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Interview with John Campbell

Webster Theatre, Hartford, CT

October 14, 2004

By Janee

Janee: Okay, lets start off with the basics for those visitors of our site that aren’t that familiar with you or Lamb of God. Please state your name and position in the band.
John: I’m John Campbell bass player of Lamb of God.
Janee: All right cool. What’s your date of birth?
John: Its uh 9.30 *pauses coughs*
Janee: You don’t have to give the year..
John: 1972
Janee: Okay *laughs*
John: * laughing* Nah I’m proud of that fact
Janee: That’s good..what’s your hometown?
John: I live in Richmond Virginia
Janee: How long have you played bass?
John: Oh god, I guess it’s been about.. 12 or 13 years now.
Janee: What was it that made you decide to pick up an instrument?
John: I lived in Richmond Virginia, and there are amazing bands that play there at the local clubs and parties and they were just normal dudes, and I’d always been into music and uh it was just the thing to do in Richmond and the dudes really set the bar high for how good you had to be, and that’s basically the reason why I play music because of the bands such as Breadwinner, Gwar that were playing in Richmond when I got there.
Janee: Was there a certain point in time where you decided, this is it, this is exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life, like when you hit the stage for the first time?
John: *laughing* Hell no.. nah I’m one wishy washy son of a bitch. I enjoy the fuck out of it some of the times like when you’re in the middle of a great show it’s a fucking incredible feeling, but there’s ya know, with every good thing there is a whole lot of bullshit.
Janee: Yeah.. To who or what do you look at for inspiration musically?
John: * pause* Uh, I’m not really sure what it is, something’s gotta grab me. I mean I can hear something and if for whatever reason it doesn’t grab me, I.. I might as well have not heard it. But that, anything can grab me, I don’t know what it is, but fucking Willie Nelson or fucking the Cliffs, any kind of shit.
Janee: What bands were you in prior to Lamb of God?
John: None that anyone would have ever heard of.. *everyone laughs* local bands back in Virginia. There was Fattie Love, uh what other bands have I been in, that was the.. that was the best, the greatest band I’ve ever been in outside of this.
Janee: How did you hook up with Lamb of God? What started this?
John: Uh.. Chris, Mark and I were room mates, well not room mates, but we lived on the same floor in the same dorm in our freshman year of college. We got to know each other then, then continued living in Richmond, we all moved from where we were to Richmond, and just got ourselves into the scene and we knew each other for four years already and I had played in bands with Mark and uh we just decided to start making music.
Janee: Now when you guys first started out the band’s name was Burn the Priest. What was the reason for the name change?
John: Well when we started we were a four piece instrumental band and it seemed like we could go crazy offensive with the name, it’s a very death metal name and it just seemed to fit really well and as we developed and evolved and we got Randy in there singing and uh developed into what.. more or less what we are now and people saw Burn the Priest and thought we were a satanic band, and that’s not what we were about at all.... although I do have a deep love for Satan

