A conversation with Fugazi's Joe Lally

Red Medicine at 30 & The Messthetics

I was a little shocked when I realised, mere seconds after picking up the phone to legendary bassist Joe Lally, that at that very moment he was with his fellow Fugazi band mates at Dischord in Washington, D.C.

In fact, a fortnight ago the full quartet – including Ian MacKaye, Brendan Canty, and Guy Picciotto – had been in the studio together remixing some tracks on Margin Walker, the 1989 EP produced by John Loder (the very same John Loder who worked with bands like Big Black, Shellac, and the Jesus and Mary Chain).

“I don’t know for sure if we’ve arrived with how to deal with it, but the original production had triggers on the drums, the whole style of John Loder’s production,” Lally said.

“It’s always been a bit whacky to us but it is what it is. It’s always going to be the main release. But it did seem worth checking it out. What we’re doing with it, we'll figure out later.”

If just for a few seconds, the inevitable question of a reunion hung in the air, just begging to be asked. Could I resist, unlike most journalists who had interviewed any of the quartet since their indefinite hiatus in 2003?

Fighting back the urge, I figured that if (big if) Fugazi ever did decide to get back together, an announcement would happen on their own terms. It wasn’t going to be teased out in this interview.

Instead, I started our conversation in earnest by telling Lally about a pilgrimage I made with two friends back in 2023. A trip to a Milanese cemetery home to a particular statue which happens to be on the cover of Ataxia’s Automatic Writing II, a relatively obscure release Lally made with John Frusciante and Josh Klinghoffer in 2004.

The second pic is from the same cemetery, the very spot used on the cover of John Frusciante’s The Will to Death

I got the sense he doesn’t get asked about that record all that much. “That’s fantastic, truly wild. I didn’t know that was in Milan”, he chuckled.

The record stemmed from Frusciante asking Lally to learn a collection of songs from his solo works for a show at the Knitting Factory in LA. To Lally’s own admission he learned them pretty poorly, before Frusciante suggested that they just create some music together instead.

“They were releasing so much music at the time. It was all happening pretty fast – our whole thing took place in about 12 days. The writing, the recording, the shows. It was never revisited again and the three of us never did anything again.”

Not wanting to derail our conversation too much, I told Lally that those two Ataxia records were a huge influence on three 19-year-olds from the south-east of England, so much so that the music we were making back in 2012 was essentially a rip-off of what he cooked up during those days in the studio with Klinghoffer and Frusciante.

Leaving Lally slightly bemused but gracious all the same, (“that is so crazy to hear stuff like that”), I swiftly moved on to the main reason for our conversation on this Thursday afternoon – the 30th anniversary of 1995’s Red Medicine, Fugazi’s fourth record.

An LP hailed as a ‘masterpiece’ by Frusciante and a huge influence on Refused singer Dennis Lyxzén, it’s regarded by many Fugazi fans as the peak of their work.

It also marks a shift in their sound: after the seismic impact of Repeater, albums like Steady Diet of Nothing and In On The Kill Taker carried forward a tradition of music built primarily for the stage. Think big choruses, tight riffs, and shout-along moments which bring the crowd and band together.

Red Medicine is a different beast entirely, representing a more experimental direction for the band. Cue instrumental interludes, samples, and even the inclusion of a clarinet. The slightly more explorative sound of this record kicked off a string of records up to 2001’s The Argument which are sonically braver, shrugging off any semblance of the ‘post-hardcore’ label.

And, to my discovery, none of this might have happened had Lally not staged a timely ultimatum to his three friends.

“In on the Kill Taker came out with Ted [Niceley] producing, and in other words we sort of hesitated to produce our own record”, he said.

The Red Medicine cover art

“We actually recorded and mixed two songs [Instrument and Rend It]. Looking back it sounds fucking phenomenal, but we were like ‘I don’t know, did we do that OK?’ We thought we needed to get a producer for it.

“I can write, I can record, but the mixing? I’m not good at it. I knew that the three of them could, but they were hesitating again and I couldn’t believe it. So I used the one card I could play – ‘If we have to have another producer I’m not doing it.’”

Lally’s ultimatum pushed the quartet to produce Red Medicine themselves, resulting in a much more freeform piece of work, made up of tracks less shackled to the confines of the stage.

He said: “We got experimental, we stopped worrying about it so much and had a good time, and allowed it to be a studio record rather than ‘these songs must be the exact way live’. The two different worlds could co-exist.”

