Kissing Keon

Jonas:
I have to confess—the very first time I got in contact with The Drums many years ago it didn’t happen by listening to your music. I came across the photo-editorials about your band taken by world-famous designer and photo artist Hedi Slimane for his blog called “Rock Diary”. How and where did you guys meet back then? What was the idea behind that very extensive and close collaboration?

Jonny:
I was in Los Angeles, The Drums were playing their first show ever in L.A., it was in 2009 I think. The World was just discovering The Drums and we were driving towards this placed called “Spaceland”, an alternative rock/indie rock nightclub in the Silver Lake neighborhood, for soundcheck. They got a call from my friend Jacob who was a writer in L.A. and who happened to be friends with Hedi. He said: “Hey, my friend Hedi wants to come and shoot you guys during your soundcheck today.” I didn’t know who Hedi was—I didn’t follow the world of fashion, I followed music. Hedi came to the soundcheck and started snapping photos. He just really fell in love, and we kind of fell in love with him, too.
We shut our soundcheck, and on his way to the door, he said: “You know, I’ve got full plans, but I canceled everything. I have to come see you play.” So he came back to the actual show and went backstage. Afterwards, we all just hung out for a long time and he followed us back to our hotel—we were staying at this shitty little hotel. Hedi started taking photos of us laying on the beds together. Back then, the band was very intersexual… (laughs) like we were always kissing each other, whether we were gay or straight. It didn’t matter, we were all in love with the gang that we had. So we were just all laying on top of each other being very tender. Hedi loved that moment and held it with his camera.

We had done a bunch of photo shoots, so we thought this is just another one and Hedi is just another photo artist. But then he made this graphic that said “I love The Drums”, an American flag graphic that was custom-made for his blog. At first, we just started kidding like “These fashion people, they are calling and everyone is going crazy.” But then, our record and band became bigger and bigger and in all the fashion capitals, they suddenly wanted to pick us up for photos. So really it was a good source of encouragement and became very, very different. Every time we are in L.A., we hang out in his house or go on holiday together. He has become a very loyal friend and somebody that is just always so encouraging. Normally this business is a sick cold world where people come in and out and try to take what they can from you. Once they feel like they can’t get more, they disappear. But Hedi is a stable friend.

Jonas:
After seven years and seen from a today’s perspective, what do these photos mean to you? What do they say?

Jonny:
When I see them, I appreciate the really delicate and kind of more sensitive moments of being in a band—especially the photos where we were like holding hands or being intimate, it’s very sensual. It was just a moment when we decided to let it happen. Hedi didn’t have this plan and we didn’t talk about it, it just happened. That’s something that couldn’t happen now—and that couldn’t happen even a week after. I appreciate that and am very grateful that there was that small little window of openness, sensitivity, and living within the nuances of life. Now everything seems so black and white sometimes like “Oh I’m straight”, “I’m gay” or this or that. Everyone says that he hates labels—but everyone also wants to be labeled. People want you to understand who they are, I understand that. But I also like the very blurry, dream-like moments. Unfortunately, it’s mostly gone today.

Jonas:
Do you miss these moments of familiarity and intimacy that the photos express?

Jonny:
Of course! Since these moments are so rare in life. I would say 99.9 percent of the people will never have an experience like that. And 99.9 percent of the bands will never have an experience like that—even if they are all gay (laughs). That was a moment when we all dropped our egos and just loved each other. It’s the rarest the world has. There was a level of innocence, intimacy, and naivety—all kind of pushed together, that was The Drums in that moment. Hedi captured the most profound, unique and special moments I think I’ve had in the history of The Drums.

Jonas:
The photos look like a family coming together—the word “family” has a very special meaning to you, am I right?

Jonny:
Hell, yeah! Good and bad (laughs). It depends on what kind of family you’re talking about: About my biological family—I don’t have the most wonderful thoughts about it. Or about my chosen family—people who I have decided to let into my life. I don’t look at family in a blood-relation term sort of way. It’s wonderful when that happens, but I don’t think a lot of people get that lucky. Family is really complex, we are born with this sort of stigma about parents that they have all the answers and they are wise because they’re older. If there’s anything I have learned, getting older doesn’t mean having all the answers. We’re still little kids, we’re still afraid of dying, we all get jealous. And when you stop being afraid of something, you start being afraid of something else. We’re all just trying to get through life.

Jonas:
Being afraid, maybe the most human emotion.

Jonny:
Yes. And desire, wanting love. People just want love and want to feel accepted. I didn’t get that with my family, mainly because I’m gay. So I really look at my heart—and I think our heart is like a house. It has so many rooms, there’s like a kitchen, a living room, a basement, a master bedroom, a smoke room, an attic and a little garage on the side. People go into those rooms and you only have so much space. Most of my life, I was reserving the master suite for my parents like “Oh they’re gonna one day accept me!” or “No, you can’t come into my life because I’m holding space for them!”
It happened very recently that I decided to unlock that door and open it up—and amazing people rushed in. Now the house is full of love. I don’t want for more, I’m ok. It’s a beautiful lesson for me to just forget about this. But anyhow, it’s hard because the relation to your parents is the most primary relationship in life.
At the end of the day, we all are raw animals that are heartwired and attached to a biological mother and a biological father. But simultaneously we are an elevated species. We can reasonably think and we can rise above the primal instincts—that’s what makes us human. And we can choose. It feels good in a primal sense to be hugging my mother even though she doesn’t love me. It feels good that I can elevate my mind and honor that I’m human which enables me to make a choice for something that is actually correct.

