{"id":90783,"date":"2020-11-12T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-12T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=90783"},"modified":"2022-07-11T13:28:06","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T20:28:06","slug":"john-doe-in-conversation-with-steve-olson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/john-doe-in-conversation-with-steve-olson\/","title":{"rendered":"John Doe in Conversation with Steve Olson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pioneers are unique, willing to take a chance, following what\u2019s within, allowing the rest to realize… The start can be a bit frightening, the outcome \u2013 victorious… They do it because they can… X marks the start, continuing into the future… Beating to his own rhythm, pulling from the past, making it his own… If you can, you will. John Doe is all of the above.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Doe, this is Steve Olson. How are you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hey, Steve, long time no talk. How are you doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m good. How are you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was down in your new city not long ago, in Austin. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What were you doing down here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was visiting a few people while I was working up in Houston. I was there seeing Tim Kerr from the Big Boys. He told me, \u201cJohn Doe moved to Austin.\u201d I didn\u2019t know that. How\u2019s it going down there?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s going good. Living here is easy. It\u2019s a high quality of life. It\u2019s easy and cheaper. I can buy a house and all of that. It\u2019s good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s great. So I want to go back to where you came from and go to where you are now. Your name is John Doe.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, my parents didn\u2019t name me John Doe but, for all intents and purposes, my name is John Doe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where were you born and raised?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, my dad was a librarian, and he had some ambition and he got better and better jobs, so I was born in Decatur, Illinois and then moved to Tennessee and then to Wisconsin where they grew up and then ended up in Baltimore when I was in third grade. I started playing music when I was 15 and I played in some cover bands. I went to school there and I was friends with John Waters and some of his crew, but Baltimore was no place you could really do anything. In \u201975 and \u201976, I\u2019d seen some bands up in New York like Talking Heads and the Heartbreakers, and everybody knew what Patti Smith was doing, but I could see that everything was kind of set in New York and I didn\u2019t really want to live there. I was sick of the East Coast and the weather and the negativity. I lived in the Baltimore\/Washington area until I was 23, which is when I moved out to L.A. When I got to L.A., I felt at home right away. I didn\u2019t know anybody and there wasn\u2019t really much of a scene, but I didn\u2019t care. I was living in Venice and then I met Exene and Billy and we finally got DJ and the rest is history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
JOHN DOE, DJ BONEBRAKE, EXENE CERVENKA & BILLY ZOOM OF X AT VANS BLACK RAINBOWS SHOW IN VENICE, CALIFORNIA. PHOTO \u00a9 DAN LEVY<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What instrument did you start playing when you first started playing music?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bass. I thought it would be easier and, to a degree, it\u2019s true. My usual line is that it\u2019s why bass players have personalities and guitar players are too busy in their bedroom figuring out that lick. Most of the early X songs, I wrote on bass. When Exene and I were working on Alphabetland<\/em>, the new record, I was purposely just writing on bass because Billy gets mad when I try to show him  something on guitar. He says that it influences him and the way he plays the song. He gets a little more freedom when I show him the song on bass and he can decide how to voice it. Whether it\u2019s major or minor, I always know, and I\u2019ll argue for which is right, but bass is good. I still have the first real bass I ever bought. I sold it once to somebody when I needed money and he kept it and sold it back to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nice. What was your first bass?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a Kent bass, which was Japanese and looked like a violin style bass. Then I bought a 1960 jazz bass for $150 from a guitar player I was in a band with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What got you into music?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, my dad played music and my mom sang. They listened to classical music and opera and they gave me folk records when I was a kid. They had Broadway musicals like South Pacific, Bye Bye Birdie and West Side Story and I liked those too. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Animals first came out when I was in fourth or fifth grade and everybody was going crazy and there was all of this music. In my later teens, I started looking at the credits for the Rolling Stones songs. I was like, \u201cMona\u201d is a cool song. Who wrote that? Elias McDaniel? Who is that? Then I discovered Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters and all those people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You went back to Chess Records and all the blues music that heavily influenced them, so how did you get into punk rock or more new rock n\u2019 roll back then?