Gas attack

The Gaslight Anthem have been generating quite a buzz of late thanks to their inventive take on the classic Jersey Shore aesthetic. Released last summer, their second album, The ’59 Sound, is a pulsating collection of spiky punk tunes, with a gritty, streetwise lyrical sensibility reminiscent of both The Clash and fellow New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen. Interestingly, The ’59 Sound also contains a track that namechecks another musical icon, ‘Miles Davis And The Cool’. Can we assume that the group are big fans of the legendary jazz musician?

“Miles I like as an icon, for what he stood for,” replies Gaslight Anthem frontman, Brian Fallon. “Jazz sometimes gets to me a little bit. If I listen to too much Miles, I have to take a step back. But Miles as an icon is definitely a big influence. A lot of musicians are like that with me; it’s not just their music, it’s what they stand for and who they are.
“Miles was a big innovator and he was always pushing the limits of what could be done on a record. He also represented the coolest of the cool; he didn’t have to try at all, he would just walk out on that stage and everybody was like, ‘Oh man, check this guy out.’ It was almost like he was a ghost.”
Given that The Gaslight Anthem’s music is so steeped in Americana, would Brian say that the band are chiefly influenced by US artists?
“Sort of,” he considers. “Right now, there are a lot of different people from different places. There are a lot of Canadian artists, a few Australian artists, and a ton of British guys. I would say that I grew up on a certain style of music, but it wasn’t necessarily a regional thing. Growing up, Shane MacGowan’s lyrics were just as important to me as Bruce Springsteen’s. It’s just that style of writing, which I think is kind of international.”
How did Brian first discover The Pogues?
“I was watching VH1 one Christmas Eve,” he recalls. “I must have been about 13 or 14. I saw the video for ‘Fairytale Of New York’, and I immediately picked up the phone and called the local record store. I was like, ‘Are you open?’ and the guy said, ‘Yeah, we’re open for another hour.’ I ran down there and bought a cassette tape of If I Should Fall From Grace With God. It was like the best thing I’d ever heard in my life.”
There’s no escaping Bruce Springsteen’s influence on The Gaslight Anthem. One assumes The Boss was also an important artist to Brian in his formative years.
“Yeah, it was always around. I grew up in the same area that he did. My mom used to play him all the time. Again, he influences me more as an icon. When I think about writing songs, and the melodies that I’m influenced by, it’s so many different people. Bruce’s work is almost like a theory – if you were going to do a paper on songwriting, his music would be a good basis to start from.”
There was a notable achievement for The Gaslight Anthem shortly before the release of The ’59 Sound, when they became the first group to be put on the cover of Kerrang without having been previously written about in the magazine. Presumably this development took the band by surprise.
“For sure,” Brian acknowledges. “That was one of the highlights I’ll always remember about our career. We were completely shocked, and very grateful. It was amazing.”
What was the initial inspiration for Brian to get into a band?
“My mom. She was in a band when she was young, and she’s always been playing guitar and piano around the house, since I was a kid. So it’s always been around, and I’ve wanted to do it since I was really little.”
Brian also credits his mother with introducing him to the work of Bob Dylan.
“It’s a funny story. That’s how I knew I wanted to write songs. Me and my mother were working together delivering newspapers. It was like a weird Christmas, where neither of us had any money. I wanted a Christmas present, and I had to work to do it. She had a job during the day, and in the morning we would deliver papers together. One day we were coming home, and it was the end of the route. She turned on the radio, and that song ‘Just Like A Woman’ came on.
“I was about 11 years old, and I was like, ‘Who’s this?’ She said, ‘This is Bob Dylan.’ I listened to it, and it was like the Red Sea parted for me. I was going, ‘Yeah, this makes so much sense.’ It was really cool.”
Along with Dylan, Brian says the other major musical influence in his youth was The Clash.
“They were always talking about things that I could identify with,” he reflects. “The street talk they had on those first records, and that Bruce had – that’s what we see every day. It feels like those movies, like On The Waterfront. In certain parts of Dublin, I bet you it feels the same way.”

The ’59 Sound gets a live airing on March 4 in The Academy, Dublin.