INTERVIEW: JAY LAUGHLIN
Photo: Dave Brown
Late last year, I interviewed the guitarist for Turning Point Jay Laughlin for an article I wrote about the band for Bandcamp Daily. Due to the reissue of the band’s debut seven-inch EP from 1989 being released by Revelation Records tomorrow, I decided to run the interview I did with Jay in celebration and also to sleazily promote that we have the green and gold variants of the record up on the No Idols webstore. If you’re looking for one, we got ‘em!
Even if you don’t want a copy of the record, read this interview with Jay and enjoy (ya cheap bum…)
Prior to the formation of Turning Point, you were drumming and Skip was playing bass in Pointless while Ken was playing drums in Fail-Safe. What was it that made you join forces to form Turning Point?
Jay Laughlin: Pointless and Fail-Safe played a couple of shows together in garages and basements in South Jersey. I was playing drums in Pointless but wanted to play guitar in a band. We met Ken and the Fail-Safe guys and he asked me to play the second guitar in Fail-Safe. We had a couple of practices, but then Ken and I started talking about doing our own thing. Skip was playing bass in Pointless, but we let him be the singer. Ken knew a younger kid named Nick Grief who lived in Vincentown and he contact him. We tried him out and he was great, so that’s how the whole thing started out.
Was the initial idea to do a band more inspired by NYHC and Straight Edge bands like Youth of Today?
100%. We definitely modeled ourselves on the NYHC stuff. That was the sound we were going for.
Was there any other motivation for starting Turning Point?
Pointless was way more punk rock. We did super short, super-fast songs like DRI. I wrote the songs in that band because I taught Skip how to play bass and the guitarist how to play guitar. It was really rudimentary stuff and all the songs were about how school sucks. We decided we wanted to get rid of the goofy stuff and do music with some kind of message.
I remember once the demo came out, there was an immediate buzz about the band. Do you remember it the same?
Yes, the reaction was immediate. We took out an ad in Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll and people started ordering the demo. I ended up mailing out way more than I expected. Darren Walters got a hold of the demo and asked us to be the first release on the label he was starting, Hi-Impact. It all happened pretty fast.
At the same time Turning Point was starting, other Straight Edge bands started to sprout up in New Jersey like Release and Enuf.
Release was coming up at the same time as us so we buddied up with those guys and played some shows. I remember when the Enuf demo came out. I thought that was one of the best demos! I really thought they would be huge. But it all happened really fast. Probably within two years. I guess the NYHC thing had spread to New Jersey!
What were some of the earlier shows that stand out to you?
We played this arcade in Kenneth Square. We booked it to get pictures for the seven-inch. We went on and people started going crazy and knew every word to the songs. After the show, I remember walking back to the van with Skip and the guys saying, “I think we’re on to something here!” It was pretty cool.
Photo: Dave Brown
The musical progression from the seven-inch to your sole LP, It’s Always Darkest… happened pretty quickly as well.
We were playing all the time and getting tighter. I got super into Verbal Assault and other stuff that was more advanced than by-the-numbers hardcore stuff. I didn’t get tired of hardcore, I just wanted to challenge myself. I was a metalhead before hardcore. I saw Kiss when I was in kindergarten with my older brothers and was into Metallica.
Along with the music, the lyrics Skip was writing changed.
Skip started writing about deeper stuff and I think that’s one of the main reasons for the staying power of the music. Skip wrote all the lyrics and barely showed them to us.
Photo: Dave Brown
On the Where It Went podcast, you talked about the lukewarm reaction to the later material when you played it live. I don’t really remember any hostility towards the change in sound. I remember liking it.
The LP got received pretty well, but not really the stuff we recorded for the Rebuilding compilation and the split EP with No Escape. The songs had these clean intros and when we played them live people would be like, ‘What the fuck is this? Let’s mosh!’ I was super into it, but I guess we progressed too fast for some people.
What were the influences for those guitar intros on “Broken” and “Life Goes On”?
Metal. I was super into Dark Angel’s Act III around that time. The intro to “Fight Fire With Fire” on Metallica’s Ride The Lightning too.
Right before breaking up, you played live on the radio on WNYU. Was that material slated to be released at all?
That was the last stuff we wrote and would have been on our next album, but we broke up.
I had no idea there was an idea to do a second album. Was there a label lined up?
It was just an idea. It would have been the dream back then to put it out on Revelation, but it’s cool to have our stuff on Rev now. I’ve since talked to Jordan Cooper and he doesn’t know why he didn’t sign us back then.
What was the reason for Turning Point breaking up?
We felt what we doing wasn’t as popular as what we did on the seven-inch or LP. Skip and I wanted to keep going, so we formed Godspeed with Nick and Sean Byrne as the drummer. But Nick stayed for a very short time.
How did the Turning Point reunion come about for the This Is Hardcore Fest in 2016?
After Skip passed, I was contacted about doing reunion shows and instantly said no. Skip was my best friend since kindergarten and if he’s not there, I’m not doing it. In 2016, the This Is Hardcore guys hit me up and talked about guest vocalists taking Skip’s place. I called the guys up and we went out to have a pizza and talked about it. We decided it was now or never to do this thing. Tim McMahon was the first guy we thought of and then we got Geoff from Thursday and it started to come together. It ended up being bigger than I ever thought it would be. I thought thirty people would show up.
It was pretty crazy. You closed out the last night of the festival with Youth of Today and Gorilla Biscuits headlining the previous night.
I had a meeting with Joe Hardcore from This Is Hardcore before the fest because I really thought Gorilla Biscuits should close out the festival. My idea was to come on and do six songs after they play as a surprise. Joe was like, “No fucking way! You have to headline the final night!” I was still under the impression we’d draw no one and he said to me, “Listen! If it’s not packed with people going crazy, you can punch me in the face after the show!” I wasn’t about to do that, but I figured he’s backing up his talk, so we did it. I remember after playing the first song, I saw Joe on the side of the stage and shook his hand saying, “You were right!”
You guys had some shows in Europe booked, but they got canceled due to Ken’s tinnitus. How did you feel about that?
We were a week away from going to Europe when he was told he couldn’t play. Totally shitty timing since we were so excited to do it. People were asking why we didn’t just get another drummer, but I didn’t want to do that. Once you start doing stuff like that, it doesn’t feel right.
What are your thoughts on why the music of Turning Point still has staying power?
I’ve got to shout out Darren Walters for releasing that CD discography on Jade Tree in the early 2000s. That exposed us to a much bigger audience than we had prior to breaking up. If Darren didn’t release that, we probably wouldn’t be talking today. Also, Skip’s words meant a lot to a lot of people. All of that combined made this happen. We’re lucky people give a shit all these years later.