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can call it punk rock. I could ask you the same question. What was your musical discovery? It\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m sick of this other shit, so what do I do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are good musical influences with the blues. My influence came from the same things that you were taking influences from. I was into the NY Dolls too, but I\u2019m a little younger. I used to go and see X at Club 88 and the Other Masque. I was a little young to get into the Masque, but I saw a lot of X gigs. Those were amazing bills back then with a bunch of bands. I would see X and The Cramps and Fear and the Dead Kennedys and it just kept going. You guys were great and we always had the best time. We were your surfer skater supporters.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. I remember when you guys were first coming up. I remember playing Tony Alva\u2019s birthday party when he was 18 or something like that. It was out on the beach and all of his friends didn\u2019t like us and we didn\u2019t necessarily like them either because they were giving us a bunch of shit. A year later, they were coming to the gigs. [Laughs] I would say the way that we got influenced and encouraged to play punk rock is because it\u2019s what was happening. In all of the songs that I wrote in the bands that I was in when I lived in Baltimore, I didn\u2019t fit in. It wasn\u2019t that I was a complete misfit, it\u2019s just that I wanted a little something more. I wanted something a little different. That wasn\u2019t really encouraged in Baltimore. When I moved out to L.A., being weird was a good thing. By that point, the New York scene was starting to get some notice. At the end of 1976 and the beginning of 1977, you had bands like The Damned coming out here to L.A. I\u2019d already decided that I wasn\u2019t going to pursue something mainstream and I wanted something that was more aligned with the Velvet Underground. I didn\u2019t really know the New York Dolls that well, but I knew Patti Smith, David Bowie and T. Rex. I wanted to do something that was a  little gender-bending and not part of the mainstream and that\u2019s what was happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The energy behind the movement that you were helping to build was incredible.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. It was in the air or in the water or whatever. That\u2019s why I believe it went from New York to London to L.A. in such a short period of time. After the Ramones played in London, suddenly, there were all of these bands. It\u2019s not like nobody was ready for it. They were obviously ready for it because, as soon as they saw it, they were like, \u201cYeah! That\u2019s it! That\u2019s what I need!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning, there was not a lot of clubs available to play punk rock music in, so how was it for X to go play out?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a lot of trial and error. If it wasn\u2019t for Brendan Mullen, we would have had a harder time. If it wasn\u2019t for Steve Samiof and Claude Bessy, we would have had a much harder time. Brendan was fearless because he would find a hall and pay some sort of deposit and get some bands and promote it, mostly by word of mouth. He would try to keep Black Randy from trying to pull the toilet off the wall, usually unsuccessfully, and then whoever owned the hall, whether it was Baces Hall or Larchmont Hall, would say, \u201cOkay, great. No more punk rock.\u201d Then the Masque was available. By \u201978, the Starwood and the Whisky started realizing that they were having terrible nights with no one there and there was some basement on Hollywood Boulevard with 150 people in it. They realized, \u201cWe have to do something.\u201d They were late to the party, but, eventually, the Starwood and the Whisky had great shows. Pretty early on, I saw Blondie and Tom Petty at the Whisky and there weren\u2019t that many people there. Tom Petty opened for Blondie and then asked the audience to stay for the second show because they had planned on turning the house, but there weren\u2019t enough people. We would try to get gigs at places south of here and there was an awful place in Redondo Beach called Kahuna\u2019s Bearded Clam. It probably had punk rock shows twice. I met Keith Morris there the first time we went down there. That was a horrible gig. It was pouring rain and it was the Alley Cats and us and there were maybe 20 people that had road tripped down to Redondo Beach. Then there was a place called the Rock Corporation in the valley. A bunch of bikers ran the place and they didn\u2019t really get us or like us, but we had to go wherever we might be able to play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for Brendan Mullen, we would have had a harder time. If it wasn\u2019t for Steve Samiof and Claude Bessy, we would have had a much harder time. Brendan was fearless because he would find a hall and pay some sort of deposit and get some bands and promote it, mostly by word of mouth. He would try to keep Black Randy from trying to pull the toilet off the wall, usually unsuccessfully, and then whoever owned the hall, whether it was Baces Hall or Larchmont Hall, would say, \u201cOkay, great. No more punk rock.\u201d Then the Masque was available. By \u201978, the Starwood and the Whisky started realizing that they were having terrible nights with no one there and there was some basement on Hollywood Boulevard with 150 people in it.\u201d <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

