John Brannon was born August 15th 1961 in Pontiac, Michigan. Raised in and around the Detroit area he was steeped in music from a young age. He was in his first band Fallout and then Static in the seventies. Which lead to the formation of Negative Approach. One of those bands from up North that used to scare us. I think he might have enjoyed scaring people a little.  Actually, Negative Approach came from an area of the Midwest that brought us bands like The Meatmen, Necros, The Crucifucks and Madonna! John Brannon has been in a band pretty much from the age of 15 and never looked back. He growled and screamed his way across America with Negative Approach for many years and then when Hardcore was starting to collapse in on itself he started a band called The Laughing Hyenas. The Laughing Hyenas were a musical, painful, beauty like a Bosch painting for the ears.  There were ups and downs for a lot of bands that stood their ground into the 1990's. Deaths were frequent. It seems that no one could escape that. The music of both Negative Approach, the Laughing Hyenas and another band called Easy Action is still out there, and people still know it. Negative Approach has been touring again. if you go to https://www.songkick.com/artists/349883-negative-approach you can see the tour schedule. They may be coming to a theatre near you, fairly soon. So before you go to see this man get loud, he has answered a few questions about his musical timeline, inspirations and Detroit. 

Punk Globe:  So to start at the start, how was it growing up in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area when bands like The Stooges, Destroy All Monsters, MC5 and Alice Cooper were playing shows? 

JB:  Growing up in Detroit was great. We had such a musical legacy all around, all the rock bands, Motown, the blues and soul bands. As a kid growing up up with Alice Cooper, The Stooges and MC5 probably the three greatest bands of all time and the blueprint for punk and the future of rock and roll was cool.  I was too young to see them live at the time but would hear all the local stories about them and read about them in Creem Magazine, which was a local magazine at the time. All three of those bands would play together at high schools or the local roller rink for like $3 dollars. I have flyers from some of those gigs, crazy shit. When I was about 16 I would sneak into Destroy All Monsters gigs in Detroit at The Red Carpet Lounge. Years later Laughing Hyenas did our first gig in Ann Arbor opening for them. Ron Asheton was one my heroes and Michael Davis (MC5) the bass player was our next store neighbor when the Hyenas moved to Ann Arbor. Destroy All Monsters practiced at Michael’s house, so we used to hang out all the time.

Punk Globe:  What were your first bands Fallout and Static like? Did you get the job of singer, as the rumor goes, because someone heard you singing an Alice Cooper song? 

JB:  Yeah Fallout, I guess I got approached by the guys that had a band called Shake it Easy. They were the bigwig rock band at my high school, I probably was singing some Alice Cooper at the time. I got "Schools Out"  when I was probably 12, my first rock album,played it about 10 times a day and learned how to sing from it. Alice Cooper Band was my favorite and still is. I had never sung in a band before, but wanted to. Got the guys to change the name of the band to Fallout. It was typical 70s Battle of The Bands, high School dances, party shit, classic rock on the harder side.They were good players and could pull it off, covers mostly we had a few originals. It was a start,this was 76 to 77. Then Punk hit, they weren’t down with it. I knew I had to do something different. I had always had the more glam underground influences, those guys were straight up classic rock and it was time to start something new. So I started Static with our 70's rock, Glam and new Punk influences. We were gonna do something crazy. I hooked up with a guitar player from my high school named Billy Daniels, and from the start we wanted to write original songs. The two of us practiced in my Mother’s basement for about a year with various drummers and no bass player 'cause we couldn’t find one who wanted to play “Punk.” Finally got my neighbor Mike Neal to play bass, who originally showed me how to play guitar. We started playing actual shows at all the Detroit clubs playing all our “Hits”, “Toothpaste and Pills”, “Punk Nation”, “Ain’t no stranger I’m a Teenager”, and “ Video Deficiency." We usually ended up getting dragged off stage after a couple songs or getting shut down by the cops for throwing underage keggers at our rehearsal spot. We thought we were Punk as fuck for the people that showed up and it wasn’t a lot. The shows were violent, broken glass, blood, makeup and doing our best trying to be The Dead Boys and The New York Dolls. That lasted 1978 to 1980.   

Punk Globe:  How did Negative Approach start? Was there any particular band or song you heard that lead to it?

