Offspring Move Ahead With Fifth Album

For a guy whose most renowned refrain is "I'm just a sucker with no self-esteem," Offspring vocalist Dexter Holland is a rather chipper and assured fellow. Of course, his lyrical inferiority complex was burgeoning before the neo-punk outfit sold more than eight million copies of its 1994 debut Smash. And even though by comparison the California quartet's major-label follow-up, Ixnay on the Hombre, punked out on the sales chart, Holland isn't ready to make wholesale changes.

"If I don't sell three million records, I'm going to commit suicide?" Holland posits. "No. What can you do? You can't second-guess what the audience might say, and if you try to gear your writing toward that, you're truly lost. Then you don't even know which way is up."

Today, the Offspring -- rounded out by guitarist/vocalist Noodles, bassist Greg K. and drummer Ron Welty -- are ensconced in a Burbank,, Calif., studio with producer Dave Jerden (Alice In Chains, Jane's Addiction), working six days a week on an as-yet-untitled, dozen-song effort due out November 17.

"I wanted to write a record that wasn't a radical departure from what we've done before," says Holland of the band's gut-check second release for Columbia Records. "I feel like we have managed to change stuff up from [1993's] Ignition to Smash to Ixnay. We're in a place where we more or less set the boundaries where we can do a lot of stuff without having to stretch it out farther ... and do a swing song or something."

He may have been kidding about the swing thing, but he's dead serious about taking on Morris Albert's weepy, overly-sentimental "Feelings." "It just seemed natural to do a punk version of it," Holland says. "It's got that 'whoa, whoa' chorus, and a lot of that old Orange County punk stuff is like that ... kinda. I had to change some of the words into negative feelings, really hateful feelings to make it work," he chuckles. "But we're doing it, and I think it'lll make it on the album. Actually, it better ... I don't have any extra songs."

While he's a fairly prolific writer (this new album will make four in the last six years), lyrics, and hence song titles, come last, so at the moment "Pay the Man" and the anything-but-autobiographical "Pretty Fly For a White Guy" are the only two in ink.

One old Offspring tune, "Beheaded," originally released on their 1989 self-titled debut, will get recycled in the forthcoming film Idle Hands, and will be performed by the quartet on-screen. In the horror/comedy flick, Holland, played by Holland, meets his demise when a hand falls from the ceiling and rips his scalp off. Prior to his on-screen beheading, the group forecasts his untimely death when they perform "Beheaded," as well as the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated." And even if the film flops and their foray ain't a smash, Holland won't lose his head. "I think it's better if it flops ... like it would be wrong if we were in Titanic. Maybe this won't be a classic, but at least it's not going to be beautiful."

By Katherine Turman, from Rolling Stone - August 26, 1998