X\u2019s first single came out on Dangerhouse Records, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. It was \u201cAdult Books\u201d and \u201cWe\u2019re Desperate\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How was it to hear your music on vinyl?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was okay. We felt a certain accomplishment but, it wasn\u2019t that great. We didn\u2019t have the perspective that we have now. You don\u2019t really understand that you\u2019re starting a body of work. It didn\u2019t sound great and we didn\u2019t have a great experience because, at the studio that we worked in, the engineer was kind of an asshole. He didn\u2019t get it and he wished that he was doing something that was real. He didn\u2019t think that what we were doing was real. He was like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t real music. This is some bullshit you people are trying to pull off.\u201d The thing is that, if you\u2019re doing anything different, everyone is going to scoff at it and give you a hard time, and that\u2019s really difficult. Hopefully, you have enough confidence or you have some support. That\u2019s where the scene really had community. The scene really supported each other and you felt like, \u201cI\u2019m not alone and I\u2019m not crazy. People like this and people get off on this. I\u2019m relating to people and, if I\u2019m relating to these people, we have shared values. If that\u2019s the case, I can continue, even though there is this recording engineer who is being completely contrary to everything.\u201d He was like, \u201cThat\u2019s not the way you do it. What kind of singing is this? What kind of song is this? It\u2019s too fast and there\u2019s too much of this and too much of that.\u201d This was someone who was in a position of authority, so we were faced with a lot of adversity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You had a guy who wished he was doing Wishbone Ash or Black Oak Arkansas. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. [Laughs] It was one of the cheapest studios ever. That\u2019s not a regret of mine, but it\u2019s one of the reasons that L.A. had an uphill battle establishing credibility for its punk rock scene. New York had Seymour Stein and people that were fairly well funded. In London, they had these great recording studios and they made all these great sounding records. A lot of the early L.A. records sound like shit because they were recorded in hotel rooms. I played on two or three Black Randy tracks and the Randoms and stuff like that and we literally recorded in a hotel room and put the control room where the engineer was, in the room next door. That was fun, but it still didn\u2019t sound very good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was the No New York<\/em> record in \u201978 and then the Yes L.A.<\/em> record in \u201979. With Yes L.A.<\/em>, it seemed like the recording quality had gotten a little better at that point. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, maybe. I don\u2019t think we used the Kitchen Sync, which is where we did the X single. I can\u2019t remember where we recorded our version of Los Angeles, but maybe it had gotten a little better. [Laughs] It couldn\u2019t have gotten much worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was there anything against New York with No New York  and Yes L.A.? It seemed like there was a rift between the two cities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I think it\u2019s a healthy rivalry. There was some rivalry between San Francisco and L.A. and I think that it made us better. We saw the Avengers and thought, \u201cThey\u2019re good. We have to be good too.\u201d It wasn\u2019t like Tupac and Biggie. Everyone that I hung out with really looked up to the first wave of New York bands because they were such pioneers. Everybody went to the Ramones show. Everybody went to the Blondie show. Everybody went and saw Television and Talking Heads and stuff like that. I think the Yes L.A. was more of a David Brown thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
JOHN DOE AND X CELEBRATE THE ERA AT THE VANS BLACK RAINBOWS INSTALLATION IN VENICE BEACH, CALIFORNIA. PHOTO \u00a9 DAN LEVY<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was definitely more upbeat.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s true of the music. New York was coming out of art galleries. L.A. was coming out of driving around on California freeways. For them to call it Yes L.A., it was more because David Brown and Black Randy sang \u201cFuck you guys\u201d to stir up shit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seemed like X\u2019s popularity happened pretty quickly, no?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Los Angeles, it did, but not so much in the rest of the country. By 1980, after two and half or three years of being a band, X could sell out two shows a night for two nights at the Whisky. That\u2019s 1,400 people. I don\u2019t know if that was quick or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From starting off playing wherever you could play to playing where the Doors played, that\u2019s pretty cool.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absolutely. I wrote about that in the first punk rock book we did where I talk about X playing at the Whisky. I was waiting on the rest of the band to join me and realized that I was standing where the Doors and Arthur Lee and Johnny Rivers played. Otis Redding played there and all kinds of people played there, so I felt that playing the Whisky. It\u2019s the same way that you feel nowadays if you get to play a nice theater or a big festival. You don\u2019t feel like you\u2019ve wasted your life and it feels good. I don\u2019t feel like it\u2019s romantic or noble to be going into another 400-500 capacity black box. I\u2019m okay with it because that\u2019s what I do, but if X only played 1,000-2,000 seat theaters and there was some standing room and people could dance if they wanted, that would be fine with me. On the other hand, I don\u2019t look down on it and I\u2019m not mad about it. It\u2019s part of the deal. It\u2019s what we do and I\u2019m grateful for that. That\u2019s one thing you learn as you get older. You\u2019re either grateful for what you get or you\u2019re an angry bastard. I\u2019m grateful. I see some angry bastards and think, \u201cHow\u2019s that working for you? Do you like being an angry bastard?