Bad Religion: Due Process.

The Process Of Belief is in stores now.

Bad Religion have been around forever and a day. They influence everyone from the boy next door who's just started his first punk rock band in the garage to a truckload of musicians that perform in their own internationally acclaimed punk bands. So what's the big deal? Why are Bad Religion so damn cool? Greg Graffin Bad Religion's singer helps us to understand.

You must be sick of doing interviews, I comment.

“You're so perceptive,” Greg states. “How did you get that in just my first two words?”

Greg had only greeted me with the fact that he's 'just fine' and I picked up that he was getting towards that I'm really bored, I'm sick of answering the same questions over and over stage that musicians get to when they're doing a hectic schedule of eight or more interviews a day with people asking that million dollar question: 'tell me about the new album…' I think Greg's after a challenge. I ask him if he's bored?

“No not bored just tired. Interviews aren't boring it's really one of the easiest things a person can do is to just sit around and talk about himself.”

Don't you ever get sick of talking about yourself?

“No it's actually one of my favourite subjects. It's only fun to talk about myself in a context and that's what my conversation partner is suppose to do... control the context.”

You've done countless interviews over the years, is there one question your just plain sick of answering?

“No because I think it's because my parents were educators, they were like 'there's no such thing as a stupid question'. I really take it seriously if someone is genuine and wants to know something no matter how many times I've answered the question if it's meaningful to them then I am motivated to talk about it.”

Bad Religion have a new album out The Process Of Belief; do you think it's important for people to believe in something?

“I would go further and say that it's not a matter of being important I would say that you have no choice but to believe in something because belief is a biological process that is natural for all of us. We can sometimes get bamboozled if you will in thinking that someone else has the prescription for our beliefs. We always maintained in Bad Religion that you have to come up with those beliefs yourself and you basically have to construct a world view based on information that you have gathered based on some doctrine based on what some authority is handing you.”

On the net I saw a Bad Religion lyric interpretation page. Is that a good or bad thing? Should people be able to make up their own minds what your lyrics are about?

“It's just like reading a book, the author had something in mind when they wrote it and some people are interested in knowing what that really meant. That's not to say that a piece of art can't be interpreted in many different ways, 'cause of course it can and I always appreciate that when other people have a different interpretation. I don't know much about he web page you mentioned but I think it's an effort to try and define our lyrics. That's awesome. I just enjoy the discourse.”

Everyone knows you as that guy Greg Graffin that's the singer for Bad Religion, there has to be more to you then that? who's the real Greg Graffin?

“Ha,ha... there is. There's a really awesome guy other than that weirdo that fronts the band.”

How are you personally similar or different from your music?

“I'm personally similar in the fact that I can get really pissed off about things, which I'm not proud of by the way. I think there's a side of me that gets really angry and then I get really intimidating even though I've never beat up anyone in my entire life, I've never even swung my fists at anyone. I've only recently coming to understand it's this look in my eyes that's really intimidating to some people. I kind of regret that part of me. We have a lot of fun on stage and I like to be part of a big celebration. So that's also a part of me, I love to have fun.”

What's something you want Bad Religion to be remembered for?

“Probably when I started out Bad Religion as a band personally I had this hope. I wanted to show the world that you can be in a popular band and also be an intellectual. I had to evolve my own personal style to do that and I guess that's what I'm trying to do. Since that time I've found a lot of intellectual people in a lot of different bands. I don't think you can have any lasting success without some degree of intelligence.”