Interview: Gaslight Anthem

Nearly a year after the release of their fourth album, the international hit Handwritten, New Jersey rockers The Gaslight Anthem are still on the road. The quartet recently played a brace of homecoming shows in the Garden State to conclude a US tour, and they are shortly heading to Europe, where a couple of dates at the Olympia in Dublin are on the itinerary.

The band’s hectic schedule meant that frontman Brian Fallon was happy to leave all details of their most recent video, ‘Here Comes My Man’, in the hands of the director, which resulted in the group foregoing the opportunity to meet foxy 24 star Elisha Cuthbert.
“It was the director’s idea, I had nothing to do with that,” notes Fallon. “He put her in there. I mean, it looks fine, she’s cool, whatever – I’ve seen her movies! (laughs) We filmed the parts where we’re playing in New York, and then we had to leave right away for a tour, so they were left to finish the storyline element to the video. We were getting ready for the shows, so I was like, ‘Whoever you want to get for that, that’s fine!’”
You must have been a bit disappointed not to meet her – surely one of the main reasons for forming a band is to meet hot actresses!
“That’s the thing,” groans Fallon. “I knew I wasn’t going to be there, so I was like, ‘Who cares!’ It doesn’t matter what awesome things are happening if I’m not there. So I was like, ‘Well, if I’m not going to be around, then I’m not having any part of it. I’m not interested in this – I don’t want to hear about it and I don’t want to see pictures!’”
Fallon mentions that the band are shortly to make another video for the Handwritten track ‘Mulholland Drive’. I wonder if the title of the song is a reference to the David Lynch film of the same name?
“The title is, yes,” affirms Fallon. “I watched that movie and I was like, ‘That’s a cool name for a song.’ I actually was never up there until after the fact. People change names and places in songs just for the sake of being interesting sometimes, but the details of the songs are accurate. You tell stories that you like, but it’s not always literal, you know? I liked the movie, but it was more I was looking for a title and that kind of popped out to me.”
Around the release of Handwritten last year, The Gaslight Anthem took over the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York, to perform a set that was streamed live from the website of The Late Show With David Letterman. Fallon was delighted to join the select group of artists who’ve been asked by Letterman and his team to play an extended set.
“We did a slot on the show and then we did a concert afterwards for the audience members,” he recalls. “The Ed Sullivan Theatre is awesome, it’s where The Beatles played. It’s super cool and we were all buzzing about it. It was cool just to get to play a concert, because I know David Letterman doesn’t really ask a whole lot of bands to do that. There’s maybe 50 bands or whatever who have been asked, so it was great.”
There was another significant moment for The Gaslight Anthem last year when they were joined by Eddie Vedder to perform a couple of Pearl Jam songs at a festival in Florida.
“Those things kind of just happen,” notes Fallon. “I’ve learned that in the rock n roll game there’s not a lot of sitting around talking – people just show up. I’d never met Eddie Vedder before that. I mean, maybe I met him for two seconds somewhere. He just rolls up and he’s like, ‘Can I play?’ And it’s like, ‘Okay!’ That’s it. Pearl Jam were headlining the festival. Danny Clinch organised that – he’s the great conductor.
“Danny’s a photographer and he’s taken a lot of shots of Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder and people like that. I guess he knows Eddie to some degree, and he just kind of orchestrated the thing. He knew I was a big fan of Eddie, and I had gotten a print from him of Eddie that I have hanging in my house. He just mentioned it to Eddie that we do a couple of Pearl Jam songs, and Eddie was like, ‘Oh yeah, I saw that on Jimmy Fallon’s show.’ So we ended up doing them at the festival.”

The Gaslight Anthem play the Olympia, Dublin on June 17 and 18.