Who Invited You?

Some people are born famous, others achieve celebrity via hard graft - and some fall into the lap of luxury by complete accident. Meet chart-crashing punks The Offspring and smell the strange odour of sudden success...

Read any piece of promotional material for the South German city of Stuttgart and three words immediately jump out: 'Stuttgart breathes success'. The home of global corpogiants Daimler-Benz, Porsche and Bosch (not to mention twin town of Cardiff), it sees itself as the vanguard of the German economic miracle.

But on a freezing Sunday night there's little evidence of such prosperity. The well-hidden restaurants and bars appear resolutely closed and, eyeing the amount of grey clogging up the skyline, you'd think the place invented concrete as well as the luxury saloon car.

Into this coldbed of non-activity come The Offspring, half a world away from their native California and its more alluring combination of sunshine, long beaches and half-decent Mexican showhouses. The last time they did the 130-mile Munich-Stuttgart tourbus trek, they were still trying to keep up with worldwide demand after their '94 album 'Smash' (11 million sold) made West Coast punk a globally viable business proposition.

Three years later and one relative damp squib later ('97's 'Ixnay On The Hombre' only three million sold), they're back on the snowboard of popularity after 'Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)' took over Europe's charts and radios in one deft, dumb-ass movement. The goofy "Give it to me, baby" refrain, the meaty chunks of overdriven hardcore, and the wannabe-homeboy sarcasm drilled directly into the public's psyche, in a week where the alternative was Steps or 911. And like every instantly gratifying, straight-to-number-one record, it seemed to come from nowhere.

Just as Stuttgart looks nothing like the thriving, moneyed community it is, The Offspring look nothing like the multi-million dollar unregistered business they are. Striding into the city's answer to The Savoy, the Maritim, they have the outward appearance of four men who got lost trying to find the local skate park to pick up their kids.

Alongside instantly recognizable singer-guitarist Dexter Holland (bottle blond, louder than life, currently fighting flu), there's effusive guitarist Noodles, bored drummer Ron Welty and unassuming bassist Greg K. Lengthy wallet-chains dangle from their expensively inexpensive-looking baggy skate pants. Their nondescript bowling shirts and T-shirts indicate downright hostility to the notion that major chart players should be conspicuous at all times.

The past few weeks have seen them embrace a few of the accepted methods of self-promotion. Four years ago, on punk principle, they flatly refused to adorn the front covers of national US magainzes or take up David Letterman or Jay Leno's offers of prime-time TV. Now, however, when shows like Top Of The Pops or TFI Friday call up, they answer. Dexter no longer has a problem with seeing his face snarling out from newsstands in every city of every country in the free world. Hell, they've even had a part in a Hollywood movie...

It's easy to assume that year zero for The Offspring was 1994 - the year that 'Smash' was released and US punk rock broke. But their history goes back to a time when all that Dexter (then called Bryan) and Greg K (short for Kriesel) were passionate about were the school cross-country running team and "good study habits."

Entering Orange County's nefarious hardcore scene via local melodic purists TSOL and Agent Orange and punk fanzines like Maximum Rock'N'Roll and Flipside, the pair formed their band Manic Subsidal after failing to get into a Social Distortion show. True to punk tradition, neither could play an instrument.

"We learned together," remembers Greg. "He'd play on one string and I tried to do the same. It took awhile."

A few months later the school janitor, Kevin Wasserman (soon to become Noodles) was recruited. Won over by Dexter's plaid trousers, jet black hair and song titles like 'Very Sarcastic' and 'Sorority Bitch', he was useful when it came to buying beer - he was over 21. And with the subsequent entrance of a 16-year-old Ron, The Offspring were complete and ready to embark upon a seven-year cycle of playing sparsely populated bars and being pretty much ignored outside California.

At the time, around the end of the '80s, the idea of a punk band getting radio play and attaining a notable degree of success was an alien concept. It wasn't such a huge effort to remain credible by not selling records, chiefly because there weren't many card-carrying punkers to buy them. That's not to say there weren't other options.

"When we started out, LA was all about Guns 'N Roses and Motley Crue," winces Dexter, a candidate for a PhD in molecular biology. "People in punk bands were moving to Hollywood and wearing cowboy boots, getting into the whole rock thing. We all looked at each other and said 'I can't do that, I wanna play the music that I love even if it's not popular'. We started a band because we liked punk, not because it sold a lot of records."

Neatly sidestepping big-hair hell, in 1989 The Offspring released their self-titled debut, a fairly joyless collection of tantrums that revolved around the usual punker themes of police, death, religion and war. But it wasn't until Epitaph, the fiercely independent home of Rancid and NOFX and one of punk's few successful labels, stepped in to release second album 'Ignition' that the wind of fortune began to change.

