands, but then, towards the late 80s, bands like Breakdown and Raw Deal were just doing really, really sick shit. So then Backbone started with a different group of guitar players who were definitely more talented and understood song structure a little more. So, that was like the first band where I sort of understood what it meant to write a good song. Then I started hanging out with kids who were into Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and Sunny Day Real Estate, and I was drumming in these bands—a band called Crown of Thornz and Over/Under—those bands were more about rock and roll. We’d do weird cover songs, like, I don’t know, Cream covers. It not hardcore at all, except for that we all came from that. We were just getting older—in our early 20s now—we were just trying to do something a little more musical, I guess. We never really toured.
Did you walk away from hardcore because of age?
It certainly wasn’t age; it was just that I wanted a change. I had been immersed so deeply, for so long, that I wanted a change. These new kids that I was hanging out with were more into rock and roll were really interesting to me, and my taste in music was very broad. All the kids that I hung around with, most intensely, were into stuff that was just hardcore. It was just exciting. It was exciting to get a chance to drum, and it was cool. In hardcore my favorite bands were all breaking up—bands like Burn, Supertouch—there wasn’t much of a reason for be to be into it. All the bands that I loved most deeply were calling it quits. Then I had transitioned to bands like Quicksand and Sunny Day Real Estate—more rock and roll-y types. I just kind of went with it. I loved those bands so much. There was always a part of me that still loved hardcore. I still read fanzines, and I wanted to know what was going on, but there was just sort of a void there. I feel like ’91 through ’94, there wasn’t a lot going on. There was a lot of like metal… Krishna really started to seep in to it… really militant veganism… stuff that wasn’t how I related to hardcore. In the mid-nineties, there were more bands that I could relate to and got me excited again. Definitely if it wasn’t for bands like those early Victory bands, I don’t know if I would have ever come back around.
What part of hardcore was always consistently most important to you? What really drew you back in?
Just that it was about heart and passion and youth. When I was doing the rock and roll stuff, those were the first bands I was ever in where we weren’t playing strictly all ages shows. I was playing to peers that were more my own age, and a lot of that took place in bars. A lot of the people I was playing with were getting older, and they were into drinking and into working and just getting out of work and drinking. Walking away from hardcore for those few years really made me realize what I loved about it and allowed me to forgive a lot of the shortcomings that came out of hardcore. You know, hardcore is mostly kids, and there is going to be a lot of pettiness. There’s going to be a lot of fleeting ideas—kids thinking they believe in this, and then six months later, something else. You have a lot of that when you’re dealing with teenagers. I didn’t realize it when I walked away, but I was like, “Say what you want about it, at least [hardcore] is about passion.” There was just nothing that could compare to it. Going to these more rock and roll-y shows, they just didn’t compare to a hardcore show. Still, to this day, it’s hard for me to go and see many bands that I like that aren’t hardcore bands live because you’re really just standing there, and your interaction is so minimal. I’m so used to complete and total interaction. There should be no barrier between the band and the kids.
From being that 15-year-old kid from Worcester, and then later traveling the world, what excited you most? I imagine you’ve reflected on your travels with Bane.
It’s crazy. I had never been anywhere before Bane. The furthest I had ever been from home was Las Vegas with my dad. I had never been to the west coast. I had never been anywhere. Seriously, San Diego, CA, was the same in by brain as Mars. It seemed as far away as you could imagine. Then Bane came along, and all these things that I had always wanted to do in bands—first and foremost just putting out a record—I had never done anything beyond a demo, ever. Backbone recorded one song for a compilation LP, but the LP didn’t actually come out until after Bane was a band.
So, I had gone all these years of just demos and just never really getting it going—never playing beyond Connecticut or Rhode Island. Then Bane came and just had a different focus. Aaron Dalbec—the dude who really threw the band together—was a member of Converge, so he had done it. I believe he had already been to Europe, but he had definitely put out records. He knew what it was like to tour. He had been all over the country. So, he really came in and knew that all these things were possible that to me were sort of like a dream. It all just happened. We put out a record. We started to get to play outside of New England. Portland, OR, was the first time I had ever seen the Pacific Ocean. I remember being like, “Everything after this is just extra credit. This is everything I had ever hoped for. I’m here. It didn’t cost me a cent. I’m here because of this music that we’re playing.” That was huge. Little did we know, it was just the beginning. We’ve gotten to go all over. Even last year we got to go to places I had never been; we got to Asia and to Costa Rica, and just places where I’ll still stop and pinch myself. I can’t believe it. All just because of this band. If I hadn’t been in Bane, I don’t think I ever would have found a way to those places. I would have never been able to see those things. It’s beyond just the places—it’s the people you meet, it’s the bands you meet that you get to become very, very close with. Even if they weren’t my peers, I would have loved these bands. Now, just getting to know them as people and as friends, it still kind of blows me away. The list is really long—all the doors that the band has opened for me.