\u201d I don\u2019t walk around with flowers coming out of my ass, but I\u2019m pretty happy in general. I\u2019m comfortable with having a degree of satisfaction. Otherwise, you\u2019re the guy standing on his lawn going, \u201cYou kids get off my lawn!\u201d It\u2019s bullshit. That is awful and it\u2019s probably no fun. Maybe deep down the guy yelling, \u201cGet off my lawn!\u201d is laughing to himself and having a great time, but it seems like he\u2019s on his way to a heart attack from being tense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about Robert Hilburn and Kristine McKenna, from the L.A. Times?<\/em> As a kid, I would look in the Sunday calendar and see those writers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kristine McKenna was our first champion and Robert Hilburn came around a few months later. Kristine really got it and wrote some great reviews that were not just praising us. They seemed to have insight that we were doing something worthwhile. It was a big deal, but if Slash Magazine and all the fanzines weren\u2019t happening, I don\u2019t know if the L.A. Times or the L.A. Weekly would have picked up on us. The bigger media works slower and that\u2019s the way it\u2019s supposed to be. The upstarts were what the community was all about. The community was about everybody doing something, whether you made flyers or you were a performance artist or whatever you did. They were all kind of equal in adding to the whole deal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about the musicianship of X? Billy Zoom was a pretty accomplished guitar player before starting with X?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, yeah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know a little about his rockabilly stuff, and you could play your bass well. How did it come about that you and Exene would share vocals? I was always curious about that. Was it a conscious decision where you\u2019d decide to sing one part and she would decide to sing another part and you\u2019d sing together on the chorus?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could say that it was destiny or you could say it was fate and I don\u2019t think you\u2019d be wrong. I think certain things are meant to happen and they do. Exene and I moved here and I met Billy and then I saw the Eyes at the Masque and we\u2019d been looking for a drummer and DJ was perfect. He also didn\u2019t want to play what every other drummer played. DJ\u2019s greatest music influence is Captain Beefheart. He\u2019s \u2018outside\u2019, as the jazz guys like to say. The way that Exene and I developed our method of singing was that she doesn\u2019t want to stand there while I\u2019m singing a whole song, so we tried to figure out, if it\u2019s a song that I\u2019m going to sing, where she could sing. We tried it out and it was organic. When it worked, we remembered it and tried to do it more. The way that Exene sings isn\u2019t schooled or calculated like a lot of other singers that had been in bands and knew what back up signing was supposed to sound like. She just sang what she heard. She didn\u2019t shy away from something that sounded weird. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was singing from feeling, yeah?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. We weren\u2019t afraid to sing in unison or an octave apart, which a lot of people think is not right. When I was younger, I was very influenced by The Band. I loved the way that they would sing all these weird harmonies. Even though they were a little more traditional, they were odd and they would come in and sing for a line or two and stop. They wouldn\u2019t sing an entire verse with someone or even the entire chorus. They would sing a line here or there for emphasis. I still do that in solo recordings. When X recorded the new record, Alphabetland<\/em>, we still used that because it works. It\u2019s interesting and not totally expected. There\u2019s no rule that says, when a second singer comes in, you have to stay in. You can come in and sing a few things and then let someone else sing. Maybe it has more emphasis if there is only one person singing it. Maybe there is a line that sounds better because, with the story you\u2019re telling, the narrator is the lead singer. Maybe you want that line to be more personal, so you just have one person sing it. It was a lot of trial and error for us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also seems like there is trust from two vocalists willing to let the other one come in and not step all over them. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absolutely. I think that\u2019s a good way of putting it. There is a lot of trust and space where they\u2019re not in it just for themselves. You\u2019re not singing your part just to have people look at you. You\u2019re singing your part because it\u2019s going to add something. That\u2019s a cool idea and I hadn\u2019t thought of that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it seems like you and Exene have an open-mindedness from  saying, \u201cYou might make this better than I could singing it by myself.\u201d It was different than what else was going on when you all started. The Weirdos were the Weirdos. Then there were the Cramps. I saw the Cramps so much. With X, you had two singers and it was different and diverse and it just worked, so thank you. