Buckcherry frontman Josh Todd says he would front a Minor Threat reunion if founding singer Ian MacKaye wasn’t up for it. Todd also lamented the lack of 21st century rock stars, calling the genre “faceless” since the early 2000s.
Yes, you read that correctly. The singer of “Crazy Bitch” is down to front arguably the most influential straight-edge hardcore band of all-time. In fact, Todd suggested as much to original Minor Threat member Brian Baker (now Bad Religion’s guitarist) upon meeting him once.
“[I told him] ‘Hey, man, if you ever want to do a Minor Threat tour and Ian doesn’t want to do it, I’ll shave my head and we’ll f–king do it!’” Todd recalled to Classic Rock magazine. “[Baker] just laughed.”
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While the chances seem slim, it sounds like Todd could easily pick up the mic and know all the words, having grown up with Minor Threat’s 1983 album Out of Step.
“I was 15 and I felt like an outcast,” Todd said. “I was dealing with a lot of dysfunction in my personal life at that time, a lot of adversity at home. I couldn’t trust the men in my life. There was a lot of anger inside of me. So I spent all my time at the record store. I had a crazy independent punk rock collection – and Minor Threat’s Out of Step was one of them.”
“I felt like it was describing what was going on with me at that time,” he continued. “I truly connected with the recklessness and aggression of songs like the title track. It made me feel like I was part of a tribe when I listened to Out of Step. You can hear Out of Step in what we [Buckcherry] do, too.”
Todd is less nostalgic for the past 20 years of rock music, however. In separate interview, the singer said the genre has been “forgettable” and “faceless” since the turn of the millennium. Lest we forget, this era also includes his own band.
“As far as rock is concerned, I think since the 2000s, it’s been forgettable,” Todd told Australian journalist Steve Mascord. “Not that the bands aren’t good and that they’re not putting out songs. There’s definitely been careers started after the 2000s in rock music, but it’s just kind of, like, faceless. There’s no rock stars, there’s no guitar stars, there’s no rock singers.”
He added, “If you look in the ’90s, look at all the great frontmen. You had Chris Cornell and Layne Staley and Eddie Vedder and Zack de la Rocha and Jonathan Davis and so on. And then the 2000s and on? I couldn’t even tell you who a singer is. It’s so weird.”
More analytically speaking, he targeted the modern music industry model as the source of the malaise: “I think it’s because it became this Active Rock movement, where everything is tuned down and cut to grid and … everybody’s playing the samples live, and the singers, they all sing the same. So you listen to Active Rock radio and it sounds like the same band for 45 minutes. There’s no dynamics between bands. There’s no, ‘Oh, that’s this band and that’s that band,’ and they all have their own little flavor. It’s just not that way anymore. And I think that’s why nobody is talking about rock music in the mainstream.”
Buckcherry are fresh off the release of a new album, Hellbound, and are currently in the midst of a massive North American tour. Minor Threat have been inactive since 1983.
Stream Josh Todd’s interview with Mascord below.
