Smashing Success

The Offspring guitarist Noodles isn't worried about the band's follow-up album to their multi-platinum selling breakthrough Smash

The Offspring's wonderfully named guitarist Noodles, superfriendly and self-admittedly hyper -- "I get bored when I get mellow," he says -- defies the notion that when groups get big they don't read their own press.

"There was an article on us, but maybe just in the Orange County edition of the L.A. Times," says Noodles, 33, from his California home.

"It was about us and U2 -- talking about next into the minefields, being that a lot of records are just coming out from established acts that are bombing heavily, so they're talking about they'll see what happens to us and U2."

The Offspring's cheekily titled collection, Ixnay On The Hombre, comes out Feb. 4, the same day as Australian band Silverchair's Freak Show, one week before David Bowie's Earthling and one month before U2's highly anticipated Pop.

But if the competitive spring release schedule, coupled with low- selling albums by the likes of R.E.M., Pearl Jam and Nirvana last fall has Noodles worried, he's not saying.

"I don't really care about that. I really don't. I think we did a great job on this record. I think it would truly suck if we're just buried, but if we do alright, then cool. If we're able to go on and play shows and tour and all that stuff, then fantastic. I don't really care. I'm not going to worry about that too much."

Part of the perceived pressure on The Offspring, expected to do a show in Toronto around June, is that the neopunk foursome can't possibly match the sales of their mainstream breakthrough, 1994's aptly named Smash, the band's third release for respected independent label Epitaph, which they have since left to join Columbia.

Smash featured the No. 1 hit and singalong favorite Come Out And Play (You Gotta Keep 'em Separated) and sold a staggering eight- and-a-half million copies.

"That whole number is just weird to me," says Noodles, who got his name because he "was just annoyingly noodling on guitar.

"Once you get past like one million, what does it mean? What does it matter? You're never going to get all these people together in one place. You know what I mean? If we could do that then it might mean something."

Which isn't to say there wasn't some internal pressure from the band to make Ixnay -- which includes some musical detours like the HappyMondays - like dance song, I Choose - a worthy followup to the multi-million selling Smash.

"I think Dexter (Holland), who writes all the songs, I think he felt it, but I think he's pretty much the only one," says Noodles. "He was just kind of suffering through that alone but only for a short while, and I think that was during the (Epitaph) negotiations and all that shit was going on. I think once the negotiations were done and we got in the studio the first time to do our demo, we kind of demoed this stuff for ourselves, kind of took a look at where we were at, once we did all that, I think he was fine. He was just like, `Phew. Whatever.' We've got some good songs here."

But The Offspring's tumultuous departure from Epitaph, owned by Brett Gurewitz of the band Bad Religion and home to ska-punk outfit Rancid, definitely left its mark on the whole band. "That whole thing just sucked," says Noodles. "For a year we were trying to negotiate with Epitaph with Brett and we wanted to stay on Epitaph, it just felt like a home to us. I mean we knew all the people who worked there, certainly at the beginning there was only like five people you had to remember their names. These people were just close to us. We just dug the feeling of being on this small independent label. We wanted to stick with them. And it was just really difficult. Ultimately, Brett told us he was going to have to sell part of the company, he was having some troubles, to a major label and he tried to tell us it wasn't going to affect us or anything but we weren't comfortable with that. At the time he was going to sell part of that company too, we were like 90% of the company."

In addition to the first single, All I Want, the new album -- produced by Dave Jerden (Social Distortion, Jane's Addiction) - begins with the spoken-word track Disclaimer, voiced by the Dead Kennedys' singer Jello Biafra.

"We get a lot of letters from parents that are just irate and telling us that we are the genesis of all evil," explains Noodles of Disclaimer.

"It's because we use words like dumb s--- and motherf-----. We say the F-word and so we're bad. It's arrested adolescence, I think, I've come to the conclusion."

The Offspring File

Guitarist Noodles on the Sex Pistols and Kiss Reunion Tours: "I don't think anyone's going to remember going, `Oh, man I saw the Pistols in '95 or '96!' I think it's going to be more of an embarrassment. I thought KISS was pretty cool. And I was into KISS way before I was into the Pistols. I did my homework listening to KISS in junior high."

On Celebrating Christmas: "I have a seven-year-old daughter so I have to kind of be into it. I kind of like making fun of it. I didn't do the punk rock Santa that I wanted to do. Just a spiky-haired Santa Claus in red bondage pants."

On Playing Stadiums: "I like to keep it intimate certainly. The main problem with playing bigger places, it takes a lot of creativity to kind of get that energy to the people. You have to really be imaginative and try different things but you know, sometimes it comes out real cheesy. You get like cheesy little slide shows."

By Jane Stevenson, from Toronto Sun - January 26, 1997