Gavin Van Vlack is arguably one of the most creative and influential guitarists to come out of the New York Hardcore Scene of the late 80's early 90's. Playing in many bands from the Young Republicans to Side by Side, New York Hoods, Absolution, Burn, Die 116, Pry and Big Collapse...Gavin has been creating music longer than some of his fans have been alive. The first time I got to see Gavin crush on stage with a guitar was with Burn in 1991. I was already a huge fan of Absolution and Burn was the next evolution of that vibe, I would blast a cassette recording of the 7" in gym class and people didn’t know what to think. For the time the shit was some of the harshest shit out. Still to this day Burn stands the test of time as many hardcore records get filed in the “forgettable” section. Recently Gavin did a reunion show with Absolution at the Knitting Factory in NYC and they were amazing. The show had an eclectic mix of people and you could fell those old vibes that made hardcore such an amazing force in the past.
I met with Gavin in August and we sat down at a local spot in Brooklyn and had an hour long conversation. Gavin always had an intimidating aura while on stage but face to face he is one of the most down to earth, chill cats I have met in recent years.
I’m glad to have had the chance to chat with him and I hope we hear more from him and his Les Paul in the future. Be on the look for a few more Absolution shows coming up in the near future. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.
Peace.
How did you get involved with playing music?
Music was always there, when I was brought up as a kid music was always around the house. There were always instruments. There was always a guitar around the house and it was never “Don’t touch my guitar”. It was something to play around with. Kids are inherently drawn to rhythm. If you put a baby around something with a beat you’ll see they’ll start to move and that’s just how I was as a kid. I was fascinated by it. I’ve always been one those people who wanted a little bit more and I was raised in Vermont, New Hampshire where there was always a little bit less. I’m not saying that to dis on Vermont, New Hampshire but I was one of those people who was like, “What’s next???” What’s the next thing? There was always this void I was trying to fill and music did it. First it was music. Then it was Rock! The earliest stuff for me was Glen Campbell and that was fucking glamorous to me. My first live show and it was accidental was Waling Jennings and it was at a Roadhouse spot he would play all the time. They were up on stage and people loved them. I gotta be real, that was a draw to it. People always think and talk about music...and I try to keep it as real as possible because it is an art form and I do look at it like that. But when you are a kid at that age and you see these people...you’re like WOW! Like Kiss cause back then...not this new Kiss that came up in the past decade but the real Love Gun, that era Kiss. There was that fantastic bigger then life Kiss. Kiss, Alice Cooper. One of the most monumental albums in my life was Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Even though that is one of the most anti-rock rock records ever.
There was just so much stuff. Black Sabbath. Early Ozzy Osbourne with Randy Rhodes because I cannot stomach anything after that. When he turned into the soccer mom, that whole shit I didn’t acknowledge. People can be like, “Gavin is being a snob again” but the Randy Rhodes era stuff is the quintessential Ozzy Osbourne. That was the real shit that made him and the other shit was ehhhhhhhhhh.
I grew up in Vermont and it was a slate mining town and there really wasn’t anything there. I remember being into AC/DC and people calling that punk rock. Lord forbid when I found out about The Ramones, X, Spizz and what was really punk rock back then. Circle Jerks! Oh forget it! You may as well call it a day, write 666 on your forehead because you are punk rock. You jumped around on glass and all this shit. To me it was so much different. I am an iconoclast by nature and I’m not saying that so that Gavin is Mr. Different. No! I’m trendy. I’m super fucking trendy because when everyone follows one path I’m garunteed to walk the other way. I’m absolutley predictable. An iconoclast is. Where not that different, we just don’t want to follow the same path. I feel ridiculous bringing up that word because I’ve used it for a long time. Now I guess it’s a big ad campaign for a shoe company which it is, it’s just funny.
But yeah that was it. Music got me into music. Music...honestly. But then it was the fantastic that really kept me there. That was the thing with Kiss, you saw this big rock show and there was that dark side that was introduced through punk rock. Stuff like that. It was like...ahhhhhhhhh, this is cool. This is real friggin’ cool! These guys don’t care, they are playing balls out and it was beautiful. It was absolutley beautiful.
When did you get to NYC?
