Rock Of Ages

The Offspring come to grips with being an American band

In a way, Dexter Holland couldn't have picked a worse place for an interview than the bustling John Wayne Airport in his native Orange County. Everywhere you look, people pushing, shoving, scrambling to make their particular flight--Golden Rule be damned. And there, in the center of the food court rotunda, sits a smirking Holland, arms folded on his chest, watching folks greedily gulp their tacos, Big Macs and Personal Pan Pizzas in strangely frenzied pre-boarding moments. In another way, he couldn't have chosen a better chat location. As far as rock's resident social commentator is concerned, the harried scene suits his mindset--and the Offspring's new state-of-the-punk-union address, Americana--to a millennial-mad, Y2K T.

Holland swears he never wanted this newscaster responsibility. Lyrics, he'd always believed, were merely a vexing chore, something to tack onto his quartet's hyperspeed anthems at the last possible minute. "I figured if I was really into messages and writing I would've been a poet or a politician," he snickers, while a few feet away, a businesswoman stops jabbering into her cellular phone long enough to inform a McDonalds cashier that she wanted that meal supersized, thank you, and didn't the kid hear her the first time? But things started changing with the group's 11-million-selling '94 landmark for Epitaph, Smash, in which lyrics (such as the anti-freeway violence sentiment in "Bad Habit" and the gangster-dissing treatise "Come Out and Play") played a major socio-political role. 1997's triple-platinum Ixnay on the Hombre (Columbia) delved deeper into the headlines; Americana (also on Columbia) practically reads like an editorial page itself. Now, Holland amends, "I've decided to try and make my words about something meaningful, but to not bang people over the head with 'em." He's doing his best not to take his position too seriously. "But who knows? Maybe, in the grand scheme of things, we do have something pretty valid to say."

Indeed. As ice shelves melt, sea levels rise, countless species of flora/fauna face extinction, floods and incurable disease decimate the world's population, and nonstop mobile phone usage jams up the atmosphere so thoroughly that astronomers are having difficulty using their sensitive telescopes, the 32-year-old Holland has surveyed his surroundings with alarm, dismay and disgust. And he's not keeping those feelings bottled up--he's going, as they say, on record about it. So lurking within the crowd-pleasing powerchords and steamroller rhythms of drummer Ron Welty, bassist Greg K. and frantic guitarist Noodles are Holland's scathing dissertations, thrown to (er, through) your door like a brick-loaded New York Times. Opening with an impersonal answering-service/push-the-pound-sign greeting from longtime Offspring voice-over personality John Mayer (recall the "Intermission" announcement from Ixnay?), the disc quickly skewers teen criminals ("Walla Walla"), twentysomething ennui ("The Kids Aren't Alright"), our need for instant gratification ("Americana") and the '90s proliferation of leech-hosted talk shows ("Why Don't You Get a Job?"). Holland sneers them all in his patented power-drill drone, but reserves his nastiest turns of phrase for a pell-mell reworking of Morris Albert's "Feelings" ("Trying to forget my/Feelings of hate!" he barks) and a cunning, cutting jab at mallrat poseurdom dubbed "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)." Droll humor winds up being the band's most deadly secret weapon.

Modern rock tracks don't come any wickeder than "Pretty Fly." A logical melodic successor to the Latin-spiced Offspring breakthrough hit "Come Out and Play," the number begins with a sly Def Leppard in-joke, then functions on a rap-simple, chant-a-long level, replete with cowbells and vamp-campy female "Give it to me, baby" chorus: "Our subject isn't cool, but he fakes it anyway/He may not have a clue and he may not have style/ But everything he lacks, well he makes up in denial," woofs Holland, dryly skewering the trend-jumping wannabe who studies himself in the mirror and decides "All the girlies say I'm pretty fly for a white guy." And the gag just keeps going, as the "subject" struggles to blend in: "Now cruising in his Pinto he sees homies as they pass/But if he looks twice, they're gonna kick his lily ass." Will listeners pick up on all the barbed invective? Holland isn't sure.

"Some people are gonna take 'Pretty Fly' at face value and think it's funny, without understanding that I'm making fun of the character in the song," reckons the punster, who--in rumpled chinos and brand-name T-shirt 'n' skater shoes, his quasi-crew-cut bristling atop a blue-eyed, all-American-boy face--appears about as ordinary as they come in sunny Southern California. "Which, in turn, means that if they're accepting it, the joke's on them. But, at the same time, you can take music on a lot of different levels. If someone just likes a song because it's got a good beat or a cool melody, that's fine--I'm not gonna criticize someone for not knowing the inner, deeper meaning of our music. And that's one of the most exciting things about music for me--to make something that you can like on different levels." For example, Holland continues, "My little niece, who's five, really likes the song, just 'cause she can sing along to it. And sure, it goes beyond that, and there's a message in there that you shouldn't try to be something you're not. But what does that matter to my niece?"

