I SHOULD TEAM UP WITH THIS GUY????

MUS_LivingThings2_1999, originally uploaded by Oldmaison.

Music Archives
Rock and Revolution

By john lucas

Publish Date: 13-Apr-2006
Living Things singer-guitarist Lillian Berlin (left) doesn’t believe in ADHD. My cat’s name is Mittens. The doctor said I wouldn’t have so many nosebleeds if I kept my finger outta there.

Living Things singer-guitarist Lillian Berlin (left) doesn’t believe in ADHD. My cat’s name is Mittens. The doctor said I wouldn’t have so many nosebleeds if I kept my finger outta there.

Any crew of sneering young things can muster enough snotty attitude to put forth an aura of rocking swagger, but it takes true talent to bash out tunes good enough to warrant such an image. To its credit, Living Things has managed both, but the St. Louis, Missouri–spawned quartet has a little something extra going for it: songs that are actually about something. The 12 tracks on the band’s sophomore album, Ahead of the Lions, make it clear that Living Things singer-guitarist and lyricist Lillian Berlin has more on his mind than sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Actually, those weighty matters are probably in there somewhere as well, but the 25-year-old Berlin’s primary concern seems to be the plight of young America under the current right-wing regime. “I said hey, hey, hey, this is our birthright,” he sings on “Bom Bom Bom”, “To be bought and sold, shipped off ready to die”.
in + out

Lillian Berlin sounds off on the things that enquiring minds want to know.

On making music with a message: “I’d like to lure people in through the music and hopefully they walk away picking up on an idea that maybe they’ve heard about but haven’t been thinking about as much, and maybe they’ll form an opinion.”

On using art as a tool for social change: “I think if there’s hundreds of artists that are injecting this into their art, through music, film, and books, and people are escaping and reading and watching and listening to this stuff, it can start actually making a difference. I think at one point in time, from about 1967 to 1971, art around the world was actually making a difference, with people wanting to think and react and do something about the climate of the world.”

On getting started in rock ‘n’ roll: “We’re very primal. We just sort of picked up the instruments and went with it. I think I had a guitar for about four weeks before we did our first gig. Once we got the instruments we were, like, ‘Okay, now we just go play ’em.’”

“I would describe it as a record with a social conscience,” Berlin says, reached on the set of a Los Angeles video shoot. “I set out to write an album, lyrically, that dealt with a myriad of social issues that were going on in America and how that was affecting the rest of the world, and how it was affecting younger people, younger adults in America.”

Not content to use his music merely as a means of venting his rage at the fucked-up state of the union, Berlin offers a message of empowerment to his generation. “Wake up,” he tells listeners on “No New Jesus”, “and uncuff your hands.”

Berlin knows first-hand what it’s like to feel powerless. In junior high, he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed Ritalin and Prozac, mood-altering medications that the singer has described as “crack for kids”. Berlin’s mother eventually took him off the pills, and he has since become an outspoken opponent of what he sees as an epidemic of hasty, inaccurate diagnoses that are creating a generation of drug-dependent youth.

“ADHD, unfortunately, is this thing where they’ve given a name for issues that young people pretty much have had for decades,” he says. “A younger person most likely is going to be more hyper than an adult, because as a child you have more energy. A younger person is probably going to do a lot more daydreaming than an adult, because children are more free to have their mind run.

“Since scientists can’t prove that ADD and ADHD exist, my whole issue with it is that you don’t prescribe a drug that’s as harsh as Ritalin, Prozac, and an assortment of other ones,” he continues. “They’re harsh drugs that really affect your brain and your body in such a way that it can damage you.”

The medicated phase of Berlin’s life is documented in his forthcoming book, Post Mortem Bliss. “It’s a diary that I kept from when I was 12 to 18, so it’s like junior high to high school, dealing with this whole ADHD thing that had infected my life,” he reveals. “The only thing I got out of it was the classroom that I was put in. I was put in this special sort of classroom during the day for three hours. They required you to keep a diary entry every day. I think it was a way for teachers to eavesdrop on the kids to see what they were thinking or doing. But I got this diary out of it that is very honest because it’s me as a young person writing what I felt was going on, and I think it probably represents a large proportion of people in that age group and how they feel today.”

Not all of Berlin’s youth was spent in a Ritalin daze. In fact, the genesis of Living Things can be traced to childhood afternoons spent making a basement-rattling racket with his bandmates, who also happen to be his brothers: bassist Eve and drummer Bosh. A second guitarist, Cory Becker, was a later addition to the group’s lineup but has been a friend of the Berlins for years. On Ahead of the Lions, they take a back-to-basics approach to riff-fuelled, raw-power rock. “March in Daylight” and “On All Fours” will kick-start the heart of anyone who ever moshed to “Territorial Pissings”, while other tracks such as the aforementioned “Bom Bom Bom” reach back to the strutting stylings of the Stones and the Stooges.

Given that, you might expect Berlin to possess an enviable collection of well-worn classic-rock records. This, he insists, is not the case. “When you rehearse and you record and you gig so much, when you go home the last thing you want to do is listen to music,” he says. “That’s how it is for a lot of my friends, and that’s how it is for me and my brothers. I can’t even put on a record when I’m at home, I’m so tired of hearing guitars, drums, and bass, so a lot of my influences are from my other forms of escapism: reading, or watching a film, or looking at a friend of mine paint a massive mural. I get a lot of ideas that come from other places.”

Wherever the band’s ideas come from, it’s clear that Living Things has a powerful message, and an equally potent slash-and-burn rock ’n’ roll attack with which to convey it.

Living Things plays the Plaza Club on Saturday (April 15).