John Martin, the lead singer of Mick’s Jaguar, may be one of the most influential individuals in 21st century lifestyle media. I’ve been lucky to know him for most of that time and even had a chance to work with him directly a while back.
Today, for our purposes, he’s simply the lead singer of a fucking raucous, spittle-and-leather, denim-and-body-odor, capital-R’s Rock and Roll band. Because he made me promise that I would only focus on that.
I’m not a dick. At least not completely. I am adhering to his wishes, but if this is all a little too cryptic for you, just Google him. I totally understand when you can’t escape telling the same story forever because you did some cool shit everyone wants to talk about. Imagine Luke Skywalker having to replay the Death Star story over and over again for every new rebel at the base.
Mick’s Jaguar is on a short tour and coming to Richmond. I remember telling John about how cool Richmond was twenty-three years ago when I met him at a Beauty Bar party in Las Vegas. This is the second time Mick’s Jaguar is coming through RVA, and we should be stoked. We live up to my hype.
They’re playing Fuzzy Cactus on the 22nd, and you should go. Outside of his long list of credits, he’s also the downest motherfucker and a great hang. You should meet him.
Christian Detres: How many stops are you doing with this?
John Martin: It would be nice to do a whole thing, but we do have day jobs. We’re all in our 40s. Just five.
CD: How do you find the time?
JM: Ha, we call this a “tourcation.” I mean, we do take it seriously, but we also get a little break from work and get to go play rock and roll. We certainly don’t do it for the money. To even make minimum wage in a band these days, you gotta be fucking huge.
CD: True. I know so many musician friends who have popular songs in their catalog, stuff you’d hear in a Target or CVS these days. Then I think about that artist and remember that they bartend in Brooklyn on the weekends, where they make plenty of cash, but, you know, not what they set out to do. You never really escape the hustle life (where your music is your side-piece) until you’re Rihanna.
JM: Yeah, you know, and try being in a band with six people. The White Stripes model makes a lot of sense. Or being a DJ. That’s a lot of people to keep on the road. That’s a lot of hotel rooms. That’s a lot of per diems. At a certain point, you have to do it because you love it. No one will last very long if they’re in a band and don’t actually have to be in a band. You know what I mean?
CD: Mick’s Jaguar has been around since what, 2018? 2017?
JM: As a real band doing originals, yes. Our first record came out in 2018. But when we were playing under our original lineup with the same name, we were doing Stones covers, which was really just an excuse to get blackout drunk and play million-dollar songs that sound good no matter how bad you butcher them. But yeah, as originals with this lineup, it’s been since 2018.
CD: Let’s talk about rock and roll a little bit. Like you said, being in a band is a great excuse to wild out and get applause for it. An excuse to go out with your homies, get on stage, get drunk, and just kind of act a fool. That makes me think about the inextricable connectivity between rock and roll and inherent vices. They go hand in hand, and you can’t really separate the two. I mean, you can, but it’s not the same thing.
It seems like the urge to rock comes from the same place as the urge to break things, whether that’s “The Machine” or an unsuspecting hotel room. That is part of the DNA of rock and roll. It’s a marriage of angst and freedom, you know, maybe the conduit between the two. The inescapable result is that the sneering, drunken, pissed-jeans version of it all is somehow sexy.
What is the allure of such misanthropy? For decades, this was the pose that got panties thrown onstage, gathered groupies, etc. Hip hop took the mantle of “most potent musical expression” from rock and roll in the early aughts, but the rockstar mold definitely informs even that genre.
JM: I mean, it’s still that. And now look, there hasn’t been a hip hop song on the Billboard Top 10 in a minute. I think rock’s having a moment right now. It seems like the festivals are shifting back to it. It’s still a really young art form, right?
CD: I never really thought of it that way, as still being historically new. But yeah, I guess you’re right.
JM: It is still, but it started as an outlet for teenagers. Rebellious youth. Then it got so big, so quick. You had these huge rock stars, the Aerosmiths and Led Zeppelins. They’re all in their 20s in the early ’70s, and they’re just behaving atrociously while writing some great music.
And then you have punk rock hit, which is really kind of a reaction to all that. “Fuck you” was the mentality. So why is there bad behavior in rock and roll? What we think of as classic rock now, and punk, were both kind of fuck-offs used in different ways.
There’s definitely been a lot of functioning alcoholics and drug addicts over the decades, but I think it’s probably harder than ever to hold that together these days.
CD: You know, I’ve noticed that lately there’s a real movement toward sobriety in the field. I have a music project that requires the musicians I cast to smoke weed on camera. I made a ton of calls and sent a bunch of invitations. I was surprised to see how many are completely sober now. I felt a little skeezy even asking after a while.
JM: That’s interesting. Especially the giving-up-drinking part of being sober, because the venues don’t give a shit what’s on stage for the most part. I mean, a few venues are like Fuzzy Cactus. You know, they actually do care. They’re like, “Hey, we’re a rock and roll venue. That’s what we do.”
