When the history of modern rock n’ roll music is told, one of the story elements it contains is often a life-altering event known as a first concert. For musicians like those in the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, their first concerts included seeing Blues and Soul-based performers such as Big Mama Thornton, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters or even Elvis Presley doing their thing on a stage and having their minds completely blown away by the experience. John and Paul and Mick and Keef formed bands that, in turn, inspired other young kids with big dreams to form their own bands, too. One of the keys to this cycle sustaining itself is the beginning of each new musical wave when there is a tremendous amount of raw energy, vitality and originality. It is those bands at the forefront that harness and unleash that energy best that seem to be the ones others seek to emulate. In time, the music scene becomes crowded as the innovators and the subsequent followers all compete to be heard. That scene eventually becomes a bloated, pale imitation of its former self. It loses relevancy and is replaced by the next new wave of music as created by that generation’s freshest new faces. As surely as the emergence of Rock n’ Roll in the sixties was a reaction to the safe music of the crooners of the fifties, and the rise of Punk and Hip Hop in the seventies was in response to the puffed up pageantry of the Prog. Rock bands of the day, the cycles continue unabated. The heydays of new music scenes come and they go. If you are lucky enough to see bands ripping it up at the beginning of a scene then chances are favourable that one day you might form your own band. That is the story of today’s band Against Me! And, in particular, the lead singer Laura Jane Grace.
Everyone has a first concert. For Laura Jane Grace, that first concert was seeing Green Day as they wrapped up their first major U.S. tour in support of their major label debut album Dookie. At the time, Green Day was a breath of fresh air that was blowing through the American rock scene. Fresh out of the emerging Punk scene in San Francisco (and in lock step with the Grunge scene in Seattle), Green Day became one of the first new Punk bands to polish their sound into a more radio-friendly version of itself, become signed to a major record label and hit the big time with a series of Top Ten hits. *(You can read more about Green Day here). Dookie arrived on the music scene at a time when rock music was appearing to be in a slow but steady rate of decline. Springsteen’s Born in the USA, Nebraska and The River were all well in the rear view mirror. Prince and his Purple Rain album had come and gone. Van Halen was evolving into Van Hagar, too. The time was ripe for something new by someone new. That someone was Green Day. Based upon the theatricality of drummer Tre Cool, the everyman guitar playing of Mike Dirnt and the charismatic lead singer of Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day became that band that young teenage kids listened to on their headphones in their bedrooms at night. For those kids like Laura Jane Grace, who was wearing her Dookie album out alone in her room, the songs that Armstrong sang seemed to be speaking to her on a deep, personal level. The lyrics contained references to things in her life that no one had ever seemed to recognize as being important. For Grace, those songs seemed to validate concerns she had about life and her place in the world going forward. Green Day, as a band and Billie Joe Armstrong, in particular as a singer, seemed to be reading her innermost thoughts, feelings and fears while, at the same time, offering her a safe path forward. So, at the age of thirteen, Laura Jane Grace and a friend of hers named Dustin Fridkin secured their first concert tickets to see Green Day in Orlando, Florida. In the same way that a youthful John Lennon was entranced and intoxicated by what he saw when he attended his first Blues shows in England in the 1950s, Grace and Fridkin were equally changed by being in the presence of a powerful band at the height of its newly found powers that day in Orlando. That Green Day show was their first experience with the energy of a mosh pit. It was the first time they had witnessed the star turning power of a frontman encouraging the audience to raise their fists into the air, to jump around or to sing at the top of their lungs, with the crowd happily following his every command. By the time Green Day closed their set, Laura Jane Grace had many questions answered and saw a way forward in life for herself. She knew she had found a world in which she was welcome and where she wanted to remain. So, as she and Fridkin headed for the gates and made their way back home to Gainesville, Florida, Grace had resolved to form her own punk band. After several fits and starts that could be expected for someone who was still under age, with no equipment, experience or money, Laura Jane Grace became the lead singer of her very own band that she called Against Me! Now, all that was left was for Laura Jane Grace to change someone else’s world.
