If you find it difficult to pry yourself away from VH1's I Love The 80s reruns, as I do, you may be able to recall the bearded visage of The Call's frontman Michael Been belting out '80s radio favorites like "Everywhere I Go" or "Let the Day Begin." The only guy more put together back then was George Michael.

So imagine my surprise as I step into the Hotel Café in Los Angeles for my interview with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to discover a post-svelte, fully gray and moderately disheveled Been hunkered over a soundboard at the back of the room working with BRMC multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Peter Hayes to get the amplification straight for the half dozen acoustic guitars littered about the stage.

Turns out Been is the band's tour manager of sorts, and his son, Robert Levon Been, shares songwriting/vocal/guitar responsibilities with Hayes while Brit ex-pat Nick Jago rounds out the trio on drums and other percussive things.

And while past sound checks for BRMC probably haven't been too difficult—plug it in, turn it up—this one is turning into a nightmare. BRMC has ditched the rowdy Brit-pop of its earlier two albums for the band's latest release, Howl, which sounds like it was born after two years in a muddy Memphis Americana boot camp where the band members put down their electric guitars and picked up south-of-the-Mason-Dixon staples: harmonicas, slide guitars and the autoharp. And currently, it's figuring out how to mic all of these music makers that is giving Hayes and Been Sr. all sorts of fits.

Forty-five minutes into the affair, Robert Been joins Hayes on the 10-foot-square stage and they pick through a few of their tunes. Been Sr. is happy enough with the sound, and I finally get to that interview.

Risen Magazine: You grew up with a dad who was a famous rock musician. Did you get mixed up in that stuff early? Did you go on the road with him?

Robert Levon Been: Yeah. As a kid, I wasn't too much into sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Not the sex and drugs when I was 7, anyway. I got to go kick around the hotels and [being] backstage at clubs is really cool when you're a kid. You have an all-access pass and you feel like you're 10 feet tall. When you're a kid you can never go anywhere where adults can't go, and [when you get to go backstage] it was reversed and you're feeling like the top man. That was fun; I liked that.

RM: When Noel Gallagher called you guys one of his favorite new bands, did you get that same sort of feeling?

RLB: No, that was just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think I was smart enough by that point to know that the British audience and the British media steamroll through things. It's all about the new, and it doesn't really matter if it's that good or not. If it's new, it's cool.

RM: Isn't it the same in America?

RLB: No, not really. New and old stuff [here] is pretty terrible. [Laughs] That's America for you. But, no. There was a massive sort of spawning of energy [in Britain around the first two records] and it's still there, but it sorta felt like the first time you fall in love. Everyone keeps falling in love for the first time and becomes caught up in [the emotion of it] and then it just becomes something else. But that's Britain.

RM: Sounds like a pretty hard relationship.

RLB: Turns out to be typical. [Laughs]

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