Exodus – Jack Gibson
Posted on February 01, 2010 at 7:08 pm by admin
Out of all the band members in Exodus who have cool names (if you look at the lineup, it sounds like they could be a rag-tag croup of mercenaries, each with their own unique talent), I think Jack Gibson has the absolute coolest of them all! He’s also been with the band since they reformed in 1997, and revealed some things to expect on their upcoming album, “The Human Condition: Exhibit B”, as well as giving insight into the thrash scene in the early 80’s, and it’s relation to punk.
Way Too Loud!: Being in a band that’s been around for a long time, do you ever feel out of place performing to younger crowds?
Jack Gibson: Not really, because Exodus has kind of a weird crossover feel to anything that’s metal. We’ve played with black metal bands with panda bear facepaint to old-school thrash bands to the young hardcore bands, and we kind of blend in almost immediately wherever we’re.
The Haunted were talking to us on how our music covers all different tempos from metal music because we’ve been around for so long. Back in the day, you didn’t get pigeonholed into one thing or another. We have textures that appeal to everybody.
WTL: Do you still feel young after all these years? Gary [Holt, guitars and founding member] has said that a couple of times.
Jack: I do not feel young! (Laughs)
WTL: Do you have some insight on how Gary writes? He writes just about everything, doesn’t he?
Jack: Almost. Lee [Atlus, guitars] has been putting a couple of songs on each record. Gary’s been letting himself rest a little bit because he trusts Lee’s writing style. “Children of a Worthless God” was Lee’s. On the new album, “The Ballad of Leonard and Charles” [the title may be different, it was difficult to hear] was Lees, and its turning out alright.
WTL: Is it a goal as a band to stay true to your roots, but move forward at the same time so that you till feel relevant today instead of sounding dated?
Jack: I think that’s the balance that anyone who’s creating something on a personal level wants to do. You want to be true to your art and ket new things in, otherwise people stop caring altogether. Gary’s pretty plugged in to the newer bands, like the death metal bands, black metal and Swedish metal, so while he’s still Gary the Exodus guy, hearing the new music still lets it creep in and update our sound a little bit, without us trying to be one of these bands. It’s like I said before, as Exodus, we can throw almost any metal texture in there and make blend with what we’re doing. I think that helps a lot.
WTL: Something I’m wondering about the new album, are the songs pretty long like they were on “The Atrocity Exhibition… Exhibit A”?
Jack: There’s a couple that are long, and a couple that are shorter too. Song kind of write themselves. Anyone who creates music or art, and even people who write stories – it takes on its own life. If it’s an epic tune, it’s a crime to cut it short thinking it could be on the radio or whatever. Especially in todays day and age, radio and video don’t mean shit. Radio has never meant anything to a band like us. Maybe now that there’s Xm satellite radio with real metal stations. We really wouldn’t unwrite a song so it could be on the radio. The songs are just the way they come out. The new album has a couple short sweet ones, and I think one of ‘em is 10 fucking minutes long!
WTL: Is there a theme running through the album?
Jack: The first album was “The Atrocity Exhibition… Exhibit A”, and this one is “The Human Condition… Exhibit B”. Lyrically it has to do with the depravity of man, how fucked up things have gotten, and how perverted in the dark corners of everything from religion to politics.
WTL: What’s it like working with Andy Sneap again?
Jack: It’s our 5th album with him, and he’s mixed some of our live stuff too. He’s almost part of our band, and a good friend of ours. We’ve known him since ’97. He loves our band, he loves our creativity, and when he comes out he’s really part of what happens. We don’t want o make a record with anybody else because we have a system with him. He knows what we’re going for, and it just works out perfect for us.
WTL: Do you feel like the band has been reinvigorated since 2004? You guys have been super busy since then.
