Gimme Something Better (68 page)

Ryan Mattos:
There were 17 rooms, at one point we had 12 of them. There were a couple students, some random voodoo doctor guy. It was two blocks from campus and two blocks from Telegraph. When Cal had a football game, they basically shut down the streets so people can just walk around. We’d sit on our porch, and thousands of people would walk past the Acacia frat, and then they’d get to our frat, and it’d be a whole bunch of dudes dressed in black with black hair and tattoos, and they’d all be like, “What frat is that?”

This is Berkeley: Davey Havok of AFI at Gilman

Davey Havok:
I think AFI played our last show at Gilman in 1997.

Bill Schneider:
AFI have changed so much over the years. Instead of breaking up and changing their name, they have just kind of evolved into what they are today.

Ryan Mattos:
I have an AFI tattoo that says, “I don’t grasp your values,” which is from one of their songs. I think it pretty much fits. I never got why my friends just wanted to talk about getting wasted, and then would get wasted. I cared about launching a water balloon more than I cared about getting wasted.

Lars Frederiksen:
AFI actually played with us on our Canadian tour after we did
Saturday Night Live
. We took ’em through Canada with us. Good dudes.

Ryan Mattos:
We thought they blew up like five times before they did. The first time I saw them headline at Gilman there was like 250 kids there. But the girl in back of me in line was talking about Davey—“I wonder if his hair’s gonna have that little curl?” It didn’t matter if it was 200 kids or 20,000, they’ve always had that charisma.

They did a big video shoot at Berkeley Square. And then it was like, oh, they’re on Nitro [Records], that’s so crazy. And it was like, Offspring covered one of their songs, now it’s on Live 105, they’re huge. And then it’s like, “Oh, you guys sold out a 12,000-capacity venue in eight minutes?” So I stopped getting as excited.

Eric Ozenne:
Knowing Adam and Dave for a long time, it was incredible to watch them go through these musical changes. There’s no sellout about those guys. They straight up were doing what they wanted to do the whole time. And they were very much, very real punk rock people. They hold a lot of that stuff as their values and morals.

Ryan Mattos:
I don’t think those bands start out like, “Oh, let’s play this kind of music and then we can catapult to something else.” There’s no way that when AFI started in their living room they were like, “Okay, let’s play shitty punk rock shows for eight years, and then we can start making mainstream accessible music.” I think it just happened.

Dave Chavez:
Every once in awhile I’ll hear an AFI song and I’ll go, “That’s kinda cool.” I actually thought they were a decent hardcore band ’cause they had a lot of energy. A lot of people really like ’em. I’m not really a big fan of theirs, but I think they’re more progressive and original than all their other Bay Area cohorts.

Jeff Ott:
I go to a gym in the morning because I’m getting to be an old guy. There’s four TVs up on the wall at Sonoma State, and I’ll see AFI and I’ll just go like, “Oh, I can’t even believe—this is ridiculous.” But I’ll put in headphones, I’ll listen to them, I’ll be like, “This is another song about nothing. What the fuck is this?” They probably spent a million dollars to make that, probably spent hundreds of millions of dollars on manufacturing it all and selling it to people, and it says nothing at all. And I feel slightly responsible. I think in the beginning, a lot of people thought so long as the music is very dissonant and not melodic, it will never end up there. Well, no, you can do all that. Sometimes I go, “It sure would be nice if the whole thing never went to that at all.”

Davey Havok:
We were sitting in the back of a Town Car driving through New York, having just won the Best Rock Video award for MTV, and it’s one of those moments where it’s like, “We’re so lucky.” Later that night at a party I found myself talking to Axl Rose for the first time. I didn’t want to bother him, but I am a big fan of Guns N’ Roses. Which is certainly not a punk rock thing to admit to, but I am not much of a punk rocker these days, and have no problem admitting to it.

It was furthermore a surreal moment to not only be talking to him, but after I stammered out something about
Appetite for Destruction
being one of the best rock ’n’ roll records of all time, and Day on the Green with Metallica in San Francisco, and I was in seventh grade, and this and that. And thinking, “Oh man, he is so bored, I wish I wasn’t saying this to him.” He’s standing there just kind of nodding and smiling. After I get all that out I think, “Oh, I bummed him out.” And he said, “Yeah, when I’m doing my warm-ups on my iPod, right after my warm-ups come on, your record comes on.” And I was like, “Oh my god. This is out of control.”

And later, Hunter and I were standing on the other side of the room at the party, and I was like, “That was amazing!” And Hunter said, “But really, think about this. Think about when we were in junior high, think about someone coming up and telling us that we were simply going to be in the same room as Axl Rose.”

It’s not simply celebrity moments like that. I really, really appreciate everything we have. We started doing this band out of the love of music, and coming from a scene where we were encouraged to play music that we liked, with complete disregard for whether or not anybody else liked it. And with no concern as to whether any of us could play our instruments. I just feel very lucky that at this point in my career, I’m continuing to be able to do what I love.

Mike Avilez:
AFI, they were once a hardcore punk band, and now they’re just mainstream bullshit. I like Davey and more power to him. If he can do it, then that’s fine. It’s just strange.

Davey Havok:
The Bay Area really provided a scene for my life to grow out of. This is where we were drawn. Seeing Crimpshrine and Green Day and Operation Ivy and Wynona Riders and Samiam and Monsula and Jawbreaker and bands like that coming out of the scene, who were all great bands, drew us here. And the community that was centered around Gilman Street and centered around the Bay Area scene was something that really appealed to us.

Playing with Screw 32 and Dead and Gone and the Swingin’ Utters, and going to see Rancid and Green Day at the tiny clubs, all those bands, the Gr’ups, and Blatz, and Filth, was just a part of it all. It was inspiring to be a part of that. It was a very supportive scene, a very unique scene.

