So new it ain’t even been published yet!

Kings of the Stone Age
By David Roy

The original line-up of alternative rock legends Dinosaur Jr makes its long overdue Belfast debut next Wednesday at The Spring & Airbrake. Scene spoke to drummer Murph about the band’s enduring reunion and why their extinction is currently far from certain.

Dinosaur Jr were as legendarily dysfunctional as they were plain legendary. Until their unexpected re-union in 2005, painfully laconic guitarist and band leader J Mascis and introverted bass player Lou Barlow had long been mutually exclusive entities, thanks to one of the most infamous rifts in alternative rock history.

Barlow was surreptitiously kicked out of the band in 1989 following a clash of malformed personalities with Mascis. He subsequently made a point of addressing this discourtesy as often as possible throughout his post Dinosaur career with his band Sebadoh.

However, the music they had made together with drummer Emmett Jefferson Patrick Murphy III – ‘Murph’ for short – endured in spite of such animosity.

In the five years they played together, the original Dinosaur line-up created a powerful legacy of three seminal albums, (1985’s Dinosaur, 1987’s You’re Living All Over Me and 1989’s Bug ) and a legion of fans left deafened and awestruck by their legendarily ferocious live shows.

Having re-introduced classic rock licks into the underground punk rock scene, courtesy of Mascis’s unabashedly incendiary guitar solos, the trio blazed a powerful sonic trail which paved the way for Nirvana. Dinosaur’s Freak Scene preceded Smells Like Teen Spirit as the definitive rallying call for the alternative crowd.

Dinosaur signed to Warner Bros the year after Barlow’s departure. Though they continued to enjoy alternative hits like The Wagon, Start Choppin’ and Feel The Pain, the band failed to match Nirvana’s world conquering commercial sales.

With Murph having jumped ship in 1993 (he later played with the Lemonheads) by the end Dinosaur was largely regarded as a J Mascis solo project. He retired the band’s name in 1997, going on to form J Mascis and The Fog. Even when Mascis decided to re-issue the first three Dinosaur albums in 2005, no one dared hope for a full blown reunion.

However, over the course of the intervening years, Barlow had apparently realised that Mascis wasn’t actually the devil. The pair buried the hatchet, laying the foundations for the unthinkable – Dinosaur would roam the earth once more.

And roam the earth they did. Having spent the past three years touring the world to a rapturous reception, the band finally arrive in Belfast next Tuesday.

"It’s definitely still fun," reveals Murph. "It’s pretty unbelievable that we’re all still getting along so well, I think we’re all pretty surprised because we really didn’t plan on it. I guess we’ll see how long we can ride the wave.

"It’s funny, everything we’re doing now feels more real. I guess because we’re older we’re able to soak in the experience more or something."

Crucial to their continued existence the reactivated Dinosaur released a stunning new album called Beyond in 2007. Despite its warm critical reception, it seems the band don’t have any definite plans yet to record a follow-up.

"I dunno, maybe this Fall we’ll see," Murph offers hopefully. "J’s big change is that he has a baby now, a son called Rory (with wife Luisa) who’s now eight months old. I’m sure that’s going to fuel some song writing ideas, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

"Lou’s daughter Hannelore is almost three years old now. She was born exactly one month before we got back together, so her age has become kind of our benchmark for how long the reunion has lasted."

Happily, the increasingly family orientated band are widely regarded to be playing better than ever.

"I think we definitely are," agrees Murph. "We kind of understand the music better. The first time around we were all 20 years old and it was kind of hard to know what we were doing. Back then we were caught in some sort of fire storm of energy and commotion.

"We’ve all been doing this for so long now that you kind of get seasoned – but in a really good way, not like old and crusty! It’s added flavour and helped us tighten things up and redefine the music."

He adds: "For me, playing a gig is kind of like doing martial arts or yoga or some kind of spiritual routine, where you’re doing the same motions over and over every day and trying to prefect it and become better and more fluid at it. It’s a very Zen like experience for all of us.

