In House With Gaslight Anthem: Brian Fallon on Honesty, 'Handwritten' and Not Wanting to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Hero
Brian Fallon is exhausted. The Gaslight Anthem singer is running on two hours of sleep when he shows up at Spinner's New York office on the release day of his band's fourth album, Handwritten. Later that night, the group will play a sold-out show at Webster Hall -- but Brian's plans to celebrate their major-label debut don't involve parties and champagne. The New Jersey native is going home to get some sleep before heading back out on the road in two days.
In the meantime, Fallon isn't letting the fatigue get the better of him. Turning on the charisma that's made him such a beloved frontman, he perks up when talking about Handwritten, which was inspired by a poem a friend wrote for him in ink.
"That spoke to me in a way that I'd never been spoken to, and it wasn't somebody I knew that well," Fallon says. "I took that and said, 'What if a band did that?' because sincerity is the name of the game for us. Some people have a talent for writing songs that do well, but we're not that band. We have to rely on sincerity or else we don't have anything."
While Brian's older songs used lyrics cribbed from Springsteen and Petty -- to name a few -- he insists that the sentiment was still as sincere as his new material. "There was a lot of stuff that was masked, a lot of characters and locations we used to avert your eyes," the singer shares. "I really like everything we did. They're just pictures of times in your life. The new one has less of the hiding."
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In House With the Gaslight Anthem
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