Fasten Your Seatbelt: Death Cab For Cutie Are No Killers

When Death Cab For Cutie was making cassettes and selling them outside of local clubs back in Bellingham, Washington, their “wildest fantasy was to sell 40,000 records.” They’ve since sold millions and gained a worldwide fan base. We spoke to frontman Ben Gibbard before their upcoming Beijing gig as part of the JUE Festival.

If you had another chance to name the band, what would you call it?
I made a joke about calling it The Killers in 1998. Now I’m kind of glad we had the name we had. It has never been a trendy type of name.

Do you think the term “indie rock” is overused these days?
It’s not something that really bothers me. I guess it’s because I don’t see our band as a standard-holder to this term.

What were you like in high school?
I tried to be into punk rock like everybody else in high school. I went through that phase but things that I started to feel connected with when I was 13, 14 years old were more melodic and underground. And that became what I really enjoy till this day.

How much do you care if people like your music or not?
I have made a very concerted effort to not spend my time searching out people’s opinions of myself. We are a successful band but we are not world-famous. We are very well-known to a specific type of person. It’s not like I’m Lenny Kravitz or something. We’ve been blessed by the success of our band, while retaining virtual anonymity for the individuals in the band.

Tell us a fact about you that would surprise your fans.
I have a very sour sense of humor. We’ve often said amongst the band that if people could put a microphone in our tour bus and hear the kind of crass humor that’s being thrown around, we’d probably lose fans.

Is there anything you want to know about China or Beijing?
Are these clubs going to be crazy smoky? How responsive are people if you put up “please don’t smoke” signs during the performance?

Refrain from smoking when Death Cab plays at Tango as part of the JUE Festival on Mar 10.

Click here to see the March issue of the Beijinger in full.

Photo courtesy of the organizers