Serj Tankian reflects on a life of truth, activism and System Of A Down

Serj Tankian was at work in his home studio last night, immersed in composing a score for an upcoming Hollywood movie, when he suddenly realised he was not alone. Taking off his headphones, and pausing the action on screen, Serj walked over to join his nine-year-old son on the couch, and asked his boy what he’d been drawing in the sketchbook on his lap. Young Rumi, however, was much more interested in what his father had been watching.

“He was like, ‘There was a gun, some girls, and some sexy stuff happening there, what is that?’” Serj says, laughing. “I said, ‘Um, it’s inappropriate for you, so you can’t watch it. But it’s a Hollywood film, it’s not real, the gun’s not real’ – you know, kinda explaining it. And he’s like, ‘Oh, OK’, and off he goes again, happy. It’s funny, you don’t lay out plans to explain how the world works to a kid, but questions come when you least expect them, so then you have to deal with it.”

It’s a cute anecdote that illustrates that, beyond the public profile of Serj Tankian – identified on his Wikipedia page as a singer, musician, songwriter, record producer and political activist – there exists a father, a husband, a human being. ‘I am large, I contain multitudes’, the great American poet and essayist Walt Whitman once wrote, an acknowledgment that we are all more complex than the persona that others see.

And over the past couple of years, System Of A Down ’s frontman has been doing some self-analysis of his own, seeking to find out who he really is by drilling down into his family history, and his own life journey, in order to write what he calls an “accidentally hatched philosophical memoir”, Down With The System .

Unfortunately, and somewhat unusually, the book’s publishers were unable to send us a copy ahead of our conversation with the 56-year-old musician – the author puts this down to the fact that their lawyers are still poring over the manuscript, pre-publication – but Serj tells us that it’s about “lessons learned, the intersection of justice and spirituality, and moral implications”, and says that writing it provided him with “incredible free therapy sessions”.

“If the book never comes out,” he says serenely, “I’m already grateful, because I’ve already benefited greatly from it.”

One story that you won’t find included in Down With The System involves Serj Tankian and his System Of A Down bandmates – guitarist Daron Malakian, bassist Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan – hanging out in the world’s oldest toy shop, Hamleys in London, in November 1998.

The band were in the capital to play their first ever UK gigs, opening for Slayer and Sepultura across three consecutive nights at the 2,000-capacity London Astoria, and this writer was tasked with taking the quartet Christmas shopping, for a magazine feature. Wide-eyed, excitable, loud and friendly, the four young musicians rampaged around the huge, multi-floor shop wearing Santa hats and reindeer antler deely boppers until, after dissolving into fits of laughter when Daron swiped hundreds of vibrating furry toys onto the floor, security politely requested we vacate the premises.

I mention this because, within three years, System Of A Down had a No.1 album on the US Billboard 200 chart (2001’s Toxicity ) and were receiving death threats for their political views – an indication of just how fast things move, and how quickly one can lose one’s innocence working in the music industry. This subject matter is, unsurprisingly, included in Down With The System .

As Serj recalls, the shit first hit the fan for his band when, days after the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001, he published an essay online titled Understanding Oil, which sought to offer some perspective on Al-Qaida’s motivations.

“Terror is not a spontaneous human action without credence,” Serj wrote. “People just don’t hijack planes and commit harikari (suicide) without any weight of thought to the action. No one in the media seems to ask WHY DID THESE PEOPLE DO THIS HORRIFIC ACT OF VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION?”

With the scars of 9/11 still raw, not everyone was ready to receive such insight, and the backlash against the singer’s essay continued long after he appeared on The Howard Stern Show to add greater context to his words. As System Of A Down received credible threats that venues on their US tour for Toxicity would be bombed, Serj’s bandmates asked him, “Are you trying to get us killed?”

“Guys, I’m so sorry, I love you all,” Serj answered. “And of course I don’t want any harm to come to any of us, but I’m telling the truth.”

“We know it’s the truth,” came the reply, “but you don’t have to always say it!”

The singer is adamant that, whatever the consequences, he will continue to speak truth to power. Prompted today, he’ll touch upon Israel’s war on Gaza (“the number of women and children killed is unforgivable… whether it’s called genocide or ethnic cleansing is for the courts ultimately to decide’) and US politics (“Donald Trump is an absolute maniac… very dangerous”), fully aware that such comments will alienate millions.

“It’s who I am,” he says simply. “I’ve been an activist before becoming an artist, and for me, without the truth we are lost. I state in the book that there are times where the guys would say, ‘You care more about Armenia, or politics, or justice, than you do about the band’, and I would say, ‘No’, but maybe they were right, in a way. I don’t want to say that I have sacrificed the band or the music for The Truth, but I’ve held them both very close.

"And I don’t think that we should live in a world where one is competing with the other, I don’t think we should live in a world where the truth has to be compromised for entertainment’s purpose. That’s a fucked-up world, and I don’t want to be in that world. “At the time I wrote that essay, I was naive enough to believe that in a democracy, the truth will stand on its own, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t.”