Many teenage kids form their own bands while in high school. Thrashing away in their parent’s basement or else in the family garage, these high school bands often burn brightly in the minds of those doing the playing. But eventually the real world beckons with the prospect of university and/or of work, effectively snuffing out those rock n’ roll dreams for good. That was not the case for Laura Jane Grace and Against Me!. In the years that followed that original Green Day concert, Grace possessed a singular vision of how her life was meant to unfold. Being the leader of her own band was no passing fancy. She wasn’t in it for fun or to seek attention. Grace sincerely believed that she had something of note to say to the world and set about to do so with a debut album called Against Me! Is Reinventing Axl Rose. While the music on Reinventing Axl Rose was rough and unpolished, the idea behind the album was mature beyond measure.
As you may know, Axl Rose was the lead singer of the rock band Guns & Roses. Guns & Roses burst onto the music scene with one of the biggest selling debut albums of all time called Appetite for Destruction which featured songs such as “Welcome to the Jungle”, “Sweet Child of Mine”, “Paradise City” and many more. However, fame didn’t always rest easy on the shoulders of the individual band members of Guns & Roses. Several battled serious addictions to drugs and alcohol. Within a few short years, Guns & Roses had gotten bogged down and distracted while attempting to make an epic album called Chinese Democracy. Axl Rose became a caricature of his former self. The band dissolved around him and went on hiatus. While the band has reunited and still tours on occasion, the electrifying promise of their debut album was never truly fulfilled. Laura Jane Grace had witnessed the rise and fall of Axl Rose in real time and had sworn that her experience would be different. She claimed that part of the reason for the demise of Axl Rose was because he gave into temptation and availed himself of too many things that didn’t matter to the music. Surrounded as he was by yes men and hangers on who catered to his every whim, Rose lost touch with what was real. He became consumed with maintaining that high that comes from celebrity. In the end he became a shadow. The songs of Against Me! Is Reinventing Axl Rose reflected a sense of understanding and maturity that was beyond their years. The album’s concept was to reinterpret the idea of success and celebrity. When critics and fellow musicians listened to that album, they were impressed with the purity of the band’s sound, its message and the energy they were conveying. Live performances started happening with greater regularity. The members of Against Me! became better musicians and their onstage presence became more controlled and intense. The music world embraced the band. There were rapturous reviews in music magazines. To Laura Jane Grace, being the leader of her own band seemed like a dream that was actually coming true.
In time, the band was noticed by the legendary Fat Mike of the punk band NOFX. NOFX came into being around the same time as did Green Day and, as such, they had achieved a level of respect within the punk rock community for their longevity, their commitment to adhering to the DIY-nature of being a true punk band, as well as being a supportive presence for up and coming punk bands by way of their own production company called Fat Wreck Chords. In Against Me!, Fat Mike recognized a kindred spirit. He offered to sign the band and to fund the recording of their next album. Laura Jane Grace accepted the offer. While the band’s debut album had been well-received, they were still seeing relatively little actual money from it. So when Fat Mike appeared in their lives like a fairy godmother ready to grant wishes, it was welcome news.
However, one of the golden laws in the world of punk music is that the truest form of the word “punk” is when you follow your heart and do things exactly as you wish without any concern or pressure from external sources. Most new punk bands seem to possess this level of artistic purity when they first start out. In the beginning, it rarely is about money because neither the band nor their fans have any, so the early considerations made by a band tend to revolve around the music. That intense focus on the art of it all is what causes hardcore punk fans to develop such strong attachments to bands in their early, formative days. But, as we know, once bands become successful, revenue becomes a factor. Fans pay to buy albums, merchandise and to come and see live shows. Before too long, a band stops being purely an artistic concept and evolves into a business entity. Some bands such as Green Day embrace the change and use their newfound access to money to fund even greater, grander visions for themselves. But many other bands such as Against Me! find such financial considerations to be grating on their nerves. Even with as supportive and mentoring a figure as Fat Mike, conflicts soon arose between his vision for the band’s followup album and theirs. While Fat Mike saw the next album in terms of a business investment for Fat Wreck Chords, Laura Jane Grace saw it as a continuing artistic statement that simply evolved out of Reinventing Axl Rose. In the end, Against Me! As The Eternal Cowboy was released by Fat Wreck Chords. It was filled with peppy songs that audiences could sing along and dance to as the band rocked out on the stage. It was also the start of a process of becoming more closely integrated into the roster of bands that were also part of the Fat Wreck Chords musical family. Consequently, instead of touring to support their second album on their own, Against Me! did so as part of a packaged tour with two other bands known as Anti Flag and Rise Against. Slowly but surely, Laura Jane Grace felt as though her ability to completely control and execute her artistic vision was being eaten away.
