Interview with Sahan Jayasuriya, author of "Don't Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen"
What motivated you to write a book about the origins of Die Kreuzen?
When I first heard the band nearly 20 years ago, I was puzzled as to why I hadn’t heard them sooner. I was a huge fan of a lot of their contemporaries (Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Void, Husker Du etc) and to me, their music was just as good as any. Once I started to hear of their influence on other artists and general cult status, I think the seeds for the book were planted.
Are you an avid fan of the band?
Absolutely. It would be difficult to spend 10 years listening to and learning about a band if I didn’t love the music. This book has only made me appreciate the music more.
How much research was conducted while preparing it?
It’s hard to quantify this, but nearly 10 years of interviews with the band members and those who worked with them, plus other musicians who are fans of theirs. All that plus a healthy amount of digging up old articles and interviews from the time and old video footage. How much research? A ton. Is that an appropriate answer?
How long has punk rock and hardcore been a part of your life, and what’s your personal connection to it? What do you like most about attending punk shows?
I got into punk and hardcore through gateway bands who were influenced by the genre or came from it. Circa 1994, I heard things like Nirvana, Green Day, Rage Against the Machine and Beastie Boys. That eventually lead me to hear a lot of the Epitaph records bands as a pre teen, which lead me to bands like AFI, Snapcase, Refused, Converge, American Nightmare and Botch. Not long after that, I heard Minor Threat, which unlocked it all. I dove headfirst into the Dischord catalog.
So, long story short, it’s been a part of my life for the better part of 25 years and it’s shaped a lot of things about how I look at music making, creativity and the politics of the music biz. Even though I have pretty broad music taste, I still find myself listening to punk/hardcore stuff regularly. Things like Born Against, Drive Like Jehu, Fugazi, The Wipers, The Damned, His Hero is Gone and Wire are always in heavy rotation for me.
My favorite part of punk shows is the efficiency and intensity of it, bands who go up there and just completely tear it up for this brief flash and then promptly get off the stage. I’m talking about the approach to playing music specifically, not any kind of bullshit macho posturing or crowd violence or whatever; I’ve never cared for any of that, it’s not for me. Tons of people are, but I’ve always been a music first kinda person- memorable riffs and arrangements and hooks played by people with tons of passion and intention. Watch that Die Kreuzen public access performance from 1983, that’s what I’m talking about-just complete precision and intensity. Even when their music became a bit more expansive and less straightforward hardcore, they still performed with that same level of passion. It’s way more than just this aimless male aggression; there’s a lot more substance there.
But yeah, the brevity of it is just so great. I’ve always felt like there’s no need to play more than 20-25 minutes, especially for punk and hardcore. I grew up watching local bands play for like 7-10 minutes. Some of those sets were just mind blowing for me, just being completely 100% focused and engaged with the band for this really brief but intense window of time. There’s nothing like it.
How many times did you catch Die Kreuzen live before and while you were working on "Don't Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen"?
I have never seen the original line up of Die Kreuzen perform live. I saw them a few times with Jay Tiller on guitar around 2012/2013, but I am just a little bit too young to have caught any live gigs between 1981-1992.
Did the band members give you all the information you needed each time you interviewed them? Did you take note of anything especially intriguing for the book?
All interviews for this book were recorded and then transcribed verbatim. Sometimes I’d have to ask follow up questions or in some cases, ask the same questions again a few years later, only to be told new information that I hadn’t gotten the first time around. It’s an interesting thing because you’re talking to people who created these things that are so revered, but to them, it’s just something they did in a studio for two or three days.
As fans, we have to remember that our perspective and relationship with someone’s work is not at all the same as theirs. Something that could be considered life changing music to a person can simply be met with a “Yeah we did that in two days” answer from the artist. For me, I tried to be as thorough as possible with this book and I hope people appreciate the things that I was able to write about with a bit more detail and depth.
What was it about Minor Threat that really struck a chord with you? How much did Ian MacKaye's lyrics influence the way they impacted you?
When you first hear punk rock, or whatever it is you perceive to be punk rock, you're usually drawn to the speed and intensity of the music, which is only relative to the music that you already know. When I first heard the Sex Pistols, I had heard about them prior to hearing the music. When I finally heard the music, I was almost disappointed by how tame it sounded. Never Mind the Bollocks is a good record and it's extremely important, but in a lot of ways, it's kind of just this mid tempo rock record with snotty vocals. Like Fun House feels more unhinged than Bollocks does. When I started to hear a lot of those Epitaph Records bands, I thought the music was cool and fast and whatever else, but for the most part it wasn't all that gnarly (besides a handful of bands like F-Minus, who I absolutely love). When I heard the Minor Threat discography and The First Four Years and the Bad Brains ROIR tape, I felt like I had finally found something I had been trying to find for years. Those three records were like the platonic ideal of what I wanted hardcore punk to sound like.