JB:  Early 1981, after Static had broken up, I ran into The Necros, Tesco Vee and Larissa from Detroit’s L-Seven and started to hang out with all of them. This is when Negative Approach just started,they all turned me on to new music which was a game changer. The LA Punk shit, Bad Brains the Dischord stuff and with that OI! came around,  this was my calling to totally Fuck Shit Up! Joining forces with my high school friends Pete Zelewski who played Bass and Zuheir, and was the last drummer in Static. Then later with Rob McCollouch who we found at Endless Summer Skateboard Park. So with this new information and my 70's glam rock Detroit Rock Punk influences we wanted to create something heavy and hard.  

Punk Globe:  I have heard people declare "Hardcore" as the music of our generation. I know in Texas there was plenty to be angry about with all of the right wing politics and religion being force fed to us. I imagine watching the area you lived in dying a slow death brought a particular kind of anger all it's own. 

JB:  We were never into politics, but we were definitely influenced by our surroundings, Detroit is a hard place.  We work hard, We play hard and party hard, just how it is and I think that comes out in the music.  

Punk Globe:  By the mid 80's hardcore was changing and a new band started, The Laughing Hyenas. Labels such as Touch and Go and Amphetamine Reptile were putting out records and Hardcore continued on in a way but there was obviously something happening in music. What lead to the change in sound for you and do you consider what you did a part of the "Noise" movement? 

JB: I never thought we were part of “The Noise Movement,”  we were just getting into different bands. Hardcore had kinda run its course as being original, it was just copying itself. We were digging The Birthday Party, The Gun Club, The Cramps, Suicide and The Scientists along with our favorites Alice Cooper and The Stooges. We were just soaking it all in and trying to do our own thing with it.  

Punk Globe:  Touch and Go Records had such an amazing roster of bands, starting with Negative Approach and into Laughing Hyenas they released your records. What was the relationship with other bands on Touch and Go and with other bands on the east coast like? 

JB:  My relationship with Touch And Go has always been great.  Corey Rusk who runs it is probably the most honest standup guy I know. He put Negative Approach and The Laughing Hyenas on the map where most labels wouldn’t give a fuck or wanna take a chance. 

We were always cool with all those bands and always did gigs with all of them. I remember doing shows in Detroit it would be like The Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Killdozer and Laughing Hyenas for $6 bucks and kids would be out side bitching, “I can’t believe they're charging 6 dollars?” 

We were always cool with the Dischord bands, with Negative Approach and The Laughing Hyenas we did a lot of shows with all those bands. I remember they were always great shows with Minor Threat and Negative Approach, and Fugazi did one of their first shows opening for us at DC Space right when we had just put out “Merry Go Round“ Good Times!

Punk Globe: At the end of The Laughing Hyenas there was Easy Action. Was this a return to basic rock and roll for you? 

JB:  When The Laughing Hyenas finally called it quits I knew I still wanted to play with Easy Action, I felt no pressure to live up to anything.  Iggy Pop said it best “I don’t need no heavy tripe I just do what I want to do,” It was basically I want to rock and I want to have fun.  

Punk Globe: You started to do Negative Approach again, was this something that was a reaction to the way things were going? How does it feel to play with bands that are decades younger than you?

JB:  Well we were going strong with Easy Action then Corey Rusk from Touch and Go asked Negative Approach to play the Touch and Go 25th Anniversary gig.  We were like “What the Fuck?” It went over pretty good thought it would be just a one off for Negative Approach. Then Thurston Moore got ahold of us, he was putting together the "All Tomorrows Parties Festival" in England and asked us if Negative Approach wanted to open up for The Stooges and The MC5.  That was a dream come true, we couldn’t pass that one up.

It’s cool playing with all the new bands, who would ever think what we were doing years ago as kids would be accepted today and still going strong?

Punk Globe:  So, for all the music you have made, does it still make you feel content? Do you still enjoy it? 

JB:  We have been having fun doing it ever since we started. We wouldn’t be doing this still today if we didn’t dig it, you can’t fake Rock and Roll... the kids wouldn’t have it. There’s more shit to Fuck Up! Rock and Roll hasn’t killed me yet, it’s tried but I’ll keep trying harder!

Thank you so much to John Brannon for taking the time to talk to us.

And to Leslie for facilitating the conversation.