Last May UK punk rockers Bad Nerves played their first-ever headlining show in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection when they performed at Underground Arts, a venue that I find out, during a recent interview with Bad Nerves bassist Jon Poulton, the band is a big fan of (Check out our own Morgan Kelley’s photos of the night.) The headlining date followed a 2024 performance opening The Met for English alt-rockers Nothing But Thieves and a 2023 show supporting English hard rock outfit Royal Blood at The Fillmore… Well, on September 25th Bad Nerves will be returning to The Fillmore Philadelphia to open the Fishtown ballroom for Sex Pistols Featuring Frank Carter, Sex Pistols’ first-ever Philadelphia show… During our recent Zoom chat, Jon tells me about Bad Nerves’ nonstop touring (Shows have included sets on festival mainstages and even a few stadiums.), new music (This summer they released single “NETWORK,” but apparently there’s a lot more coming soon.), and thoughts on the band behind Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Izzy Cihak: You’ve already played a ton of shows this year, including a bunch of major festivals, like Lollapalooza and Rock am Ring. How have the shows been going so far? What have been some of the highlights and standout moments?
Jon Poulton: To be honest, it’s all a highlight! We never really expected to be doing this on this level, so we turn up, we play Rock am Ring, and we’re like, “This is mind-blowing!” This is the first year we’ve moved up to doing mainstages, which has been a real trip!
Izzy: How do you like playing these massive outdoor festivals, compared to nightclubs? Most artists say there are benefits to each, but they don’t necessarily agree on what they are…
Jon: I mean, you start off, you’re like, “We’re just happy playing small shows.” And I love playing the small ones; I like the intimacy of it. I grew up in punk, so most punk bands I listened to never went to bigger stages [laughs]. But once you do a bigger stage, it’s a whole different thing. We got a bit of a warmup when we did the Green Day shows in South America. We’d never played a stadium before [laughs]. Walking out into a stadium crowd is unbelievable. But they’re different things. Small shows: cool, intimate, sweaty. But the bigger ones are like a pinch yourself moment. I like them both, really.
Izzy: Have you gotten to see or catch up with any particularly cool artists on the festival dates? I know a lot of the time you’re in and out…
Jon: A lot of the time you’re in and out. This time around, because we’ve been doing mainstages, we’ve been on early. We’re like the first band there; we have to be on the festival grounds at like nine o’clock in the morning [laughs]. And then you wait around, watch some of the artists, like we watched Turnstile the other day in San Fran, and if we have friends playing, we’ll watch them. This year it’s been a heatwave everywhere we’ve gone. Normally we play at like midday in that scorching heat, and we just wanna chill after that.
The thing is in festival season, you’re just doing one after the other, so — and I appreciate every second of doing it, because it’s mind-blowing — when you’ve played like twenty festivals in a row, you’re like, “I just wanna get off the festival site,” because they all start to become like a weird existence [laughs]. We just got back from America and had such a great time playing club shows and that kind of thing where you can get settled.
Bad Nerves’ Jon Poulton at Underground Arts by Morgan Kelley
Izzy: You have spent an absolute ton of time on the road for almost a decade now. Are there any things you’ve gotten to especially enjoy about being on the road, in addition to just playing the shows themselves?
Jon: I guess it depends on where we are, but touring life isn’t for everyone. I’m not gonna sit here and make out like it’s the hardest job in the world, because it ain’t. Getting up at the crack of dawn and going and working a construction site is like the hardest job in the world. But it can be quite a tough time at points, but you just realize that you’re doing something that you dreamt of doing. Like, every time I’m on the road in America, I’m like, “Wow! I can’t believe that I’m working a job that is allowing me to go and see all these different states and meet different people.” Same when we went to Australia and Japan. Like, a lot of people where I’m from, they don’t get to leave their town. So, for us, being on the road… We love it! There’re obviously things that can suck about it but, in general, we can’t wait to get back out.
Izzy: Have you noticed patterns amongst your biggest fans? Your sounds and energy seem to reference a lot of punk rock of previous eras, like the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s.
