Review: Do What You Want

As a fan through the second half of Bad Religion’s career, I’ve always felt the band put their message before themselves. Their personalities haven’t been nearly as front-and-center as so many other rock stars I’ve followed. It’s only thanks to album liner notes that I’ve learned just enough about them to be curious: how did Greg Graffin come to be a professor at Cornell? How did Mr. Brett’s role change over time? Why did Bobby Schayer leave the band? Why did Jay Bentley come back? In chronicling the band’s forty-year run, Do What You Want filled in all the gaps and then some.

It details how Graffin’s academic career advanced right alongside the band’s, including an especially interesting anecdote about an early scientific expedition. To be honest, though, Graffin receives a surprisingly small amount of attention (at least, for a front-man).

Contrast this with Bentley, who provides the lion’s share of direct quotes, giving perspective on everything from partying to operating heavy machinery. I met Jay once, so I might have been more focused on his contribution. Watch any Bad Religion performance, though, and see for yourself which member is the most animated. It seems natural that he’d take such an active role in the biography. His goofball comments add levity to the book, but he may also be the most transparent about personal struggles (even insecurities) and criticism of the music.

For a drummer with “only” ten years in the band, Schayer also gets a surprising amount of attention. He comes across as the most humble of the crew, focused on the work and the opportunities it afforded him. In their consistently positive portrayal of their former band mate, the band seems to be saying, “we really love this guy.”

“Mr. Brett” Gurewitz’s role is way more complicated. Like Bentley, he struggled with drug addiction. Unlike Bentley, he wrote some of the band’s most popular songs. On top of that, he founded a record label, Epitaph, which he managed right alongside songwriting and guitar playing… Until he didn’t. He left the band for most of their stint with a major label and returned years later. Gurewitz provides perspective on songwriting but also on the business side of things. It’s through him that the book explores Epitaph, though as a separate and highly successful venture, its story could probably support a book of its own. It was surprisingly telling to learn how he came to be called “Mr. Brett.”

Any artist that works for forty years is sure to have regrets. Acknowledging them takes some care, though. Go too far, and you alienate your fans. Don’t go far enough, and you come across as out-of-touch. I think Do What You Want dances the line well. They have no love for their most spectacular artistic digressions, but it’s easy to take pot-shots at Into the Unknown and The New America (they do take a few). The band’s most compelling reflections are more subtle. Graffin talks about how he “went too far” in his lyrics for “God Song.” Drummer Pete Finestone complains that Graffin and Gurewitz “sucked up so much oxygen in the room.” Gurewitz explains why 80-85 was “clumsily conceived,” and Bentley admits that “we didn’t take [No Substance] seriously.”

I’m cherry-picking, of course. This is not a book of bitter, washed-up artists. The band still endorses most everything it’s done, which is a little surprising given that they were teenagers when they wrote their first songs. Though that sometimes goes a little too far. The biography’s occasional self-congratulatory rhetoric sometimes struck me as conceited. To be sure, the band has made a ton of great music, and it’s not my place to deny them a little horn-tooting. But the subtlety of statements like “two of the most intelligent songwriters in the industry” is still a little grating.

Maybe it’s because their actions speak for themselves. From their rigorous touring schedule to their empathetic set list design process, they regularly demonstrate how their commitment extends beyond the music they’ve created.

Though what they didn’t achieve is also telling. Bad Religion is not a group of activists. They understand their impact as the ideas that they convey and the conversations they inspire. Social organizing is largely absent from their career. Sure, there’s the Bad Religion Research Fund, but that only ran for a few years, and it was capped at $5,000–hardly the kind of money you’d expect from a group of international rock stars.

They’ve never claimed to be anything more than entertainers, so it’s not exactly fair to count this against them. But the book does make me wonder about how things could have been…

Having the full chronology laid out (and forgiving some liberties with the order of events) really helps contextualize their career. On a personal note, it helped connect two moments that have always seemed disjoint to me: the release of No Substance and the release of The New America. That’s when I started listening, so I’ve always felt a divide between “classic” and “new” material. Do What You Want helped me recognize how artificial this is. It gave me an appreciation for the relationship between the two albums and see how the shortcomings of the latter are in some ways present in the former. And it helped me to appreciate The Process of Belief as something of a return to form (albeit with way more pop influence).

As a long time fan, I found Do What You Want to be tremendously satisfying. I doubt it holds much meaning for folks who can’t already sing along with “I Want To Conquer The World,” but that’s okay. If you’re among that group, I have a different recommendation for you: listen to the music.