Covering Their Bases: Beatallica's Jaymz Lennfield

Cover bands. Say what you will about them, but unlike their more successful and famous counterparts, they’ll always play the hits and won’t be snobby assholes about it. In Covering Their Bases, The A.V. Club asks a cover band to weigh in on a contentious issue regarding the reason for their existence. In this edition, frontman Jaymz Lennfield of Milwaukee’s Beatallica—a band that mashes up Beatles classics with Metallica-worthy vocals and twisted riffs—talks to The A.V. Club about the tradition of cover bands, what broke up The Beatles, and how Lars Ulrich might feel about fans downloading MIDI files of their songs. Beatallica plays Saturday at the Double Door, and their sophomore album is due out this summer. You can stream a couple of songs from 2007's Sgt. Hetfield's Motorbreath Pub Band below.

The A.V. Club: What is your definition of a cover band?
Jaymz Lennfield: The definition of a cover band is doing things directly and doing things verbatim.
AVC: How much reinterpretation can you have and still fall within that definition?
JL: You can have reinterpretation. I think that even if you are a cover band and you do things exactly to the note, to a “T,” that’s great, but if you can add some of your own creativity, which is why people should be musicians to begin with, I think that’s even better. You use things as a starting point and see what you can do with it from there. If you are just lifting it and you’re like, “Ah, that sounds exactly like the original,” congratulations. That’s cool, but to me that’s not that interesting.
AVC: That’s what the original is for.
JL: Yeah, why don’t I just go see Led Zeppelin then instead of seeing a really great Led Zeppelin cover band?
AVC: Well, you can’t see Led Zeppelin now.
JL: Maybe not Led Zeppelin. [Drummer John] Bonham is gone, so how about AC/DC? [Laughs.]
AVC: So, do you guys consider yourselves a cover band?
JL: We don’t consider ourselves a cover band just because of all the derivatives that we use.
AVC: So you prefer the term “derivative band,” then?
JL: Yes, definitely. But you can’t deny the influence from The Beatles and Metallica side obviously. But there is a little bit of Dr. Demento thrown in there. There’s a little bit of our own lyrical ideas and chord changes and music and dealing with keys and time signatures. We almost put ourselves into a tighter box than a full original band.
AVC: Do you bristle at being lumped in with other cover bands in people’s minds?
JL: Not really. I play in a couple Irish bands. The Irish thing is based a lot on tradition and doing songs that have been written hundreds of years ago, or if it is more contemporary or whatever. If I’m doing a bunch of Irish songs that were written in the 1800s, what’s the difference between that and a cover band?
AVC: Which group has had more influence on modern music: The Beatles or Metallica?
JL: The Beatles. Me and [bassist] Kliff [McBurtney] have this fun running feud about who wrote the first heavy-metal song. I said it was Paul McCartney with “Helter Skelter.” He disagrees. He thinks it’s [Iron Butterfly’s] “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” I tell him just because you want to get high and listen to a 17-minute-long song doesn’t make it the first heavy-metal song.
AVC: Has Metallica’s image recovered from their anti-Napster crusade?
JL: From what I’ve read on blogs, I think there are going to be people who never recover or never say, “Okay, that’s cool. I understand.” I think most of them have [changed their mind] because sometimes people need to be educated. Those people who were upset at a band, they’re just seeing the initial impact of their heroes saying they are upset and saying screw the fans.
AVC: Have you ever downloaded a Metallica song?
JL: I can honestly actually say I have never gone on to an Internet site and downloaded a song in my life. I just don’t have time. [Laughs.]
AVC: What about the rest of your band?
JL: We’ve gone onto websites, and if we are creating like, a mash-up song, we might try to find a MIDI file. Sometimes that is easier to pick apart as a musicality thing.
AVC: So you’ve illegally downloaded MIDI files. How do you think Lars would react to hearing that?
JL: [Laughs.] To create a Beatallica tune? It’s not like I’m going to download a MIDI file and put it up somewhere and say, “Here’s the new Metallica record!” [Laughs.] People are going to be like, “What dude? Did you do this on your Casio keyboard in your bedroom when you were eight?” With Beatallica, we want to be so exact and have little subversive parts in songs that you really need to be fully versed in what the Metallica side is doing, what the Beatles side is doing. Otherwise you are glossing over the idea behind the project. We just don’t prefer to take the easy way out.
AVC: Going over to The Beatles: Everyone likes to rag on Yoko Ono, but do you think she was really the final straw that broke them up?
JL: Uh, no, I think that would be vodka. [Laughs.] Drugs, them not communicating with each other—kind of like how Metallica was doing at one point in time. They just weren’t communicating. I know that John Lennon gets viewed as this guy who was like, really into peace and love. I don’t always exactly buy that. I think that he was kind of bitter. You know?
AVC: Which of The Beatles’ solo careers have you followed the most?
JL: Probably Lennon’s. Not just because that’s my character in the band, but when I was younger, my babysitter was a huge John Lennon fan. I remember the day that he was shot. She was babysitting me, you know, and just watching this news conference and these press things come across the TV, and how destroyed she was. And it’s like, I kind of understood it, you know? I don’t know why she kept turning off my copy of Kiss' Love Gun album to watch TV, like, "Is it that important, really?" But then after a while it’s like, “Oh, I guess this really means something.”