The War on Drugs Responds to "Douche" Mark Kozelek: "I Don’t Have Time for Idiots"

The War on Drugs are having the biggest year of their career so far with the release of this spring’s Lost in the Dream. The band has also been subject to the curious venom of Mark Kozelek—also having a huge year with his Sun Kil Moon LP, Benji—but they’ve been quiet about it so far. Now, the War on Drugs’ Adam Granofsky has finally shared some thoughts on the whole debacle in an interview with Songs for Whoever.

For those not keeping up, here is the SparkNotes version: Kozelek was pissed that a War on Drugs festival performance bled into his simultaneous set at a different stage, and called their music “beer commercial lead-guitar shit.” It culminated in him writing a song called “War on Drugs: Suck My Cock”. (Read Perfect Pussy singer Meredith Graves’ essay about why this song is problematic here.)

In the Songs for Whoever interview, Granofsky first jokes that he’s “never heard of” Kozelek. He then explains that he tried to contact Kozelek via email, and almost agreed to perform with him, until Kozelek made a snide comment conflating War on Drugs with Starbucks-rock:

I mean, to be fair to that idiot, what he said in that song… I didn’t really have a problem with any of it until I heard the song. First of all, he never met us, and yet said all these things. He’s such a douche. I asked somebody if I could get his e-mail, because I wasn’t trying to start this stupid Twitter thing, I was just bummed. I went to a mutual friend who explained that he wouldn’t give out his e-mail address. So I just got an e-mail through this friend that said “Mark wants to come to the Fillmore, he will write a song called ‘War On Drugs Suck My Cock’, you back him up on it and he gets to play ‘Beer Commercial Guitar’, then you back him up on one of his songs, ‘Dogs’, from his new album. And then he plays ‘Beer Commercial Guitar’ on one of your songs.”

We were on tour and I thought “this is actually a pretty cool idea, I don’t have anything against this guy, this is cool.” So I was really excited and was gonna write him back in a couple of days, ’cause I was busy at the time. Then two days later I get an e-mail back from him, saying “the offer has expired, maybe when I get home from tour I’ll go to Starbucks and buy your record.” I was like “you’re such a fucking prick, dude.” He was such an asshole, I didn’t even say anything. Then he goes to the internet and he “challenges” us to this thing, but I was like “you fucking prick, you already said ‘No’!” He’s such a fucking child. And then the song is just idiotic, he’s just a fucking idiot. I don’t have time for idiots. I’m just pissed that he tried to make it come out like he was challenging us. I had already essentially agreed to it, and then the Starbucks comment…what the fuck, dude. Get over your fucking self.

Read our feature on the War on Drugs and watch them play “Red Eyes” in Spain:

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