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, thank you. I appreciate the compliment and I think you\u2019re right in that we kind of stumbled upon it. We found something, regardless of whether we worked towards it. It was out there and then we realized that it was something that was unique. Billy, with his incredible ability and versatility and style, was the first guy that was playing rockabilly in punk rock. You can give him credit for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absolutely. He was deeply into the tone of his Gretsch. It was obvious to someone that wasn\u2019t really aware of it, at that moment, then realizing that the guy in the leather jacket with the silver sparkling Gretsch is really a masterful guitar player. Your playing accompanied Billy\u2019s playing and DJ\u2019s playing. It seemed like it all came from a different place and morphed into this unique sound. The uniqueness was really cool. Then you also had the influences from all of these different types of music, played at a faster tempo. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. The fast tempo was what was happening. The thing with Billy is a point that Henry Rollins makes in this latest book. I\u2019m not plugging my books, but it\u2019s relevant if somebody wants to dig deeper into L.A. punk rock history. Henry\u2019s point was that the drummers in the Bad Brains and Minor Threat and Black Flag and the musicianship in those bands, even though they are all pretty hard and fast, they listened to and knew 200 records very well. They understood swing and the roll part of rock n\u2019 roll and then they ended up getting to what they played. If you fast forward about five years and there\u2019s some band in the Midwest who has a Bad Brains record and a Minor Threat record and a Black Flag record and they\u2019ve got three records they listened to, then that swing and musicianship and vocabulary and experience is smaller. They don\u2019t have the range that the first wave had. Henry is a huge musicologist and, when he hears something, he goes, \u201cOh, that\u2019s cool. Where does that come from?\u201d Then you listen to the people that influenced the band you just heard. I know that\u2019s where Billy got a lot of his stuff. His dad was a jazz musician and Billy played R&B music. He played with Art Wheeler & the Brothers Love and he backed up Etta James and he played with Gene Vincent. He played with real deal national players because he was that good. He wasn\u2019t interested in playing some bullshit Foreigner or these other terrible bands that were around at the time. He wanted to play something that was good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s talk about Modi Frank and your acting and the film Bad Day. I remember Modi showing it to me and saying, \u201cOlson, look, I made a film.\u201d It was you and Kevin Costner and people from your scene. I remember Modi saying, \u201cI made a Western.\u201d I thought, \u201cThat\u2019s amazing.\u201d How did that all come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I had become friends with Michael Blake who is a writer. Michael knew Kevin Costner and this guy, Jim Wilson, because they all hung out at Raleigh Studios on Melrose Ave. Raleigh Studios is a big deal now, but then they just had an office there. Kevin worked as a carpenter, and then Jim Wilson cast him in a movie. Anyway, we all got to be friends. Gil T. from Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs, and my ex-wife, Gigi Blair, and Pete Haskell, who eventually became Exene\u2019s boyfriend, were in the movie. Exene was the DP and Modi was the director. We had a friend of a friend who had access to a Western town, so we thought, \u201cLet\u2019s do a Western. That will be fun. I\u2019ve got some cowboy boots. Do you have cowboy boots? Yeah. Cool. Let\u2019s go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] That\u2019s so good. It still fit in with the punk rock thing \u2013 making a DIY movie. It was also not being afraid and going for it. Again, trust comes in and it\u2019s like, \u201cLet\u2019s do this film with Modi.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re right. People weren\u2019t afraid, but we should have been more afraid, but not so afraid that we didn\u2019t do it. I haven\u2019t seen that movie in years and years, but it was pretty fun as I remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was that your introduction to acting?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, my real introduction to acting was working with Allison Anders on Border Radio. That was the first real thing that I did, even though it wasn\u2019t all that real. It was more like a student movie, but it turned out good and looked beautiful. Allison went on to do many things and she\u2019s still working as a director. As we speak, she is working on Mayans M.C., the spinoff of the Sons of Anarchy. I always give Allison credit or blame for getting me into acting. It was fun and rewarding and it was very similar to music. It was hanging out with people that you liked and doing something creative and then it was like, \u201cLook! We\u2019ve got something.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re doing anything different, everyone is going to scoff at it and give you a hard time, and that\u2019s really difficult. Hopefully, you have enough confidence or you have some support. That\u2019s where the scene really had community. The scene really supported each other and you felt like, \u201cI\u2019m not alone and I\u2019m not crazy. People like this and people get off on this. I\u2019m relating to people and, if I\u2019m relating to these people, we have shared values. If that\u2019s the case, I can continue, even though there is this recording engineer who is being completely contrary to everything.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Then you did a lot more films and people enjoy your acting, which is a cool thing. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess the people that hired me liked it well enough. [Laughs] It can be very rewarding and somewhat frustrating. I\u2019m a little more mercenary usually. I look at the script and figure out if I can do it and be convincing. Then I ask for as much money as I can possibly get away with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s very important.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] Yeah. I\u2019m definitely in an enviable situation because I get to do different things and it\u2019s a good time and it\u2019s also creative. I take it very seriously and I never talk about \u2018the work\u2019, which I think is pretentious. On the other hand, I recently filmed a thing, which is a remake of a film noir movie called D.O.A. It was shot in St. Augustine, Florida, and I was the lead guy and it was terrifying because I didn\u2019t want to screw it up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You felt pressure having to carry it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. That kind of went away once we got into doing it and it was a great experience. You have to challenge yourself and find things that are frightening and try to do it anyway. That\u2019s how you grow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you have to memorize lines, do you find it easy to remember lines?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes. Sometimes it\u2019s harder because the language is more confusing. Some writing is more natural and fluid and other writing is not. I find, if I read through it from beginning to end three or four times, by the fifth time, I\u2019m pretty much there. The real trick is not worrying about it and having that in your pocket ready to go and just being there and not acting. If you\u2019re acting, you\u2019re blowing it. If you\u2019re just being there, you\u2019re in good shape. The hardest thing in recording records is to be present at all times. You have to be in tune with your intuition, and not fuck it up by thinking too much. If you\u2019re thinking too much, you\u2019re probably going to ruin it. That sounds counter-intuitive, but it\u2019s 100 percent true. If it\u2019s the Beach Boys or Elliott Smith or one of those orchestral type productions, then maybe you have to have a lot of brain power. For me, it\u2019s more intuition and what seems right. My advice to young musicians is, if you\u2019re listening to something and it doesn\u2019t feel right, trust in that. If someone gives you a bunch of reasons why it makes sense, even though you feel like it\u2019s wrong, I guarantee you, you\u2019re going to listen to it again later and say, \u201cOh, no. Why did I say yes to that?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is it to speak other people\u2019s words, since obviously you write and also deliver other people\u2019s lyrics? Do you find it difficult to deliver someone else\u2019s words?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. You really have to make it your own. You have to believe it and be it. It\u2019s like when you learn somebody else\u2019s song. Even if you play or sing exactly what has gone before, you have to make it your own so it\u2019s believable. If you don\u2019t put some heart and soul into it, then it\u2019s bullshit. People will be like, \u201cI don\u2019t need to listen to that. Somebody else did that and they believed it. Why do I want to listen to your version?\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valid point. Once X came to a certain plateau, there was X and Los Lobos and the Plugz and the Blasters and they all seemed to have a different step up of musicianship. There was also a common thread that ran through a lot of those bands and that was Americana. There was also the Latin influence in L.A. Hollywood was there in your backyard too. It seemed like, here is punk rock in Hollywood and these kids are crazy. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] Yeah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a two part question because I\u2019m just going with my train of thought. Let\u2019s go to the Americana within those bands. I\u2019d see really good bills with X and the Blasters and Los Lobos and Top Jimmy and so forth. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right. I think everybody learned songs and listened to the radio and those were our first and probably most important influences. I think that whatever you hear first, when you\u2019re a kid, you  eventually come back to that. The Blasters and the Plugz, to a degree, and certainly Los Lobos, all heard somewhat of the same stuff, so that was just part of it. The common thread was that we wanted to make a hybrid of that. We didn\u2019t want to just be an oldies band or a cover band. We wanted to do our thing. The fact is that we were all hanging out and exchanging ideas. \u201cWhat do you think is cool? What do you listen to?\u201d I remember Phil and Dave Alvin making mix tapes of Sun Records musicians that we\u2019d never heard. We\u2019d heard Jerry Lee and Elvis and Johnny Cash, but we didn\u2019t know Billy Lee Riley or Sonny Burgess. I give the Blasters a lot of credit for people like Bruce Springsteen or John  Mellencamp honoring  American music more. Before the Blasters, they did Americana music, but they didn\u2019t go back as far. Then there is your other question that is about Hollywood punk rock. The first wave was all rules are off and you can do anything you want and, if you don\u2019t like what we\u2019re doing, you can lump it. If you don\u2019t like what we\u2019re doing, that\u2019s fine, because a lot of people don\u2019t like what we\u2019re doing, so go listen to something else. That was brave and that\u2019s what you get when you\u2019re young and you can do whatever you want. There wasn\u2019t much riding on our success or failure. We didn\u2019t think it was going to last. All we were doing was hoping that maybe we could be in a band for three or four years and somehow, by a fluke, we could have some kind of career, but we didn\u2019t really believe it was going to happen. I think we were all surprised and grateful that anything happened. On the other hand, we thought, \u201cWhy in the world doesn\u2019t somebody sign the Go-Go\u2019s? It\u2019s such a slam dunk. Are they crazy?