As a fan of the music yourself, what are some of the most dramatic changes you’ve seen within the scene from when you first started going to shows to now?
There are so many. I get asked that a lot, and it’s hard because it just goes in peaks and valleys. The hardcore scene just seems to go through these cycles. I think of it as circular, and in the middle it’s always the same; it always comes down to young kids that are completely drawn to this aggressive, outspoken, passionate music, and that doesn’t change, but a lot of the outer layer changes and goes through very strange peaks and valleys as far as the way kids dress, as far as what kids consider “cool,” the way people dance. Now, with the internet, social networking, and people just being able to communicate so massively, so quickly, there are so many weird trends and cooler-than-thou attitudes, that I can’t even keep up with or try to understand.
It still comes down to the fact that there are bands like Dead End Path, that are just sincere, amazing, dynamic kids who have something important to say, and that never changes. It doesn’t matter whether or not bands are singing about suicide and heartbreak or how they want to fuck up the people who’ve stabbed them in the back. Have Heart brought us through a very nice wave of there being a ton of bands that actually had things to say, who loved hardcore, and that didn’t have a big chip on their shoulder. They had an attitude that they wanted to bring people together and make them feel connected with the music and the message. That was a beautiful thing there for a couple of years—Have Heart and Verse and just all these bands. I don’t mean to take away from bands that are doing that right now, but I feel like the trend has maybe shifted a little bit.
I try not to pay too much attention. At the end of the day, it does boil down to being about the music, and about the great things that hardcore makes available to us as far as friendship, as far as road trips—you know, all these festivals where you get to see people that you only get to see a few times a year, and everyone gathers and gets down with these bands. I don’t think it’s shifted too much in terms of the bigger picture.
Do you think the scene has lost anything?
It hasn’t lost enough for me to start feeling like it’s not worth my time anymore. I mean, it’s lost a sense of dirtiness and lack of structure. Even before Bane, to tour was a really, really hard thing. Pre-cell phone and pre-Internet, getting out there and getting on the road was a real risk. It took a heck of a commitment. Now, a band can come out and put out a couple of good 7” records and be in Europe without having to worry about losing massive amounts of money. I think maybe kids are a little spoiled these days, but that’s not their fault. You can’t hate on a kid who was born in a decade where he has all these great tools available to him. It makes touring a little bit easier. It makes getting the word out about your band a little bit easier. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. There are so many bands now. Everybody wants to start a band. I still think that the cream still rises to the top. The bands that are getting kids super, super siked and are able to tour or get on a label that gives them a push, there’s a reason for it; it’s because kids have decided these bands are worth it.
I’m trying to think if there are any huge things that I think have been lost. Not really. I tend to not dwell on that stuff. I tend to hold on to the good stuff. At the end of the day, it’s just about young kids with a ton of passion and energy, and a lot of them have really good work ethics, as far as doing things like putting on festivals or starting bands or putting out fanzines or whatever. For some reason, they have a calling in their heart to give back to [hardcore], and not just let it be about music that you listen to, shut off, and just leave. You throw yourself into it.
What if your 15 or 16-year-old self met you now? What do you think he’d have to say?
I think about that! Any time I hear people say, “My 15-year-old self would be siked,” I think of mine. I think he would be completely mind-blown. It’s almost a little bit embarrassing, to be completely honest. Like, the arch that I’ve taken from 15 to now; it should be greater. I mean, I still love it; I still love hanging out with my friends. I still choose [hanging out] over any sort of responsibility. The whole idea of the things that you’re ‘supposed to do’ when you’re a grownup is still frightening to me. It doesn’t quite make sense to me. The time between 18 and now, there haven’t been a lot of big epiphanies. I’ve allowed myself to live the way I have because I didn’t have to take on a lot of responsibilities; I didn’t end up impregnating a girl young and having a child to worry about, and I didn’t get married too soon. I just didn’t get myself into these messes that become very, very difficult, where you’re suddenly forced to work very, very hard just to make ends meet. I’ve managed to duck and jive that. Of course Bane has been a great tool for doing that. I think some survivalist in me recognized that and clung to Bane really hard.
