BRMC Roaring Onto Stage
By Dan Craft
Opening for Stone Temple Pilots Wednesday night at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum are San Francisco-spawned alt-rockers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, better known to their minions as BRMC.
The band’s guitar-fueled sound is noted for its cross-cultural influences befitting a membership that began as two-parts American (co-founders Peter Hayes and Robert Levon Been) and one part Brit (drummer Nick Jago).
Been, son of The Call’s Michael Been, and Hayes were high school cronies when they formed the band, with Been on bass and Hayes on guitar. Searching for a drummer, they crossed paths with Jago, who’d just moved to California from Devon, England.
Seeking to avoid any charges of nepotism, Been adopted the pseudonym Robert Turner for the first half of BRMC’s history, reverting to his own name around four years ago.
Christened after the biker gang Marlon Brando led in his 1953 classic “The Wild One,” the trio is revving up for its 10th anniversary this year – but not without some mechanical difficulty.
On the eve of the current tour with the famously trouble-prone STP, the band lost drummer Nick Jago, BRMC’s version of STP’s Scott Weiland.
It wasn’t the first time, though.
The initial parting of ways with the drug-troubled percussionist was around three years ago, in 2005.
The build-up to the estrangement is said to have started two years earlier at the NME (New Musical Express) Awards ceremony during which BRMC’s “Whatever Happened to My Rock n’ Roll (Punk Song)” was up for a Best Music Video Award.
During the show, Jago had to be forcibly removed from the stage after a stretch of odd behavior, including standing still for nearly 10 minutes without saying a word.
Absent from BRMC for most of the recording of the band’s third album, “Howl,” he was back on board by 2007 for the band’s most recent recording, “Baby 81,” the group’s highest-charting release to date, peaking at No. 46.
Two months ago, Jago was out again.
A MySpace bulletin he dispatched indicated a move to a solo career. His replacement is Leah Shapiro, of The Raveonettes.
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