Much has been written about the near-telepathic connection between Fugazi’s four members – a bond made blindingly obvious if you hunt down any recording of the band’s extended live jams. These are musicians with an instinctive understanding of one another’s movements and idiosyncrasies. On Red Medicine, that synergy is captured and amplified by the more flexible writing and recording approach.

“As far as egging each other on, we’re probably the worst four people to be doing that. We’re going to try and push the limits.

“It’s not like [Red Medicine] is the craziest sounding thing on earth, but it did allow us to go ‘let’s just do these incidental bits that happen between songs,’ and who cares? Why can’t they be on a record? We like psychedelic music and all the experimentation that came all the decades before us, so why not?”

That’s not to say there aren’t direct, straight-to-the-vein moments on this record. Opener ‘Do You Like Me’ is peak Fugazi; the opening wails of noise give way to a mischievous riff and Canty’s frantic drums, Picciotto shouting ‘Lockheed Lockheed Martin Marietta’ – a reference to the merging of two of the largest military contractors in the 1990s.

The surf rock guitar of ‘Bed For The Scraping’ switches up vocalists, finding MacKaye in his typically vitriolic mode, singing ‘What else is there to do?’.

But the evidence of experimentation is everywhere – ‘Fell, Destroyed’ uses dynamics brilliantly to enrich the stop-start plod of the track, complete with a sober spoken vocal turn from Picciotto.

‘Version’ is a pure showcase of Lally’s powerful, dub-influenced playing style. One of two instrumental tracks on the record, Picciotto plays a tortured clarinet melody above the resonant low end, resulting in one of the haziest songs the band ever put out.

Lally says dub continued to be an influence throughout the recording of Red Medicine: “We’re big fans of dub music, which is the biggest example of taking the song you’ve recorded completely apart, dismantling it and rebuilding it – all the possibilities therein.

“Once you’re aware of that, if that means anything to you it’s really hard to let that go.”

Lally and drummer Canty have always been Fugazi’s engine room. The lockstep the pair slip into forms the backbone of every great Fugazi song – whether it’s frenetic and balls-to-the-wall, or something more restrained and atmospheric.

Lally and Canty in 1996

Three decades on from Red Medicine, the pair find themselves working together again in their latest band The Messthetics, an intriguing experimental/prog/jazz fusion group.

“I feel insanely fortunate I get to play with Brendan again,” Lally told me. “We played in Fugazi for 15 years and then literally never played a live show together before that first Messthetics show [in 2018]. It was really clear to me, my body was aware just before that first show like ‘oh yeah we’ve got this’. I knew I could do anything we were about to do.”

The Messthetics trio line-up is completed by D.C. guitarist Anthony Pirog, gently ribbed by Lally as ‘the academic one’ in contrast to himself and Canty.

“All the things Brendan and I know, we don’t know what they're called or how they’re talked about – it’s just shit we understood how to do together as the years went on.

“I really do feel very fortunate to still be playing music with him because we just don’t have to talk about it or think about it too much. A thought comes, we make an attempt and the next thing we’re kind of doing it. It’s crazy how easy it is.”

The most recent Messthetics LP has morphed the trio into a quartet, adding jazz saxophonist and composer James Brandon Lewis to the lineup. Their latest, 2024’s The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, is a near-uncategorisable 46 minutes – it jumps from post-punk grooving sections, to jazz-prog guitar solos, to honeyed chill-out moments lead by the velvety tone of Lewis’ sax. Oh, and it’s brilliant.

~ Listen to tracks ‘L’Orso’ and ‘Boatly’ for a taste test ~

Astonishingly, Lally says the entire record came together in just two days — “not even ten-hour days”. And while this project is something of a departure for him and Canty, working with a guitarist like Pirog and a jazz musician like Lewis isn’t so different from their Fugazi days. “For us it’s almost like the two singers became two people singing with sax and guitar. You’re still setting up this foundation for these possibilities to happen over the top.”

Lally made a point of saying he was out of his comfort zone during these recording sessions, slightly unsure of what he could offer the project alongside the more ‘academic’ musical minds of Pirog and Lewis.

“After the recording I was like ‘are you sure you guys like this? Because I can hear myself moving to the right note’. Anthony and James were like ‘it’s just the feel, people do that on purpose.’ I was like, ‘whatever you say!’

But listening to the latest Messthetics record (or, for that matter, anything Lally’s put his name to), you’d never guess it. He continues to carve out a space as one of the most compelling bass players around – long may it last.

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis are playing a two-night residency at London’s Cafe Oto in July. You can get tickets here (I’ll be at the 08/07 show). You can get tickets for their other 2025 shows here.