Black and white. Night and day. Doom 'n' gloom versus peppy, poppy pranksters.

The Offspring and AFI might come from opposite ends of the punk rock spectrum, but don't try to tell that to their respective frontrnen. At the moment, Brian 'Dexter' Holland (tall, sun-bleached, casual) and Davey Havok (thin, pale, clad in black) are emerging from the same car and laughing at a shared joke. Walking inside Dexter's Orange County recording studio, the pair come across as relaxed and uninhibited, like the friends they are.

Dexter and The Offspring are taking a quick break from the first hatch of Stateside dates in support of the million-selling 'Conspiracy Of One' album. The singer is pleased with the way things have been going, and admits that performing in arenas presents new challenges.

"You're always wondering, 'What am I going to do to get the audience into this thing?'," he grins. "We did a lot of arenas on the last tour, and then we just played Roseland in New York, which is more like a big club, and it felt great! It was like, 'Yeah! This is what our shows used to feel like'."

For his part, Davey Havok can't boast of performing to enormodome audiences just yet, but with sales of last year's 'The Art Of Drowning' album clearing 75,000 copies worldwide, those days might not be far off.

Twinning these two vocalists up for an interview and photo shoot wasn't difficult. The Offspring are AFI are visiting our shores this month on the European leg of the ongoing 'Conspiracy Of One' campain. Of course, AFI are signed to Nitro Records, Dexter's label, but there's also a bond between the two singers, with Davey talking about his admiration of The Offspring, as well as saluting the way Dexter runs the label. Holland staes that he's a huge fan of Havok's crew; indeed, The Offspring have covered the former's 'Totalimmortal' in the past.

"We're going to let them play 'Totalimmortal' this tour, I think," smiles Dexter, reclining in a plush leather chair in the studio's control booth. "Thanks!" laughs Davey, sitting next to him. "You can sing on back-ups!"

For both Dexter Holland and Davey Havok, it's been a long, twisted journey since they unleashed their respective debut albums. Listening to The Offspring's self-titled 1989 effort or AFI's first record, 1995's Answer That And Stay Fashionable', you'd have been hard pressed to predict what lay in store.

Leaving behind the squalling hardcore sounds of their first three records -Answer That...' (1 995), 'Very Proud Of Ya' ('96) and 'Shut Your Mouth And Open Your Eyes' ('97) - AFI's 1999 album 'Black Sails In The Sunset' saw them moving into altogether darker, territory inspired more by the schlock-horror punk of The Misfits and The Damned than Bad Religion or Social Distortion.

And then there's The Offspring. Since 1994's breakthrough album, 'Smash', they've sold some 22 million albums, scored a Number One bit with 'Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)' and decapitated mannequins of the Backstreet Boys onstage every night for a year. More pertinently, they've honed the since generic punk thrashings of their early days into a noise that's both cutting and commercial. Dexter Holland smiles when he recalls his band's initial attempt to forge their sound.

'Our first album sounds a lot like (early '80s Orange County punkers) TSOL. It's pretty obvious who we were listening to then, but it didn't seem that way at the time.'

Back in the day, TSOL frontman Jack Grisham would regularly dress like a New Romantic dandy. At the time, no-one seemed bothered by the sight of a man clad in lace shirts and make-up. Yet Davey Havok says he's sometimes been on the receiving end of catcalls and insults when he's worn PVC trousers and eyeliner onstage.

"As any fashion becomes more solidified, there become certain rules for that fashion, even if it was created to completely disavow fashion" shrugs Davey. "A lot of people who are into the punk scene of today have no idea of its roots or its origins. They don't realise that Jack Grisham or Christian Death's Rozz Williams or Rikk Agnew of the Adolescents were wearing dresses!"

"That doesn't go over very well today," chuckles Dexter. "Punk is more of a fashion statement than anything else now. Having green hair at school is kind of cool, but people were seriously being beaten up for having green hair 15 years ago."