As long as I have [Bane], I don’t have to grow up. I don’t have to go and get some real job. At the same time, all of my friends are getting degrees or have gone and done really well for themselves. I have a lot of friends, who are my peers, who I’ve known for years who have taken a little bit of a break from being so deeply immersed in hardcore, who now have careers and condos and are doing really well. I literally live month-to-month. I wouldn’t trade it for $60,000 dollars in the bank. I wouldn’t trade a single experience, even the ones that I just had last year. It’s still worth it to me. I’m sure a lot of people would think I’m completely crazy for doing this the way I’m doing it, but it just makes sense to me. It just fits for me, for whatever reason.
Five, ten, twenty years from now… Do you hope to be doing the same thing?
No. No. Maybe five? Now, every year is crazy. I’m in my forties now, so it’s crazy. I have to find some exit strategy. I have to be able to not be ‘that dude’ who clearly just doesn’t belong there anymore. It worries me. It worries me that I might even be that now. You have to be honest with yourself, and I try to be. I feel like it still fits for me, and Bane went so hard last year—played shows everywhere—and it was so successful, and kids were so siked. So, it’s easy for me to convince myself that I’m still supposed to be here, but I don’t want to be that old dude that no one came and tapped on the shoulder and said it was time to move on. It leads to the question, what is next? What will I do next? I have no idea. I’ve done a terrible job at preparing for that. I don’t know what is next. I can’t imagine my life not being about touring and wanting to be with my friends all the time. I want to travel with my friends. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, I’m smart, and I think on my feet, so I’m not too worried about it, but I really have no idea. Even like two years from now… I just don’t know.
So with those worries in mind, what keeps you motivated to keep writing songs or to keep touring?
I’m just good at not thinking about what’s next. I’m really good at just blocking it out and trying to worry about the now. I do feel like if Bane needed me to write songs right now, I’d be capable of doing that. I’m still filled up with a lot of things to say, a lot of things that piss me off, a lot of things that I wish would change, and a lot of ideas that I want to share. I don’t know why that is. I don’t know why I’m able to be the age I am and still feel as engaged as I do with a lot of themes that come along with hardcore and being young, but I do, and I don’t know what’s going to happen when I don’t have that anymore or when it’s no longer an option. I do a good job at not thinking about it, and not telling myself it’d be a good time to hang it up.
For the time being, you still have fans approaching you and telling you that Bane has changed their life. What sort of feelings do you get from that?
The most overwhelming thing for me is to be apart of something that somehow means as much to some kids as bands like Minor Threat and Gorilla Biscuits meant to me. Those bands were as close as religions or as close to finding honest truth in this world as anything I’ve ever known. It was the pinnacle of, like, art for me. I remember listening to those records. I remember rushing home wanting nothing more than to just listen to those records. To now be on the other side of that, and to be able to mean a fraction of that to anybody else is the best pat on the back that I’ve ever had. It vindicates everything I’ve tried to stand for and everything I’ve ever tried to do. It’s really overwhelming, and I try not to dwell on it too hard. I don’t want to be that dude who just gets used to hearing that.
I always try to really just consider how huge it is for a kid to come up to me and show me a tattoo he’s gotten with a lyric or tell me a story that “Superhero” helped him quit smoking. I really just try to give it the weight that I would want it to be given had I gone up to Ian MacKaye and been like, “I don’t know if you understand this, but at 16-years-old, your lyrics steered me away from a life that could have been awful for me.”
It’s hard because, you’re right, that stuff still does happen. We still find kids now who were so young when Bane started, and they really don’t need to be paying attention to a band that’s as old as us. There are great, young bands that they could feel connected with and feel like, “There’s are my peers”—Naysayer, Fire and Ice—these bands that are made up of fun, fired up kids. Not these guys who were already old when [these kids] got into hardcore. To have some kid still chose us, to decide that [Bane] is saying something to them, is the best. It makes me feel ready to argue, “Fuck you, we are still relevant. We are still important here. We’re not just here holding onto something that’s been dead for years.” Even if they don’t come up to us, just the way they respond to us live; it’s incredible. I don’t know how we got that lucky. If you were to ask me, “Why you?” I don’t know the answer, except for maybe just because we have stayed who we were; we were just kids who loved hardcore. We never got too ambitious. Some bands just do so well in the hardcore scene that they start thinking about what’s next for them—they want more money, more fans, and more girls. We never did that. For whatever reason, we’re just these stunted guys, and it just worked for us, so we never needed to get too ambitious.