The story of Against Me! is longer and more complex that I have room to go into in today’s post. There were more albums released. The profile of the band continued to grow. They made appearances on national television shows. They played on larger and more noteworthy tours. They began to see the world. However, it all soon started to feel like being a producer of revenue was getting more emphasis placed upon it than being artists and role models for others. That didn’t sit right with Laura Jane Grace. It had only been a decade or so ago that she and her friend were having their minds blown by Green Day. The lyrics of the songs on Green Day’s Dookie album had spoken to her heart in ways that had never happened before. Those lyrics spoke to a sense of personal identity so deeply held within her that acknowledging it had only ever been something that she had dared to whisper, even in her own mind. To many teens who felt lost when Dookie came out, the lyrics to several of the songs seemed to hint at a sense of sexual ambiguity and/or gender fluidity. To kids who felt trapped in bodies that they never understood or felt comfortable in, to have someone as confident and charming as Billie Joe Armstrong sing about how he understood their confusion and pain made a whole generation of lost souls suddenly feel seen. It is difficult to put into words how powerful it all was for people like Laura Jane Grace, all of thirteen at the time, to know that who she was then (as a boy) wasn’t necessarily who she was destined to be.
In 2010, a little over fifteen years since that first Green Day concert experience, Against Me! released an album called White Crosses. On it was a song called “I Was a Teenage Anarchist”. This song is a lament regarding the compromises that life forces on even the most passionate of us. It is, essentially, a song about losing control of your life and the vision of it that you held so close to your chest for so many years. “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” provoked a strong reaction from other punk bands because being in control of your artistic vision is a hallmark of what makes punk the genre that it is. Many other bands derided Laura Jane Grace for appearing to be waving the white flag of surrender in a world where admitting that the fire has been snuffed out amounts to sacrilege. In reality, “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” was a song that was heralding the ultimate of independence and fire.
In 2012, Laura Jane Grace gave an interview in which she announced for the first time that for as long as she could remember, she had been a sufferer of something called gender dysphoria. This is a clinical term used to, in simple terms, describe the feeling of unease and/or distress a person feels with the gender they have been assigned at birth. This includes, among other things, feelings that your body is not the one you were meant to have. Laura Jane Grace came out as being a transgender female. The name of Laura was chosen as her name because it was the name her mother told her she would have been called if she had been born as a girl. The last name Grace was her mother’s maiden name. She chose Jane for her middle name because she felt it was pretty and that it perfectly suited the space between Laura and Grace. Laura Jane Grace was became the name by which the lead singer for Against Me! was now known to the world. She feels free to perform in dresses and heels and to do so while rocking the stage as hard as she ever did in the past. In 2014, the band released an album called Transgender Dysphoria Blues and in 2016, an album called Shape Shift With Me. Laura Jane Grace is now who she always felt she should be. Being unapologetically your true self is the ultimate punk statement. She is an anarchist after all.
I am just an old guy in sweatpants typing away on a couch. I have no pull when it comes to public discourse and altering the state of the world’s affairs. I just have the words that I write and my readers who read them. So, for what it is worth, just let me publicly state that I would happily invite Laura Jane Grace into my home. I would welcome her with a hug, a handshake, a fist bump or whatever form of greeting she would be most comfortable with. I am always happy when anyone finds peace in their world. Thus, I am happy for Laura Jane Grace and wish her well on her continued journey through life. This post is my flare into the night sky that highlights my support for her journey and those of others like her, all hoping to find their way to being their true selves. Like any choir, there are many types of voices needed for there to be harmony. Life’s choir is no different. In the days, weeks and years to come, it is going to be increasingly dangerous to make similar punk statements like the one Laura Jane Grace has made. In fact, it is already dangerous to do so. And yet, that danger doesn’t mean that lost souls have ceased to exist. They still do and always will. In the times that are to come, hopefully they will draw some comfort and strength from the lyrics of singers such as Laura Jane Grace and Billie Joe Armstrong. There is power in being seen, even when one has to hide. My teapot is always on, for anyone who may need to know.
The link to the video for the song “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” by Against Me! can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.
The link to the official website for Against Me! can be found here.
The title for this series of punk rock posts is taken from a lyric in the song “Boxcar” by the awesome punk band Jawbreaker. I would appreciate it if you would take a moment to visit their website and show the band a little love. The band’s website can be reached by clicking here.
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