INTERVIEW: Lou Koller – Sick Of It All

After releasing another stellar addition to their back catalogue this year in the form of Waking The Sleeping Dragon!, we got the chance to sit down with hardcore royalty Lou Koller to look back on their epic career, reminisce about the classic CBGB matinee shows and also look at how SICK OF IT ALL have grown into one of the most legendary hardcore bands on the planet.

How did SICK OF IT ALL start?

Lou: That’s pretty easy. We were all hanging out in school, and Armand [Majidi, drums] was playing in a band called REST IN PIECES, and then started another band with Craig [Setari, bass] called STRAIGHT AHEAD, so we would go to all the shows and support them. Then Pete [Koller, guitar] wanted to join and so we had these two other guys and we started a band in our basement. We played one show as SICK OF IT ALL with those two and then Armand got Richie [Cipriano] to play bass and that’s what we call the first SICK OF IT ALL kids.

How quickly did it go from being a hobby to being a career option?

Lou: It’s weird, we kept playing just to do the matinees at the legendary CBGBs. We got to play one, and then we got offered another, and then we said we were gonna headline. As we started playing CBGB we got offers to play in Rhode Island, Boston, and it just started snowballing from there. We always had day jobs, up until 1997, so it was a good 10 years before we could make it a full time job y’know. It was rough, you would have weekends where you work Friday, go to play the shows from Saturday through to Sunday morning and night, drop the gear off go home and go to work on the Monday. That’s like every musician though!

What was it about the CBGB matinee shows that made them so special?

Lou: When I was there it was like we didn’t know how special it was going to be. I just loved it cause of the community and it’s where the team formed and got their identity, but we were just so lucky that Hilly [Kristal], the owner was so into all different types of music. That’s why he had the birth of punk there with THE RAMONES, TELEVISION, nowhere else would let those bands come and play and he said yeah come on. He did the same with hardcore, he had every other night of the week and the Sunday matinees where young kids who were just getting into hardcore got to go to a rock and roll show. The rest of us could do what we wanted, so long as we weren’t breaking the law or killing each other! He gave you a chance, so many bands had their careers started there, look at THE BEASTIE BOYS.

How hectic did the shows get?

Lou: It was crazy, when people first started going to the shows 100, maybe 150 people used to turn up, but from like ’84 onwards it was jam packed, there was like 500/600 people in a room that’s supposed to hold 300. There’s an AGNOSTIC FRONT video and the people can’t move cause there’s so many in there. That’s where it was all born, and it was an experience that won’t happen again, at least in my experience, not in New York again, there’s no centre anymore, there’s no CBGB, no Wetlands and no Coney Island High. Those were the three centres of the hardcore scene. It’s still going now but it’s so scattered, there are scenes in Brooklyn that have been wild and insane that I’ve just discovered, and they’ve been going for about 10 years!

Do you think that the segmenting of the scene is the biggest evolution of the hardcore scene, or do you see more differences in the scene today?

Lou: There’s more differences. You know, there are bands like us who paved the way and now made it more acceptable for younger bands to go big. Like when we first signed to a major [label], we got a lot of shit for it. Now, a band like CODE ORANGE worked their way up from CODE ORANGE KIDS to become one of the biggest metal acts, nobody said shit to them about selling out. Good for them, but that’s one thing that has changed in the hardcore scene that I’m really happy about. People just wanted to be successful at what you do but the scene wanted to hold on to it. And I understand why, I used to love METALLICA dearly until all the kids who made fun of me for liking liked them, and I was like fuck you!

Were you nervous about signing the first big record deal?

Lou: See the thing Is we grew up and love the hardcore scene, but before all of that we loved heavy metal. Following your favourite band, it just seemed like the natural progression for us, we released two independent albums, had a really strong following in New York and we were starting to get a strong following around the world, why not? This major record label wants to give us a chance and if you ask me I wouldn’t think twice about it, but there are kids from the DIY scene and they really hated the fact that we did it.

Were you upset at the bad reaction?

Lou: It was like a small faction of people, and you know I don’t want to be stereotypical, but it always seemed that the people shouting about us making money from music always came from wealthy backgrounds. We came from the typical working-class background; you work hard, and you get what you want. When I was young my dad told me to go get a job, you gotta start earning your own keep. So for us, getting paid for making music we were like hell yeah! But there other kids, they thought it was sacred, and I understand it, but still it’s a fucking pain in the ass! We all laugh about it now though.

How did the drive for success feed into the song writing process?

Lou: We just wrote what we wanted to write. We always joke around and say that we’re not the greatest musicians in the world, but Craig is really good, he has a great ear. Personally though, I think I’m a horrible singer, I have a story too. We were on tour with THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES and a support band with Zack, who is now in RISE AGAINST, came up stairs and I’m with Dickie [Barrett] of the BOSSTONES and he says “ahh, my two favourite singers!” Me and Dickie both look at each other and say that’s an insult to singers everywhere! We could scream in key, that was our contribution.

How has the writing evolved?

Lou: It changed over the years. On the first two albums it was me and Pete, and then Armand came in and he would say that it didn’t fit his other band so he gave it to SICK OF IT ALL, or he would look at my lyrics and say “this doesn’t work, let’s try this” which I really appreciate. Then on Scratch The Surface when Richie joined, we all wrote together, and that was one of my favourite times because we spent the whole summer at this rehearsal studio in China Town, and we would have tourists looking up at the fire escape cause we’d be blasting this loud hardcore music and it was great. The way it is now, now that everyone’s grown and moved away, we all write alone and then meet up together and hammer the songs out. On the latest album Craig has come in with full songs and full lyrics, I might add a line here or there, but he’s coming in with full songs, Pete is coming in with full songs, they’re making me obsolete!

Does the breadth of influence that SICK OF IT ALL draws from make it harder to write?

Lou: Musically we’re all different. I don’t know what Armand does, but I know Pete and Craig goes right back to the old stuff, to the old hardcore that used to really excited them, but we’re not blind to whats going on. We’ll be sitting there and people will tell us to check out a band, and if it excites us, not in a way that we wanna sound like them, but in a way that excites to write a better SICK OF IT ALL record. They always start right at the beginning, DISCHAGRE, CROMAGS, AGNOSTIC FRONT, and you can really hear it in Craig’s songs. He has always been an old school hardcore kinda guy, and I think that on the Last Act of Defiance record he really started to come into his own. On [Wake The Sleeping Dragon!] he contributed the lead tracks, Inner Vision was his and Wake The Sleeping Dragon!.

What was it about hardcore that drew you to it?

Lou: I remember getting into metal and rock and all that, but me and Pete always liked the more aggressive shit, when they were listening to DEEP PURPLE we listened to BLACK SABBATH. The we discovered MOTORHEAD and one day my brother comes home with a PLASMATICS album. Then we met Armand, and we spoke about the English scene with DISCHARGE and THE EXPLOITED, but he mentions in New York there’s this band called AGNOSTIC FRONT and we were like this is amazing! What sold me on it though was going to see AGNOSTIC FRONT at CBGB, I had long ass hair and a jacket with MOTORHEAD and VENOM painted on the back, and I’m standing in the crowd and some skinhead guy comes up to me and asks if I like AGNOSTIC FRONT, then two minutes later he’s on stage playing guitar cause it was Vinnie Stigma. I had just spoke to the guy who is in the band I’m here to see and now I’ve gotta go see BLACK SABBATH play Madison Square Garden where I can barely see the stage.

Wake The Sleeping Dragon! is out now via Century Media Records. 

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