Janee: *laughs* Doesn’t everyone?
John: Yeah well, the issue is, that just wasn’t what was going on with the band.
Janee: Your most recent album “Ashes of the Wake” is Lamb of God’s major label debut. How is being on Epic different than what you were doing before?
John: We’re a lot fucking busier, that’s for sure. Yeah, the last... we’ve been on tour for a week now, we had a day off in there somewhere. I can’t even remember cause there was so much press and shit to do anyway that we’ve just been really busy with promotion and playing shows and all of that stuff.
Janee: Did you find the transition difficult? Like was there anything that really slapped you in the face and you went woah what’s this?
John: Uh.. they wanted the record really fucking quickly. We had 4 months to write and rehearse the record. But no, they’ve been super cool, they’ve never stepped up and said no you gotta change that song there or anything like that. It’s been awesome.
Janee: That’s good. You hooked up with Machine to produce this album, how did that come about?
John: His name came up on a list of producers, as our process goes we go “okay who the fuck do we wanna use” lets get all these names together and talk about them all, and what stuck out about him was that he wasn’t, he wasn’t the guy that everyone else was using in metal, but he did really good work We met a few of the different producers and just meeting up with Machine just totally felt natural, that was.. It was an easy decision.
Janee: Despite not being on a major label with promotion and all that, you guys have built up a really big fan base that’s very loyal, what do you think is the reason for this?
John: I’m not sure, I think coming from Richmond and just how that music scene works you just have to kick ass. And from the very beginning we always wrote our songs like all right how are we going to just make people’s jaws hit the floor, and that’s kind of the inspiration behind a lot of the crazy changes *makes bass noises to demonstrate* to some crazy content you wouldn’t expect and uh, early on when we were doing tours and nobody had ever heard of us and playing parties and playing some of the songs we were playing, people would just flip out. So we kind of purposely did that and uh..I guess that somehow effected people and people just started coming back and it was a real slow growth, but we’ve been doing this band for 10 years so we’ve been working at it for a while.
Janee: Randy has stated in previous interviews that he feels people are more ready for angrier and more aggressive music now due in part to the socio-political and economic climate of the US which in turn effects the rest of the world.
John: True.
Janee: Do you agree with this, and if so in what direction do you see your music as well as metal progressing over the next couple of years?
John: I agree with that and I think , that this upcoming election will have a lot to do with where it goes. If George Bush is elected, then it will be incredible for metal. I’d just as soon go back to work, to being a bartender ya know?
Janee: Yeah
John: *continues* than get that motherfucker out of office. But yeah I think it definitely is a direct relation. If you think about it, back when Reagan was in office punk rock and metal was coming out then, it was great and people were really into it because people were fucking pissed off.
Janee: That’s cool. *laughs* That’s the one I really wanted to know. *everyone laughs* Your music has always had political tones to it even going way back. When you went in to create “Ashes of the Wake” was a goal you had in mind to continue this political theme.
John: Nah it was actually the opposite.
Janee: Was it just something that happened?
John: We were like let’s not do, let’s not do so heavy on the politics, but then the shit that was going down, we started writing this in January of 2004, from January to April and there was just crazy shit going on and it was hard to ignore and hard not to express how we felt about what was going on.
Janee: Now you guys headlined... co-headlined second stage at Ozzfest...
John: We had the 2 o’clock slot , right before Hatebreed and Slipknot..
Janee: You were one of the headliners, don’t worry in a lot of people’s eyes you headlined.*John laughs* How was that touring experience different than what you guys have done before?
John: It was fucking amazing. A lot of the bands on second stage were bands that we’ve toured with before on smaller levels, so we had a lot of our friends there and the huge crowds of Ozzfest and just the nice big stage and the nice time slot... it was just incredible. *pause* It will be a while before we do a tour that tops that.
Janee: Were there any bands on Ozzfest 2nd stage that you found yourself hanging out with that you never really listened to or hung out with before?
John: Uh... some of the people that we didn’t know that we ended up hanging out with were some of the people from Lacuna Coil, the dudes from a band called Magna Fi that were kind of an odd man out on there but super cool guys. We got to know the Throwdown guys really well, they’re playing here tonight. Then again there were a lot of bands that we’ve played with like Everytime I Die, Unearth, God Forbid.. It would have been everyone if Shadows Fall and Killswitch managed to get there, but they played on a couple of the off dates.
