Show & Tell - Lamb Of God, a chat with John Campbell

LAMB OF GOD
AN INTERVIEW W/JOHN CAMPBELL, 06.25.05

The tour: Sounds of the Underground... The summer of 2005's bone-crushing, ear-splitting alternative/precursor to Ozzfest. Just as heavy, not nearly as expensive.

The headliner: Lamb of God... Similarly bone-crushing, ear-splitting.

S&T's Kevin Curtis spent some time with Lamb bassist John Campbell the first day of the tour. The interview takes place behind the Paul E. Tsongas Arena in Lowell, Mass. Kevin and John are sitting in a small park, facing the river. The recorder goes on as John talks about the view.

Here's KC with JC...

John Campbell: This reminds me of my home. It’s very similar to this with the river behind as well.

Show & Tell: I’ve never seen this here. It’s kind of nice actually.

JC: Yeah, it’s fucking beautiful. It’s got some kind of yankee civil war symbol thing down there on that stone so I don’t know how I feel about that but you know everybody lost a lot of people.

S&T: When was the last time you actually got to be home?

JC: We actually just got here. We showed up yesterday morning and had a day of pre-production and now this is the first day of the shows going down.

S&T: Before this you were just chilling at home?

JC: Well, I wouldn’t say chilling but we were getting ready, getting prepared. I was getting all my stuff together because I also have an impending wedding, so I got a lot of planning going on with that.

S&T: Yeh, congratulations. Do you get to see a lot of family when you’re home or is it just in and out?

JC: Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Definitely now with trying to get everything organized with the wedding I’ve definitely seen a lot more of my family than I normally do. I’m on the road a whole lot (and) you have to make the most of your time when you’re home. That’s actually what makes this the coolest fucking job I could ever have but it’s also the part of the thing that kind of makes it suck. You know, being away from your dogs and just simple shit (like) your home. But I don’t even wanna sound like I’m bitching.

S&T: You started this band a long time ago. Do you ever get to the point where you’re just tired and want to stop and live at home?

JC: (laughing) Man, I’m telling you this is the greatest fucking job you can ever get (but) every job has something that sucks about it. But no, if I had to choose today if I ever wanted to go into a real job or continue doing this, I would continue doing this, believe me. If I could do this for the rest of my life in some degree or some capacity that would be amazing.

S&T: Back to the marriage. Do you guys have a date set?

JC: Oh yeah, it’s the end of August.

S&T: And after you get married is Lamb Of God going to pause for a little bit?

JC: No, not necessarily. (Singer Randy Blythe) is also getting married shortly after that too, so we’re taking the time while we’re home to get some of that stuff done and then we were thinking about (starting to work) on our next record. I think we’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this record and toured a lot on it and I think it’s time to think about what we’re gonna start doing on the next one. We don’t have to quite as rush it as much as we did the last time and (we’re looking forward) to spending a lot of time on this labor of love – but it’s definitely a labor – and get to put out a new record sometime in the middle of next year.

S&T: Is this something where in between you’re gonna try to do this and make a family at the same time?

JC: That’s the bitch, man. I don’t know if I want to have a family at home and have to be on the road so much. I wouldn’t want to miss some of the shit that’s just stupid shit when you’re raising up a little baby. I got a lot of friends that have babies and I go over there and hang out and I love hanging out with the little baby but it’s real fucking cool handing back that baby. But definitely I would imagine that it would be even more difficult having a child at home and trying to do this.

S&T: I could definitely see that. But anyway it’s the first day here and it’s hot out.

JC: (laughing) It’s not hot, bro!

S&T: No?! [Ed.’s note: temperatures were very close to 100 degrees that day.]

JC: This is warm.

S&T: This is hot to me.

JC: Oh, this is goddamn beautiful, man. Yeah, we’re heading south eventually on this tour and this is probably one of the most beautiful days that I’m going to get.

S&T: You guys are headlining this tour and you’ve got the whole day to yourself. What are you gonna be doing to kill some time?

JC: I practice keeping away from alcohol.

S&T: Did you give it up?

JC: No, no, no, I just don’t like to drink before I play because then I’m not playing the show that I want to play. So I’m avoiding all my friends who have already played and are starting to party a little bit. They got this thing here where it’s playroster.com or somebody’s got a bunch of X-boxes and Playstations set up and I’ve been going up there.

S&T: Well, you’re a big gamer anyway?

JC: Well, I like a couple of games, you know. I’m not across the board loving every game but I play the shit out of Halo, man. That’s definitely an addiction and I just went and spent an hour playing all comers. Me and Jim from Chimaira, the bass player, we just sat there and did a little double team action and had three kids sitting down there at the time and we were undefeated. We whipped the living shit out of these little kids and I was actually scared thinking these little kids were gonna come up and have some skills but apparently the ones that do have skills are just sitting at home still playing Halo and not coming out to shows.

S&T: Does not wanting to drink before you play make it hard to be a headlining band and to avoid your friends?

JC: It changes. Well no, I still hang out with them. When you’re headlining, you go on, you play and when you’re done playing essentially the party is over. But, you know, I just finished playing, I want to go get a shower, maybe something to eat, and then start partying. But when you’re headlining by the time you get around to partying a lot of people fucking split, most of the kids who came out split and depending on how long the drive is you might have time to hang out in the parking lot and get a couple drinks in before you roll out. Yeah, (headlining) definitely kind of changes. It’s not quite as much fun, but believe me I’m still gonna have plenty of fun.

