Mainly the scene was something we always looked at and saw the whole Dischord thing they had their own little thing and they did it their way and didn’t really worry about what anybody else was doing. punk scene make their way to your record collections?īF: Yeah definitely, I mean I had Minor Threat records when I was really little. You all grew up with a lot of Jersey punk influences on top of bands like The Clash, but did records from the D.C. JS: So we’re here in the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., a month before you and The Gaslight Anthem play your first shows since going on hiatus.
I caught up with Brian Fallon a month before the start of the tour to ask about potential influences of the harDCore scene on Gaslight and to tease out any augury on the future of the band. They performed their first shows in three years on May 27 at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., starting a string of a couple dozen tour dates that ended with back-to-back-to-back nights headlining in Asbury Park. But the prospect of honoring The ’59 Sound and everything it did for their lives, and did to the lives of their fans, lit a spark for the members of The Gaslight Anthem. The band that just five years earlier was on track to achieving every rock band’s Camron Crowe, Almost Famous dreams decided that Neil Young might be wrong, that it might in fact be better to fade away than burn out. The Gaslight Anthem, everyone’s favorite underdogs in 2009, somehow became the favorite punching bag for every writer, blogger and tweeter who either had a bone to pick about everything from the Springsteen comparisons to the band’s songwriting (too nostalgic) all which stemmed from leaning into pre-packaged narratives and refusing to commit the proper critical listening attention.Īfter almost 10 years of life on the road - which was growing ever more demanding from physical, emotional and spiritual endurance as well as time away from burgeoning families - Fallon’s divorce, and the pressure of being “The Gaslight Anthem,” Brian, Alex, Alex and Benny decided to hang it up after Reading. In 2012, New York Times Magazine dubbed Fallon the true, “heir-apparent of Bruce Springsteen.” As the roar and size of the crowds grew, so too did the pressure from all sides and the sting of the critic’s pen. People clambered for that heart and the resonance it brought the community it created.īetween 20, the group recorded three more albums and toured relentless, evolving from thumb-your-nose, wizened punks to elder statesmen of the rock world, carrying and even embodying some of the classic rock lineages. The rock world’s attention was on these four punks from Jersey and it met a band that didn’t wear its heart so much on its sleeve as it had its heart grafted onto its arm with black ink and crimson blood. Springsteen even joined them onstage during a string of festival dates to play the title track. Within a year of The ’59 Sound’s release, the group would go from playing tiny clubs and bars to a hundred people, at best, to headlining some of the most iconic rock clubs across the States. The other members of the group, guitarist Alex Rosamalia, bassist Alex Levine and drummer Benny Horowitz, drew on their shared love of old soul, folk and country to expand the sound of the Gaslight Anthem into something that synthesized the roots of rock n roll into something familiar but refreshing like the discoveries you glean from new mixtape of your favorite songs. On The ’59 Sound, released just a year late, Fallon leaned into his love of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and other singer-poets of the folk revival heritage. It’s first album Sink or Swim (2007) reflected as much. The Gaslight Anthem was forged in the fires of the New Brunswick punk scene, drawing influence from British progenitors like The Clash, the bruised, midwestern bash and pop of the Replacements and the fierce individuality of Washington, D.C. It’s also the last song on the last album the members of the Gaslight Anthem recorded when their lives were still normal. The final song The Gaslight Anthem performed at Reading, what could have been the band’s swan song, was “The Backseat,” an anthem of striving and survival as much as it is a declaration of the group’s place in the lineage of Jersey shore street poets.
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