Jeff Ott:
You were the kid that everyone shit upon. You were the one with pimples and glasses in high school, and everyone discarded you. And that was your place. So when these bands started to get popular, we felt like we were used as a stepping-stone. Who would care about this group of fucked-up kids? Why would any of these bands ever be popular?

Orlando X:
It’s the progression of music. Fans make the music.

Jello Biafra:
Every underground rebel art culture, if any good, is always gonna get co-opted. It was bound to happen.

Blag Jesus:
Youth movements take off in the most egalitarian and idealistic way, but ultimately people come in and profit off them. That’s what happened with punk rock in England, that’s what happened with punk rock in New York, and that’s what happened with punk rock in the East Bay.

Lars Frederiksen:
You could see it coming, from Nirvana first putting the stamp on everybody. But I never could see that we would be doing it. Whatever happened with Offspring or Green Day and us—I would have told you you were out of your fuckin’ mind.

Adam Pfahler:
Blake and I were at Jabberjaw in L.A. While Nirvana was recording
Nevermind
, they played an unannounced show at Jabberjaw and it was packed out. We looked at each other and were like, “This is gonna be fuckin’ out of control.”

Billie Joe Armstrong:
We went to Europe, just playing squats. We booked it ourselves. When we were on tour, Nirvana started getting really popular and I remember thinking, they made a great record. And they’re on a major. And they still have this consciousness about them. It wasn’t something that was made up or fabricated or contrived. It was real.

Noah Landis:
When
Nevermind
got all that attention, for the first time it was something that somehow everybody
got
. Everybody understood the intensity and the emotion of those songs.

Jesse Luscious:
I was listening to rock radio and I heard “Aqualung” into “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I almost crashed the car.

Dave Chavez:
I thought Nirvana was a half-ass kinda thing. I thought he wrote really good words but thought the music was just—he was trying to be like Flipper and Negative Trend, but he didn’t have the balls to do it all the way.

Noah Landis:
Punk rockers hated it because it was bringing this punk rock to MTV. But there were a lot of punk rockers who were like, “This is undeniably really good, this is really powerful, and it makes you feel something when you listen to it.”

Jello Biafra:
Once Nirvana got that big, the major labels took the ball and ran with it.

Adam Pfahler:
Then two years later, Green Day sold eight million records or whatever, and then the whole Bay Area got gobbled up. It blew up completely. And then it blew up in everyone’s faces. Lars Frederiksen: A&R guys would find out what hotels we were staying at, and stay at the same hotels. “Oh, hey, guys! You’re Jim from Rancid, aren’t you?” People wouldn’t even know our names. “What label you with? Blah blah blah.” It was that bizarre.

Adam Pfahler:
Jawbreaker would get those lame form letters in the mail: “I am blah blah blah from Columbia Records. Please send me a copy of your blah blah blah and we’ll have lunch.”

Kamala Parks:
That to me is the antithesis of punk. It was supposed to be DIY. You’re not supposed to take your popularity and benefit some high-ranking mucky-muck. You’re supposed to keep things local and in your scene. And not buy into this fame bullshit that they were feeding bands.

Lenny Filth:
Back then, it was a no-no. You were supposed to live in poverty your whole damn life. And just play because you wanna play.

Andy Asp:
Green Day’s first shows after they’d signed with Warner Brothers, you could see that there was a line drawn. There were protesters, picketing ’cause they had signed to a major label. That was the end of the innocence.

Jibz Cameron:
All of these younger, more trendyish kids started coming around, and it pissed everybody off.

Andy Asp:
You could see our world changing. Here it was, being spoon-fed to people via television and major magazines.

Jason Beebout:
There’s a lot of passionate people who really believe in that Oakland hardcore sound. It means something to them. You ride your bicycle everywhere, and you’re wearing everything black for the past 20 years because you’re so to-the-fucking-core. And all of a sudden you’re looking at Clear Channel, and it’s loaded with images that are looking a lot like you. You start to feel like you have no identity anymore.

Adrienne Droogas:
The people I knew who were heavily into the politics wanted it to be very separate. If you wanna be on MTV and you wanna sign to a major label and go do these things, that’s great. That’s awesome. But you’re not a part of the punk scene anymore. The punk scene I know and that I was a part of, and that meant everything to me, had nothing to do with that world.

Kamala Parks:
You have the talent here, and you should use that locally, rather than selling yourself across America. To become someone who encourages other bands to do the same things, and represent your values if they want to. To not make yourself a generic punk rocker.

Jesse Luscious:
Major labels may be the nicest people. They might love kittens and bunny rabbits, but at the end of the day their corporate owners make guns, missiles, they pay lobbyists to destroy the environment. And by choosing to put your art into the maw of that planetary machine, I think that’s ethically suspect.

Winston Smith:
It’s kind of a black-and-white way of looking at things. I could never understand that kind of logic. General Electric, they make all kinds of guided missiles and other bad juju. But I can look up and count five little incandescent bulbs with “GE” on it. So I’ve given GE money, which means I’ve contributed to the death machine. I’m helping their CEO keep his golden parachute. If you’re playing a record, with the electricity from a little string that goes into the wall, that’s created by a giant power plant, PG&E, which is Profit, Greed and Exploitation. Every time you pay your electric bill, you’re giving them money to pour into Diablo Canyon, building a nuclear power plant on the San Andreas Fault, which is insane. For thousands and thousands of years it will be radioactive and carcinogenic, and so every time you play a record, or pay your bill, or anything, you’re contributing to this machine. You can take that, and reduce it down to any argument, and everyone is guilty, all the time, everywhere, all at once.