"As a three piece, each of us has so much responsibility that there’s really no room for error – especially with J’s songs and the way they have to be executed."

Though Mascis was once notoriously dictatorial when it came to instructing band mates on how to perform, he apparently adopted a more conciliatory approach for the band’s latest album. Their live shows are also benefiting from improved on stage communication.

Murph reveals: "J is still really specific as far as the framework of the song goes, but they’re a lot more kind of interpretive now as to our own style and what we’re able to play.

"Live, we tend to play off each other more, which is very different than the old days when we would just try to make it through the gig!

"Back then it was more like flying by the seat of our pants, trying to hold on to a roller-coaster ride. Nowadays we can kind of step back and listen to each other play. That’s really a different dynamic and probably one of the newest things to come out of the reunion which is kind of cool."

Looking back on the original trio’s split today, Murph outlines the growing schism that led to Barlow’s departure and recalls the odd transitional period he endured while the band were looking for a new bassist.

"J and Lou were really socially inept people, they were kind of stunted, almost retarded," he explains. "They just weren’t able to communicate. I guess I kind of bridged that gap.

"It put pressure on me,I felt almost strange and uncomfortable just being a normal person around them. They were both so socially inept that I was the one who felt left out sometimes.

"J had a very low tolerance for people. He really hated Lou for a couple of years just because he got on his nerves. I think he felt that way with both of us from time to time.

"It created this really weird tension between us. We really didn’t hang out together or feel comfortable in a room together. The only time we could really be together was on stage."

He continues: "It was a really odd period after Lou left. We went through a bunch of different bass players, we even did this show on MTV where they put up a 1-800 number up as a joke, asking potential candidates to call in.

"Little did they know they’d be flooded with calls. We ended up holding a day of auditions in New York City. It was surreal, I think we did it as an experiment more than anything else.

"Van Conner from Screaming Trees played with us for a while and then we ended up getting Mike Johnson who stayed for a long time after I left."

As for his own departure from the band, according to Murph it was a hasty decision that he quickly came to regret.

"I left right after Lollapalooza in 1993," he remembers. "Things were getting too big and there was still too much of the old negative residual energy. J was like, ‘well, if it’s not fun any more maybe you shouldn’t do it any more.’ I kind of just agreed with him.

"It was one of those things where it was kind of like a delayed reaction afterwards, a slow devastating feeling that gradually hit me. I was like ‘of wow, what have I done? Oh my God!’

"When you form a band when you’re that young and then you’re in it for as long as we’ve been in music, it becomes like your family. You’re kind of lost for a while without that feeling."

However, all’s well that ends well.

"I don’t know if Lou could have done as much as he did without going through that really painful process. I think it actually helped him get Sebadoh going. It really fuelled him and pushed him on to start his own career.

"Today he’s much stronger and we’ve both kind of been able to bring things back around full circle into the band."

* Dinosaur Jr, Tuesday May 13, The Spring & Airbrake, Belfast. Doors 7:00pm, tickets £18.50 from Katy Daly’s and all usual Ticketmaster outlets. Credit card bookings: 0870 243 4455.

***

Bonus quotes just for you folks:

Hey Murph, what’s up?

"I’m just kind of getting ready for the tour right now. I have to bring a bunch of stuff for the band, I kind of got duped into bringing Lou’s extra bass and some other things, so I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to carry it all.

"I’m excited to get back out there, this is going to be a pretty good long run. I was looking at the schedule and it’s about five weeks this time.

On Dinosaur’s distinctive sound:

"For me, it would almost be impossible to imagine a Dinosaur cover band because the songs are too quirky and too personalised. I just don’t know if you could mimic the sound properly.

"There’s been some pretty funny people who have covered the songs but usually they’ve been done in a really different way. I think Juliana Hatfield did something but it was definitely like a much more mellow version of the original song. There’s been a couple of things like that which we’ve heard but I think it was more just in fun.