Jon: Well, when we first started no one liked us [laughs]… and then we played around Europe for like two, three years — just going out doing small festivals and little shows — and we started getting this really loyal following. The first time we went to America, we toured with Royal Blood, who are much bigger than us, and great guys. So we were like, “We’re going to play these pretty big venues, everyone’s gonna be there for Royal Blood. We’ll just go on, do our thing, not be a pain in the ass, and appreciate it.” And when we went over there, there were people that’d flown in from different states that had been waiting to see our band for years.
That was the first moment when we were like, “Holy shit! People like it in America, too!” Because a lot of our influences are American, especially American punk stuff, we always had it down as like, “America’s seen it all! They’ve seen all this!” But maybe the fact that we’ve come over with British accents has resonated [laughs]. We try and make time to hang out afterwards, because it’s a very humbling thing, having people spend their hard-earned money and travel to come and see us. It’s hard for it to sink in sometimes, because I don’t know that I’ve ever traveled, gotten on a plane, to go and follow a band around. So, big-up to the fanbase!
Izzy: You have played Philadelphia a number of times of this point, with Royal Blood, with Nothing But Thieves, and a headlining show just last year at Underground Arts…
Jon: Yes! Yes! Underground Arts was sick! I remember I bought a T-shirt from there! I love that venue!
Izzy: I’m gonna tell them that! I’m friends with all of them…
Jon: That was with Spiritual Cramp. Me and Will [Phillipson], our guitarist, walked in and were like, “You can always judge a venue by how good their merch is!” and we were like, “Those T-shirts are sick! We like this place already!” We played there, and we played The Fillmore…
Izzy: Yeah, that’s where you’re playing with the Sex Pistols in a few weeks.
Jon: I didn’t know that [laughs]. Amazing! It’ll be good to be back! It’s a great venue. I remember that well because because it was our first time in America, we didn’t realize that everything ran off of different power, so we turned it up and blew all our pedals straight away. Soundcheck was an absolute nightmare; it was massive stress. So, that taught us valuable lessons!
Izzy: Earlier this summer you released “NETWORK,” which a lot of people have been saying is your heaviest music yet, which I know deals with things like social media and being always online. How did that particular track originally come about?
Jon: Bobby [Nerves] wrote that song, and I know his songwriting process like the back of my hand. He was trying to do something that was a similar vibe to “Antidote,” but more of a progression. Lyrically, we tend to not get too into the political framework of everything, because it’s so divisive, but that song’s about something that we all feel quite strongly about. It feels like media and technology is such a catalyst for pitting people against each other and taking away kids’ childhoods, in a way. People are so obsessed with it, and it all feels like it was done by design.
Like, there’re great things about social media and there’re great things about the internet, but the people that run it I don’t think have people’s best interests at heart all the time. It feels like it’s done a number on people’s mentality toward each other, which is horrible. We travel around, and we meet so many people, and we just think, “God, if you just took all the fucking politics and everything out of it all, people would probably get along.” Because the people you meet, like whenever I’ve been around America, I haven’t really had a bad interaction with anyone. So, it’s sad that the media and social media and all of that is designed to make the division wider, when people have a lot of similarities, ya know? And I think music should unite people. A song like “NETWORK” is trying to make people realize that you can step away from social media and have real human connections. Because, sooner or later, they won’t exist anymore, if we keep going down this route of living everything online.
It’s not meant to be some huge statement, but it’s just something that has always bugged us. We always joke, “Can you be a band and not have social media?” Like, is it possible? And it’s like, you could, if you were a huge, huge band, but, as an up-and-coming band, probably not, because people would just forget about you. And that’s kind of sad. ‘Cause when I was going to shows a lot of this stuff didn’t really exist. It was pure. It was a pure thing. But, then again, on the flipside, I’ve found so many great bands through the internet, and I’ve met loads of great people through the internet. So, it’s a double-edged sword. You’ve got to be aware of what it can do, I think.
Bad Nerves’ Jon Poulton at Underground Arts by Morgan Kelley
Izzy: Can fans expect more new music in the relative future?