But most venues, they don’t give a shit. Whether you’re the Barclay’s Center or the local dive bar, they don’t care what’s on stage as long as the cash register is ringing up.
CD: The band could be bent over in a heroin haze or puking their guts up, but as long as drink sales are flowing, there’s a blind eye. I get it.
JM: Ultimately, the band is the joke. The band is a touring T-shirt sales force. The reality is they’re pushing alcohol. We have a crowd that drinks, so yeah. The sobriety trend is tough for the venues too. When people stop ordering beers and whiskey, I mean, how many $6 Liquid Deaths are you gonna drink in one night?
CD: The concept of going to a rock show without at least some kind of buzz on is alien to me. And I don’t know how long I could actually take that environment sober.
JM: Yeah, imagine going to an extreme grindcore show not on anything.
CD: People do it a lot, and I kind of admire them. I don’t understand them, but I think it’s nice that they can.
We’re from a different generation too. Careless abandonment of social responsibility used to feel like a primal yawp. Now it translates as lowkey cringe. I’m not sure we gained much more in the divorce of rock and rude than righteous indignation and finger-pointing.
Being wild and young, taking up space with your own screams, is important sonic graffiti. Bottling all of that up in politeness can’t be good for the soul.
Let’s talk more about the band before I get canceled for my debauchery.
Today I was driving around and played both Mick’s Jaguar albums. Had them pumping loud in the car. I loved the immediate tribe check in the first lyric on the first track: “WE ARE A NEW YORK BAND.” Loud and clear.
It tracks for me because it recalls some of my favorite bands of all time. It has a lot of the Dolls in it, some Pure Hell, but also some Detroit influences. The MC5, for sure some The Stooges.
*I’m sorry Detroit, but we are officially claiming Iggy Pop. He is the Lower East Side, and you wouldn’t be able to remove him if you tried.*
It’s very heavy on the guitar gymnastics. I’m hearing the first album, and it’s just pure subway grime. I kind of liked that a lot. But then the second album was giving more TV Party than Johnny Thunders, which I also love.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but the evolution of your sound kind of tracks as a mirror of the progression of the genre.
What are you guys playing in the van on this trip?
JM: When you’re in the van, you know, unless everyone’s got their headphones on, you gotta do red meat. Something that everyone knows, so no one complains. One of the records that will always play is …And Out Come the Wolves by Rancid.
CD: That’s a damn good album.
JM: That it is. Kind of undeniable. Some of the guys probably don’t know it as well as some others, but you can’t fault that record.
CD: Yeah, um, so, you know, you’ve kind of lowkey, especially for the purposes of this interview, hit a few mountaintops in your career. Care to talk about that at all?
*Completely evades question*
JM: There’s good shows and there’s bad shows, you know. There’s shows when you play for 500 people and you’re like, “Holy shit,” and then there’s shows that you play to, like, no one. Then the bartender goes to the bathroom and you’re literally playing to the void.
It’s what you make of it. If you’re just doing it because you want a big paycheck, you’re probably going to be pretty disappointed. So you gotta have fun with it.
I like to embrace all the sideshow aspects of it too. You realize that the van is a bit of a pirate ship. You have to embrace the side quests. We set out to accomplish other things, like, “What are the other side quests going to be?” Hey, let’s go get our photo taken with the statue of Dolly Parton. Or what restaurant are we going to eat at before the show? [John is famously a gourmandizer.]
Otherwise, you’re going to be fucking miserable and on your phone the whole time. But, you know, everything’s hard work. Nothing’s easy.
On this five-day run, we will break even and maybe have some beer money. And you know, I mean, that’s okay.
CD: Yeah, well, about that. Which cities are you going to?
JM: We’re going to Philly, Asbury Park, then Richmond, Virginia, Wilmington, and then Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn show is the Cosmic Sonic Rendezvous festival, which is put on by Tee Pee Records. They put our last record out. It’s a small, very heavy rock festival, and, you know, we’re probably the lightest band on the lineup.
We’re touring with our buddies, Spitshine, who are kind of like a Southern rock Thin Lizzy type. They’re from Philly, and they just put out their first record. It boogies.
They’ve got us headlining the garden, which I think means when everyone’s fucking wasted, we go on. That will be pretty amusing.
CD: That’s the best rock and roll audience you could hope for, as long as they don’t have glass bottles.
JM: It could be a bit of a The Blues Brothers scenario. Yeah.
CD: Get some chicken wire, put it up at the front of the stage. But, funnily enough, that’s kind of what the band sounds like to me. It’s a band that should be behind chicken wire.
JM: I’m not above a bottle getting broken here and there. Just don’t throw them at my head.
CD: Thanks for the time, dude. Appreciate it. I’m gonna just take the recorder off so we can really catch up.
I’m getting crunk at this show, people. May 22nd at Fuzzy Cactus. Bring your sneers, intransigence, and unreasonable pettiness. Hit on someone else’s partner. Come out. We’ll only remember the good parts in the morning.
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