The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon: The life lessons of an eternal underdog

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Brian Fallon has a photo on the wall of his house of him singing with Bruce Springsteen on stage at London’s Hyde Park in June 2009. The Boss had become an unofficial cheerleader for Fallon’s band, The Gaslight Anthem, joining them on stage at that year’s Glastonbury Festival a couple of weeks earlier to sing their song The ’59 Sound and inviting Fallon to join him later that evening for his own headlining set. And here they were again, in front of a vast crowd in the middle of London.

“It’s taken from the back, and all you see is the microphone, me and Bruce and this sea of people,” Fallon says of the Hyde Park photo on his wall, Zooming from his New Jersey home. “I just walked past it, and I’m still amazed that it happened.”

The title of his new solo album sums up the unlikelihood of the career of a man who grew up in the wilds of the Garden State: Not Bad For New Jersey. It’s a title that leans into his home state’s sense of self-deprecation, but it also suits Fallon himself, as the lessons he’s learned along the way prove.

New Jersey is the underdog of the East Coast

It’s maybe even the underdog of the whole country. People talk about New York and Boston and Philadelphia, but we don’t even have a major city that people reference. We get tossed aside, yet we have a pretty good track record here for talent – Sinatra, Springsteen, Bruce Willis, Scarlett Johansson… even Jack Nicholson was born in New Jersey. But people never give it credit. They’ll go: “Oh, that’s not bad for New Jersey.” So I turned that on its head for this album.

People from Jersey keep a little back

It ties in with the underdog thing. We’ll never show you everything we’re good at. It makes people underestimate what you can do, so when it comes match time you have an edge. When you underestimate people long enough, they start to use that to their advantage, and it can really blindside someone. Have I ever done that? I have, absolutely.

The outside is the best place to be

Bands and people we came up close to, like The Strokes or [Bleachers frontman/Taylor Swift producer and fellow New Jersey-ite] Jack Antonoff, they’re inside guys. My heroes were The Replacements, who were the ultimate outsiders. Being on the outside gives me a good chip on my shoulder. If I were at the fancy ‘cool kids’ parties I think I’d lose my edge, which scares me.

Bruce Springsteen knows how to make an entrance

The Gaslight Anthem were playing Glastonbury in 2009 when Bruce Springsteen was headlining. Right before we were about to go on stage, this cop car pulls up outside our dressing room. I thought: “Great, one of the guys has snuck weed over here and we’re going to jail.” Then Bruce gets out of the police car and walks into our dressing room and just starts casually chatting about music. I’d never met him before, and he said: “Hey, do you want to do a song together? I know [The Gaslight Anthem’s] The ’59 Sound.” He came out and played with us in that tent. That moment just overtook me.

Drive is everything

I’ve spent a lot of time talking to guys like Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, and they have an intense drive. I love punk rock and Tom Waits and Nick Cave – I’m comfortable with a level of fame where you can still have a normal life. But those guys really wanted to take on the world. I just wanted to maybe take on a couple of countries. I had something to prove, but not that much.

I’m not in the New Jersey Music ‘Mafia’ – yet

I don’t know, I think I’m getting there. I feel like you might have to be fifty before they tell you you’re in. I’ve got to talk to Jack Antonoff to see if he’s had any calls about it.

My mom has always been my guiding light

It was just my mom and me growing up. My mom taught me lessons about life by what she did rather than what she said. She was always working, but when she came home, she really sat with me and focused just on me. She made time for me even though she was busy taking care of all the bills herself. Seeing that example taught me not to let whatever gets in your way stop you. She’s still around, and I talk to her all the time. She still comes to the shows.

God stuck with me early and never left

Where I come from, almost everybody is Irish Catholic or Christian – and I don’t mean the Donald Trump kind of Christian, cos that’s a whole other thing. I grew up going to church. Not having a father affected me deeply as a kid, and the idea of a heavenly father really impacted on me. I remember walking home from school scared that someone was going to beat me up, and praying: “Please God, get me through this.” I believe in God and Jesus because I need it to be true. Whether it is true or not, I’m not going to argue with anyone about it. But for me, I need it to be true.

