Gaslight Anthem Wrestle With the American Dream

The American Dream is a concept many are familiar with but few can concretely define. Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon, however, has an idea -- and while it reflects his blue-collar upbringing, it definitely doesn't jibe with what many of us were taught in grade school.

To me, it's the ability to be like 'I'm putting a roof on somebody's house but I can also play guitar; I'm going to try to be in a band and that can happen,'" he tells Spinner. "The thing that's so cool about living in America is that everyone will give you a chance to try. The thing that isn't good necessarily is the spoon-fed American Dream thing -- just because you try doesn't mean you're going to be rich and successful. It's a long road."

That working-class sensibility can be heard throughout the band's third album, 'American Slang,' an autobiographical record about Fallon's New Jersey roots. And although the group still hasn't achieved any sort of megastar status and all the financial gains that come with it, Fallon is content with Gaslight Anthem's level of success.

"My friends always go, 'Are you rich yet?' Look at you on the TV and the magazines. You're on the cover of the internet,' they say. I'm like, 'That doesn't translate into dollars,'" he says, laughing. "You have to be OK with that, with doing that because you actually love it, not because you're waiting for some kind of miracle payday. That's the American reality. It shouldn't be called the American Dream, it should be the American Opportunity: 'dream' is elusive and a lot of people don't get there."

And if he had never made it to this point, Fallon knows exactly where he would've ended up. "I would've moved to California," he says. "This is the reason why -- out there, there's no sea salt that messes up cars, so I would be fixing up old cars from the '40s and '50s."

Well, you can't get more of a blue-collar image than that. Gaslight Anthem's 'American Slang' is due out June 15 from SideOneDummy.