Up Close With The Offspring

Earlier this year, Brian "Dexter'' Holland, lead singer and songwriter of The Offspring, sat down with bassist Greg Kriesel to talk about being punk rockers in the wake of worldwide sales of 10 million copies of "Smash.'' Their follow-up, "Ixnay on the Hombre,'' brings them to Denver.

Sidewalk: You came back to your homes in Southern California and were able to go back to somewhat a normal life — something like the existence you had before "Smash." Was that the plan all along?

Holland: Yeah, pretty much. This is the neighborhood we grew up in. You can do everything you need to do here because L.A. is just down the street, pretty much. Part of the reason we can just kinda go back to a normal life is because we purposely tried to not overexpose ourselves last time. We didn't do "Saturday Night Live" or "David Letterman," "The Tonight Show" or all the MTV stuff, "Spring Break" or "120 Minutes" or the cover of Rolling Stone and all that stuff. So it's not like we can't go to the supermarket or the post office. We go home and no one knows who we are. So it's really pretty easy for us to transition from one to another.

Sidewalk: What was the biggest adjustment in all of it?

Holland: What surprised me the most was how not a big deal it was. I think everyone expects all of sudden you're gonna be swarmed, and it's just gonna be drugs and whatever and everything else. And it's not like that. It's really not. We don't get recognized. We're not hounded. I'm not getting stalked by anybody, you know? I still hang out with my friends, and they still call us (expletives) whenever they see us.

Greg Kriesel: We were talking about that last week. We went out and couldn't get anybody to go out with us.

Holland: It was just me and Greg. We're calling up our old buddies, "Come on, let's go out and grab some beers." And they say "Aw, I'm tired tonight."

Kriesel: We got turned down by the mailroom guy.

Holland: We couldn't get guys to go out with us. (He shrugs.) Maybe (fame) is what you make it. Maybe if we decided to hire security guards and make big entrances at the Viper Room or something. ...

Kriesel: We don't go to all the Hollywood shows. And nobody comes to our shows.

Holland: Nobody famous.

Kriesel: I go to other people's shows, and there's always Danny DeVito (laughs) or Juliette Lewis or something like that. Not at our shows.

Holland: Which is fine.

Kriesel: We don't have that kind of draw, that kind of appeal I guess.

Holland: The biggest celebrity that ever came to our show is Cyndi Lauper.

Kriesel: But she was just there meeting Brett's wife, though. She wasn't really. ...

Holland: Yeah, I know (He laughs).

Sidewalk: So she was out for the night, not to see you guys?

Holland: Yeah, Greg spoiled it. I was hoping to ... aw, but she was really nice; she was great.

Kriesel: Madonna came to a show, but she was there to see Rancid. That was in New York.

Holland: At Roseland. We were out there, and we heard, "Madonna is out there." We thought "Wow!" We'd brought Rancid on tour with us. But we thought, "Wow, Madonna is here to see us play." We were pretty happy. We didn't realize she was there to check out Rancid because she wanted to sign them to Maverick. So it was aw, geez. She didn't even stay to see us. She watched Rancid and took off. What did she say? "Oh Larrrrsssss, I'm leaving," across the dressing room.

Sidewalk: But you got to see her, at least?

Holland: Yeah.

Sidewalk: But she had no idea who you were?

Holland: I doubt it.

Kriesel: I think maybe she'd heard the name before. ...

Sidewalk: What was the plan for going in the studio, especially since the circumstances are so radically different than the last time you made an album?

Holland: We haven't planned out anything for about 10 years. It did give us a chance to have a little more time this time around. We took advantage of that and tried to write a bunch of songs. But there isn't really a grand design or anything. We come up with a bunch of songs, record them all and see what fits together to make an album. We just do a bunch of punk-rock songs and some other songs that are maybe a little different. And that's about it.

Sidewalk: Did working with Dave Jerden make a difference in your style? "Ixnay" sounds very much like "Smash."

