Interviews

No Use For A Name

Interview with Matt & Rory on Nov 15, 2003 by Archive Bot

Been around the block a few times, No Use For A Name is still one
of the biggest and best independent bands around. With their most recent album, Hard Rock Bottom out on Fat Wreck, nufan knows what it takes to prevail on their terms; they've been doing for the past 15 years. If keeping it real was listed in the dictionary, a picture of NUFAN would lie right next to it because they are that; NUFAN is the definition of keeping it real...and all the while ageing nicely.

PB: do you think that money makes the world go round?

Matt: absolutely.

PB: not greed?

Matt: greed is money. It’s all the same thing. And what sucks is that-

PB: no greed may not be money.

Matt: money’s power. In order to have power you need to be greedy. It all comes together.

PB: well yeah it all weaves in some way or another, I totally agree with that.

Matt: I feel that it’s getting to a point now in society where I feel that money does buy happiness. Money buys security. Once you’re secure you’re happy. It’s all there is to it. And that’s sad. It’s too bad that it’s that way, but it is.

Rory: I’d say that’s the general population, but that’s not everybody.

Matt: not everybody! No of course we’re talking about in general. I can’t name names because-

Rory: but right now, I’m so in debt and I owe so much money!

Matt: I’d be fucking stoked if I had a bunch of money!

Rory: I’ve got to be straight.

Matt: that’s totally true.

Rory: but I’ll survive and I’ll be happy doing my thing that don’t cost money.

Matt: I don’t want to come across like I’m even mad about it or angry about it or bitter about it. I don’t care. I think it’s great. Everybody seems to be doing better. The problem with it is is that kids are getting so bored with the fact that everybody’s so well off, everybody’s fine. They’re trying to rebel against nothing. You got all these kids out there with their mini-trucks that they can’t fucking wait to see Fast and the Furious. They’re so fucked up nowadays. Oh man. I can get-

Rory: anyways it goes back to my question, to my quoted remark of saying punk ain’t what it use to be and it’s not. For various reasons.

PB: that’s the essential-

Matt: punk is a business.

Rory: punk is business.

Matt: yes it is isn’t it?

PB: anything is like a business.

Rory: well yeah. Well No Use For a Name, our band, is a business as well as a band. We have a tour manager-

Matt: the thing about a question like that too, is that it’s hard to give you a simple answer. You think about this stuff all the time and when you’re trying to answer you find yourself contradicting yourself because it is so confusing. Is punk dead?

PB: ok so you’ve mentioned it’s so mainstream now. This tour, you’re headlining so you draw fans who like your genre of music for the most part or the opener. And you have a say of who opens for you obviously. So what about when you were on tour with Sum 41? What kind of surprises came out of that? Because you were the supporting band were you not?

Matt: I’ll tell you-

Rory: me too. It’s the same thing

Matt: they were like the most down to earth, coolest guys you’d ever meet.

Rory: couldn’t believe it. Didn’t know what to expect.

Matt: we hung out with them every single night.

Rory: we realized, over the years though, you need to do a tour like that to keep expanding fans because you lose fans to just uninterested in music, or having families or moving away. You got to keep gaining fans and keep record sales or touring, solid.

Matt: we love playing. We love doing this. It’s great. Play every night.

Rory: so we decided, well Sum 41 offered us a tour. Do we want to do it? And we weighed all of our options and talked about. We’re like yeah, what the hell? Yeah we should do a tour like this because figured it was important to find some new fans because those young fans is a different fan base. So we did this tour, not knowing anything. Just hoping it would be cool because we signed on for al long tour with them and it was one of the best tours.

Matt: they asked us last year those guys. Not asked but brought up to us. Like hey there’s a possibility and we’re all kind of like, not that rad. When they asked us again, and we were like well, you know, why should we shut our doors? Why should we not do that? Why do we have to be hateful or whatever I guess these new kids are getting all popular and so we’re like fuck that. Our record sales went up and in every city we played with those guys, great. Good for us. Again, we like playing. But it was really surprising that those guys ended up being the coolest guys. We did the first part of the tour then we were asked to do the second part of the tour so we did two months with them.

PB: so how do you feel knowing that you’re attracting these kids who are being angry about nothing fans? Are you ok with it?

Rory: those fans weren’t angry. I’m ok with it.

PB: but kids who are trying to be angry about nothing. You’re ok with having those kind of fans? Any fan is a good fan or what?

Matt: If what we’re doing makes somebody happy, they enjoy, hey good for them and good for us right? Everybody does their own thing. Well that’s the thing I wish people did their own thing but people are more into following the mainstream.

PB: what’s their own thing?

Matt: whatever’s in their mind. What’s your thing? My thing is video games.

PB: what happens you don’t have a thing?

