'We're Never Going To Be The Biggest Band': Fucked Up Just Want To Play Punk Shows

Canadian hardcore-punk veterans Fucked Up have toured Australia on four different occasions since their formation back in 2001.Three of their previous southern excursions were under the auspices of the travelling Soundwave festival, while the other trip was as a guest on the Foo Fighters’ 2011 stadium tour.

And while their shows on these larger stages were as enthusiastically aggressive as ever, anyone who caught one of Fucked Up’s incendiary shows in smaller clubs and venues will attest that this is the best way to catch the six-piece.

“I don’t know, we really only know how to do it one way,” says lead guitarist Mike Haliechuk. “We don’t have lights, we don’t have people making a show – we just sort of make the show out of the six of us. 

“We started playing in basements and sort of put a live identity together in hardcore, and we sort of just do one thing and if we’re playing in front of 50,000 people it’s basically the same show as if we’re playing in front of 50 people. 

“We do the music and we like being there, but we’re not these performers necessarily. I mean Damian is [a performer], but Damian’s going to be Damian no matter how many people there is.”

The outgoing bandmate in question is naturally frontman Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham, whose unmistakable growl and unpredictable stage antics make him Fucked Up’s natural focal point in the live realm.

"We didn’t come out of an art school or some desire to be rock stars, we just did punk shows."

“He really is,” Haliechuk chuckles. “For a couple of years it sorta bothered me – we’d all be on stage and he’d go off into the crowd and sorta take the mic cord with him and he’d take all the cameras with him and all the attention. So for a while I was, like, ‘Fuck, what’s this about?’ 

“Now I’m, like, ‘Oh, please do it, I don’t like having people looking at me, so please suck it all up and get out there!’

“But people like it, and I think we put on a very warm and welcoming show despite what our music sounds like and our name. [Damian] really does like connecting with people in a way that some of us don’t or aren’t able to, and people like it and it’s what we know how to do.

“We sort of became a big band for a minute and played on a lot of big stages, but we didn’t come out of an art school or some desire to be rock stars, we just did punk shows... That’s where our band came from so that’s all we really know.”

Fucked Up are still touring off the back of their startlingly ambitious fifth studio effort Dose Your Dreams, an epic double album – largely Haliechuk’s baby from a songwriting perspective – that integrates not just disparate musical styles but also a raft of guest vocalists representing different characters in the unravelling narrative.

“It took like two years,” he recalls, “including a year of just tinkering and going through it note by note and being able to just try whatever I wanted to and have the freedoms and time to just do it. 

“And before we’d even begun, we’d realised how weird it was going to be and that let us make it the record it was, in terms of how long it is and how varied it is and the story and stuff. 

“It’s hard to go back and listen to the records you do once they come out, but I think, out of all of them, that’s the one I’d probably go back and listen to in a couple of years – it’s the most interesting I think, and that’s all I really ever wanted the band to be.

“We’re never going to be the biggest band and none of us are the best players, but I think we can inject something interesting and have interesting ideas and I think that’s what this record was trying to be, for me at least.”