\u201d Eventually, it took Miles Copeland and IRS Records to make them superstars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When did you start thinking that making a career out of it was a possibility?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was maybe about four years ago. [Laughs] Actually, it was around the time that we started playing the Whisky and the Starwood with the reinforcement that there were 300 people there and we didn\u2019t know everybody there, which was around early or mid \u201978 or \u201979. Really you don\u2019t believe it because you\u2019ve seen how people go up and down so fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why I asked that question.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, that\u2019s why I first said about four years ago. That\u2019s when I figured I\u2019m not going to end up living on the streets. No one knows that their retirement is going to happen and be secure. I know that as long as X is able to keep playing, and continue to be good, we can make money, and that\u2019s a good thing. I think we are all very grateful for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How instrumental do you think that Rodney Bigenheimer was? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the early Hollywood scene, he had a lot of influence. Beyond L.A., he had no influence. By \u201979, we were beginning to do national tours, even though they were small. By \u201979 and \u201980, we were starting to go to Texas and New Orleans and Arizona. By \u201980 and \u201981, we were going to the Midwest and all over the East Coast. Rodney definitely helped the initial L.A. punk rock scene  because then you found out about things, and not just for the bands, but also for the audience. He had a forum that was bigger than Slash Magazine. Maybe they were equal. I don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, with Slash Magazine, and the aesthetics of what was going on in fashion and graphics, it seemed like everything fell into place. It seemed to all go hand in hand. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything influenced everything else. If you\u2019re a graphic artist or a fine artist and you\u2019re listening to the music that is going on, you\u2019re probably going to make art that is similar to that. If you are friends with a band and they ask you to make a flyer or a poster, then you\u2019re going to do something that fits in with that. I\u2019d give Richard Duardo and a lot of the Latino East L.A. artists credit for bringing Day of the Dead imagery into our world. We were going to bodegas and seeing voodoo powder and stuff like that, so we brought that into some of the gun club imagery. People would find skulls on candles and burn them and that would be part of their imagery. It\u2019s the whole process of looking for something else and not just being status quo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You guys did American Bandstand as well. If you got on American Bandstand, you made it, or it seemed that way. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, we loved it. Dick Clark was a huge music fan. At one point, we were pinching ourselves like, \u201cReally? Are we going to be able to do this?\u201d We did it and I don\u2019t know what kind of doors it opened up for us, but we felt great doing it. One of the first or second times that we were on there, Exene was getting her make up professionally done and she was thinking, \u201cOh, my god, this is so weird and crazy. What am I doing here?\u201d Everyone has that fraud reaction to feeling like you don\u2019t belong in certain places. Dick Clark came into the make up room and said, \u201cHey, explain something to me. We\u2019ve got all these bands that are really great, but the radio isn\u2019t playing them. What\u2019s the deal?\u201d Exene turned to Dick Clark and said, \u201cI don\u2019t know. You\u2019re the professional. You\u2019re the guy that\u2019s been in the music business for 30 years. You tell me.\u201d Dick Clark was kind of mystified. It\u2019s like I was  saying, \u201cWhy aren\u2019t the Go-Go\u2019s signed to a big record contract and why are we having so much resistance?\u201d I think it was because the record companies only understood the status quo. Major label record companies and even independent record companies rarely have foresight. It\u2019s the exception to the rule that they see something ahead of time, like Sub Pop or Bloodshot or Epitaph did. That\u2019s the exception, not the rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, so now what are you doing? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to go get a haircut. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excellent. [Laughs] What are you doing now career-wise? You write books. You\u2019re an actor. You\u2019re a musician. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m trying to stay home as much as possible, but that\u2019s not working out so well. X has a new record out and I\u2019m also planning book events for More Fun In The New World, which is part two of two books about L.A. punk rock. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Break that down for me about your books. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll give you the drive to the liquor store length explanation. I\u2019m assuming that the drive to the liquor store takes about five minutes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the most. [Laughs] <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under The Big Black Sun was L.A. punk rock from \u201977 to \u201982. Instead of me being the authority, my co-writer, Tom DeSavia, and I decided that we would enlist other people to write stories. We called up Jane Wiedlin, Dave Alvin, Henry Rollins and a bunch of other people and said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you write a chapter?