Real Punk Attitude!

Despite selling millions of copies of "Ixnay on the Hombre", the Offspring vocalist Dexter Holland tells Murray Engleheart they're still in touch with their punk roots.

The first South American tour by the Offspring won't be forgottenin a hurry by the singer, Dexter Holland or whoever the hell does his laundry these days. "It's wild down there," he says, "kind of like Mexico. If they like a band they show their apprecation by spittingon them. There was this one show we played and I just got spat on for an hour. Literally. The entire show I kept on getting it. That kind of sucks," he laughs quietly.

Holland got no such airborne nasal lining blessing or preferential treatment at a not so hush-hush shoe in West Hollywood. "We heard that Oasis were going to play a show at the Viper Room at about midnight. I went down there and I was standing in line with Jonathan from Korn, and none of us could get in!" he cackles. "We just didn't rank, I guess. I don't know what we have to do..." he jokes.

Disapointting as the scenario must have been on the night, if fits the Offspring's template perfectly. Even when the band were selling shipping container loads of the 'Smash' album and suddenly looking at the world from cover of New York's ultra-hip Spin magazine, there were no sex scandals, no flings with supermodels and no tragically fashionable bathroom -floor-turn-blur scenes. It seemed the weight of being one of the biggest selling punk outfits inmusical history hadn't altered their internal emotional balance at all. The consistently steady succes of thei current album, the powerful "Ixnay on the Hombre", and some healthy radio play has allowed the band a more even outlook, still without the enormous psychological burden that only begins with clocking up millions of sales. "I think so, " he agrees. "When a band has a record that really takes off it's kind of an aberration; it's not really fair in a good or bad way to the band. It's great that everyone's excited, but it's almost not real because people have never really heard the band before. Look at all the bands that are doing great now, like The Spice Girls and stuff like that. It gets overblown, if you get my point." It seems everyone now can see both the woods and the trees and many have latched onto what's emerged now the dust has settled. The reaction to the words "Gone Away" was a good example. "Some people really identified with the song in that way and sent some pretty heavy stories sometimes. There was one guy who sent a letter saying that his wife was murdered, and when he first heard the song he broke down, and it's helped him gett through it. Stuff like that. He's 25, and it's just like, jeez!"

That sentiment aside, while the Offspring might not be heavily tattooed or pierced, they are sincered about handing down the traditional spirit of punk from generation to snotty generation. They're also beating the drum for some of punk's originators and prime movers."We did some small shows in California, and we got jello Biafra to play some Dead Kennedys songs with us. That was really cool. There was one in L.A, one in Fresno and one in Santa Cruz, and actually we did it in New York. Jello and I have been working together to set up a kind of a benfit foundation and stuff, and since we were going through the stuff, and the Offspring donating those shows in California to the charity foundation, he agreed to come out and play some Dead Kennedys songs. That was really a thrill for me because they were always my heroes when I was starting a band. "We played Chemical Warfare; that was my choice. He wanted also play some of his material, so we did a song called Burgers of Wrath off his Mojo Nixon record, and we asked him to do Holiday in Cambodia and he even went for that." No doubt bootlegs of the shows will surface at some point, but that'll be pretty much all we can expect from the Offspring in the immediate future. "I think it'd be great to do something for a movie if that came along, that kind of thing. I just wan to put out a record sooner than we did last time. It took a long time to do the last one."

Holland is in an intersting position. The man's personal resume doesn't have a string of his previous bands litterd through it. The Offspring is his first and only band. "It's the only band I've ever been in. Me and Greg pretty much started it . We didn't know how to play and all that kind of stuff, and we bought instruments. We called ourselves different name back then, Manic Subsidal, because it sounded really punk, it was the two of us and Noodles joined us about year later. Ron joined six months after that and we changed the name around that time to The Offspring. But I've never really been in another band, wich is kind of weird because you hear these stories about guys who come together from kazillions of different bands. Manic Subsidal's first show was in Santa Cruz with the rather forgettable White Flag (yep, you read that colour right) The Subsidals were first on the bill and were 'pretty terrible'. Playing in people's living rooms and parties was their general mode of operation. We had songs like Sorority Bitch and we had an anti-police song, Police Protection. Actually the first songs I wrote were Police Protection and an anti-war song and a death song, because they were pretty much the bases you had to cover being a punk band. First you write an anti-cop song, then you write an anti-war song and then the I-hate-myself-and-I-wanna-die song. Then it was like God! Where do we go from here? But the first year was pretty easy. But for a lot of these kids coming to our shows, punk's always been there since they were born and it's more than the alternative that it started out being."

History as history itself has proven it doesn't really matter a shit to a lot of folks. No one knows or cares about the vital role that Britain punks Discharge played in Metallica's speed metal platform, while all those who fashionably name-drop Black Flag or the Stooges are unable to name one of their songs. "When we played these songs with Jello, they were at our shows, and he would come out and do Holiday in Cambodia, and there were a lot of people there that were stoked and jumping up and down. But there was a section af the crowd that didn't get it - never heard any of the songs, never heard of the guy - and I was just like, wow! I was talking to my friend once and he was saying when we're like 50, we're gonna be like our parents. We're going to go The Dead Kennedys, now that was real music." Holland can speak from a position of authority. He was very much a part of the original Southern Californian punk scene. He's seen it all, from DOA and TSOL to Dead Kennedys shows where he copped a police baton on the arm for not moving fast enough. But one band he saw could very nearly have had a major bearing on his band's early career. "I never actually saw a live concert of them, but I was able to get a ticket into the MTV Awards when (Nirvana) did that live show. They just played one song and (bassist) Krist (Novaselic) threw his bass up in the air and it landed on his face. I was standing out about five rows back and stuff, and it was amazing to be in that crowd. We were able to roam around and we saw him backstage, me and Ron (Welty, Offspring drummer) and we approached him and gave him one of our CD's Ignition. We felt really self conscious and kind of dumb, but we were like, we've gotta give him a CD! So we did. He was very nice. He looket at like, 'Oh, I've never heard of this before but thank you anyway.' I seriously doubt that he ever listened to it. But we gave it a shot."

From "Metal Hammer" magazine - January 1998