The Living Things Interview

Hey guys, so I conducted an interview with Lillian Berlin, frontman for "The Living Things" late last month and am posting the convo he and I had here. Enjoy :)


The Living Things Interview with Lillian Berlin: Conducted by Laurel Salvo, June 19th, 2009


So you guys are in Boston today and Philly tomorrow? How have things been going?

Things are great. Touring’s been really good so far.

I guess the first question I have centers around the media. You traveled to Berlin to record your most recent album, “Habeas Corpus” . Do you feel like going so far outside of the states gave the band a sort of stand-point or outsider’s view in a better way…sort of placing yourself outside of what was going on to get to the inside more?

That’s interesting. I think that definitely happened in some ways…When you’re watching something and you are listening to the news or hearing commentary about… y’know a place you live, you hear a different side of the story. It’s like any situation where you sort of remove yourself from the nucleus of the situation. And you’re parts of a story you wouldn’t likely hear if you were in it.

Do you find that you’re watching more of less of the news lately? There’s still so much negativity in it even since Barack has been elected. Do you think you’re more interested in seeing what the media is trying to show or are you one who sort of…likes to find their own way through what’s out there?

Yeah I mean …I think it’s great to have a fresh perspective and leaving the country gave us a different perspective and I’ve been always been able to maintain an unbiased perspective of what’s going on inside of America. For me I sort of believe that the American Dream is broken right now and we need to restore it through the people of the country.

You guys have been compared to bands like the Ramones and AC/DC and Nirvana. Does that sort of thing weigh heavy on you when you hear things like that in Rolling Stone and Blender Magazine? Is it more flattering? Does that make you feel a responsibility to draw in more fans?

For me I don’t really pay attention to much of that stuff. I just focus on…if I’m going to go looking in a magazine or go watch that has sort of a pop-culture thing…I’m definitely not going to be reading or watching about us cuz I live with the band, y’know.

This is something I was curious about. What are some of the current bands you guys listen to that you respect? Who would be like…the “top 5” on your recently played list right now…

I would say….I like the Whores, Kasabian. I enjoy the Kings of Leon I think they’re a great rock band. I like the Black Lips. I like Ricki Lee. I think she’s pretty cool.

I know in your music video for “I Owe” you mention that your band is a product of “The Blackout Generation”. Could you elaborate a little bit more on what that is exactly?

Yeah I mean the term that I’ve coined, y’know the generation that became teenagers in the mid-to late 90’s and then that are now late 20’s…To me it’s the generation that kind of grew up on Prozac and Ritalin and Paxil and a lot of these prescription pills that were being prescribed for made up diseases like ADD and things like this.

I was a kid who was diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Ritalin and y’know all the fuckin’ prescription pills you can shove down my throat…and I didn’t feel like it really worked and I feel like the one thing they did do was create this sort of generation where when you were a teenager when you felt like you were constantly kinda living in the dark. It was almost like a state when you’re about to faint. I mean, you kind of get this fuzziness in your eyes and you can’t really see well. And that’s the kind of feeling I always had when I was always on those prescription pills.

And I wrote a book about it called “Post-Mortem Bliss” that comes out on September 9th. It’s basically my diary entries from when I was 12-18 and…

You talk about your parents in too right? I read about that a little bit…

Yeah it’s just straight-up diary entries of a kid just going through the shit like you’d have gone through like…in an era of Columbine, y know…

And do you think that writing a book on that has sort of influenced your lyrics at all or are those on completely separate planes?

To me it’s all on one. I’ve been writing since I was a young kid and writing for me came first before music. They almost came hand in hand. I started writing like a year before I started playing music. I’m from St. Louis Missourri and William S. Burroughs and T.S. Elliot and Mark Twain are all from that area…and so as, as a kid those were my heroes. Those were my rockstars. Y’know every kid has their favorite athletes, those are my favorite athletes. I was a book nerd.

In an interview on Shockhound.com you mentioned, “Musicians aren’t politicians. They can change the world to raise awareness.” Is the prescription generation sort of …just one thing or are there a slew of things you’d like to raise awareness on to your fans?

For me, prescription pill-popping is a very serious issue. I don’t resort to telling people what to do with their bodies, it’s their decision. But when you’re under 18 and you don’t really have a choice sometimes …and when teachers or parents are telling you that you have to take something then to me that doesn’t make sense. Whether or not you choose to take prescription pills or you choose to snort heroin or coke, y’know that’s your prerogative to do whatever you want, but when you’re forced like I was forced to do I didn’t have a choice because I was under 18 and my parents were telling me what to do. That to me is unlawful. To me it’s a heavy cause. And you know just the whole American Dream is broken right now and the Bush Administration did such a very good job of just destroying it, hopefully Barack Obama can rebuild it sooner rather than later.

I’ve watched some Youtube videos of you guys live on stage and in some of them you burn dollar bills in front of your fans. Do you feel like…theatrics like that are necessary to bring things to light more? Do you think you’re going to be doing more significant acts like on stage in the future?

I feel that live shows…it may be hard for me to admit this but live concerts are like mini-plays or mini-musicals in a sense. They’re Bostonian and it goes back to ancient times to where musicians were even like Jester’s. Not that it’s like a reality show and they aren’t going to watch it if it’s not entertaining but sometimes it’s necessary.

What have you guys been doing on your downtime? I know you probably haven’t had a lot of it when you were in Berlin recording but now that you’re on tour and headlining what do you guys do when you aren’t up on stage?

We’ve been recording our fourth record and it’s almost done. We plan on releasing it at the beginning of next year.

For this tour you’re going to be hitting every major U.S. city?

Yeah. Basically our plan is to tour as much as possible and record simultaneously so that we can segue next year and get an album out. I just don’t like when media takes long to get out and we took a long time between to get our last record and this out.

It was about four years in between right?

Technically it was 3. We’ve been touring a lot so you know it was a long break.

Rolling Stone has named Habeus Corpus “Pop Rock Record of the Year’’, you guys have been on Jimmy Kimmel. Do you think with that sort of popularity that keeps growing and growing, do you think there’s going to be any negative changes for the band right now or are things going pretty smooth?

No everything is great. For me I just take life one day at a time and never bite off more than I can chew.

This is your first headlining tour, right?

Actually, it’s our second.

Do you guys hang out with bands you’re touring with or is kind of a separate thing? You’re on with Jaguar Love right now, right?

Yeah we do actually. Jaguar Love, those guys are great. Whenever we get a free minute we’re not recording, y’know, we hang out with those guys.

Next Spring and next Fall do you guys know what you’re going to be doing or are you pretty much open? Are you thinking of staying on tour throughout the rest of the year after August?

We’ll be touring the rest of the year. We’ll be releasing a single… maybe in September. We just released a single on Itunes called “Oxygen”, a mini-acoustic version of it and an unreleased track.


*The Living Things most recent album, “Habeus Corpus” is now available on Itunes and frontman Lillian Berlin’s biographical book “Post-Mortem Bliss” will be hitting stores September 9th through Apochrypha Press.

They will also be playing at Lollapolooza on August 8th in Chicago.

To learn more about the band, please visit:

Their Website

or find them on @ Their Myspace