The Offspring often transmit their messages spoonful-of-sugar style. The Ixnay concerts kicked off with a Mayer-muttered invitation to "smash shit up, get wasted and puke in the bathroom." Kids roared their party-down approval, oblivious to Mayer's final acerbic line: "See ya in the thrash pit, you stupiddumbshitgoddamnmotherfuckers!" And all the drunken frat fools who didn't get it, Holland chuckles, "wound up making jerks outta themselves. And I think that's something that every band faces, if you come from an underground scene that at one point grows into something more. People who are coming to see you and buying your music are the people, almost, that you're writing your music against. It's kinda weird, and we started to notice it during the Smash tours. But the whole thing about where we come from is not to be judgmental, to be more tolerant of different kinds of bands." As an O.C. teen, long before the Offspring's eponymous indie debut in '89, Holland "always heard about Black Flag playing shows with the Go-Go's in the old days, and that's how it's supposed to be. So I try to never say 'Oh, you're not cool enough to listen to our music!' If they come see us, fine. And hopefully they get it."

The Dave Jerden-produced Americana, however, trains binoculars on everything uncool in today's follow-the-leader, tell-it-all-on-Jerry-Springer world. The theme came about by accident, swears Holland; he'd penned the lyrics to three songs, "Pretty Fly," "Get a Job" and "The Kids Aren't Alright," when he noticed a pattern emerging. "Once I started thinking about it, it was like 'Yeah! This is the way we see things these days, and it's a different kind of American culture than what people traditionally picture--it ain't no glossy Norman Rockwell version.'" For starters, he grumbles, look at the so-called "slacker set," the latchkey children who eyeball their absentee corporate-shill parents and think 'No way, dude!' "There is a slacker mentality out there, and I think one of the reasons the whole punk scene took off a few years ago is that the ideas that were central to early punk rock--the Sex Pistols and 'No future' were something that only a few people related to in the '70s. Come around to the '90s, and it's something a lot of people can relate to, the feeling that they don't have a future. Like, 'What the fuck--I'm gonna go to college but end up working at Burger King? I might as well stay home and get stoned!' And it became almost a mainstream idea.

"Kids are on their own and they know it," Holland adds. "They're doing their best to survive, and it's not easy--they're home alone, they've gotta fend for themselves, and it's a little bit of what we're talking about in the cut 'Americana'--it's immediate gratification, where culture and fashion are everything and the icons of what's important are completely different from those of the latchkey kids' parents. It was supposed to be, 'We'll get a job at the big company, and in 20 years' time we'll be promoted to Vice President and life will be good!' And there ya go--there's you're door. And kids today aren't buying into that, and they feel really disillusioned because it's just not true in many cases. You can go to college and even get a graduate degree, and still not get a job."

Holland was studying genetics at university when his band took off. Now, he sighs--tapping into another "Americana" theme--society is studying him. Studying all of us. "I'm not exactly anti-technology, but I saw a recent statistic that said the average American is actually videotaped 27 times a day, just walking into a 7-11 or whatever. And along with the technology, you have this new lack of privacy, and you can get to a point where you actually feel soulless because you don't know when you can be yourself." Holland points toward the crowded McDonalds. "Fast food, instant gratification--these are the ways people deal with it. People perhaps allow themselves to be exploited by cable TV and Psychic Friends Networks and all that kinda stuff. But ultimately, you've gotta take responsibility for yourself, for your own life." If he could sit each depressed, confused youth down for a quick heart-to-heart, he adds, he knows exactly what he'd say: "At the risk of sounding corny, my message is that you can do it. You don't have to listen to the bullshit that everyone else says--you don't have to be a doctor or a lawyer; you don't have to follow any rigid plan in order to make yourself happy and your life successful. You can define for yourself what's happiness, what's success. So don't give in to outside pressure--figure it out and go for it."

The Offspring have made a few moral choices of their own. Amid punk-purist cries of "sellout," the band left Epitaph for major-league Columbia three years ago (Epitaph, of course, recently "sold out" to Interscope), which ultimately made good aesthetic sense, since the group, style-wise, has been regressing past punk confines to good old-fashioned rock 'n' roll. Adrenaline-rush fast, yes. But rock 'n' roll, nonetheless. Still, scowls Holland (who formed his own all-punk label, Nitro, with Offspring royalties), the main question most journalists ask him is "Do you consider yourself punk or not?" His response? "I'm proud to say that I come from an Orange County scene and that I was influenced by local bands like TSOL and the Adolescents, and even beyond that, the Dead Kennedys and the Ramones. I'm not gonna deny that that's where we come from. But I also don't wanna stay stuck in the past--we're gonna throw in rock elements, Latin elements, reggae elements. I'm proud of my history, my heritage, but I think we're ready to move on."

And the message travels on, as well. A couple of weeks ago, an Offspring acquaintance made a startled confession to the group: "You know, I just read the lyrics to 'Come Out and Play,' and wow! I had no idea! I thought it was just a fun dance song!" This makes Holland very happy. Happy that--albeit belatedly--his point finally got across. "But I don't wanna be a politician," he counters, dismissing any ideas that his true-blue social concerns might one day motivate him into office. "See, the problem with politicians is, they're always sugar-coating and skirting the issues. They have to figure out a way to please everybody, and they never fucking take a stand. That's one of the nice things about being a musician--at least musicians say what they really think.

"I mean, you're not gonna find [Social Distortion's] Mike Ness saying, 'Well, I'm not really sure how I feel about that subject--I think it could go either way!'"

By Tom Lanham, from "BAM" magazine - November 20, 1998