Jon: Oh yeah! The album is almost done. We basically got off tour last year, after playing our record amount of shows that year, I was barely at home. We’re on Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam’s label, Loosegroove, and those guys are amazing, and they haven’t really hassled us at all for a release, but we got to the end of the year and we were like, “Shit! We really should give them an album!” And we had about a three-month period where we could sit down and write and do stuff, and we’ve managed to get a record written and mostly recorded… We actually wound up having too many songs, which is ironic [laughs]. And we were trying to whittle it down, and Bobby is just at home, going mad on it, and our sound guy, Mike, is also the guy that records our stuff, so those two just lock themselves away and just go to town.
The idea is to release singles up until the end of the year, like three more singles, and then drop the album early next year, and then jump back on the road and tour it. We wanted to get it out this year, but it felt like we were rushing it too much, and by the time we’d already done all these festivals and everything, it’s like, “What are we gonna do? We’re gonna drop the album and just not tour?” But there’s new music coming. We’ve got a new single coming out pretty soon actually.
Izzy: Your upcoming Philly date is your first night with Sex Pistols. What can be expected of the live show on those dates?
Jon: We always try and go as mental as possible [laughs]. That’s been the staple from when we first started. I don’t know how that quite happened, but now, if we don’t come off feeling like we’ve been run over, we haven’t done a good job. So, high-energy. And we’re pretty stoked to be playing with the Sex Pistols, as well [laughs]. Sex Pistols were the first record I ever bought as a kid, so it’s kind of crazy how this has come around.
Izzy: Yeah! I mean, how excited are you? I mean, I think that is not only the greatest debut album of all-time, but maybe the greatest album…
Jon: Probably one of the greatest albums ever written, right?
Izzy: Yeah! How excited are you to be on the road with them?
Jon: Very! Like I said, that first record is one of the greatest records ever written. Obviously Johnny’s not there and they’re older guys now, but people seem to dump on it a little bit, and it’s like, I go and see old punk bands play now and there’s like one original member. I mean Sid’s dead, and Glen was in the band before him, so you’re only missing Johnny, which is a shame, but Frank does a great job, and he’s a great dude.
I caught them live a couple of times last year before any of this came about, and it was so cool to hear those songs. And you don’t know how long they’ll be doing this, because those guys blew up and it fell apart in a matter of years, and they never really got to enjoy it. There was so much controversy, they never got to enjoy playing those amazing songs. And now they’re getting to tour the world and play to audiences that know the songs… Good on ‘em! Good for them to be out there! And it still sounds great. When I reach that age, I don’t reckon I’ll be playing as good as that [laughs].
Izzy: And, I mean, their last full-scale tour of the States, I was there, but it was in ’03, 23 years ago…
Jon: That was with Johnny, right?
Izzy: Yeah! I was at the date at the 9:30 Club, which you’re playing with them this time around, in DC… But yeah, that was their last tour here, 23 years ago…
Jon: I’ve watched that a lot on YouTube! It’s sick!
Izzy: Yeah! It was crazy… And I saw Frank with his band maybe like two years ago upstairs at The Fillmore in the smaller venue, and they were amazing.
Jon: The Rattlesnakes?
Izzy: Yeah! They were totally great!
Jon: Frank’s a diamond, man! I’ve known that guy a long time, through various bands, and then I hadn’t seen him for years, and we played in London, a headline show, and he turned up at our dressing room, and I was like, “Wow! Great to see you!” We ended up chatting for hours after the show, and I think that’s why he came, he was thinking, “I want to get a band that’s a similar vibe that I know I can get along with, and we’ll be a good fit when we go to the States.” Because it was only a few days after that we got the offer for the tour.
Izzy: Finally, what can you tell fans about what they can expect of the upcoming album?
Jon: We haven’t slowed down, that’s for sure. We’ve got stuff on there that’s probably the most hardcore we’ve ever done. There are some songs that are so fast that it’s almost impossible to play on drums [laughs], almost. It’s a mixed bag, but it’s definitely a bit harder. Not all of it, like some of it is probably arguably the most poppy stuff we’ve done. Every album, we try and progress past the last one. ‘Cause you get tied into this whole thing of people just wanting the first album again. And I’m sure some people might, but when you try and write that, it feels very forced. It doesn’t feel like authentic, because you’re trying to go back to a time in your life, and you’re kind of ripping off your own stuff. So, it’s whatever comes out naturally. We don’t try and force anything. It’s gonna be the same Bad Nerves you like, just a bit harder.
*Get your tickets here.
