J Mas­cis: ​‘In the ear­ly days, venues banned us for being too loud’

For 37 years, J Mas­cis has pushed the alt-rock enve­lope with his sem­i­nal band Dinosaur Jr, backed by a Mar­shall stack with his trade­mark Fend­er Jazzmas­ter in tow. The guitarist’s blunt-edged riffs, solos and non­cha­lant vocals have inspired gen­er­a­tions. Inter-band har­mo­ny, how­ev­er, hasn’t been quite so sanguine.

Internecine feuds with Lou Bar­low – also a found­ing mem­ber of lo-fi pio­neers Sebadoh – pushed the bassist to depart in 1989, and left the orig­i­nal line up estranged until 2005 when an unlike­ly ref­or­ma­tion brought about a string of crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed albums.

New doc­u­men­tary Freakscene – The Sto­ry of Dinosaur Jr pulls back the cur­tain on the group’s his­to­ry, offer­ing insight into a unique b®and of dys­func­tion. Here, Mas­cis chats about their unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tions with Matt Dil­lon, his view on Nirvana’s suc­cess, and why he can’t abide The Clash.

LWLies: The film reveals that you were reg­u­lar­ly banned from venues in the ear­ly days. Why?

Mas­cis: If you go into somebody’s club and play abra­sive music very loud, where the bar­tender can’t hear some­one who wants to buy drinks, what’s in it for them? We were too loud, and we had no fans. That’s a bad combination.

It’s alleged that your ethos was that the band ​‘shouldn’t be fun’. Do you still feel that way?

It’s not that it shouldn’t be fun, but that it shouldn’t be the goal. The goal is the music. If it’s fun or not shouldn’t mat­ter. We’ve always been intent on mak­ing good music.

Pri­or to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the film, had you pre­vi­ous­ly reflect­ed on your history?

Sure. I had. It’s inter­est­ing to hear Lou and [drum­mer] Murph talk about it though. It was good to get Lou final­ly admit­ting he was try­ing to get out of the band or break up the band [back then]. It was good to hear him admit it years lat­er now he’s older.

Has there been a favourite peri­od for you?

Our first tour when we opened for Son­ic Youth was a high­light. We’d move stuff around through either Lou or my par­ents’ sta­tion wag­on. That was our inno­cent peri­od. After that we were more jaded.

Did it feel dif­fer­ent when you moved from an indie to a major label in 1990 pri­or to the release of ​‘Green Mind’?

It was good in that it was more straight­for­ward: ​‘Here’s the mon­ey, make the record’. Every­one seems to mythol­o­gise indie labels, but they’re not that great if they’re not pay­ing you and rip­ping you off.

Did that hap­pen to you?

Def­i­nite­ly. It wasn’t great being on an indie label back then. We were on SST and the label wouldn’t real­ly pay [us] any­thing. Same with Home­stead Records. If we’d had a cool one that paid what they owed us, I would have been more inclined to stay on an indie label.

With the advent of grunge in the ear­ly ​’90s, did you feel the press bunched you up with those oth­er bands? How did you feel about the term?

[The term ​‘grunge’] is fine with me. I def­i­nite­ly felt a kin­ship with all those bands.

There’s been a lot of dis­cus­sion around the 30^th anniver­sary of Nirvana’s ​‘Nev­er­mind’. What does that album mean to you?

It was a point in time where things made sense. A band that should be huge were huge – some­thing in the uni­verse made sense for a sec­ond. That was a great moment. That album was awesome.

How did Matt Dil­lon end up shoot­ing the video for 1992 sin­gle ​‘Get Me’?

We became friend­ly after he came to one of our shows. He expressed inter­est in try­ing to direct a video. You don’t find many movie stars walk­ing around our old town, Amherst, Mass­a­chu­setts, so it was fun­ny see­ing people’s reac­tions and stuff. He also direct­ed anoth­er one [the 2007 sin­gle ​‘Been There All The Time’] that we made at Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon’s house. Every once in a while we’ll get back in touch. Before the pan­dem­ic, I saw him a bit in Berlin, where my wife and the direc­tor Philip are from, as Matt was mak­ing some movies. We hung out a fair bit then.

1997’s ​‘Hand It Over’ end­ed up being your last album on a major label. You men­tion your sur­prise when they came to you after you hand­ed it in say­ing they ​“didn’t hear a single”.

I just thought it was a joke. We’d not heard any­thing from the label until that point. That’s when we knew it was over. We thought, ​‘Now they don’t want us to do any­thing that we want: they want a sin­gle’. I don’t real­ly hear my voice com­ing out of the radio.

Kei­th Richards once said, ​‘Many bands know how to rock, not many know how to roll’. The Stones’ swing was said to be the result of the drums falling slight­ly behind the gui­tar. Your vocals sit slight­ly behind the rhythm in Dinosaur Jr, pro­vid­ing a sim­i­lar mag­i­cal quality…

Yeah. I remem­ber Kei­th Richards not being that into [Led Zep­pelin drum­mer] John Bon­ham because he thought it was a bit too heavy hand­ed. I always find it strange that none of Led Zeppelin’s con­tem­po­raries liked them but every­one younger loved them. It’s inter­est­ing how dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions view things. It’s like the begin­ning of the gen­er­a­tion gap where par­ents don’t like their kid’s music. I’m look­ing at the Stones with­out Char­lie Watts and it sounds bizarre to me…

What do you think made Char­lie Watts special?

His style, his feel. It’s hard to dupli­cate. He was one of the best drum­mers and it was part of the band’s chem­istry. It’ll take a while to form a new chem­istry with a new drummer.

In The Clash doc­u­men­tary West­way to the World, Joe Strum­mer talks about part­ing with drum­mer Top­per Head­on and how he regret­ted tam­per­ing with the group’s chem­istry. He said you could replace that per­son with one, two or 10 peo­ple and it wouldn’t be the same.

Yeah, and I nev­er liked The Clash. Because of the drum­ming, mostly.

Why so?

Well, I was a punk drum­mer and some­thing about The Clash’s drums sound­ed so wimpy to me. It real­ly dis­tract­ed me from lik­ing the band.

How have you man­aged it to avoid­ed the clichéd traps of rock and roll excess?

I guess I’m just not that type of per­son. I had a real­ly strong father fig­ure, and a lot of my life I was kept in line just by the fear of him even though I didn’t do any­thing. He was a strong pres­ence that I didn’t want to mess with. I dun­no. Maybe it’s time now? Char­lie Watts became a junkie when he was in his for­ties just to see what the fuss was all about [laughs].

Is there a mes­sage that you’d like view­ers to take from the film?

That a band is a com­plex rela­tion­ship and there’s a lot of weird­ness in try­ing to get peo­ple to stay together.

Lou com­ing clean as to why he left the group in 1989 must’ve been very cathar­tic for you?

It’s just good that he final­ly got over his anger. It seemed like he held on to it for too long.

Do you think his anger was out of des­per­a­tion to start Sebadoh and do his own thing?

I don’t know. I wasn’t the nicest to him. He wasn’t hap­py with how I treat­ed him and stuff.

Did you ever say sorry?

I’m not sure. Maybe. I can’t remember.

Freakscene – The Sto­ry of Dinosaur Jr is in UK Cin­e­mas from 1 Octo­ber via munro​film​ser​vices​.co​.uk