Holland: Dave's a great producer. He was one of the first people we thought of when we decided we weren't gonna do it with Tom. He was the first. We just called him up and he said sure. He was the only guy we talked to. I just think he's a great producer because of some of the other records he's done — Social Distortion, Jane's Addiction, Alice in Chains stuff. I thought he could probably get across the same things for us. He is a real easygoing, laid-back kinda guy. He'd sit at the mixing board and play Doom. He would just sit there and play Doom during our takes. We'd be in the other room , playing our little hearts out, and he wouldn't even be looking. We'd go "Uh... Dave?" He'd look up from his Doom and say "Sounds great." And then he'd keep on playing. Sometimes you wouldn't even think he's paying attention. Then all of a sudden once in a while he's like "Nope! ... Do it again." So he's listening for sure.

What Jerden is so good at is that he can make a record sound good, but he doesn't make it sound like a Dave Jerden record. It sounds like an Offspring record. If you listen to other records, it really holds up. Social Distortion is very straightforward kind of stuff, where Jane's Addiction is much more layered. Alice in Chains is really like lush and layered vocally. He just brought out what was there for us.

Sidewalk: With the chance to go away and make a record, why did you stay here and commute to the studio in L.A.?

Kriesel: We didn't really have long days. It was like 12 to 8. He said that was about as much as you should go. Any more you start getting burned out, losing intensity. On the last album I was working, I was getting up and working from 7 to 11, then going in the studio from 1 to midnight, then sleeping five hours and doing it again. Last time we had jobs and everything.

Holland: You have to get in there and bang it out. You book a studio for 12 hours, and you're in there for 12 hours. But we'd done so much touring we didn't wanna go out of town to record. We've been gone for the past year and a half or whatever, so we wanted to record in L.A. for sure. We just wanted to stay at home. We commuted on "Smash" as well, so we decided to just do it the same way we did it last time.

Sidewalk: That doesn't distract you?

Kriesel: I don't think it's anything different than commuting to school or something like that or going to work. You go home, have dinner, get up the next morning.

Holland: A day at the office.

Sidewalk: Yet the new record sounds like you did go in and bang it out. It doesn't sound like you carefully redid vocal No. 90. Was it as quick as last time?

Holland: We did spend longer on it. That's part of what Dave is good at. Making something sound good but still leaving it kinda rough around the edges. It's also a matter of knowing when you're done. You don't have to do a vocal 900 times to get it perfect. It can be OK to be a little bit not right.

Sidewalk: And the fan club-only disc?

Holland: Yeah. That's something. ... I feel so bad that it's taken us so long to get it together with that. The whole thing about that is you feel done having a quote fan club unquote. It sounds so cheesy. Yet you get these letters, and it seems to be what a lot of people ... they're interested in that. Where we came from it seems so tacky to sign an autograph. It's like "Oh, God, I would never do that." But there's a certain point where you're surrounded by people who actually want it. So what do you do when you're in that kind of situation? If I sign the autograph I'm a rock star, and if I don't sign it I'm an asshole. You have to choose between the two. What do you do? I figure if these people are interested, we should try and provide it for them or whatever. So that's kinda what we're doing with this.

Sidewalk: Did you ever plan for this to turn into a career?

Kriesel: We never planned for it to be a full-time job. It was just something we did, just part of our lives. So then this happened and I guess this is gonna be it.

Holland: When we started we said no way. When we were on Epitaph for a couple of years and going on tour with bands like NOFX who were actually making a living at it, we kinda started to think wow, maybe at some level we could actually pay the rent or something. That seemed like kind of a cool idea. But as far as what happened to us after the last record came out, we had no idea at all. No one at Epitaph had ever been on the radio or MTV or anything like that. Bad Religion was quite a bit more successful than we were, so that was the furthest thing from our minds. We were just hoping to maybe do as swell as NOFX or Pennywise that year. We were still quite a bit below where they were. I don't know if you can ever plan for this kind of stuff, but we had to just go with it, do whatever. Noodles had a promising career as a custodian. He had to give it up. Ron was shoveling muffins at a muffin shop. He had to give all that up. Those are the kind of sacrifices you have to make.

Sidewalk: And you quit college, right?

Holland: School's a good way to not have to go into the real world. I didn't know what I wanted to do for sure, but I just wanted to stay there because I could stay in the band at the same time.

Sidewalk: So what happens when you do go past the Pennywises and NOFXs of the world? Did you catch flak from other musicians?

