Chapter 40
INTERVIEWER: Let’s dive straight into the deep end. What does being a drummer in a rock band mean to you?
KENNY LOVINS: I know some drummers might use this question to talk about how we’re the real unsung heroes.
But I’ve never been interested in jockeying for the spotlight.
So I’ll just say this: most people don’t realize how hard it is to keep a steady rhythm.
You have your guitar players and keyboardists and maybe your bassists flying all over the place and your singers wailing and there’s this great temptation—it’s kind of a natural human instinct—to get distracted, pulled in to the theatrics.
But your job as the drummer is to be the heartbeat.
The center that carries the song forward no matter what anyone else is doing.
My bandmate Hannah once called me the backbone of our band, and I take that responsibility seriously.
INTERVIEWER: You seem like a thoughtful dude. What drew you to music in the first place? What’s your earliest memory of it?
LOVINS: My parents were always playing music.
They were—well, you’d call them aging hippies, but they called themselves flower children.
I had a really happy childhood, and part of the reason was that there were always instruments around.
Tambourines, guitars, bongos, triangles, you name it.
We’d break into song getting ready for dinner.
INTERVIEWER: Sounds charming.
LOVINS: I was lucky, the way I grew up. But what really made me commit to music was a little more cerebral.
I was one of those teenagers who became fascinated by philosophy.
Existentialism, epistemology, ontology. I was seventeen and thought I was going to uncover all the answers to the universe, you know?
INTERVIEWER: I can’t say I relate. I was vaping and playing Fortnite at seventeen.
LOVINS: I got really into Heidegger. He has a pretty fascinating life story.
He was an underground academic hero in Germany who became a huge star.
And then Hitler took over and Heidegger became part of the Nazi Party to keep his job.
He denounced it later, but a lot of people still argue over whether to engage with his ideas.
Even still, he’s probably one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.
He argued that most philosophers before him who’d tried to define human beings, isolate what made us us—and we’re talking about the biggies, Descartes, Kant, etc.
—forgot about time. Heidegger thought time was such a fundamental part of being human that it wasn’t just a condition of being, it was the condition.
Specifically, being temporary, or finite, is what defines us.
You could almost answer the question “What are human beings?” with “Human beings are finite time.” For him, ending—or death—is at the core of what it means to be us.
You’re probably thinking to yourself, Kenny, that’s super interesting and all, but what does it have to do with music?
INTERVIEWER: I’m actually wondering how much weed you smoked before this interview.
LOVINS: None, man. This is just me.
INTERVIEWER: Please continue.
LOVINS: Well, unlike other forms of art, like paintings and books, music unfolds over time.
Think about it. Paintings hang on a gallery wall and can hang there unchanged forever.
Books sit on shelves, static and eternal.
But every song has a start time and an end time.
It’s dynamic—Heidegger would use the word ecstatic— and no matter how much emotion you pack into a song, how much sound and fury, love and longing and lament, it’s always going to end.
It simply can’t last. To me, that makes music the form of art that best represents the human experience.
Writing songs is performing, on a small scale, what it means to be a being that exists as a temporary eruption of thought and feeling.
We’re fireworks, right? This beautiful glittering explosion that’s dying as soon as it starts living.
Once I understood that, it felt like there was no more meaningful thing to do with my life than create beauty with an expiration date. Art like us.
INTERVIEWER: Damn, dude. Will you be my life coach?
LOVINS: Unfortunately, I’ve already got a long list of people to take care of.
INTERVIEWER: Speaking of . . . can you address the rumors about friction in the Future Saints? I’ve heard whispers that your sudden success has you guys on the rocks. Is that true?
LOVINS: I first met Hannah, Ripper, and Ginny when I was eighteen.
Back then, Ripper had a mullet and Hannah wore PacSun jellies and Ginny was a high school senior with a thing for Sailor Moon.
Point is, it was ten years ago. We’re growing up.
We’re becoming different people, and that means we’re becoming different artists, moving in all these directions according to what’s happening in our individual lives.
Of course there’s going to be friction. How could there not be?
But I believe in our commitment to one another.
We’re trying to meld visions and . . . well, I guess the word is endure.
INTERVIEWER: I’m sorry about the loss of Ginny.
LOVINS: Thank you.
INTERVIEWER: You said humans are finite time, here and then gone. Does that mean you don’t believe in an afterlife?
LOVINS: Not in the Christian sense. No pearly gates.
Maybe in the Buddhist sense, where life and death exist on a continuum of energy.
Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything waiting for us after we die.
But as I’ve gotten older and lost people I love, I’ve come to really hope there’s something.
I hope the pragmatists and cynics are wrong.
Just like I hope the Saints will stay together making music for as long as our collective expiration dates allow.
INTERVIEWER: So at heart, you’re an optimist.
LOVINS: God help me.