CHIP ON MY SHOULDER
An interview with SLAPSHOT’s notorious frontman, Jack Kelly
by Jason Walsh
Rising out of the ashes of Boston’s first wave of hardcore, which included straight-edge pioneers SS Decontrol, Negative FX, and DYS, came the controversial and iconic Slapshot, who through thick and thin, would continue the legacy of aggressive underground music throughout the better part of three decades. Jack Kelly was one of those early voices, with his early bands Negative FX and Last Rights, and joined forces with Steve Risteen and Mark McKay from the local outfit, Terminally Ill, who would later bring in bassist Jonathan Anastas from DYS and Decadence notoriety. The band was originally contemplating Straight Satan, based on the motorcycle gang that protected Charles Manson, but later took their name from the hockey term which involves the most violent yet inaccurate motion in the sport, however the hardest hitting shot in the game. A significantly appropriate title to lend to the music the band would later produce and from the land of the Bruins came one of hardcore’s most recognized groups in its lineage.
Slapshot was renown for their energetic and chaotic live shows and became quick staples in the American hardcore scene, releasing the classic records “Back on the Map” and “Step On It,” as well as anthems like “What’s at Stake,” “Firewalker,” “Straight Edge in Your Face,“ and “No Friend of Mine.” Over the band’s tumultuous and unpredictable career of “Old Tyme Hardcore,” there have been numerous lineup changes and hiatuses and as they approach the quarter century mark, the emphasis on the band is not nearly what is was in those early days. People start families, separate lives, other careers, and it can become difficult to concentrate on the band when there are so many outside factors in life pulling. However, Kelly continues to hold the torch up high and strives to record an album of new material in the near future.
Recently, filmmakers Ian McFarland of Blood for Blood fame and Anthony “Wrench” Moreschi, who fronted Ten Yard Fight, Stand & Fight, and Resist, released a film about the band, “Chip on My Shoulder: The History of Slapshot.” More of a documentary about the relationship between Kelly and drummer McKay, as well as other former members from the group, than a fan DVD with live concert footage and videos, the film shows the human side of the guys from Slapshot. More about the people involved than the music, “Chip on My Shoulder” shows the true nature of the characters involved in one of Boston’s most memorable hardcore outfits to date.
I had a chance to talk with Jack “Choke” Kelly about the new film and his thoughts about it, as well as the current direction the band is taking, with some touring and possible recording of a new album this year, as well as the departure of one of the band’s founding members.
JW: So Jack, kind of tell me what you guys got going on this year.
JACK KELLY: Ah, well, we really don’t have much going on at all. Just plans to go down for a show in Florida but we’re not going to do that now. We’re trying to streamline things. Mark (McKay) has decided to move on and do other things with his life, so right now it’s just me and Chris (Lauria) and I’m not sure about Mike Bowser yet, he lives in New Jersey. We’re still planning on going to Europe in August for like ten or eleven days. That’s really it. I’ve been writing a ton of stuff. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get together and write enough and eventually get in the studio and do something new. You know, I always kind of just play it by ear. If things happen, things happen. If things don’t happen…the band now is such kind of like a side thing in my life. It’s not something that I actively go out and do all the time or count on.
JW: It’s got to be a lot different now being a lot older, you have a family now, and it’s got to be tough to do this as a full-time thing.
JACK KELLY: Oh, it’s not a full-time thing at all. It hasn’t been a full-time thing for a whole long time. You back in the late 90s, early 2000s, it wasn’t a thing at all. I kind of like had given up for about three years, nothing was going on, we didn’t play in Europe. Then I got a call from the people over in Europe and they said, “Hey, you want to come over?” and that’s kind of how we’ve done things. Actually, we’ve done more in the past say two years than we had in the years previously. We’d been over several times, of course the last time we went, we kind of decided that we really can’t milk this thing without putting something new out, so that’s kind of been our focus. Actually, it’s kind of been funny, it’s been one of the most prolific writing spells over the past eight months that I’ve had in years and years. Man, I’ve got a ton of stuff, kind of like jot it down, lyrically and musically in my head.