Holland: Oh, yeah, definitely from other bands and stuff. Not to mention any names, but mostly bands that we didn't know. I don't know what their beef was. If they were jealous, they felt like they deserved it or whatever. Some older punk bands, too, were maybe bitter by it. But whatever, you can't really worry about that kind of stuff. People make you feel like a contradiction. You're supposed to be a punk band and yet now you're this mainstream thing. (Other bands would say) "What's up with that? It's totally fake; this is lame." It's easy to get caught up in that ... until you realize that the whole thing about the music you're trying to make is to try to reach the average kid and not to have any kind of pretenses about who is cool enough or not cool enough to listen to the music. All that elitist crap is what caused a lot of punk rock to start in the first place.

Kriesel: I don't know any band besides maybe Fugazi that doesn't want to go as far as it can go. Or reach as big an audience as they can reach.

Holland: Every band wants to further itself, you know?

Kriesel: They're at this level, playing at the club level, and it's easy for them to knock the bigger bands because they're not there. But I'm sure most of them want to be there.

Sidewalk: So how does it affect your writing when you know that this next album will be heard by millions — by people on the other side of the world?

Holland: Now we're important, right? (He laughs.) It's a strange feeling for sure. The strangest thing is to see a band cover one of your songs. That's when it kinda really hits. We'll just walk into some bar, and they're playing it. And it's just the strangest thing. Usually they don't play it right. But that they're attempting it even is pretty strange. It just makes you feel like, wow, it's really weird that these people would take the time to try and learn this song. Part of what's so weird about it is the bar bands aren't from the same background that we are at all. So you get these guys with beards and ZZ Top hair trying to play come out and play: "Hey, baby, come out and play!"

Kriesel: They kinda rock them up a little bit.

Sidewalk: So how did you keep from freezing up in the studio?

Holland: It's totally natural (to freeze up). You'd be lying to say it doesn't affect you though that's what bands usually say: "Aw, it doesn't affect us." But it kinda does. But the thing is, if you really let it get to you, if you freeze up, then you're dead. You're sitting dead in the water. You gotta do what it is you do so you gotta figure out some way to just get past it. Maybe you can't do it 24 hours every day. Maybe you can only get yourself together for an hour or two hours every day and actually do it. But you just gotta figure some way to get through it. Eventually you get in the studio, and you're in this little place that's your own little world. You don't go outside and see sunlight or anything. You kinda lock yourself away and eventually get in the mindset.

Kriesel: Once we got in the studio, that stuff was all put behind us. You were just worried about getting through the song and playing it right, not what's gonna happen to it.

Holland: Though I'd be trying to write a line and all of a sudden go "Does this pass the 6 million test or whatever?" "My ... dog ... is ... brown" or something. Uh-oh, better rethink that one.

Sidewalk: So how much self-doubt crept in from the criticism and the backlash? Were you afraid you couldn't do it again?

Holland: Well, we're certainly not the best technical band in the world. I don't know. I'd totally admit that there's luck that goes into all this. I don't think we're the most deserving band in the world. I don't know what happened. We kinda hit the lottery, I guess. We got lucky. I don't know what it is; we're just kinda going with it. What else can you say about that?

Kriesel: Some of the big festivals we go to, we think maybe we don't deserve to be the headlining band. Usually we try to stay away from that. We're like "Wow, we can't headline over ... whoever."

Holland: We had to play a show with the Ramones in Norway a year and a half ago. The festival insisted that we headline over them. We were really uncomfortable with that. I went and talked with Johnny and Joey before the show and said "Hey, you know, we would be happy to go on before you guys. In fact, we'd prefer it." He just kinda laughed. He said, "Hey, Joey, they want us to go on after them, heh, heh, heh." So they just didn't do it. Stuff like that is really kinda strange, that people perceive you in a way that's so different from where you came form. We still see ourselves as where we were 10 years ago in this neighborhood, where as the Ramones — wow, big band. So to be playing after them seemed very strange.

Sidewalk: What's been the best part of it?

Holland: Uhh ... I don't know man. Greg?

Kriesel: I hate those kinds of questions.

Sidewalk: Quitting the job? Doing something fun for a living?

Kriesel: Yeah, that's nice. I mean, we're doing something we like doing.

Holland: When we used to have regular jobs or whatever I seriously thought I'd commit suicide if I had to do a 9-5 thing for the rest of my life. I thought that was all that was out there. I didn't think it was reasonable to think that I could make a living off a band, especially the kind of music we were doing. At the time, bands that were popular were bands like Poison where you had to have makeup on to make a living at it. So that didn't seem to be a possibility either. But it's great now to not have to dread getting up in the morning, knowing that you have to slave for somebody else for the rest of the day, and your life isn't yours till six o'clock that night.''