On J’s songwriting:

"J is still really specific as far as the framework of the song but they’re a lot more kind of interpretive now as to our own style and what we’re able to play.

"I’ve noticed the big difference in J’s writing is that he used to be much more concerned with technical parts, especially with drums. He always wanted to have a lot of changes and quirky kind of rhythms going on. For some reason he’s gotten away from that. He’s more into straight-forward songs now.

"That’s part of the reason I don’t think we’ve concentrated on Green Mind, which has a lot more of that kind of quirkier stuff. I personally kind of miss that other style, as a drummer it was kind of exciting for me to have to mix and match and twist things up.

"I don’t know, Lou’s style is geared more towards songs as well. I mean he plays the bass kind of like a rhythm guitar, so it lends itself to the more straight-forward stuff. If we keep going it’ll be interesting to see what way things go.

Early days:

"All White Jury were more like a fun joke band. I was the only high school guy, the others were all college students. J and Lou were in Deep Wound which was a much more serious project. They put out a single while they were still in high school, which was unheard of. Nobody had ever put out a record in high, at least not in our town. It was a really big deal.

Developing his "chops" and playing with Lemonheads:

"It wasn’t really until later on in Dinosaur when J and I worked together in the early 1990s that I started really learning and getting better, laying down a lot of the foundations that’s become a part of my playing today.

"I went on to get a gig with Evan in The Lemonheads and did a record with them, which was really fun. It was interesting, We did that for about two years. We had a really strong band, a bunch of really good players. I think we did a really good job of propping Evan up."

The infamous J/Lou onstage bust-up:

"At first I didn’t realise that it was a real situation, I just kind of thought it was a joke. Lou refused to play this one song, Severed Lips. He just started making bass feedback, which at first I thought was kind of funny, but it just became too much for too long.

"I didn’t understand why we didn’t stop the song, it was just bizarre. J started getting really annoyed because he was trying to play it right the way through. Right when it became apparent that we weren’t going to be able to finish the song, J swung his guitar over at Lou, Lou put his guitar up and they both kind of clashed like medieval knights.

"At that point I was really mad at both of them. I just thought it was really unprofessional and foolish and I felt like taking both of them and wringing their necks. I remember feeling like I wanted to scold them like naughty children. It was like, ‘we’re a band, you’re not supposed to do this!’

"It was really awkward. We went backstage and were just standing there staring at the ground. Lou was like ‘oh I don’t know what happened’ and J just didn’t say anything. Then we went out and finished the set.

"After that, things just remained really awkward and tense. I think that was the beginning of the end, J just felt like he couldn’t work with Lou. Lou at that point was feeling realy surpressed like he had no voice at all and was not allowed any voice. It got to the point where he was pushing harder to be heard and J was pushing harder to surpress him, so it became this unwinnable battle.

On being told of the existence of a bootleg of that night:

"Really? Is there like a video? I’d like to get a hold of that, it would be kind of fun to see."

On "what are you thinking about when you’re playing?" a la The Year Punk Broke. (Forgot to ask him about being a permanent no-hair!)

"I just remember not really having much to say at that time. I don’t know if it was Thurston or whoever that asked me the question, but I just remember making something up that probably wasn’t very true to form or very accurate. I just put it out there so as not to appear motionless or something!"

"These days it’s really funny. It depends where you are on the tour. When you’re really tired mentally from travelling and everything, a lot of times you’re just thinking of the most mundane stuff, like if you have enough clean laundry for the next day."

Favourite song/least favourite song to play?

"Lately Been There All The Time has been really a good song for me to play, I like that one. For whatever reason I think The Post is like my least favourite, it’s hard for me to get into and play but I don’t really know why.

Will they play Let It Ride any time soon?

"A lot of people have suggested doing Let It Ride and we have dabbled at it in soundcheck. We’ve thought about it so you never know, it could happen!"

Can’t wait for Tuesday!