Jack: Right before “Tempo of the Damned” (2004), when [Paul] Baloff died, it hit Gary, Rick [Hunolt, guitars, no longer in the band] and Tom really hard, and they got deeper into their drug use at the time, then all of the sudden they woke up and got clean off the dope, and Gary instantly turned into a guitar hero, and started walking in with songs, and ever since then we have been reinvigorated. He started writing cool, relevant material again.
WTL: How do you feel about other music fans getting into Exodus? I’ve heard that Hatebreed fans are really receptive to a lot of bands.
Jack: That was actually a band where at first we did feel a little weird because we were on tour with Hatebreed, The Black Dahlia Murder - there’s no hair anywhere on the whole fucking tour! We’d have something called the “hair stare” because we’d come on stage and see these 12 year old girls who’s eyes would light up like they’re seeing the wolfman. By the 2nd song though, they had a mosh pit going! If you ask some kids if they like At the Gates, they’ll say “Yeah I like At the Gates” do you like Exodus? “No, I don’t like Exodus” It’s the same fucking thing! (Laughs), and when you hear it you realize it’s the same thing. The emo kids are letting their hair grow longer and their putting Slayer patches on now, so I welcome that.
WTL: How do you feel about the current revival of thrash that’s going on right now?
Jack: I think it’s great! It’s good for us, and it’s good for the business. There’s a lot of these younger bands out making these REALLY old-school thrash records, and we’ve toured with these bands like Evile and Mantic Ritual, and bands like Toxic Holocaust are out there. It’s cool, and it’s brought young kids into our shows. Every night we see a 10 year old kid in the crowd, and he’s knows every word to every “Bonded by Blood” song, and you know he had to get into his dads record collection to find it! It’s breathing new life into the whole scene.
WTL: With all the trends that have come and gone since “Bonded by Blood”, is there anything you miss in a way?
Jack: I think the whole band has a secret love affair with hair metal and an affinity towards the 80’s – they’re the good old days. Sometimes we miss the true debauchery of rock ‘n roll that isn’t really there anymore. It’s become more like a business, and you really have to pay attention to it because everyone’s watching their money, so the carefree attitude is gone. I miss that a little bit.
WTL: When you’re on tour with younger bands like Mutiny Within, and some of the other ones you’ve just mentioned there, do you ever try to take them under your wing and help them out, and give them some tips with life on the road?
Jack: Absolutely! When we’re out on tour with bands, we try to become a family, and if they need to borrow something we let them borrow it. Sometimes if the stage is small we let them use our backline, and show them how to smooth the process out, because when you come into a place, you have to work as a team or there’s just conflict.
We love the young bands because the position of Exodus in the world is somewhat static, and you never know who’s going to be opening for you one day, and who you’re going to be opening for the next day. That’s happened to us over and over. We had Shadows Fall on one of their first tours as kids in a band, and now they’re like way bigger than we ever were. We’re always nice to the younger bands because you never know who’s going to be king tomorrow!
WTL: With how accessible music is now with the internet and iPods, do you think it’s positive or negative for music as a whole?
Jack: I think it depends on what stage your musics at. If you’re trying to make it out of your basement, it’s great because you can market yourself to the world with the click of a button, but for the people that’re our trying to make money with it and get record deals, sell hard copies and go on tour, it’s a fucking disaster! They’ve taken %60 of our business away from us, and nobody seems to care too much about it. If it was any other business that was out there, the government would do something about it. If 6 out of 10 cars were getting stolen off the lot, something would happen, but its us pot smoking scumbag musicians loosing money, and they don’t care, but we just get treated like 2nd class citizens.
WTL: Do you ever pay attention to anything that goes on at message boards, or Blabbermouth? There’s a lot of smack talk.
Jack: I think it’s pretty funny! Sometimes it’s a little rough reading somebody that’s really railing on you, but for the most part they’re pretty fucking creative, and it’s pretty funny. I know we’ve had some issues with some people making videos mocking us, and while it stings, it’s still pretty fucking funny too! It’s the kind of thing you have to deal with. If you put yourself in the public like that, then you have to deal with peoples negative opinions as well. It’s just like being a movie star or a politician. If you put yourself out there, you have to take the good with the bad. That’s just the way it is.