Sidewalk: Yet you haven't gotten away from that; with leaving Epitaph and going to Columbia, you've probably had to spend more time on business in the past year than you have all your life.

Holland: You do have to pay attention to it more just because it's there. If you don't pay attention to it, somebody else is. You have to do that. The transition has been fine. Columbia has treated us really well. The main thing was really to have the creative freedom we wanted to have, to do the kind of music we wanted. It wasn't a matter of money or business in that sense at all. We really took less money to leave and go to Columbia. We really wanted to have the artistic control we hadn't had before.

When we recorded the record, we told Columbia we didn't want anyone to come into the studio and they totally obliged all that kind of stuff. They didn't hear a demo tape of the songs. They didn't hear what was gonna come through till we were done. We decided the songs that were on the record; we decided the sequence; we decided the title; we decided the artwork. We just handed it to them as a finished package and said here you go. And they were great about that.

Sidewalk: You didn't have that freedom at Epitaph? Or was it the fear of the label being sold from under you?

Holland: That was the reason we left, pretty much. Epitaph, the bands are real brotherly. Everyone gets along. There's a real sense of that. There was a sense of that with the label as well. After we started doing well, we were gone on the road, and we'd hear about how (Brett) was meeting with the labels and stuff — that all kinda disappeared. We just kinda felt betrayed. Brett wasn't straight with us for a long time, too. He finally admitted "Yeah, I have been meeting with these guys." Once we felt like we couldn't trust him anymore, we just felt we had to pretty much go.

(Sidewalk asked Epitaph Records president Brett Gurewitz to respond to Holland's allegations. Regarding Holland's statement that the group went to Columbia "to have the creative freedom we wanted to have," Gurewitz says: "I've never tampered with my artists' art, never, ever, ever. You can talk to the Red Aunts, my smallest artist, to my biggest artist, Rancid. They'll tell you that."

As for charges that Gurewitz "wasn't straight with us," the record company president says: "I never denied having meetings [with record company execs]. It wasn't about selling my company. Now that my business was going, I felt it was smart to meet with people who'd been there before. I told them up front I have no interest in selling any fraction to their companies because I didn't want to yank their chains."

Gurewitz says he told the group he wasn't trying to sell Epitaph. "They put me on the hot seat in front of them and I said to them point blank: 'I give you my word of honor that I will never sell my company, period.' "

He can't hide his disappointment that the group left. "What I really wanted was for the Offspring to be career recording artists at Epitaph, more than anything else in the world. They meant so much to us. They were so much a part of what we are. They are the Epitaph sound. You can never know how much they meant to me and my people. It would have been so beautiful to have them stay at home. It would have made what we were doing at Epitaph so much greater. We're trying to create a utopian place for recording artists, you know?")

Sidewalk: So is it hard to trust? Columbia didn't want you guys till you were popular. (The media) barely wrote about you guys till you were popular. It's the same music, the same guys as before.

Holland: Yeah, where were you guys when we needed you? (He laughs.) You guys didn't care then! I don't know if you really ever do (trust outsiders). If you think about it, why are you interested now? Why is Rolling Stone or whoever else interested? What makes the world go round for them? I guess it's advertising, right? You have to put something interesting in so people will wanna read it, buy it, make money.

Kriesel: We're just a commodity.

Holland: Essentially we really are, you know? The same thing with Columbia. Columbia doesn't have some special affection for our music. They don't have some special place in their hearts for Orange County punk rock music. They signed us because they think we can sell records. As long as you go into it with your eyes open, you're OK. It's not easy to trust, especially a major label. I've always feared major labels. Maybe not feared, but not liked them. At this point it was like they say — choosing a devil that you know rather than staying at Epitaph, which was a situation where we didn't know what was gonna happen. We just weren't in control of our destiny anymore.

In the music business, everyone's out to totally capitalize immediately, suck everything out of a band as quickly as possible, then leave it over. That was something that we and Jim tried not to do. When our record first started getting on the radio, all these other stations started playing it and all wanted us to come and play on their radio shows. This is part of this vicious cycle that happens where they just chew up a band and spit it out. If we hadn't said no right off the bat, we would have been out there playing every radio show, we would have been doing ever MTV special till there was nothing left.