I said before that I'm a music first, lyrics second kinda listener in that 'm way more drawn to songwriting, cool riffs and rhythmic stuff, great production, all that. Even though I listen with that kind of an approach, Minor Threat's lyrics definitely stood out to me in that they didn't just feel like another band writing songs about Reagan (which to clarify, I completely support, there were just so many bands who did that). A lot of those Minor Threat songs are about friendships gone bad and other sorts of interpersonal conflicts. More than anything though, the rawness of the music really stood out to me, and also the fact the songs were deceptively tuneful. Those choruses are hook central, you can sing along to them after hearing them a few times.
In relation to Die Kreuzen, I had a very similar reaction when I heard them for the first time. There was an intensity to the music and vocal approach that I hadn't heard before, and the music was played with so much precision and focus. It's the last record they did that included a printed lyric sheet, and similarly, the lyrical approach is far more personal than political. To this day, there's not another hardcore record that sounds like the first Die Kreuzen record; their approach and technique were unlike anyone else at that time. That first album is hardcore punk, but it's hardcore punk done in their own unique way. Throughout their career, no matter what they did, it always stood apart from whoever their contemporaries were at the time; it had that secret sauce.
How much have punk and hardcore influenced your perspective on making music and music industry politics? Does this help you create on your own terms?
Labels like Touch & Go and Dischord taught me a lot about how the music industry should be, even in comparison to other massively influential indie labels that began around the same time. Learning more about Touch & Go through this book only increased my respect for the label and Corey Rusk as a business owner. To me it seems like a no brainer, to run a label ethically and treat artists fairly, but we all know how uncommon it is to find labels who operate this way. Comparing other labels to Touch & Go and Dischord, it's always made me feel like "Oh, you could treat artists better but you choose not to".
As someone who values the boundless creativity that can come with making music and art in general, its easy to see how the major label system often puts a damper on that in the interest of making money. For me, whenever I do anything creative, I always make sure that I'm happy with the outcome first. I make things because I enjoy it, so to create something with someone else's opinion or approval in mind is just not how I go about it. I think years of listening to and studying punk and hardcore have brought me to that mindset.
Would you say the band were down to earth despite being revered. and this made your interviews with them run more smoothly?
I think the members of Die Kreuzen are extremely humble and kind. In the decade that I've spent getting to know them and piecing together their story, there was never any kind of arrogance that came through; there was always just an immense amount of gratitude for all and any accolades they've received over the years. All four members have always expressed so much gratitude for anyone who has taken the time to pay attention to what they did. The interviews went smoothly for the most part. If there were any challenges, it was trying to get them to recall specific things that happened decades ago.
What do you think about the role of politics in punk these days, especially with media spin, fake news issues and cancel culture going on?
I can't really speak on the entire genre as a whole, as I'm involved with so many other things outside of the realm of punk. There are plenty of punk bands who are apolitical, at least lyrically, but from the handful of things I experience firsthand, I still see tons of bands (punk and otherwise) who take advantage of their platform to speak on issues that are of significance to them. I don't think punk rock has to be explicitly political to have value (Die Kreuzen consciously never were, at least lyrically), but some of the best things to come from the genre have had some sort of political component to them, be it through lyrics, activism, fundraising or otherwise.
Share with the readers how you hooked up with Feral House to publish the book.
I started promoting this book long before it was finished in an attempt to find more people to interview, and a handful of publishers would check in with me from time to time to see how things were progressing. Christina at Feral House has been following my writing since I started, and we finally decided to work together in 2023. Prior to 2023, I was pursuing this project 100% independently, working on it in my free time while also working various full-time jobs. I'm extremely grateful for Feral House; had they not stepped in, there's a really good chance I may still be working on it.
When the band looked back on past events, how frequently did they include details that might have slipped their minds before?
I sometimes asked the same questions or asked the band to recall stories more than once over the years. In some cases, certain extra details were included on the second or third telling that weren't there the first time. I don’t think those details slipped their minds as much as it’s just like, rarely do we tell stories exactly the same every time.
The nice thing about writing a book about a band as opposed to a solo artist is that you have more than one perspective and also more than one source for recalling the past. Sometimes, one band member would bring up something, which would jog the memory of another, etc. I was able to interview Dan and Keith together a few times, and Erik and Keith together a few times, and those were the interviews that had more of those memory jogging occurrences.
Which research material you went through was the most useful for you regarding information and context?
There wasn’t one thing in particular, really. It was cool to look at zines over time to see how the subgenre names would change-like how the word “hardcore” didn’t appear until some time in 82. Even later into the 80s when writers weren’t sure how to classify Die Kreuzen, they’d make these bizarre comparisons like “R.E.M. meets Anthrax”. Ultimately, it was all useful. Any press I was able to get my hands on wass useful in helping me understand the time period overall.
Overall, how much did you learn about Die Kreuzen from all those years of interviews and research?
Prior to starting this project, I knew just a fraction of what I know now, and that's largely because there wasn’t much information out there to begin with. I think I have a pretty extensive understanding of what the band did in that time period, and probably know more than most people do at this point, but there’s always more to learn. Even now, I’ll ask the band questions about stuff and they’ll give me these great stories that I’ve never heard before. So am I an expert? I don’t know. Maybe a mild expert? I’m comfortable with that.
-Dave Wolff
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