Greg Graffin
Greg Graffin
Gregory Walter Graffinis an American punk rock singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, college lecturer, and author. He is most recognized as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and only constant member of the noted Los Angeles band Bad Religion, which he co-founded in 1979. He also embarked on a solo career in 1997, when he released the album American Lesion. His follow-up album, Cold as the Clay was released nine years later. Graffin obtained his PhD at Cornell University and has lectured courses in life...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth6 November 1964
CountryUnited States of America
I've written almost 200 songs with Bad Religion. No matter where you look in our history, the focus has been trying to instill some of these disturbing realities about the world, some of the implications of evolution into an artistic format that can be interpreted by people who may never study evolution.
Unfortunately, the average guy on the street believes that studying evolution leads to atheism.
If you accept learning as a dominant determination of your behavior, then all of a sudden you're open to the idea that, for instance, there are other people who are more educated than you about the environment, who you will learn from. It's kind of like you don't even have to believe that you know anything about the environment, but you do have to understand that your behavior has been determined by learning in the past.
I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that.
Creativity is a challenge. It requires us to be fully human -- autonomous yet engaged, independent yet interdependent. Creativity bridges the conflict between our individualistic and our sociality. It celebrates the commonality of our species while simultaneously setting us apart as unique individuals.
For me, the existence of nonexistence of God is a nonissue.
When I create, I feel that I am a participant in the grand pageant of life, a part of the ongoing creative engine of the universe. I don't know if that feeling is enough to replace the solace of religion in the lives of most people, but it is for me.
One of our great thematic traditions in Bad Religion has been to question human nature.
I don't think anyone is going to Hell because it only exists in the minds of people who wish ill-will on others.
A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil... not the cross.
We delude ourselves into believing that morality comes from somewhere else, whereas in reality we behave as we've been told to behave.
Naturalism teaches one of the most important things in this world. There is only this life, so live wonderfully and meaningfully.
If there is no destiny, there is no design. There's only life and death. My goal is to learn about life by living it, not by trying to figure out a cryptic plan that the Creator had in store for me.
Whether or not punk is the flavor of the month is not important for us. Bad Religion has been popular through many different climates. When heavy metal was popular, when new wave was popular, Bad Religion was still there underneath the mainstream selling more and more records.