It’s an excellent filter for people to get rid of bullshit because people get to judge what they say, and I think it’s good because it gets you right in touch with the fans.
WTL: How has life changed on the road since you first started? I guess it’s a bit different with you because you weren’t with Exodus in the early days.
Jack: Yeah, I joined in ’97. The major change for me when I joined the band is that everybody was fucked up on drugs. It was a completely chaotic situation, but things have gotten more orderly, and we’ve made it more of a business too, and that’s good. Though sometimes I miss some of the crazy shit too… We’re older, and we’re all post-40, and staying up all night doing coke and drinking REALLY hurts now! (Laughs) And we also have to watch our health and eat good while we’re out here or else we get sick and feel like shit. We just have to take better care of ourselves now.
WTL: Where in the world would you like to tour?
Jack: We haven’t been to Russia yet. We’ve had 3 trips fall through, so I’d really like to see St. Petersburg and Moscow, and some of Africa too. Of course there’s Antarctica too, but there’s not too many metal shows there!
I did hear of a band who played the Maldives, this little group of Island in the middle of Atlantic, and they said it was pretty killer, so you never know.
WTL: Who would you like to tour with if you had no rules?
Jack: I would’ve liked to been around back when all the club stuff was going on. I was a little too young. I grew up in Sacramento, and I couldn’t get out to all the shows when Metallica and Exodus were just emerging. I feel like I missed out on all of that.
There’s a million musicians I’d like to come back from the dead to see.
WTL: Talking about the Bay Area there, I’ve always wondered what happened to help get thrash started over there, because San Francisco doesn’t seem like that angry of a place.
Jack: Yeah, but if you go across the water to Oakland and Richmond, people lock their fucking doors! Exodus came from Richmond, the ghetto. Nobody really came from San Francisco, unless you’re a banker. It’s just like any metropolis, there’s ghettos and rough places. The punk rock scene was really big at that time too, and that really helped to feed the whole thing, because Exodus had a whole lot of punkers come to shows back in the day. They were a really big crossover band because the pits were so violent. If you talked to anybody back then, they’d say the Exodus pits were the most violent pits ever. Ever! Bloody walls, blood dripping from the ceiling type shit. People were fucking afraid to go to shows!
It was like a little family too from what I gather from people that’re there. They all supported each other, and that’s just what it turned into.
San Francisco has had a million scenes – from the hippies to the Santana jam bands. It’s always been a place for creative things to happen. LA has always been more commercial, where people there are looking for the deal, while San Francisco has been more of the creative outlet area with the beatniks, poet coffee house, hippie-dippies to all the real thrash that came out of there. The whole hippie community likes that, and they encourage that whole idea, so I think that had a lot to do with it too.
WTL: Who would you like to tour with again?
Jack: We’re going to be touring with Megadeth again, which is good. I probably would’ve said that and it looks like that’s going to happen in March. We loved playing with The Haunted. We’ve become friends with almost everybody that we tour with. I’d love to tour again with Hatebreed. Almost anybody that we’ve ever toured with and had a good time with. The Kreator guys.
When you spend a month together in the same building every day, you form a special bond with the people that lasts. We always talk about going back out with all the bands we’ve toured with.
WTL: Since bands get asked about their band name all the time, have you ever lied about your band name or what it means?
Jack: I wasn’t really around when they named it, but they don’t have any problem with it. They knew it was a Bob Marley song, but didn’t know too much about Bob Marley. They just knew that it sounded cool. It’s something in the Bible, but they don’t know what. It means the movement of people, and that’s totally what happens when Exodus plays, and that’s about it. It really has no biblical reference in the beginning, or even Bob Marley.
WTL: I’m guessing you get a lot of biblical and Bob Marley questions your way.
Jack: It seems to be the obvious answer!
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