When Dexter Holland talks about punk's traditions, it's not just out of idle interest. He's just signed British legends The Damned to Nitro, as well as releasing the debut album from Davey's side-project, Son Of Sam, which finds Havok - a longtime fan of Glenn Danzig's - singing goth-tastic punk tunes with cohorts London May, Steve Zing, and Todd Youth, all former members of Danzig's band Samhain.

There are a few differences between Davey and Dexter: the former is from a small northern California town; the latter is from sprawling Orange County in the south- ern part of the state. One is undeniably wealthy, the other is still living month to month. At 25, Davey - who legally changed his name to Havok years ago and won't reveal his original surname - hasn't come close to witnessing the punk rock tides turn- ing in the same way Dexter has. What unites them is a passion for their music.

"There's nothing I'd rather be doing," says Davey. "AFI started when we were 15 and 16 years old, and we did it out of love for the music. We couldn't even play at the time, and we certainly never thought we'd get as far as releasing a seven-inch."

"That's the big one," says Dexter. "The love of the music, and beyond that, playing a kind of music that establishes who you are, what your identity is. And then, when you first start playing your shows and bonding with the audience, this kind of music makes that bonding very powerful. And let's face it," he adds, "there isn't really a better job than being a singer in a band!"

While Dexter admits he's relieved that he doesn't have to worry about the same things that he did when he was Davey's age, he insists that success brings its own set of problems. 'Smash' ignited a firestorm of controversy in the ever-opinionated punk community. If you were on an independent label in 1994, you had no chance at having a mainstream hit - until The Offspring came along and blew the doors wide open. The purists have never forgiven them.

"It took a while for me to not care," sighs Dexter. "We were on Epitaph, and we were stoked, because we felt like we had actually done something. It felt good inside: we had done an indie record on an indie label, we wrote songs that we wanted to write and didn't think about getting them on the radio. We didn't break 'the rules'."

Even an Offspring fan like Davey recalls that no matter how much Dexter's band tried to retain street cred, there were many that were jealous of their good fortune.

"It was ridiculous," says Davey. "I got 'Smash' right when it came out, and I thought, 'This is a great record!'. And I know that the same kids who also bought it right when it came out and loved it were saying, 'They're fucking sellouts'. Oh, so now that you're bearing it on the radio instead of on your CD player, you don't like it anymore?"

Dexter claims to he beyond caring these days. "That whole time was really disillusioning, because we really did try to hold onto those ideals," the singer shrugs. "Now, I certainly wouldn't deny that our roots are totally punk rock, but I can't defend that anymore. People always ask us, 'How can you still be a punk rock band?'. Well, I'm happy to be considered a 'rock' band."

AFI went through times of disillusionment themselves. As teenagers in the suburbs outside of California's Bay Area, they could count their devoted fans on the fingers of one band. It appeared that music was not going to be their ticket out of the small-town doldrums.

"Back in '93, nobody cared about us whatsoever," says Davey, "and we had been together for three years. So we broke up and went off to school, but when we came home to visit our families shortly thereafter, we were encouraged to do a reunion show. We agreed, although we couldn't figure out who would he interested in seeing us, since they hadn't shown any interest before!" When 200 kids showed up, singing along to every word of their songs, AFI were told by friends that they might want to reconsider their intention to make the night a one-off. Davey still considers the show the most gratifying of his career.

"It's a scary thing, to give up everything and risk complete failure," the singer grins. "But that concert made a real difference."

"It's a big moment when you see someone singing along to your songs for the first time," agrees Dexter. "It's something you definitely remember."

When did you feel most proud of your own accomplishments, Dexter?

"It sounds weird saying this," says Dexter with a nervous giggle, "but when people come up to me and say, 'Your music saved my life', it trips me out! You don't know these people and there's a part of you that thinks, 'Maybe they're a little wacky'. But when it really hit you, about the whole one-on-one aspect that music can have on people, it's a pretty impressive thing."

"That's the stuff which sometimes gets lost," he continues. "People always talk about the numbers of records sold, or how the fans in Philly didn't jump up and down that much last time you played there. But I get some letters from people saying how much 'Gone Away' - which is about losing someone - means to them, from parents who have written to me to say that it helped them get over the loss of their son who died from leukaemia it rips your heart out."