We got asked by Bud Lite — they wanted "Come Out and Play" to be their new ad campaign. Free Bud Lite. That would have been pretty good. But that's the sort of thing ... where management or the label would say "Yeah, sure, here you go, gimme the check." Those are the kinds of things we stay away from because I'd rather be around for awhile rather than blow it on something cheesy like that.

Sidewalk: You've made an effort to avoid cheesy lyrics; even fairly obvious pieces such as "Self Esteem" or "Meaning of Life" are a little smarter than your average dumb song. Did you make that effort this time and make an effort to broaden your sound?

Holland: The lyrics are put on at the last minute, literally, in the studio. It's more out of desperation — what can I write about today?

We always come from kind of a punk background. That's where we came from and I certainly wouldn't deny it now. People say you're not a punk band anymore. Well, whatever. I think we draw very heavy musically from that kind of stuff. But what we want to do to make us a little more unique is to throw in some different elements as well, so it's not just one two-beat song, bam, bam, bam the whole way through. You find different kinds of stuff on this record like "Amazed" or "I Choose" or "Me and My Old Lady." Musically we're just trying to experiment — not go off the deep end or anything. It's not a Yoko Ono record. Nothing against Yoko Ono, but you know what I mean.

Lyrically a lot of bands say "We're a positive band" or "We're a straight-edge band" or whatever people want to do. They pigeonhole themselves into certain lyrics. I definitely try not to do that. If I'm feeling good one day, maybe I will write something positive. It's so scary writing something positive because you come off like a Christian or something if you write something positive. Or if you write something negative, it's like "Oh, another one of those miserable bands." So we put together whatever is there that day. You'll find a little of both in the record. It's not always positive, it's not always negative, but it's real."

Sidewalk: Is that Jason from "Come Out and Play" singing on "Mota?"

Holland: Yeah, Jason Blackball. He used to come to our shows and bug us to play "Blackball," a song off our first record. By this time that record was three years old and we didn't wanna play that song anymore. And he always used to bug the shit out of us to play that song. And even after we were done, he'd be harassing us: "Why didn't you play 'Blackball?' " after the shows, hanging around all the time. After a while I thought he was kind of funny. ... So we just had him come in and do "Keep 'Em Separated" on the last record. So this time we had him come in and do "Mota." We told him we'd get him his credibility back because this one won't be a single.

Sidewalk: It's the first anti-pot song I've heard in a long time.

Holland: I tried to make that song not anti- or pro-pot. I was trying to think of how to do it. We were talking about it in the studio and decided to just write about all the dumb things you do when you're smoking pot. So I guess it comes off as anti-pot, but it's not really.

Sidewalk: But when you get to the lyric where you've smoked so much that even Jimmy Buffett sounds good. ...

Holland: (laughs) Yeah, I guess. ...

Sidewalk: "Me & My Old Lady" sounds like the couple in "Self Esteem" got married.

Holland: Everyone loves to write about their tortured relationships, ourselves included. We did that. Been there, done that. Let's try something new: How about writing about how you actually like your girlfriend.

Sidewalk: "Gone Away" and "I Choose" are different sounds for you.

Holland: Maybe. Like I said, we didn't wanna have all punk-rock songs. On the last record, "Come Out and Play" really stuck out as something different. That's what all our friends said at first — man, this is really something different. I don't really think of it that way, but I guess it is.

Sidewalk: "Way Down the Line" seems to have the same tone of inevitability that "Come Out and Play" had.

Holland: The cycles continue. That's from me watching too much daytime talk TV. You watch those shows? The guy's always a drunk, and he beats his wife. And she has kids, and this kid is gonna beat his kids. It's just horrible. It goes on and on. That's not a very positive song, but it just seems inevitable. You watch those shows, and it's so fatalistic.

Sidewalk: Must be the downside of success — having time to watch those shows.

Holland: Too much time on my hands.

Sidewalk: "Change the World" rails at phonies and sellouts; you can't help but wonder if it's a reaction to the whole situation with Brett and Epitaph.

Holland: What do you think?

Sidewalk: Sounds like it. But unless I have a lyric sheet in front of me and the guy who wrote the song explaining it to me, I always miss something.

