MINOR THREAT
from Maximumrocknroll #10, 1983
GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
MINOR THREAT, one of America's greatest punk bands, recently broke up. Ian MacKaye, their singer, felt it was the right time to do it, for various reasons. First off, the fame and attention they were getting was starting to hit down hard at them. Ian says, "It was hard to do, and took a lot of balls, but everyone in the band is happy we did it. We're all still friends, perhaps better friends now than before. The pressure was growing incredibly -- being so "acclaimed". We've always tried to keep a nice slow thing going, but now... We had gotten to the point where it's not so much that the band changed, or the people changed, or the music changed, but our lives within the band changed. Lyle and Brian were 16 or 17 when we started. They're growing. They want to be more professional musicians, and that's fine. I hope they do it. But I swore to myself that MINOR THREAT would not be that kind of act. Thankfully, we called it in time. Most bands, someone kills themselves or they "sell out". Our last hurrah of honesty was to bow out before it became a dishonest situation, in the sense of being "too big". My dream, from the beginning, was to "make it" or be big, but to not use the traditional channels and do the same old thing -- to prove to people you could make it being people. You don't have to "sell" yourself. We proved the point, and could have taken it a lot further, but got to the point where other people in the band didn't. We made it relatively high, for our kind of music, and not too many other bands at that stage could claim to have kept it as honest".
Does Ian have any regrets? "Well, I'm worried that it might not have been the perfect time to do it, as we didn't get to play a lot of places we never got to before, like Eastern Canada, Seattle, Denver, etc. But, we all knew we would break up; it was just a matter of when. We all had different aspirations, different wants from the band. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life."
What lies in the future? Lyle and Brian are working on musical stuff together. Jeff and I are committed to working on our record company (Dischord)." Does Ian still want to do music? "Right now, the priority is the label. But I don't feel creatively dried up or anything; I still have some more to do. I love to play, to get on stage, and MINOR THREAT was my perfect vehicle, and I may never be able to get one like that again. We were there, that's all I can say!"
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