Big Cheese Interview with Ben Weasel

Big Cheese Magazine has posted a sneak peak of an interview with Screeching Weasel frontman, Ben Weasel, on their website. In the interview Ben talks about the Screeching Weasel reuinion, the “Ben Weasel Act”, his “support” for Sarah Palin, his opinion on today’s state of punk, and his difficult relationship with Screeching Weasel founding member, Jughead.

The downside to having a reputation as being a notorious curmudgeon is that sometimes people in your day-to-day life will take advantage of that to try to get things out of you. That caused a lot of problems in the band. When people use your public persona against you, it’s going to cause problems. That’s what happened when I moved on without Jughead – he tried to sic the fans against me by going public with his complaints about me. Which, obviously, only made it that much more clear that I couldn’t work with him anymore. Those guys knew I wasn’t my public persona but they’d sort of play it like I was sometimes. If any of them ever chose to blow off steam about me, they weren’t going to have to look far to find a sympathetic ear. That caused a lot of problems – mostly for them, ultimately.

The rest of the interview can be read here.

Screeching Weasel‘s First World Manifesto, their first album in 11 years, will be released on Fat Wreck Chords March 15th.