Matt: then you sit home and practically commit suicide. I have nothing to live for. If you have nothing to live for, ok. But you got your thing, it’s something you like doing.

PB: so are you saying you live to play video games? Because that’s your thing.

Matt: that’s the Legend of Zelda, right here. (shows his tattoo) yes I do. I’m doing it right now.

PB: don’t you live to play or anything?

Matt: I love for my wife. I live for my video games. I live for playing shows. I have my things that I do. Everybody has their thing to do.

Rory: I live for surfing.

Matt: am I saying that wrong? No really am I insulting you?

PB: oh no no.

Matt: his thing is playing every night. Rory’s thing is he loves surfing and snowboarding. He loves outdoor sports. What do you like to do? What do you do? Like you wake up in the morning and go this sucks! We just got sucked into this. This is what we like to do. Because we like two things. We decided we wanted to do it.

Rory: we’ve only known Matt for short of eight years but Matt joined the band and at the time when Matt started playing in the band, he was just like the rest of us in No Use For a Name. That was, he never stopped trying to make a living for it. We never thought we’d be still doing this 15 years later. We’d never thought we’d be sitting in a motor home doing interviews. We just kept on doing it. With No Use For a Name when we started, oh my gosh Bad Religion’s coming through! We gotta get a show with them, they’re our favorite band! So we go played a show with Bad Religion. Two months later oh man Adrenalin O.D’s coming, let’s go play a show with them! And we just started to play shows and getting out there and keep playing with bands that we like and Matt was doing the same thing so when Matt says we got stuck doing this-

Matt: not stuck, sucked into it…

Rory: right, sucked into doing this. But we’re still doing it 15 years later the same thing. It wasn’t by choice but it wasn’t by default either.

Matt: when we started doing this, we had no idea it would ever go this far.

PB: yeah no one ever does.

Matt: so we actually got sucked into it. I don’t mean that in a bad way.

PB: so as a group would you say punk chose you, you didn’t choose punk?

Matt: sure. Whatever punk is now. We are eternally grateful for the fact that… I know that we don’t have a lot of the same fans as we did when started because they’ve grown up and got jobs and done their thing. Whatever that thing is. But luckily maybe the torch got handed down to the younger brothers or sisters or something like that. Our fans are way different than they use to be.

PB: do you think punk can evolve then? Maybe this phase is evolving and maybe not to your pleasing nature but it’s evolving and you can’t help it.

Matt: well yeah there’s nothing you can stop about it. Yeah it absolutely is evolving. It evolves into something that’s totally not punk anymore. It evolves into a music form. That’s all it is now. Like the old days of heavy metal. It’s gone. It’s as dead as anything else. And it sucks because you’ve got all these bands like Creed and all these weird-

PB: and the yarling?

Matt: you know what I’m talking about?

PB: yeah, we’ve got Nickelback. The equivalent.

Matt: and luckily enough there are a few bands around still doing it for the real reason. You still have like Dio and Iron Maiden and Slayer. They’re like the real metal bands. Metallica, I don’t know what’s going through their heads but luckily you still have a kind of guy’s keeping it true. That’s kind of what we are. We like doing what we’ve always done. Maybe it’s a little rebellious against whatever but we came up in a different time. It’s different generations you know? We’re older than a lot of people. We’ve seen it go from hey this is a cool thing to like, this is bullshit! Like now, where it’s like whatever.

PB: what kind of influence or factors would allow you to have such longevity in something such as the music industry? You know, you’ve been around for 15 years, you’ve been saying it.

Matt: we ask ourselves that.

Rory: well we haven’t gotten worse.

Matt: well I know, not to be like that guy, I think we write pretty good songs. I think we’re a pretty good live band. I think we’re lucky enough to have kids out there who respect what we do and they show their friends because it’s more of an underground thing. We don’t have the MTV push. We don’t even have the radio push. We don’t have anything. Everything that we do is on our own. I think there’s just kids out there that can respect that. Maybe we’re just really lucky or maybe we’re just really dedicated or both, I don’t know. We ask ourselves too, seriously. This is crazy. Once it dies or once it’s not fun any more, we’re done.

PB: can you see that ever happening though? It not being fun.

Rory: oh yeah. Easily.

PB: but it’s already been 15 years. It hasn’t lost its fun factor so far?

Matt: it won’t be as fun when there’s less kids at the shows. When they’re not as dedicated or whatever. Like tonight, Thursday’s in town playing. That’s a perfect example of how the music scene has changed so much. That’s going to hurt our show. For sure. Because this emo thing got really big and it’s like whoa, what? It doesn’t matter because the kids that are coming to this show I mean, as of last week there was 400 presale and we knew we were up against Thursday we’re like fuck that’s great. Maybe if Thursday wasn’t here we’d totally sell out, we don’t know.