Today, Serj is speaking to us from his home in Los Angeles. And frankly, given the length of the ‘to do’ list he casually rolls off – the singer is currently scoring two films and a documentary series; he’s got an EP, Foundations , coming out in September, and another record of covers and collaborations in the works; he’s opening an art gallery/cafe here in LA; and is making plans to expand his AVAT (pronounced ‘Kah-vaught’) coffee line – we’re surprised he has the time.

“Sometimes it can be overwhelming, sure, but mostly, it’s incredibly fun,” he says. “I don’t overthink it, I wake up every morning and I’m excited about the opportunities and options that I have to be creative.”

You may notice here that there’s no mention of System Of A Down on Serj’s current itinerary, but by the time you read this, the singer will have re-grouped with his bandmates to co-headline the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas – alongside Slipknot – for the second consecutive year, and the quartet also have a huge co-headline show with Deftones lined up on August 17 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

“I really enjoyed Sick New World last year, so when the opportunity came up this year again, I said I’d love to do it,” he says. “And everyone was shocked. They were like, ‘Wait, the guy who doesn’t want to tour wants to play that show again?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s one show, it’s not the fucking Groundhog Day of touring.’ I’m not discounting the band touring again, by the way, but it’s got to be right for everyone.”

“And making new music together,” he adds with a rueful smile, “is another conversation.”

The smile that accompanies that last comment is indicative of the fact that System Of A Down’s relationship status remains ‘complicated’. Serj Tankian is many things, but he is not a stupid man, and he is fully aware that for fans of the band, and indeed members of the band, this is a source of some irritation.

The subject is not off-limits at all – Serj doesn’t duck a single question thrown at him today, and his pride in his band is evident in the numerous RIAA multi-platinum certification awards for SOAD’s albums that hang on the white walls behind him. But when he says, “all of this is handled in the book, not that I’m trying to advertise it on the basis”, it’s an acknowledgment that there is a lot to untangle here.

When we mention an interview that John Dolmayan gave last year with the Battleline Podcast, in which he said that the singer “hasn’t really wanted to be in the band for a long time”, and bluntly stated “we probably should have parted ways around 2006”, there’s the mildest flash of anger in Serj’s eyes.

“John means the world to me, he’s my brother-in-law, I love him, and I saw him just yesterday, but there are times he’s got mad and said fucking shit,” he says. “And look, there’s times I’ve gotten mad and said fucking shit, too. The option has always been there for the band to move on without me, and John knows that.

“In the end, to me System Of A Down is beyond the band, it’s our relationship together. And it means more to me than the band itself, or even the music itself. And that is hard for other people, maybe even other people in the band, to understand. But, as I saw from the stage at Sick New World last year, the multi-generational appeal of the music we have made is mind-blowing, bro. Our music is more timeless than we ever imagined, and that is the hugest compliment for any artist.”

Oh, and there is new System Of A Down music coming, in a way. Serj’s upcoming Foundations EP will include at least one song written for the band in their early days, but never previously released, and a brace of tracks left off Serj’s first solo album, 2007’s Elect The Dead . They’re being released this year, he says, because revisiting his past for his memoir led him to dig into his song vaults, too.

And, having put out a doom metal single, Deconstruction , with Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi last year, Serj says he’s open to future collaborations, naming Tom Waits and Eminem as just two of the artists he’d love to work with.

“Making music for me isn’t heavy lifting,” he says. “When I have downtime, and I’m not watching a movie, or painting, or playing with my son, or our beautiful Bernedoodle, I’ll mic up my piano and just play some free unselfconscious music. I relax through music too, this is what I do.”

Before parting, we feel compelled to ask if there’s anything that Serj Tankian can’t do. And it turns out that there is. “I had a failed dream of becoming a farmer,” he laughs.

“We have a farm in New Zealand, but my neighbour out there tells me [puts on convincing Kiwi accent], ‘You’re the shittiest farmer I’ve ever seen, mate!’ He tells me everything that needs to be done – ‘Those trees need cut, mate, and those fences need fixed’ – and I’ll get in people to do it. My wife laughs at me, because she’s a great landscape gardener and I’m useless. New Zealand is a great escape from the fucking LA rat race, everything is so clean compared to in The Big Smoke, but man, it’s no holiday when I’m there, no Club Med beach break!”

By his own admission, Serj has never been afraid of work, and his enthusiasm and passion for every aspect of his creative life is a joy to observe. So too is his obvious devotion to family life. “I was very much an animal person ’til I had a kid,” he admits, “then focusing on having a child meant that the animals became second-class citizens, to be honest.”

When he reflects upon the fulfilment that his creative endeavours bring him in 2024, he draws an analogy with the simple pleasures that he sees lighting up his little boy’s days.

“Rumi is at an age where he’s absorbing information all the time, and we try to encourage him to see education, and culture, and growth, as a form of a strength to overcome whatever life throws at you. But equally important is the pure joy of care-free play, and the opportunity to explore whatever makes you happy. “The beauty of being an artist is being able to play without being told how to play and in which box to play,” he adds with a smile. “That’s the freedom every artist desires – the freedom with which a child plays.”

Down With The System is out now via Headline (UK) and Hachette Books (US). Foundations is due in September.