"Absolutely," says Davey. "it's nice to know that the words you create can help someone. I have kids who come up to me telling me that they've stopped cutting themselves from our songs."

Dexter recoils slightly. "AFI's fans are a little more fucked-up than our kids," he jokes. "Our fans are just a little depressed!"

Neither Dexter nor Davey are remotely arrogant or self-important. Humorous and down-to-earth, there's little rock star bulishit surrounding them.

"I think that it's due to the fact that we came up in the scene we did," comments Dexter. "It was all about being straightforward, not putting on airs, and not placing yourself an a pedestal. Being humble was how we were taught to deal with things."

Davey adds that there are always those who will tear you down for reasons of their own, but that he himself pays little attention to the nay-sayers.

"I think all of the fans who were waiting for us to sell out a show at (famed punk breeding ground) Gilmnan Street, or to sell more than a thousand records, just so they could hate us, lost interest a long time ago."

"But that's alright," cuts in Dexter. "We're not in this to say that certain people are cool enough to listen to our music, and that others aren't. That whole sense of elitism is a bunch of bulishit."

"The Offspring have been very fortunate in that so many good things have happened to us," he continues. "It can be a rollercoaster sometimes. It's human nature that people want to tear you down, so six months after you've been on top of the world, you're shit again. It's almost worse that way than if nothing good had ever happened to you."

Dexter's honesty is refreshing. A veteran of hundreds of interviews, he knows what journals will ask of him, and, having been wounded by the press before, he tends to speak with the knowledge of how his words will look in print. The younger, less-media- savvy Davey, however, uses no filters.

"I try to advise him all the time, but he never listens to me," smirks Dexter.

"Yeah," replies Havok mischievously. "I'm a punk, I don't listen to anybody!"

When Davey says that an unflattering article in a magazine has never burned him, Dexter is astonished.

"Oh my gosh," he says in mock-horror. "A virgin!"

"No, I've been quoted out of context, and misquoted a couple of times," shrugs Davey. "But nothing too horrible."

Dexter chortles with the dry edge of a man who knows whereof he speaks.

"Well," he croaks, "you're in for it."

While Davey excuses himself to make a telephone call, I ask Dexter if being among younger admirers like Havok makes him feel like a wrinkly old fogey.

"It's weird," he sighs. "I feel that by being in a band, I never really have to grow up. I don't think of myself as an 'older guy' around them. It's cool that I can kind of give them advice on stuff, if they want it."

"It's interesting for us to talk about the press thing," he continues, pointing at my tape recorder. "He hasn't done enough of the bigger press to have had a had experience or whatever."

Holland says that he enjoys watching Davey transform into a latter-day Glenn Danzig when AFI take the stage, though he admits he never really flirted with a wild image himself. Well, except for those long braids that he sported circa 'Smash'.

"That was it," he grins. "My big 'image' moment. I should grow them back, huh?"

The other half of this punk rock version of 'The Odd Couple' re-emerges after finishing his phone call. He agrees that his and Dexter's styles couldn't be more divergent.

"Our music is completely different, we're aesthetically different, but we come from the same place," he says.

Walking outside the studio, Davey takes a look around at the asphalt-covered surroundings of this bland industrial part of California. Here, Dexter Holland could be any guy from Orange County."

"...And I obviously don't look like anybody from Orange County," Davey laughs. "I'm aware of this. Every time I come here, it's like I'm someone from the freak show!"

"Yeah," says Dexter. "if we went to a restaurant, I'd go, 'I'll have a cheeseburger, and Davey'll have a dead pigeon'."

For Dexter Holland, having the chance to see his protégés growing in stature first-hand has been nothing if not rewarding.

"It's one of the reasons I started Nitro," he says. "You have this band who you know and are friends with, and you think, 'Everyone I know loves this band, and I know that if other people heard them, they would love them too.' I can't wait to take them to Europe, because I know they're going to go over great."

And with that, they get into Dexter's car, and drive off into the sunset.

From "Kerrang!" UK magazine - January 2001