"'Ignition' sold around 40,000 - really good by independent standards," Noodles drawls, while sipping his decaf latte. He shakes his head. "But we had no idea - no idea - what was coming."

Speak to The Offspring about the year 1994 and you'll hear two phrases crop up again and again: 'All of a sudden...' and 'We weren't comfortable with that'. As a band who'd been schlepping around doing tours in a knackered pick-up for the best part of a decade, the idea of instantly having your record bought by an extra ten million people was, understandably, alien.

By this time grunge was just about over and the world's passive-aggressive youth were looking for something to replace it. Noodles doffs his cap to Cobain, as well as concurrent tough metallists like Rage Against The Machine and The Rollins Band. Commercially speaking, the first positive indications for The Offspring came when the early '94 single 'Come Out And Play' got local radio rotation before its release. The Offspring were away in Alaska opening up for Pennywise at a snowboarding show and came back to discover the single had spread to stations further afield.

"All of a sudden, we knew we had a song that was doing really well on the radio," Noodles continues flatly, "but we still had no idea of the magnitude of people it was going to reach."

With both 'Come Out And Play' and follow-up single 'Self Esteem' getting MTV all lathered up, 'Smash' went Top Ten in the Billboard charts. With Green Day selling similarly ludicrous amounts, the punk explosion was in full effect. Madonna was sending nude pictures of herself to Rancid. Every West Coast fleapit venue was being staked out by Gucci-suited execs pleading with facially tattooed punkers to relieve them of their bankroll. And every Tom, Dick and Jock were claiming they'd always been into hardcore.

Noodles: "This friend of ours, Ron, was working in an independent record store in Orange County and these normal, kinda geeky-looking kids come in and buy Green Day and The Offspring. A couple months later, they come in again with their caps on backwards and they're looking a little tougher and they all get Pennywise, NOFX and The Mr T Experience [the first two being Epitaph label stalwarts]. Then a few months later they come in, and they're getting Crass, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, real hardcore stuff. And Ron would say to them, 'Hey I remember when you first came in hre and got Offspring and Green Day records,' and they were like, 'Oh, those bands suck, man'."

Noodles may laugh now, but while American teens were just learning to slamdance, certain fundamental pockets of the punk fraternity were taking umbrage, equating success with the multi-purpose phrase 'selling out'. Gigs were regularly picketed by purists screaming 'Fuck you', spray-painting their van with the hateful slogan 'Pop stars'. Noodles was woken up in the middle of the night by people shouting abuse outside his window because his band were on the radio.

There were other concerns, too, such as how to keep some semblance of sanity while all around people were foisting celebrity and its undesired commitments upon the band.

"We were made poster boys for this whole media phenomenon," reflects Dexter, his usual jovial manner briefly lost. "I felt it was a flavour-of-the-month kinda deal and I hated that because we'd been around a long time. We wanted to try and show people that were were more long-term."

So: No TV appearances, no in-store signings, no meet-and-greets and definitely no barbecues round John Cougar Mellencamp's house. But the really troubling question was just what the hell had gone right. And how to make it happen again.

"I spent a lot of time thinking about that one," admits Dexter. "But I was talking to Dave Jerden [friend and producer of latest album 'Americana'] and he told me this: 'Everybody asks themselves that and they never figure it out. Because there is no answer. If people in the government could take whatever's in your head and they could quantify it, make it tangible and use it to reach that many people, they would kill you in a second. But they can't, so don't worry about it. Just go with it.' And that's the best piece of advice I could have got."

You'd imagine by this point The Offspring had been on the receiving end of enough righteous hostility to last them well into their old age. Not so. Two years after they earned more than enough money to retire for life, their relationship with Epitaph and, more specifically, label boss Brett Gurewitz irreparably broke down. As soon as word got out, The Offspring's phone began to burn up with multi-million offers. Eventually they signed to Columbia for an estimated $10 million.

Question the band in 1999 about this pivotal moment in their career and you may as well have asked about the sexual habits of their mothers. Immediately, the atmosphere changes from mild joviality to distinct frostiness.

"What it came down to," Greg drones as if on autopilot, "was that we really couldn't work out a deal with Epitaph. There just wasn't any independent label that we could trust. Columbia came in, we liked what they said and that was it."

You can understand the band's reluctance to give fresh and insightful comments. Since the moment they flashed the pen across that contract, The Offspring have been singled out as the US Underground's Most Hated, simply because they didn't revel in the blinkered no-money-is-good ethic favoured by the fundamentalists.