JW: What kind of stuff have you been working on right now? What kind of stuff have you been writing?
JACK KELLY: Well mostly, I kind of went back to personal politics, that kind of thing, girlfriends, you know that kind of thing, you know just whatever. I’ve never really been into singing about like politics or anything like that, like politics per say. I’ve touched on it here and there, but I always kind of felt that kind of stuff is better left to bands…people that know a little bit more of what they’re talking about, follow news and stuff like that., It’s never kind of affected me enough to really go and write about it. But as far as anything else goes, I mean the movie is sort of the focus of things at the moment.
JW: Tell me about that.
JACK KELLY: Well, I mean it’s honestly…the tentative title is “Chip on My Shoulder: The History of Slapshot.” I mean it really has not a whole lot to do necessarily with the history of the band, but there are historical elements in it. It’s really more about a bunch of friends and you know say twenty years of sort of living with each other and comings and goings of band members, you know, how they feel about things. It’s less about a band necessarily than it is about friends, and I think a lot of people can relate to it. People looking for like the definitive Slapshot video or your typical band video, where you’re going to see like “Chip on My Shoulder” played eight different times in different cities, will probably want to look elsewhere because that’s not what this is. There’s actually very little live footage in it. It’s much more personal than that.
JW: Is it finished now?
JACK KELLY: I think there’s just a few more things to finish up with it. Ian (McFarland) and Wrench (Anthony Moreschi), and all those guys did a fantastic job on it. It’s amazing. While I don’t like everything in it, or the way I’m portrayed or other people may be portrayed in it, it’s there movie. You know, my original degree when I went to college was Film, so I totally respect their…I’m not asking them to change anything. There’s some things I would love to change. I’m not going to go there and ask for them to change it. This is their movie and it’s fantastic as it is.
JW: So you’ve seen a great deal of it, or the final cut?
JACK KELLY: I saw the whole thing. There was a premiere in Boston a few weeks ago, two or three weeks ago. Actually, it sold out the theater the fastest any film has ever sold out for a film festival. So, I think those guys should be really proud of what they did because it’s a pretty cool movie.
JW: When you walked out of the theater, even though there were a couple things you didn’t like about it, you still though it was pretty well done at the end of the day?
JACK KELLY: It’s definitely not a feel-good project. Anyone going to it isn’t going to be like, you know, leave going “wow…that’s fantastic!” You’re definitely not going to leave the movie like feeling good about…whatever. It’s not one of those kind of things. But, it’s really amazing. It’s a fantastic film.
JW: How did this come about? How did the whole idea for doing a film come about? Was this an idea of Ian’s or what?
JACK KELLY: Ahhh…no. Honestly, it’s been so long now, I can’t remember where it came about. We had, for years and years and years, we used to go on tour with a video camera…just 99 percent of it, of what we got was just absolute ridiculous, like “Jackass” way before “Jackass” was ever what they are. You know, it’s just us doing stupid shit on tour. So originally my idea was we were going to put something together, you know just get somebody in an editing room, we were going to put all this stuff together. You know, I envisioned it having very little live footage but just sort of us being just jerk-offs all the time. Which honestly I think is really what the band is more about. Playing live for us is sort of the ends to the means, where in order to go over to Europe or go on tour, we had to be in this band. So, it’s sort of like my vacations have been with the guys and how bad is it tour around Europe with five or six of your best friends. People pay you to get on stage…and at the end of the day, you know you go home, you got all the money in your pocket, and you had a good time. Those have been my vacations really. Not a lot of people get to do that. We kind of created this, like 23 hours out of the day, it’s fun and then “alright, we got to play a show now,” and we’ve always been like, sometimes that’s the worst part of our day. The rest of the day was mostly just such a blast to hang out.
JW: You’re having more fun enjoying where you’re at and then it’s like, “oh wow…we’ve got to go to work now.”