Holland: (He laughs.) Should I leave that one open to interpretation? (Kriesel shrugs.) Yeah, OK, I'll say "No comment" on that one. Leave a little of that Offspring mystique.''

Sidewalk: The words are often mocking of punk attitudes, all the way back to "We Are One" from Ignition and on "Cool To Hate" from the new album.

Holland: I was a little more subtle back then. ("We Are One") was supposed to be how we're all going down together. "Cool To Hate" is just something you see so much. Not necessarily just us or a band, but just watching TV or whatever. That's the attitude out there. It's cool just to hate everything. "Oh, I don't like that." Like somehow that makes you up on them, to be cooler than they are, to be down on it. Everyone up to Rolling Stone now. Rolling Stone seems to like to bag on everybody. It was something I wanted to write a song about. And people come up on both sides of it. They say you know, I really feel like that sometimes. And you do wake up some mornings and really hate everything.

Sidewalk: How is it now that you've become cool to hate yourself? The new Spin review compares you to Bush.

(Silence.)

Kriesel: Oh, really? Wow.

Holland: A lot of the media go in very skeptical. They have an idea of what they're going to write anyway. So before when we got reviews, they gave more space to the music because they didn't know us. Now they know us. I don't know how they can compare anything we've done to Bush. I know on the last album a couple of songs might sound similar to Bush.

Kriesel: But our album was out before Bush was a band!

Holland: I know. That's the thing. I don't know how you can say that. Whatever. We don't' worry about that too much. Yeah, the Jello Biafra thing, that really sounds like Bush. I have to wonder how much they really listened to the record. What could possibly be compared to Bush on this?

Sidewalk: They know you, but they don't. People know much more about Bush's or Counting Crows' personal lives. The closest thing you had to an image is your dreadlocks, which are now gone. People don't know you.

Holland: They try and act like they know us. It is weird. The people who do seem to know us the best are like fans that write. They can write, and they've really taken the time and really seem to understand the music. I'll open the letter, and they'll talk about a few of the songs, and they totally understand what it's about. It's the kind of person I could have a conversation with. Where as the media tend to have it completely wrong much of the time. They have some kind of an agenda; there always has to be an angle on the story. It's not enough for it to be just good or bad or whatever. It has to be horrible or derivative or brilliant or head of the generation or whatever. I try to stop paying attention to what the media say.

Kriesel: We knew when the reviews started coming that there would be a lot of bad reviews. A lot of that.

Sidewalk: Because it's time?

Kriesel: Yeah. There's just no reason for it. It's just gonna be.

Holland: Because it's cool to hate.

Kriesel: Yeah. We're just in there now.

Sidewalk: You're releasing "Ixnay" into a completely different musical landscape than Smash — a landscape you helped shape, to a degree.

Holland: It's a different story. There'll be a lot of expectations. People tend to put it more to the bottom line now — whether it's a success or a failure depends on how many copies it has sold. We try not to focus on that. When "Ignition" came out, it shipped 10,000. We were stoked. ... Ten thousand! So you gotta keep perspective on what's important in being in a band. It wasn't always just how many records you sold. It was the fact you could go on tour, meet some people, have a live show, connect with an audience. We did it because it was fun. It was fun to play for 10 people. There's something about it — a live show and a connection. All that stuff is stuff we can still do.

Sidewalk: You can try to keep focused on that, but all the record company and the media will look at is if it debuts at No. 1 on the chart.

Holland: Yep. You said it. You're right. But if we worried about that, it wouldn't be fun anymore.

Sidewalk: Do you feel you've opened any doors?

Holland: I can't think of anyone we've helped. Us being able to start Nitro and put out other bands — Guttermouth and the Vandals — that's real rewarding.

Sidewalk: Is there just way too much analysis and thought about all this?

Holland: Good, God, yes.

Kriesel: Geez. It seems like when we hit, people kept asking why is there this big punk revolution? I said it's just two bands that have records; there's not a revolution. Now that it's sorta died out, and we'll put out an album that won't do as well, people will ask why is punk over?

Holland: It was never really over — or started — to begin with.

Kriesel: It was always just sorta there and stayed there.

Holland: I think it'll exist the same way rap exists; at some level it'll be there. There's more punk bands now than ever before.

By Mark Brown, Denver Sidewalk Rock Critic