"That whole thing about being big and successful, how do you measure that?" explodes Noodles, suddenly spurred into action. "It's all totally relative. Besides, everybody who makes music wants to get it distributed to as many people as they possibly can. You want people to hear your records, you want broad distribution."

"You greedy bastard," laughs Dexter, keeping one eye on the cred-o-meter. "Eleven million isn't enough for you?"

Five years on, The Offspring have come out the other side relatively unscathed. They rode out the storm of extreme hype by remaining steadfastly in control, never letting celebrity status becoming larger than the band's music.

Now the pressures of instant fame and fortune have been replace with pressures of time. Over the past two weeks they've recorded three TV shows, done innumerable radio interviews and had at least two press interrogations a day. Noodles writes a daily diary for their own netsite in-between chatting to his daughter back home in Orange County (at home he spends more time listening to Radio Disney than the Descendants).

In his spare hours, Greg likes nothing more than getting his golf handicap down from a credible 16. "I tried it once," deadpans Noodles, "but I couldn't get it past the windmill."

Meanwhile, Dexter is keeping it the most real, heading his own independent label, Nitro, which numbers bands like The Vandals, Guttermouth and the fearsome AFI among its roster. "I don't depend on my label to pay the rent or anything," he hugely understates, "so I can give the bands priority over profit margins. It really is rewarding, putting some of the money we've earned into other deserving bands."

Less right-on, perhaps, is The Offspring's movie debut in the forthcoming teen slasher Idle Hands, in which Dexter has his scalp ripped clean off by a demonic hand.

"In the movie this guy's hand is possessed and so he chops it off and it goes around killing people," Dexter enthuses, giving the appropriate hand movements. "Eventually it sneaks into this high school Halloween dance and we're on stage playing The Ramones' song 'I Wanna Be Sedated'. The guy runs on stage and shouts, 'You guys gotta get out, there's a killer in here'. No one believes him and I say, 'Get out of here, kid, you're messing up the show'. Right at that moment, the hand drops through the ceiling, rips my scalp off and I get killed - my ideal role!"

For now, it's back to the day job. A car is waiting to drive The Offspring to tonight's venue where they'll eat small racks of lamb and chocolate mousse ("Awesome," admits Ron) before descending an incongruous sweeping stairway directly onto the small club stage.

The gig itself turns out to be a tightly-wound exhibition of the sheer joy of punk. There's no preaching, no posturing - just pretension-free ramalama that catalyses ridiculously good-natured slamming within the German pit. Dexter doesn't get spat at, and Noodles doesn't have his glasses smashed or his wallet nicked. Perhaps this fame thing isn't so bad, after all.

Keepin' It Real - Dexter Holland's tried-and-tested five-step method of staying sane in a town called Celebrity

McDonalds
"I hate to say the M-word, but it's true, we eat there, like, all the time. I never eat McDonalds at home but sometimes when you're in, say, Germany and there's a language barrier it's hard to know what you're getting. At least with McDonalds there's no mistaking what you're ordering. Eating from a fast food joint keeps you grounded. Plus, what celebrity would ever eat there?"

Get Completely "Schnockered" Every Once In A While
"Drinking and smoking are always good. None of us really drink or smoke, so we make sure that once a week we all go out with the express intention of drinking and smoking like champions. Tomorrow's Ron's birthday so we'll be calling Zurich to make sure they have enough beer and cigarettes to satisfy us all."

When At Home, Lay Low
"Laying low actually helps a lot. A lot of people, they start doing good and they wanna move to Hollywood. That's not a healthy thing emotionally. I live about five miles from where I grew up, near to a beach and a supermarket - all I need. But it's good to go home and act like a normal person for a while."

Have A Bubble Machine On The Stage
"Now that's just stupid, but we do it. There's something about playing a punk song surrounded by bubbles that is just surreal. There's no way anyone could think they're really something when they've got this huge machine behind them pumping out these bubbles that little kids don't even think are interesting. Pure circus."

Smash Hotel Rooms, Man
"Yeah, throw a TV through a window. That sure relieves a lot of stress. Nah, I'm joking ... that's more a Noodles thing."

[It's also on another page of the magazine]

Have You Ever ... the monthly confessional

... trashed your equipment?

Dexter Holland (The Offspring): "I tried to set it on fire once. We did this show in Texas and it was the end of the tour and I wanted to do the Jimi Hendrix thing just for the hell of it. So I poured lighter fluid over my guitar but it was so hot and hazy that it wouldn't light. I was there for ten minutes trying to light my damned guitar and it wouldn't set alight because the atmosphere was so wet. Pretty embarrassing."

From "Select" magazine - April 1999