JACK KELLY: Yeah, exactly. Honestly, I think that’s the way a lot of bands feel. I never understood a lot of these bands that “made it.” Sometimes, I hear interviews with them and they’re bitching and moaning about being on the road when they’ve got, say, their own tour bus and they’re getting paid a lot more money than we ever got paid, and they’re still doing the same thing, you know, they got their friends and everything. I never understood the whining. I’m not necessarily talking about the Metallica movie, but Jesus Christ, give me a fucking break. You guys are enormously huge, you make a ton of money doing what you love to do. Give me a break. Stop complaining. I’ll never get to that point. We had, say, an opportunity and it just passed us by like it does many bands, but we got some measure of success and some measure of renown, but we never got to do what a lot of say big bands go to do and it kills me when I hear big bands whining and complaining about their life on the road. Give me a break.
JW: When it’s all said and done, this many years later, this is still fun for you?
JACK KELLY: Yeah…yeah, oh sure. It’s become less fun, but, yeah sure, it’s still a blast. I mean I’m not going to complain. I get to go over to Europe, like I made a lot of friends, a lot of friends over in Europe, a lot of friends all over the country, people that are in other bands and whatever, and I would never complain about it. There’s some shitty times, like this last trip in December was awful. The shows weren’t so good, it was freezing cold and dark every single day, Mark and I got sick about a week into it and spent the last ten days of it absolutely miserable with fevers and sick. I cam home, I told my wife, you know, if this had been my first tour it would have been my last. It was so miserable. But, even at the end of it, it beats working. It beats having like a regular job. What the hell, you know, an hour of getting on stage, yelling at the top of my lungs and sweating my balls off is better than sitting at a desk all day long working nine hours a day or commuting an hour to work and an hour home, and then spending eight hours behind a desk. Just about anything is better than that.
JW: Where was this tour in December? Where were you at?
JACK KELLY: It was back in Europe. We did Italy, a couple off-shows, like one in Poland, mostly as usual, like Germany and Holland.
JW: And just wasn’t a good time to be there?
JACK KELLY: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, we kind of agreed that if we ever went back, we’d go from say like April to October. I don’t think I ever want to go back there after November ever again. In the eighteen days there, we saw the sun once and I’m not much of a sun person, I don’t really care, but in eighteen days when you only see the sun for two hours in Poland as it’s setting, it gets to be pretty rough.
JW: So, without a doubt, when that was over with, it was good to get back home?
JACK KELLY: Sure. And being sick, on top of it all, really sucked. It was nice to be home after that one.
JW: Are you looking to bring somebody else into the band to do some of this recording and do something towards the end of the year? Is that what you’re looking at now?
JACK KELLY: Yeah, we’ll see what happens. Obviously, there are people around that we know, so I’d like to get together with a couple people. The way I write songs, I usually have like a voice recorder and I hum into it and that’s how I jot down all my stuff. I don’t really play an instrument. I can pluck things out on a bass a little bit but I don’t really play. So what I do is I just kind of hum into a voice recorder and then I’ll get to practice and I hum it to the guitarist or the bass player and then they can transcribe it and we refine it from there. Basically, until I take some of these ideas and sit down with the other guys in the band and we start hashing them out, sometimes it sounds great in my head but the thing is I hear it recorded, you know, full on with drums and vocals and guitar and when you get it with a band and the way people play things and everything, sometimes it ends up, “OK, well, that wasn’t so good after all.” Sometimes I dump them, there’s been tons and tons of songs over the years that just aren’t going to work. And, with certain people playing it, it might sound completely different. We’ll just have to see what happens once we sit down and start writing them out.
JW: And that’s the thing about collaboration, it’s getting together with a bunch of people and just saying, “this is my idea,” and turning it into something else and seeing what works and what doesn’t work.
JACK KELLY: Sure. Right, and I mean at this point I’m so used to working with sort of like hardcore people that I’m sure if I actually got like real musicians (laughs). I’d almost be embarrassed to hum out some of this stuff to real musicians because, you know, it’s up in my head but I’ve never worked with, you know, real accomplished musicians in my life, so we’ll have to see what happens.