The hard stuff was never for me

The nickname for the school I went to in New Jersey was Heroin High. A lot of kids died. When you’re thirteen years old and people around you are dying, it scares you enough to say: “Okay, that’s not for me.” I’m not saying don’t take a weed gummy – like my friend Brandon says, it makes Cheers a lot funnier. But the hard stuff was out.

There’s a value in overcoming the odds

Where I come from, there weren’t a lot of opportunities straight off the bat. Nobody knew anybody who was famous. Maybe you knew somebody who could get rid of a body, or an uncle who could shake a guy down if he was bothering you after school, but that was it. The idea of getting out into the world was crazy – I had as much chance of going to the Moon as I did to England. Really pushing through all that is a special thing. Everybody has struggles – tough circumstances, disabilities, mental health issues – but you can always push past what’s in front of you.

Punk rock taught me I could do anything

It lets you create your own world. As a kid, I loved how The Clash used to dress. I had to do that as a punk rock kid – I couldn’t afford jackets with studs on them so I made my own. I’d chop the sleeves off of jean jackets and customise them. When you get in a punk rock band, you realise you don’t need a manager or a booking agent. I remember calling bars and pretending to be a booking agent representing my own band, just to get a step ahead. I was making it up as I went along.

Persevere through the tough times

There were plenty of moments where I thought: “Why am I doing this?” One time we were in New Orleans, which is notoriously hot and humid, and we had to sleep on top of the van because it was too hot inside. I remember waking up in the morning, getting cooked by the sun, thinking: “This isn’t normal. It can’t be how you do it.”

I worked in construction for a long time, and for me it was the fear of having to go back into that that kept me going. Construction sucked. Some people are great at it, but I hated it.

I can rewire a house

Yeah, man. Construction wasn’t for me, but I can still do that stuff. Electricity is my speciality. You never know when that stuff will come in useful. We needed some work done in the living room recently – the ceiling was a little uneven, so I fixed it. Painting the house? Yeah, I’ve done that.

Politics? Not for me

I have an extreme distaste for politicians. Maybe I’m too working class, but I don’t trust ’em. I’ll tell you one guy who would make a great politician, and that’s Ken Casey from Dropkick Murphys. He’s really tied into his community, he’s smart, he knows how to talk to people, and gets his point across. I trust that guy, so I’ll leave the politics to him.

Check your ego now and then

There have been times where I’ve had to stop and think: “I’m getting too big for my boots here”, especially with the Springsteen comparisons in the early days. When you’re young, you’re out to prove who you are and how you’re different. I had to tell myself: “Dude, anybody would kill to be where you are, and plenty of your friends would die to have these problems”.

Rock’n’roll hurts sometimes

I’ve never had a major injury, but the other Gaslight Anthem guys have. Benny [Horowitz, drummer] was walking up a metal ramp on stage once and he caught his arm on a sharp piece of scaffolding and cut it wide open. As we were playing, I looked over and said: “Dude, you’re covered in blood, are you alright?” He said: “I think so, nothing hurts.” But when we got off stage he had a giant gash and had to go straight to the ER for stitches and a tetanus shot. He gets injured the most.

Earthquakes are terrifying

We were all in Japan during the 2011 earthquake and the tsunami that hit in Fukushima. We were on a train driving through the mountains when the train suddenly stopped. The power went out, and the train started swaying from side to side. Being from New Jersey, where there are no earthquakes, we were freaking out. The PA announcements were all in Japanese, and our translator tried to calm us down, saying: “Oh, earthquakes happen, it’s okay, we’ll get to Tokyo and be fine”.

Then we arrived in Tokyo and found out what actually happened, which was terrifying. If we had been any closer to the coast it would have been really bad. That was nuts.

It feels like I’ve won the lottery

For a kid from New Jersey, my life has been kind of unbelievable. Getting to know Bruce Springsteen – that kind of thing is never supposed to happen. Same with Jon Bon Jovi. He did his first show back after vocal surgery at Madison Square Garden. I watched a video to see how he was doing, and I sent him a text message: “Hey man, I know we sat and talked about what you went through to get here, and you did a great job.” Then I sat back and said to myself: “You just texted Jon Bon Jovi. That’s crazy.”

Not Bad For New Jersey is out now.