\u201d We gave them subjects and said, \u201cYou\u2019re an expert in this and we think this is worth writing about.\u201d Pleasant Gehman was an  expert in the way the social world worked. I was an expert on what X did and different subjects, so I tied it together. It\u2019s a good picture of the initial punk rock scene and the photographers and artists who were part of it and the community that grew up around it. That book did well. It sold 20,000 copies and people liked it, so the publisher exercised their option to do a second book, so we did More Fun in The New World, which is \u201982 to \u201987. During that period, a lot of the original community broke down and hardcore took over and people started going on tour a lot. You can\u2019t maintain a community like that, so a lot of people got on drugs and were lied to by record companies and a lot of bullshit went down. Also there were a lot of different genres that went down like Cow Punk, which was really the beginning of the Americana genre. Then there was the funk and ska scene with the Untouchables and Fishbone. There was also hardcore, so we got different people to write about those scenes. We also realized, because my partner is smarter than me, that there was a lot of legacy that happened then, so we got Shepard Fairey, Tim Robbins, Allison Anders and Tony Hawk to write chapters as well because they were influenced by the DIY ethos that was happening, which became bigger and more prevalent in the mid to late \u201880s. Beyond that, somebody else can write their book because, after that, I was kind of out of the L.A. music scene and it was more national. Hopefully, we\u2019ve inspired some people to work on their own books. We definitely have a somewhat complete history of L.A. punk-influenced music and art in the two books, Under The Big Black Sun and More Fun in The New World, so I\u2019m proud of that. Other than that, I\u2019m trying to write songs for another solo record. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, good. I will look forward to that. One last thing I wanted to touch on is the Knitters. Break down the Knitters. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Knitters were born because Dave Alvin and Exene and I hung out a lot and we had a lot of respect and love for old time music. Phil Alvin and Billy Zoom didn\u2019t really want to play benefits for Medical Aid for El Salvador and stuff like that because they felt like politics had no business being in music, and I respect that. We thought, \u201cWhy don\u2019t the three of us go out and we can do some benefits?\u201d Then we made a record and it was a good time. It was also influenced by all of the other bands that were dipping into Americana at that time, like Green on Red, Rank and File, Tex & the Horseheads, The Gun Club or Lone Justice. We go into that quite a bit in this second book. It\u2019s like, \u201cWhat do you love and what can you sing and play convincingly?\u201d Punk rock and country music have certain things in common. They are both relatively simple and deal with some difficult subject matter <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You switched to guitar with the Knitters. Was that a conscious decision?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. I wanted to sing and play and not have to work up all those bass lines. Our friend Johnny Ray Bartel is a great bass player so I thought, \u201cI\u2019ll get him to do all the hard work.\u201d We also didn\u2019t have a bass player. It was just the three of us \u2013 rhythm guitar, two vocals and a lead guitar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m glad that you\u2019ve gotten to make a career out of something that you love. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Me too. That\u2019s the deal. The older you get the more grateful you should be that you\u2019re still doing something that you love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I totally understand and agree 100%. Thank you for sharing and thank you for doing what you\u2019ve done and what you do. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back at ya, Steve Olson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks. Now go do your thing and get a good haircut. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have a great day and I will see you soon somewhere on the planet. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope so. It will be good to see you again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, GET ISSUE #77 AT THE JUICE SHOP HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pioneers are unique, willing to take a chance, following what\u2019s within, allowing the rest to realize… The start can be a bit frightening, the outcome \u2013 victorious… They do it because they can… X marks the start, continuing into the future… Beating to his own rhythm, pulling from the past, making it his own… If you can, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4027,4028,4034],"tags":[4449,14942,7560,4448,3651,4444,14255,14260,14362,14390,3437],"class_list":["post-90783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-interviews","category-music-2","tag-billy-zoom","tag-black-rainbows","tag-brendan-mullen","tag-dj-bonebrake","tag-exene-cervenka","tag-john-doe","tag-juice-magazine","tag-music","tag-steve-olson","tag-vans","tag-x"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/BE8A1863-DANLEVY.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90783"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90791,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90783\/revisions\/90791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}