Credit: Dangerous Minds

Speculating as to why teenagers form rock bands often feels kind of crass, and the truth is that teenagers take up guitars for many more reasons than just the obvious.

If anything, teenagers are savvier now than ever before. They know better than most that just because you can stumble your way through the intro to American Football’s ‘Never Meant’ and found some slightly more humble folks willing to be your rhythm section, that still won’t make anyone interested in you that wasn’t already interested in the first place. Which is, strangely enough, something of a godsend. It means that not only are people forming bands for the right reasons, but they’re also coming together in interesting ways, too.

This might be something of a blanket statement, but I think there’s something to it. Guitar bands have spent the past few years on a downturn of relevance, and as a wise man once said, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” Thus, you’ve got a generation of rock bands coming up who haven’t formed simply to look cool or because they had nothing better to do.

Instead, they could form for any of the myriad reasons that people form bands in the 21st century. They could be forming from some Oasis-like desire to turn rock ‘n’ roll on its head. They could be forming to stand for the disenfranchised and the outcasts. Or, because they know the future of guitar music is a mix of Mogwai, Sophie and Mk.gee, and all they have to do is get their sound in front of the world.

Perhaps, it could have nothing to do with the sound or the success. Instead, it could have everything to do with the need for self-expression. That would put them in the company of one of the great could-have-been bands of the 2010s, Joanna Gruesome.

How did the rock band Joanna Gruesome form?

There are several great stories of how rock bands formed, and the Cardiff noise-poppers have one of the best. In fact, it’s so good that it can’t possibly be true (and a number of the band’s former members have poured cold water on the story since), but does that really matter?

When the band were first getting noticed in 2010, their party line was that the band had, like many bands of their era, formed at school, but with one slight deviation from the standard story.

Guitarist Owen Williams explained to Interview that the band had all met in a school-sanctioned anger management program, saying, “We all got sent there. We were in school at that point and we all got sent to this thing where if you were bad in school, they sent you to anger management courses, and we all met on one that was focused on musical therapy, where you’re all bound together to produce little songs with the group.”

Now, as previously mentioned, the specific story is almost certainly false. Yet, there’s a reason why that story has stuck with the band more than the other tall tales they spun of their formation. Williams also tried to say that they formed during a wine tasting trip, and that absolutely fooled no one. A school-mandated anger management class, though? From a rock band whose whole thing was articulating an adolescent rage that was self-aware enough to know how juvenile it was but completely unwilling to suppress it? Yeah, that checked out.

Because that’s the reason, isn’t it? Above all else, people will always need to express themselves, and people have tried for generations, but still haven’t found a more cathartic way of doing just that than making an absolute racket with some cheap guitars and your best mates.