Janee: If you were able to design your ultimate tour, who else would be on the bill?
John: Hmm.. *pauses* Led Zepplin and Jimmy Hendrix.
Janee: That would be awesome.
John: Two of the greats.
Janee: Yeah. Okay, Take me through a day in the life of you on tour.
John: *laughs* Well how about we just.. I’ll go through today.
Janee: *laughs* Okay
John: Uh what happened... I woke up when we got here, I think I woke up at 11. Woke up called my girlfriend, uh caught up with her, kinda stumbled around, drank some coffee, walked inside to see the club, went and found a shitter, took care of business cause you can’t shit on the buses. Yeah that’s definitely a daily concern where am I going to shit, the next time I need to take a shit?
AJ: Man that sucks!
John: I know!
Janee: You never heard that before?
AJ: No..that’s terrible.
Janee: If you go, you gotta hot bag it dude.
John: Well, thankfully I’ve never been down that road before
Janee: *laughs*
John: uh, let’s see. Farted around, got online for a little bit. Did our sound check, went and smoked a joint. Came back here, played video games, waited on you to show up, then Epic showed up, we’re about to go to dinner with uh.. Some radio contest winners, and then uh, we’ll come back here. Probably eat some dinner, play a couple of video games, drink a couple of beers, smoke some weed. Go play the show, go find a shower, clean up. Go drink a whole lot of beers, go smoke a whole lot of weed, and then pass out on the bunk, wake up the next day..
Janee: And do it all over again.
John: Yeah do it all over again. Unfortunately I’m coming down with a cold so I’m going to have to chill out tonight.
Janee: What do you like to do when your not on tour?
John: Hanging out with my girlfriend, my dog, going fishin’, catching up with all my friends I don’t get to see so much now that I’m on the road all the time.
Janee: Can you share with us some of Lamb of God’s plans for when you wrap up this tour? Are you going to take a break or are you going back out on the road?
John: Well we’re going home for a couple of weeks, then we’re going out to the UK for about 2 and ½ weeks and that will be the middle of December so we’ll come home and get through Christmas and the New Year, probably take January off maybe, then the end of January-February we’ll be going out again. Not sure where, not sure when but we’re planning that now.
Janee: Are there any local/unsigned bands out there that you think everyone should check out?
John: RPG at http://www.RPGVA.com The Broad Low from NYC, actually they are just smaller bands that are signed to smaller labels, *pauses* All Night may or may not be around any more, I just heard they recorded a new demo but I thought that they had broken up, they are a band from North Carolina, Suzuki Town from Richmond Virginia, great band.. Who else? There is Alabama Thunderpussy another Richmond local band that’s amazing, Strike Anywhere from Richmond great band, that’s all I can remember through this oncoming cold. My sinuses are feeling like shit..
Janee: Now these are just a bunch of random questions we always ask at bacstagepass.com. If I were to steal your discman right now what CD would I find in it?
John: I just got a shutter to thanks CD and old one Pony Express record, their first Epic release, they are a band from, DC, coming up in the DC punk scene that I listen to and haven’t been able to find it since the record was out of print, but somebody brought it to me yesterday so..
Janee: What’s your all time favorite band?
John: Hmm...that's hard, man, cause it switches around because it depends on the mood
Janee: Depends on the week..
John: *laughs* Yeah, I love Lynard Skynard, I love Bad Brains, I love Black Flag, uh... god... those are the ones popping out of my mouth right now.
Janee: Do you have a favorite song to perform live?
John: Hmm.. I don’t know. I fucking love performing all of our songs, it’s great. I’d say the first one cause the shows getting started and then the last one because I get to go drink beer.
*everyone laughs*
Janee: Speaking of drinking, what’s your favorite drink?
John: Miller Light, Amstel Light if I got some money in my pocket.
Janee: Do you have a favorite quote?
John: *laughing* It’s funny that you ask me for a favorite quote, I have a quote but I can’t really remember it.. But it’s my favorite I swear!
Janee: *laughs*
John: Ben Franklin has a quote about those who would give up freedoms for liberty deserve neither. Or something along those lines..
Janee: Well, thanks so much for doing this..
John: Oh yeah..

Janee & John

Janee: Is there anything you’d like to say to your fans?
John: Sure, keep on coming out to the shows, come on to the message boards say hi to us, come out to the shows say hi to us.. And don’t get caught.
Janee: *laughs* That’s good advice right there!
John: Ohhh yeah, you get in a whole lot less trouble if you don’t get caught.