By Carl Begai
During a recent interview with Toronto-based Danko Jones about his band’s new album, Rock And Roll Is Black And Blue, he offered some insight into the new book Too Much Trouble – A Very Oral History Of Danko Jones. Call it the companion to the recently released Bring On The Mountain documentary DVD, only the book offers a view from the outside looking in as well.
“The book was done by Stuart Berman, who worked on it for about two years,” says Danko. “He interviewed over 70 people that, all together, tell the story of our band. We didn’t oversee it because I don’t do that with people who make videos for us, write about us, all that. It’s like ‘Go crazy, man’. I think that if you free people up more on things like that you get a better outcome. Stuart was a good choice to write the book because he knows a lot of the people we know, and a lot of the people we have bad relationships with (laughs). He was a great person to track down old band members and bands we’ve had brushes with. A couple bands didn’t respond but there’s a enough drama in there to keep people satiated. With him writing the book those parties felt safer, which was good. I told Stuart that we weren’t going to censor anything they said.”
“There were a few points when I read over the drafts where I started yelling ‘That motherfucker!'” Danko admits, laughing. “It took me back to that moment in time five years back or whatever and I’m going ‘That motherfucker is such a bullshitter!’ There were a couple times when I mailed Stuart back and said ‘Seriously man, I’ve gotta reply to this! I’ve gotta say something! This is bullshit!’ I never said strike it from the book, though. We left it all in.”
On the subject of butting heads with some of his peers, Danko has been taken to task since the beginning of his career – particularly at home in Canada – for being an obnoxious king-sized full-of-himself loudmouth. Anyone that’s spoken to him or paid attention to his interviews, however, invariably end up wondering how people can’t grasp the concept of a stage persona. Turns out some folks still don’t get it…
“Yeah. Oh yeah. I catch shit all the time. I’m misunderstood constantly in this country but I don’t mind. I embrace it because there’s gotta be somebody out there who is kind of a douche (laughs). I am surprised that people don’t see the two different sides, though. In the beginning when people didn’t get it we’d sit in a corner and laugh our asses off. When it got bigger, got real and we became part of the scene I started to get a little bit offended, but what are you gonna do? At this point I don’t give a fuck. You’ve got to prop it up and spoonfeed people sometimes, but I refuse to do that.”
Watch for the complete interview with Danko about Rock And Roll Is Black And Blue, which hits the BW&BK website here on October 20th.
Too Much Trouble – A Very Oral History Of Danko Jones is available via Amazon.com here.
Watch the first 10 minutes of Bring On The Mountain here.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
