Everybody in the punk scene knows who Brett Gurewitz is. Bad Religion guitarist and producer, yes, and the owner of Epitaph Records, of course. But above and beyond the obvious there is bound to be a good amount of trivial knowledge about the punk rock icon that you don’t know. He’s been active in the scene for nearly 35 years after all. To test and expand the extent of your trivial knowledge we thought it would be fun to put together a list of 10 things most people probably don’t know about Brett Gurewitz.
Find it here.
1. In his early Bad Religion days, he was known as “Mr. Brett”. As a producer or engineer, he is sometimes credited as “The Legendary Starbolt”.
2. Although Brett is still in Bad Religion today, he only occasionally joins them live, such as when they are performing near his hometown or for televised appearances. The reason for this is so he can focus on his label.
3. During the early 1990′s when Bad Religion signed with Atlantic records, Gurewitz left the band to run Epitaph full time and it wasn’t until 2002′s The Process of Belief that he would return. His return coincided with the return of Bad Religion to Epitaph.
4. In 1985 Brett released a five track album on his label called “The Seeing Eye Gods”, where he sang, produced, engineered and even played all the instruments.
5. He has cited The Beatles as his one of favorite bands of all time. His first son, Max, is named after one of their songs “Maxwell Silver Hammer”.
6. In the mid to late 90s Brett struggled with addiction to crack cocaine, heroin and other very hard drugs. He successfully completed drug rehabilitation and got sober by 1999.
7. He has co-written songs outside of Bad Religion, such as Pennywise’s “Who’s on Your Side” and L7’s “Scrap”.
8. In 1996 Brett formed and fronted his own band called Daredevils who put out only one single called “Hate You”, which is supposedly written about Bad Religion bassist Jay Bentley who Brett frequently fought with prior to his temporary hiatus from Bad Religion and getting sober.
9. “Give You Nothing”, taken from Bad Religion’s seminal 1988 album “Suffer”, is about Brett’s friend Tom Clement, who “had low self esteem and killed himself”.
10. In 2003, Gurewitz played guitar and bass in an electro-hardcore band called Error formed by Nine Inch Nails collaborator Atticus Ross and his younger brother Leopold.
How many of these did you already know? If you’ve got your own juicy piece of trivia enlighten your fellow readers and leave it in the comments.