Jonas:
I’m sure your boyfriend Keon has conquered most of the rooms in your heart…

Jonny (laughs):
Haha, he owns the whole house.

Jonas:
Is Keon the highest level of family you’ve ever reached in your life?

Jonny:
He is certainly someone that I would call family. I’ve been dating him for a year, he is the most important person on the planet. He’s a soulmate for me. It’s a very beautiful relationship for many reasons. An important reason is that he was Mormon when I first met him. He was still wearing his undergarments, he had never had sex, and he never had a coffee, tea, soda, or something like that. He and I met at a little sucky bar in New York. When we started talking, he revealed to me that he was Mormon. It peaked my interest: Outside of him just being sexually attractive, I felt like “Here’s somebody that is amazing, so I can actually help because I’ve been through this—detaching proper religion when you’re so deep in it.”
Keon has been a great support to me, too. It’s rare to find someone who has gone through something so similar. I mean, you meet a lot of people that say: “Oh, my parents are religious, too.” In most cases, that type of religiousness means going to church every Christmas. I don’t think these people understand the kind of experience Keon and I made. Our parents are religious in a very extreme way—with the tiny difference that his parents were extreme and loving, mine were extreme and not loving. Nonetheless, there is so much overlapping that I can share with him when I’m super sad. When I talk to him, he gets it.
By the way, Keon actually did his two-year-mission as a young Mormon in Germany. He was living in Berlin and in Hamburg, so he speaks fluent German.

Jonas:
The cover of your latest record “Abysmal Thoughts” shows a photo of Keon sniffing a shoe, so he must have influenced you in a certain way. Would this record sound different without him being in your life?

Jonny:
No, because I met him when my record was pretty much done.

Jonas:
But the artwork would have been very different.

Jonny (laughs):
Hahaha, yes!

Jonas:
You created a major part of “Abysmal Thoughts” in Los Angeles. Is this place responsible for the wicked title of your record?

Jonny:
Los Angeles is kind of a dark place for me. I went through a divorce there, I got really deep into drugs. I’m not generally anti-drug, but I am anti-drug when it comes to the point where I let it take over my life and let it shrink to numbing a lot of pain.
I had a really dark year and a half in L.A. and simultaneously, the sun never stopped shining. You lose your sense of time because every day looks the same. So something important that I’ve learned from L.A. is that I need clouds and rain in my life. I grew up in Upstate New York, so I need seasons—like in Berlin.

Jonas:
Berlin, the city of sin.

Jonny (laughs):
Yeah, we’re getting in trouble already.

Jonas:
In the last decade, you created a lot of songs that by now, have reached millions of people and have let them dance. Some of them have become regular classics and let your fans ecstatically flip out. What are the moments in your life that make you ecstatic personally?

Jonny:
Kissing my boyfriend, I guess. I don’t really experience abysmal moments anymore. I’m more learning like what makes me happy. At the same time, I’m learning that my highs aren’t so super high and my lows aren’t so super low as they were a couple of years before—I’m numbing as I get older if I’m really honest. And I hate that. I wish to try my inner child out. But the voice of my inner child is like waning. I wanna get that back, but I’m not really sure how.
Dating Keon has been a little bit helpful because he has a really innocent, naive and sweet side. And I kind of tap into it sometimes—sometimes I look at life through his eyes and so I feel a little child-like in that way. I really don’t get much ecstasy or bliss anymore. But I think I prefer that over having a really high-high and a super low-low, and then, in the middle of these feelings, it’s scrambled, like spinning circles. At least I have at this point more of a center, I feel like I can understand who I am a little bit more.

Jonas:
Let’s go back to the photography of Hedi Slimane: Comparing the visual black-and-white narrative that Hedi created in the early days of The Drums, with the colorful and energetic photos on your official Instagram account today, it seems that, over the years, you kind of merged from a melancholic and withdrawn world to a happy and hilarious one. Do you feel like you’ve arrived in your life?

Jonny:
It’s a slow and constant process that is still going on. But today, I know myself better than I have before, I think. I feel calm—I never felt calm in my life. Today I went to a radio interview all by myself without a shred of panic. I just walked in. Normally I would need like a manager, a friend, a group of people to make me feel supported. That’s how I formed the band in beginning: I was making all the music myself, but I didn’t feel that the world would care if it was just me—like “Hey, I’m The Drums!” or “I’m Jonny Pierce!” I felt like I wouldn’t be enough. And maybe I was right, maybe I was wrong, I don’t know. But it’s definitely not a healthy mindset.
Anyway, it worked and people loved it. But for me, the band was a support system that I needed. And now that it’s just me, I’m telling the whole world that I made all the music, something I have never done before. I’m just stepping into who I am, which feels beautiful. It’s not just the music, the recording and what I’m saying. It’s overflowed with the artwork, it’s overflowed onto stage. I used to feel like I had to do backflips and summersaults just to keep everyone in the room like “Oh, I have to entertain, I have to be juggling and I have to be crazy!”
And now I just say to myself: “Take a deep breath, go on stage, dance if you want, stand still if you want, do what you want.” The only thing I’m actually afraid of is: Will people embrace that? I’m only wondering if this really enriches the shows if the fans can read the genuine aspect of all of this. You know, just being yourself, that’s hard to do.