Canadian punk rockers, Billy Talent, have been known for their electrifying riffs and dark choruses amongst their songs. With their Hits album being released, this record will include highly acclaimed tracks such as “Surrender” and “Fallen Leaves” as well as two brand new tracks which are an exclusive feature in celebration of the successful record releases the band have made so far. Jonathan Gallant, bassist player of the band shares his insight on his music career and his invaluable experience to what he has achieved so far.
With the band originally being called Pezz, do you think the band’s music would’ve been totally different if you guys didn’t change your name?
“I don’t think so. I think it just kind of evolved into its own and it [band’s music] would happen naturally. Some of the early songs kind of crossover from the old name to the new one anyway. So maybe. It is kind of an iffy name.”
Obviously to make it big as a band, you need to make the most of the local market first. Could you tell me more about the journey you went through as a fresh out new band?
“When you start in high school and you meet a whole bunch of new people, you start meeting everyone in bands and everybody’s sort of forming a band. Basically after we finished high school we took every opportunity we could get locally, whether it would be in a local hall or a bar or going down town trying to get a gig. We would do anything, just tried to play as much as we could. And it took about ten years before anybody from the music industry started paying attention to us. When that happened and we had our foot in the door, there was no way to close it and we just kept on trying to write the best songs we could and that’s what kind of paid off in the end.”
I find it funny that the band named their first demo after your friend’s last name, simply because he was banging on the door of the basement while you were recording it. It must’ve been a surreal experience having to upgrade from basement playing to world tours. What has made your experience with Billy Talent memorable so far?
“It’s funny because you’re always learning. Just being in an independent band trying to get into any show, anywhere that you can and then you book a tour – that whole process is a huge learning curve and then when you’re just jamming with your friends. Basically you don’t really know the guys like you think you would have – even after 10 years playing with them, you’re basically hanging out with them after work. There’s not one significant thing, it’s just the whole thing is that you’re ‘that’ [being in a band] and it never stops and it’s pretty awesome. The first time in Europe, the first time in Australia – all those memories are there, and they’re very strong, very clear.”
Obviously when you guys started out as a band, you had many musical influences. What were they and how did they inspire you?
“When we first started as a band it was during like the grunge era, bands like Nirvana. The bands in that era heavily influenced on us, especially Rage Against The Machine in the beginning. Essentially we’re all just big music fans of classic rock. We love bands like The Police and Led Zeppelin. I think when you listen to our music, you’ll hear a wide variety of influences all over the place and we try to have our influences go in our music but we took them up in our kind of way.”
The lyrics of the songs that you’ve created are quite dark, especially looking at “Surrender” and “Red Flag”. How does the songwriting work for the band?
“We start writing melodies and start working on melodies and we have a song and a couple of verses once it’s all ironed out and then we sit down and write all the lyrics.”
You guys obviously have a really good relationship with one another considering that the band have been together for 21 years. When it comes to facing challenges, how do you overcome them?
“As a band, we had a lot of arguments and now we just talk it through, you know, With any kind of relationship it’s about communicating with each other, compromise and understanding and knowing how each other works and fighting for what you feel is important and finding little things that are not important. We just work it out now like adults.”
If you could pick three qualities a band must have to be successful, what would they be and why?
“Work ethic, integrity and respect. You have to have integrity or else you won’t be able to work hard and not put effort in a task that requires you to give it your all. Plus, respect comes hand in hand because the people you work with aren’t going to co-operate if you can’t respect their views and/or opinions.”
Of all the albums you’ve released so far, do you have a favourite record you enjoyed making in particularly?
“I think the first record [Billy Talent] was probably the most fun to make because of the experience that we went through. We were away from home some time to make the record plus it was also new and it was a lot of fun. All the records are fun in their own way.”
What are your favourite songs off that record?
“I’d have to say “Cut The Curtains”, “Prisoners of Today” and “This It How It Goes”. Those three, I just think are amazing.”
So, your Hits album is up for release soon. How did the choosing of the tracklist come about?
“We just laid out all the singles on paper, so we just picked the contending songs that we wanted on it. It was a pretty easy process actually. Basically, we looked at every album individually. Every album had four singles so we knew which singles were popular with fans and we know which ones were our favourites. It was not that challenging as I thought it would be.”
I find that the album artwork for the Hits record is really cool. Could you tell me more about it and what it means?
“Well, the album artwork was made by a fellow Australian named Ken Taylor. We just tried to come up with something unique and cool. In our style, a lot of the creativity came from it. He did an amazing job on it and we’re really proud of it. We just wanted to sum up our potential as a band and the potential that came out from our own careers that we’ve shared in the last 21 years.”
There’s two new tracks off it too, “Kingdom of Zod” and “Chasing The Sun”, how did the decision of having new tracks off the record come about?
“We’ve been working on new material and we had a couple of dozen songs. “Chasing The Sun” is a song we’ve never done before and we didn’t really know how that would fit in the new record. We thought it would be a perfect opportunity to put it on the Hits album. Something very different towards the compilation of songs. So it was kind of an easy decision with that one. “Kingdom of Zod” that was a hard choice because we really loved that song but it didn’t really fit with our new record. We didn’t want to give it up because it was such a strong song so we went along with it and felt it was best to put it on the Hits record.”
Is the band planning on releasing a new album anytime soon?
“We’re working on it now and we’re gonna try and finish it as much as we can and get it out as soon as we can. We’re in the studio pretty much every day, jamming and working so that’s the plan right now.”
When was your last tour and how was it?
“We finished up last September of last year. It was our anniversary tour, celebrating our first record. It was pretty cool and we did it across Canada. We did our first record front to back and then we played another set with that. It was a lot of fun, they were smaller shows and we had Anti-Flag opening. It was a nice way to finish off the long 18-20 months of touring. I love playing the shows. In my opinion it’s the best part to our music, really.”
What does being in a band mean to you?
“Man, it’s the only thing I know really. It’s what I’ve been doing for so long. I originally wanted to be a hockey player but once I started playing music, it pretty much took over that dream.”
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HITS is available now.
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