What’s your process when it’s time to write lyrics? Do you wait for something to inspire you or do you just sit down and pick your own brain?
I have a little notepad in my phone, and I’ll just write down either a theme or a line. Sometimes I’ll come up with the name of a song, and I’ll just know that in that name, all of these things can be talked about. It’s odd how I do it. Usually it has to do with something irking me, something is pissing me off or there’s something that I’m excited to say, and it just kind of stays in the back of my head, and I know the only way it’s ever going to get worked out is when I sit down with pen to paper and write a song. I’m not good at doing it all on my own. Usually it has to be under the pressure of there being a song that the guys have written that needs lyrics. Once that happens, the gears just get spinning in my head. If they had a song this week, I know that I’d be able to write a song by the weekend. But, you know, I guess it takes some degree of concentration to sit down and clear out the stuff in my brain and just focus. Two years ago, I had to write seven [songs]. I hadn’t had to do that for a few years, and I was a little daunted at the task. I was really happy with almost all of them. Once I’m under the gun, I’ll get the job done. But if those dudes never write another song, I’ll never write another Bane song, which is kind of sad, you know? I just won’t do it. The only way I’m going to do it is when I know there’s a vehicle for it.
Do you write lyrics more for yourself or for your fans?
I don’t worry much about what [the fans] are going to think. I try really hard to not worry about what they’re going to think. Honestly, you know, I’ll get to that point, and I’ll realize that’s what I’m doing. I’ll realize that I’m trying to please the wrong people. Please yourself. I’m a gambler by nature, so I always try to push it a little far, and to take [my lyrics] to a place where I’m not just playing it safe, and I’m not just doing what [the band] has already done and we know will work. I try not to think about why “Can We Start Again” and “Count Me Out” were so successful. I don’t want to do that. I’m hard on myself. I love the challenge, and I really take the role of writing the words for this band very seriously. When it’s all said and done, I want that to be part of our legacy. That obviously the person who wrote the lyrics was not just writing a bunch of safe hardcore anthems. When I’m writing something, if I find myself thinking too safely, then I make myself switch it up. I don’t want to do that. That’s like the worst idea. So, I’ll just take it in some crazy direction, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t work, you know?
You said that without the pressure, you wouldn’t write lyrics for Bane, but do you think you would still write for yourself?
Oh, yeah! Absolutely. I mean, I’ve been writing for months now, just like working on a screenplay or writing little short stories. Since probably first grade, once I learned that I was allowed to tell stories—that it was something that you could do about anything—I’ve been doing it my whole life. Like, writing the first batch of lyrics for Bane was just so easy. I was just so ready for it. I’m always writing something. I’m not very good at finishing, but when the outlet of Bane is taken away from me, there won’t be many months that go by before I’m like clawing at the walls to be creative, for sure. You know, the other thing I do is DJ, and that has nothing to do with real self-expression. People always say, “When Bane ends you can just DJ and be happy!” But, I know that I’m going to need an outlet for my imagination. The way that works for me is always through writing, for sure.
You’ve expressed a passion for hardcore and writing, you love DJing, a lot of Bane lyrics are about gambling, so would you say those are your main interests?
Gambling has been huge for the last ten years, for sure. Poker is a form of gambling, but also a game of skill. Yeah, I mean hardcore and I guess drum-n-bass all sort of falls into the same place for me; I just love music. I’m just crazy about music. I have loved drum-n-bass deeply since the year 2000. In the wintertime I went through like a black metal phase; I was listening to nothing but satanic black metal. Years ago I went through this huge jazz phase. I just, you know, I just love music, and when I really get into something, I get really passionate and just immerse myself in it. I’d say poker, music… I mean I like to play tennis and basketball. I like to do things with my friends. I like to compete. I like to hang out with my friends. I still get so stoked. I mean, even like today, you and [Aaron] coming over to watch the [Celtics]; those are like high points in my life.
I love when I’m among people with who I am inspired by, even if it’s just because we all just get each other. A psychiatrist would break that down and say, “Well, of course you love hardcore.” It all makes sense. I don’t know if something was missing in my childhood or something that I’m still chasing after—it’s just the feeling of being apart of something important. I don’t have a job. I’m not motivated career-wise. I’m not motivated school-wise. I like to read. I like to watch movies. But really, yeah, I love to play poker, and I love music. If given the chance to be able to be fresh and energized and young with Bane for 10 more years and never DJ again, I would take that in a heartbeat.
Kira Cole 