Mickey Madden, the compassionate and articulate bassist of popular alt-rock group Maroon 5, chatted with the Post about his views on animal rights and advocacy and offered up some wisdom regarding the efficacy of music and sex as means of spreading awareness.

When someone asks why you are a vegan, what do you tell them?

All of the reasons that someone would become vegan definitely apply to me. You know, the environmental argument, the health argument – for me personally I feel so much healthier as a vegan. But I guess the main reason I’m vegan is an animal-rights reason. For me it was a consciousness shift, one that I couldn’t come back from. The idea of eating another animal has become really abhorrent to me, and once you make that leap, you can’t go back. It was like a realization. It’s not something I could argue for; it was just a feeling that came over me one day that I could never go back on. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I definitely do. It’s like once you realize what’s going on, you can’t un-know it.

Exactly, exactly. And then that of course leads to a certain amount of research and self-education, from which you then learn the horrifying realities. And also if you spend any time around animals at all, you can’t help but realize that they are individuals with personalities. And they are to be treated as such.

So what initially pushed you towards veganism? Obviously you had to have some sort of impetus to start researching and looking more into some of these issues.

The straight-edge community was a big factor, I think, for a lot of people my age. The culture around Fugazi and the D.C. straight-edge community had a really big influence on me growing up, and that definitely led to an awareness of veganism and eating as a political act. So that would be the culture from which it came.

Also around the time I became vegan, Fast Food Nation came out, which I think was a big influence for a lot of people who turned vegan at that age. Even beyond that there’s been a lot of writing about it – good polemical writing about veganism and just eating in general, but veganism in particular.

Now I realize you are the only vegan member of Maroon 5, but do you ever work any animal-rights messages into your songs, or push the group to do so?

No, songs are a really difficult format for that. To reduce a complex argument into a three-minute song is very hard. So I just try to use whatever other platforms I have to talk about it as much as I can. We’re a band of pretty strong opinions and political beliefs, but it doesn’t really find its way into the music. And maybe that will change – I mean, I would definitely welcome it if it were artistically viable. But it’s a difficult thing. You really run the risk of reducing complexity by trying to simplify it enough to fit in a song.

I can see that. I mean, you’ve got John Lennon on one hand, where every song he wrote was about something political or whatnot, and yet…

But honestly, even in a song like “Imagine,” he’s speaking in real generalities. It’s rare that he actually waded into specifics as far as political messaging is concerned – which is fine. It’s a rare song like “Ohio” [Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young] that is really specific, but those are few and far between. It’s a very difficult thing to write genuine protest songs. The great ones that are out there are a model to us all.

It makes me think – going back to John Lennon’s songs and songs like “Ohio” –  these bands were singing about issues that were pretty front-of-mind and universally agreed-upon, whereas at this point, animal rights isn’t something that everyone thinks about. I suppose lyrics about animal exploitation wouldn’t be as well-received.

Well, I’m happy to say that I think awareness [of animal exploitation] is increasing a little bit more. It’s more in the mainstream now. I think even just the growing focus on healthfulness has caused the public to sour a bit on agribusiness as an entity, which is good. I think people now are more concerned with and more aware of where their food comes from and are concerned with its providence, and that will lead to a lot of people thinking twice about eating meat. It’s sort of a necessary part of that thinking process.

I’ve found that a lot of people, if they just really think about and examine what it is that they’re doing – they get it. It’s really just a consciousness shift. Most people just don’t think about it. I mean, it’s part of our culture; it’s engrained in us.

That’s definitely true. It’s really a matter of seeing the fallacies in messages that you were brought up with.

Yeah, exactly.

Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine recently posed naked in full-page ad in Cosmo UK to raise awareness of testicular cancer in men, which made me think of PETA, an organization that’s been utilizing this sort of shock-value nude advertising for nearly a decade – most notably their “I’d Rather Go Naked” campaign against fur. These kind of ads are effective, no question about it; they certainly catch people’s attention. But sometimes these groups are criticized because people see the ads as pornographic or sexist. What do you think of this advertising strategy, especially as it’s used by PETA?

Well I think that anything that brings attention to the issue is worthwhile. I actually don’t see anything tasteless or pornographic about nudity in and of itself. I think that’s just a really prudish and conservative response. But you know what? Sex sells. That’s been a truth throughout the years.

And what about you, personally? If PETA approached you to do an anti-fur ad, would you do it? Would you strip down for animals?

Oh, well, I would definitely be happy to do an anti-fur ad, but I would definitely want to keep my clothes on. [Laughing] That is not in my nature.

Are there any encouraging words you would like to leave with any of our readers who are considering adopting a vegan lifestyle?

It’s the easiest time in history as an American to be vegan. Our culture, like I said, as we start to focus on health, these issues are bound to come up. Honestly when I first became vegan [almost a decade ago], touring was difficult. I really had to have patience and seek things out. Now things are so different; it’s much easier to find good vegan food now than it ever has been. It’s to the point where you don’t even have to feel like you’re sacrificing.

And also, I would say that anyone considering a switch to veganism should just start by cutting down the meat you eat. You don’t have to eat meat at every meal. And as soon as you start to make that shift away from animal products, you find that it’s much easier than you believed it would be.