S&T: You guys have been headlining shows and playing arena shows. You think you’re progressing and moving out of the club scene?

JC: Yeah, well we’ll definitely play clubs again and probably in the very near future and we will probably continue to be playing them as we start to slide back down to smaller clubs and smaller clubs.

S&T: You don’t see yourself as being a band that starts off in the club scene, moves to arenas and stays there?

JC: Well, I don’t know. It’s hard to say because when we started even playing in small clubs was a huge victory for us at first. Forget about it, this was never thought of.

S&T: Would you like to see yourself go in that direction?

JC: I’d say that I like the path that I’m on. I’m not exactly sure where it’s leading and I won’t let my hopes sway that because you might get that and find out that it sucks, so you know I don’t know. I think it would be cool but for all I know is that it would suck so I’ll just take it and see where it goes and we’ll be doing an interview and I’ll be on (MTV Cribs) and then I’ll tell you how much it fucking sucks.

S&T: What is different with your personality, and the other guys, than when you first started this band in the American Gospel Days?

JC: Well, I think we definitely learned a lot about what it means to have a business and to work in the music industry. A lot of times we’re just doing what seems to be best and the right thing for us and a lot of people will say, “Oh, that’s retarded, nobody does it like that, you can’t do it like that,” and to us it makes perfect fucking sense and we do it and it turns out to be the right way to do it for us.

I would say we’re definitely a lot more confident with ourselves and with our abilities. We just worked hard and got here so I think we’ve all managed to stay very humble. It can be a little taxing when people are like freaking the fuck out and that normally only happens at shows and outside of shows like we were at a restaurant last night and one of the busboys was like, “Holy shit, like I’m a huge fucking fan!” He was totally cool about it but that kind of stuff gets weird.

S&T: Because this person comes up to you and knows your name and everything about you and you’ve never seen them before.

JC: Well, they have a shaped opinion about us through what they have picked up listening to music and seeing the DVD’s and reading interviews. There are impressions that they get from that that could potentially be pretty fucking wrong than what we actually are ‘cause I think a lot of people when you read something like that, you put yourself into it, it’s human nature, and for me it’s weird because I know I’m just this dude, you know. I eat and shit and sleep and fart and puke.

S&T: So you don’t consider yourself a celebrity?

JC: No, man, not at all. I’m just a regular dude, man.

S&T: Well, there are a lot of people out there that do.

JC: Yeah, I know and that’s funny to me. Whatever. Maybe one day I’ll grow to hate it or it will all be over, whatever. I play bass in a metal band. I can’t get that famous, right?

S&T: What do you find to be the ups and downs of that?

JC: Well, the ups, and not to sound terribly crass, but it’s a business and with the fans that are plugged into what you are doing and helping you to continue with your efforts by basically giving you money and supporting you financially by buying into your product. The down side is, you know not to continue talking about a tragic thing that comes up in interviews all the time but, shit, like what happened with Dimebag was just an example of some psychotic mother fucker had an idea as to who Dimebag was and in his sick brain acted out on his impressions of this guy. But the only reason he knew who he was, was because he was famous.

S&T: (Dimebag’s death is something we’re) always gonna remember where we were when we heard the news.

JC: Yeah, older generations even where Kennedy was shot, it’s like, “Where were you when the Twin Towers fell and where were you when you found out about Dimebag?” I was in Brighton in England and we were playing a show and it was a shitty rainy day. It’s just crazy, man, walking around in a haze.

S&T: You guys had a new DVD come out. I’ve seen some clips. It’s quite interesting.

JC: Yeah, we’re some goofy motherfuckers, man.

S&T: Going back to before when you said that people could see that and get the wrong idea.

JC: Well, we try to give a very brutally honest view of who we are and what we do behind the scenes and, of course, cutting out all the fans in here who know about it we made sure not to show and weed because that shit is illegal apparently. But I think still there’s people filtering it through they’re own perspective, they’re own experiences and how they take it in they could see something and think it was something completely different and form a judgment in there brain of who we are. It’s cool, we’re just trying to show people that we’re a bunch of goofball motherfuckers. We always say it but now we’ve got proof!

S&T: To finish up you said after the marriage you’re going to sit down and write a new record. Has that been kickstarted yet or do you have any (ideas/direction)?

JC: Absolutely not, nothing outside of, Mark and Willy are the main riff writers and they have been... they have ideas they have been stewing on at home. I’ve worked on a couple lyric ideas but that’s not anything I’ve ever really branched out into so who knows what’s gonna happen with that. We’re starting to conceptualize what exactly it’s going to be when we get down to it.

S&T: You getting lyric ideas, that’s more of a collaboration than previously because you never branched off into that.

JC: Yeah, I play bass and I’m lucky enough to play bass in a band with some ass-whooping guitar players and a drummer and I have a lot of arrangement ideas and stupid little bridge ideas and whatever, but I’m just in there trying to take what these crazy bitches are doing and translate it to bass because the strings on a bass are really fucking big and the frets are big and those guitar players are just (JC makes guitar noises) and they just hit like a million notes without moving there hands and I’m like, “You fucking prick, that’s the riff, you fucking dick.” I do a lot of stuff I really only play mostly the lowest 2 strings because it’s a drop D tuning so I can go a little bit lower down there and just work octaves and my general rule is when they go up I go down.

S&T: Thanks, John. I hope you guys have an amazing show.

JC: Thank you. And yeah, me too. Thanks for coming out and talking to us again and thanks everybody for reading this and giving a fuck about what we’re doing.

interview by kevin curtis