Interview by Bec Harbour
I am 100% sure that every interview that ‘Fat Mike’ Burkett has done since NOFX announced that they were calling it quits has been asking about why and his feelings about this.
When I had the opportunity to speak with Fat Mike, it was on the brief that we asked about the final tour and calling it quits. I decided to get it out of the way first up as well as some of the basic tenants of being one of the most influential figures in punk rock.
I asked Fat Mike about the tour – on the Zoom video I could see that he was nonplussed and the answer to this question, “Quitting NOFX – 40 years is enough?” was “Yes, we have had our TV series, we have gold records, what more can we do?”.
I feel like the wheels have fallen off on the first question so I quickly move on to the next around the item that I was intrigued by in his presser about his ability to provoke and push buttons. This is mis-interpreted and I feel that potentially I am not speaking coherent English this morning and is this how the whole interview is going to go? But it is evident that Mike really wants to talk about what he is currently working on and proudest of right now – his new album Fat Mike Gets Strung Out – a collection of NOFX songs that have been arranged for strings.
Having listened to the album prior to the interview, you can tell the craft behind the music. Punk bands are often dismissed as people who can barely play, the music is sloppy and so is the musicianship. Fat Mike Get Strung Out proves all of this wrong especially for NOFX and his own solo work. The collaboration with Baz the Frenchman has had the songs transposed for cello, viola, violin, bass and piano becoming beautiful pieces of classical music.
I told Mike that I had listened to the album in full and that it was beautiful (in fact I had listened to it to go to sleep) and it was not what I was expecting. The songs on the album are not just punk songs with strings, they are arranged for strings and many of them, if I didn’t know the song titles, I would have thought they were new compositions.
“Thank you, I have definitely listened to that record more than any of my other records, and I’m in the middle of making the second one because I had such a great time doing it” Mike says, “It’s just… music, and my brain works on vibrations, and I don’t have to fucking sing or perform or write lyrics, I just get to put down vibrations that make my ears happy.”
We speak next about the underestimation of the musical ability, to compose and write music that is complex and beautiful – punk by its very definition can be abrasive, simplistic and harsh.
“Punk rock is one of the most complex styles of music, both lyrically and melodically. And people don’t know that, that’s why I wanted to do this.” Mike says.
“The chord progressions in most NOFX songs are… none of it’s three fucking chords, it’s all 8 to 16 chord progressions. And that song, ‘I’m A Rat’, that’s 54 chord progressions in a row without a repeat. When you hear the punk version, you cant even tell.”
With so many chord progressions was it hard to translate that one?
“Same as the other ones…most of these songs have complex chord structures, you have to put down the melody, the harmony and any other parts of the songs, then we always throw in something new too.”
“Probably ‘Medio-Core’ was the hardest one, that one is the one that is most like the original.”
‘Medio-Core’ was the one song on the album that I did recognise instantly. I went into listening to the album with the view to just enjoy the songs without trying to identify which song was which. My brother was wandering around and asked what on earth I was listening to and I showed him the stream, and his comment was that it matched the house (we live in an art deco period house that is filled with art deco furniture). This seemed to tickle Mike’s amusement “It’s not a bullshit album.”
“What’s fun about this album, and I tell people to do this, try to pick out and instrument for every song and listen to that, its fun…I always think the cello parts are the most interesting”
That’s because you’re a bass player.
“All melody comes off the root note, it’s why me and Paul McCartney have always played bass last on albums. Bass makes the melody what it is, and you decide if you’re going to play the 5th or the 3rd and that’s what makes the melody shine…”
I didn’t know that’s what happened during recording, I always thought that the drummer and bass player came in and laid down their tracks, then the guitar came in over the top.
“That’s what most bands do. Then you often get basses out of tune, you can’t tell if a bass is out of tune unless there is a guitar.”
Well that makes sense.
“I didn’t do it because Paul McCartney did it, I’d been doing it for 20 years, then I heard that’s what he did.”
I wanted to go back to the provocation stuff that was sidelined while we discussed the new album because I wanted to know why that was such a prominent part of the press release.
Is the provocation because he enjoys making people think?
“I do make people think”
I knew a person when I was younger who would just go around doing shitty things and calling it “punk rock” but they didn’t make anyone think, they were just shitty things.
“You can’t throw a brick through a window and call it jazz.”
But if you were throwing a brick through a window, there would be a cause behind it right? Just doing shit things is a bit…
“Hurting someone is shitty, but if you just add to the cacophony of absurd life, by doing fun things that no-one has ever done before, for no reason, that just adds to the experience on this planet, living by the rules all the time, that’s no way to live…”
And there is some punk ethos to live by. I then wanted to speak about the Punk Rock Museum that Mike had started in Vegas. We spoke about how it was important to preserve those moments in history and to some extent, punk had been forgotten about.
“It’s the most important genre to preserve, punk rock has been more important to society than any other genre really. We taught people to think differently. And to question authority, I mean other styles, there has been protest music before, I just think that punk rock does it the smartest way and the funnest way, and really the most humble way too.”
“The museum in Vegas is, it’s five decades of punk by the way, everyone is inducted, if you’re in a punk band, you can have your flyer on the wall, it’s for everybody.”
“You can go there and play my bass, Joan Jett’s guitar, Joe Strummer’s guitar through his amp, it’s all there…”
There is no other museum that would let you do that, it would be behind a velvet rope or plexiglass…
“We have few guitars behind plexiglass, we just got Joe Strummer’s telecaster and Johnny Thunder’s 59. But most of the guitars you can just play…it really means a lot to kids, kids are blown away and they can play a rock stars guitar…”
That’s because when they go to a museum they are told not to touch.
“Yeah, on the first day we opened, someone dropped my bass and it broke. And you know what we did? We fixed it. Like you do on tour. People are weird about their instruments, you know, oh my god what if someone breaks it. Well then you fix it, no one’s going to smash it you know. There are people in the room making sure you don’t smash things!”
I would have thought that you would have played a bass on tour that was held together with glue and gaffer tape?
“I’ve been playing the same bass for years and yeah the necks been broken 3 times and I made it work.”
I know about bass necks, someone sat on mine and there is a bit of a bow in the neck and it makes an interesting noise but I made it work. Mike laughs at this.
We move on to recap the tour 40 Years, 40 Cities, 40 Songs – what was thought process behind this?
“Yeah, we’re giving 100%, that’s what everyone deserves, they deserve us to be on our best game.”
NOFX are doing their 40 Years 40 Cities 40 Songs tour next year
Fat Mike Gets Strung Out is out now.