We moved down to the city in 1981. My mom had cancer, they moved to the suburbs because they realized it wasn’t smart to take a kid who was originally raised in the swamp and throw him in the ghetto. I got into some trouble real quick. Then I moved upstate and went to school up in Westchester. I was always coming down to the city because that’s where all the shows were.
I was constantly between NYC and Stanford/Norwalk. Everyone remembers it is as the Anthrax but I remember when the Anthrax was in Stanford and the Sheridan Brothers owned it. It was a basement of an Art Gallery they ran next to an abandoned gas station. I remember seeing the Chilli Peppers there on their first tour. 7 Seconds would play there on the regular. It was like they lived in the next town they were there so much. Then all the great CT. Bands that were out at the time...Vatican Commando’s, Violent Children, Reflex from Pain, 76% Uncertain...there were so many great bands. CT. Punk rock bands are almost completely unknown now and many were groundbreaking bands. At that point it was the whole east coast corridor from D.C. to Boston. Everyone talks about the violence, this, that and the other thing. I want to talk about the bands! I want to talk about Eye for an Eye, Wrecking Crew, Swiz...all the bands...there are so many. Bands that people don’t even remember anymore. God, just think about the Pagan Babies from Philly! They were really out there and is I like to put it “On the Tar”. We were out there playing from town to town. I don’t care if you can set us up in your basement, We’ll play! That was a really big part of it. I got down to NYC in 1981. So I was a young kid. One of the first things I remember seeing was John Golden/Wrecking Machine in this denim jacket, 7 inch nails sticking out of it. I was thinking, “Oh my Lord, this guys is scary”. He was a huge kid and he was Jewish. Back then there was a contingency of White Power Skinheads and John didn’t take any shit. He was very vocal and combatant to all that stuff. I remember seeing guys like him and Vic Venom who was the guitar player from Nausea. I remember the first time I saw Vic he had this Venom jacket which was just the most awesome thing in the world, he had soaked out hair and it was just like he was the coolest guy in the world. He was one of the best punk rock musicians... actually he is one of the best musicians I’ve ever known in general. The guy can play anything and make it sound amazing. He just has always been able to do that. He is a very humble, humble, humble cat on top of that, which is pretty hard to find. For some of us punk rock hardcore kids, we’ve taken this style of music and we just think we are the shit. We think we are fucking amazing...God bless us and Fuck us!
What was the first band you played in?
First band I ever played in was around 1983 with John Porcelly from Youth of Today, Sam Collins who runs a production company on the West Coast now. He does production and mixing for a lot of Alt/Art type groups. Everyone knows Porcell from Youth of Today, Judge and Shelter. The band was called the Young Republicans, we used to play the Anthrax. We played aq bunch of High School parties and stuff like that. That was the really legitimate first hardcore band I did. It was generic three cord hardcore but the reason they liked me was I had started playing guitar a long time ago and I had a very, very metal influence. I saw Metallica on the “Kill em All” tour. I saw Raven, I saw Anthrax when the first singer Neil was with them. I was a metal kid! Metal kids...we became Hardcore kids. But metal kids...we basically sat in our bedrooms and practiced a lot and got really fucking good and that was kinda it. We were nerds!
We listened to records religiously and learned them note for fucking note. I don’t even think I’m a fraction of how technically good I was between the ages of 16 and 19. Then from 19 to 24 I got really out there and really weird. I consider that a different type of good but not the technical prowess I once had. I think my song writing ability is much better as I realize I don’t need to play as much now to put something across. But at that point it was like “Let’s get this guy, he is outstanding” and it was great. I was playing with this band, I was the best musician in the band but they much cooler then I was. Porcell went to the most un-punk High School in the world....John Jay. He was a punk rock kid but I remember seeing him because he played football. He had taken his pads off and underneath he was wearing a Sex Pistols shirt. I was like this guys is so fucking cool, he is riding both sides of the fence. Porcell was always that guy. Ever since I’ve known him he has been that guy. Super even keel, super sweet, super honest...a real Human Being! There was a point when my mother had passed away and I was living from place to place and Porcell used to sneak me into his parents house. I would sleep on the floor next to his bed until his Pop “The Big V” caught me and kicked me out at 2am. Porcell has always been a really good friend and always looked out. So yeah..the Young Republicans was the the first legit hardcore band I was ever in.
(More coming soon, be on the look. This is about 13 minutes of an hour interview. Much more to come!)
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