Viva Brighton October 2015 Issue #32

music
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Wheatus
Middle-aged dirtbags
“It was an interesting time; very nerve wracking,
very topsy-turvy, lots of insecurity, and excitement
at the same time,” says Wheatus frontman Brendan
B Brown. “We were a bit wide eyed.”
The band’s year, really, was 2001. They had a major-label
contract, a top-ten album, and a hit single
so successful that it would obviously overshadow
anything they subsequently did. They were big.
But Brown, unsure why his band was “being
lumped in with ‘pop punk’ and stuff”, had been
feeling “a little bit misunderstood”. Then there was
an incident in Australia where “we were going to
play a TV show, and one of the Sony people said:
‘Hey, can we get you into some clean white shirts?’
They wanted us to clean up. And I said, you know,
the name of the song is Dirtbag…
“I felt a lot misunderstood that day. From then on,
I was kind of feeling like, well, maybe they didn’t
know who they were inviting to this party, perhaps
it isn’t for us. That began the whole ‘maybe we’re
not supposed to be on a label’ thing.
“There wasn’t a second step for us to take at
Columbia Records, so we got out of it. That meant
that people didn’t hear from us for a few years,
because we had to get out of our deal. I was also
being sued by an ex manager; we eventually won
the case… The point is, we had to lie low after that
because we didn’t have the ability to make another
record yet, legally. And as soon as we did, we got
it together and kind of reformed things, around
2003-04, I guess.”
Since then, the band has been independent, releasing
stuff through their website. According to their
own PR material, ‘they scrape recording & touring
budgets together by selling last year’s gear on
eBay.’ But that doesn’t bother Brown.
Photo by Jane Greenwood
“Most artists from our time period, who released
albums in the year 2000, are doing much, much
worse. Some don’t exist at all. Most musical
endeavours end in catastrophe. And we never got
along with the major label system, so it’s fortunate
that we don’t have to.
“That comes at the cost of being sort of just an
indie band. But I feel a lot better about selling
stuff on eBay every year than I do about having
solipsistic, horrible conversations with record label
executives who have eaten the wrong yoghurt
that morning, so they’re not going to give you the
fucking video that you need. No matter what the
reward, I don’t want that in my life.”
And actually, Teenage Dirtbag has been useful to
them in this respect. “It’s fantastic, we use it now as
an ambassador, as our calling card… all the things
we don’t have that you typically need infrastructure
for in the music industry, Teenage Dirtbag provides.
So, you know, we’re quite happy with the way
things turned out.” Steve Ramsey
Wheatus – 15th Anniversary Tour, Mon 12 Oct,
Komedia, 7pm, £15
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