Gimme Something Better (69 page)

Nick 13:
I still don’t understand the major-label debate. The Ramones’ first record was on Sire, the Sex Pistols were on a major label, the Clash were on a major label. And those three bands, along with the Damned, who were also on a major label, they all started punk. You can go back to the Dolls and the MC5 and all that, who were also on majors. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the ethic. Because I certainly never thought a major label would be interested in putting out my music.

Kamala Parks:
Having your image splattered across the TV—it’s not like you’re actually saying something. It’s like every other fucking video on TV. I do believe that there’s a certain element, for punk at least, that has to be struggle. And the struggle can’t come from having a multi-million-dollar record contract.

Adrienne Droogas:
A lot of people would sit there and say stuff like, “Well, we can get our message out to a lot more people this way.” But you lose the message. Because the second there’s a Pepsi ad, and then George Michael’s ass shaking in some video, and then you guys, your message has gotten lost in all of that.

Cammie Toloui:
One of the last shows I went to was a Green Day show. Gilman was packed full. The regular Gilman people were wearing T-shirts that said “Down with Green Day” or “Kill Green Day.”

Jibz Cameron:
There was a huge “Green Day Sucks” graffiti right above the stage, like, two feet tall and ten feet long.

Frank Portman:
One famous Green Day show at Gilman, everybody was gonna turn their backs and walk out when they started playing.

Jesse Luscious:
People who knew them for years were just like, “You’ve made that jump. I can’t support you.” If you’re in this comparatively tiny scene, and you have these agreed-on guidelines that you exist within that scene by, well, it makes all the sense in the world.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
There was almost a socialist aspect to it. It was like, “This label is part of the bigger system that kept Noam Chomsky from printing a book,” or something. It was taken very, very seriously. There was this feeling that if you did this, you could expect to leave your friends behind. All of your relationships with people were over and there was no turning back. It was really hard, but I took responsibility and did it. You know, people need to have their beliefs. That’s what keeps Gilman so strong. It was tough. I carried that baggage around with me for about five years.

Davey Havok:
They recorded an amazing record. Clearly that translated, because the same people that were saying “Fuck them” were at their shows when they played.

James Washburn:
There’s been anti-Green Day from the beginning. It’s about punks thinking, “Punk is ours, and you’re not, so you’re not gonna come and change it for us, because punk is
this
.” Which is fuckin’ absurd.

Bill Schneider:
There was some jealousy, ’cause everybody was in a band.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
It was sort of this culture shock. I was still the guy with the garbage bag full of clothes and a band that was getting big. It was like being caught between two worlds. The punk world was like, “You’re not allowed here anymore. We told you.” And I didn’t want to be part of this other world, so I was just floating in the middle. It took me a long time to say, “Fuck it. This is where my life went and I’ve got to be proud of it.”

Marshall Stax:
After Green Day got big, reporters wanted to come in the club and film.

Jesse Luscious:
TV news shows were calling, “Can we come down and film outside?” We were like, “No. Fuck off.”
Rolling Stone
,
Spin
, whatever—we were like, “Go away. We don’t want to talk to you.”

Marshall Stax:
No one at Gilman liked the idea of this becoming another Seattle scene, where it just turned into some circus. People became very defensive about the media.

Jesse Luscious:
I helped write the No Major Label policy at Gilman. We didn’t want Gilman to be a minor-league grooming place for bands. We didn’t want to be the Roxy in 1979, or the Whisky, whatever. First of all, I don’t think we could have handled it. Second of all, that was completely against everything we were about.

Jason Beebout:
One of the things was, “We don’t wanna have any more sellout bands play in our club.” ’Til they started losing money. And then they started asking some of those bands to come and play.

Howie Klein:
When the record companies saw Green Day break, so gigantically and so fast, all of the record companies thought, “Well, we can do that. All these punk bands are the same anyway. My kid has a friend who’s in a punk band. I could get them and they’ll be our Green Day.” Some record executives honestly thought Green Day was the first punk band.

Jason Beebout:
Maximum RocknRoll
didn’t like Samiam. We got banned from playing Gilman. The kids voted us out, along with Jawbreaker and other bands. People like Jake Sayles wouldn’t go to any shows that I’d play. Jake was the person who called us sellouts. I couldn’t tell if he was joking, because we were friends. We started growing apart. I felt hurt.

Lars Frederiksen:
We played with Jawbreaker at Gilman. I remember one time watching them and they said, “We’ll never sign to a major label,” from the stage. And then they signed to a major label. I just never got why would you say that.

Adam Pfahler:
It wasn’t just the indies and the little zines, the mainstream press jumped on that story, too. So whenever we got a review, it was like, “This is the band that sold out and shame on them. This is gonna be the undoing of this band.” And sure enough, it was.

Fat Mike:
It’s silly. When I was a kid, we all called X sellouts! That’s just what kids say. They don’t even know what they’re talking about. Taking some company’s money, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Sergie Loobkoff:
So it wasn’t like all these Berkeley bands were becoming big or anything. Gilman was still going on, and little bands were still playing. At that point it seemed like there was still a neat little scene going on. To me the thing that changed everything was Warped Tour and Hot Topic, and indie labels that had a lot of money.

Dale Flattum:
On tour, you’d show up at these clubs and there’d be some brand-new Econoline van parked in front of the club. Some band you’d never heard of. They would have all this nice equipment, this little flurry of people around them always talking on the phone. Then they’d play, and it just sounded like a bunch of nice equipment.

Jason Beebout:
Lotta new guitars, lotta new vans, everyone had new tennis shoes. There was a big conveyor belt, like, “Get ’em in, get ’em in, take their photo and then scoot ’em out, scoot ’em out, scoot ’em out!”

Frank Portman:
You thought, how can it possibly be that they suck so bad and get so much money?

Dale Flattum:
I always thought that Ford should have made an indie rock model of the Econoline. Their sales must have just spiked in this way they probably never understood. “Why did all those vans sell in the ’90s? We couldn’t make enough of those things.”

Jesse Michaels:
The punk that did get big was unrecognizable to me as punk. It’s the common complaint: Punk stopped when I stopped going to shows. I don’t mean to hit you with that old saw.

Blag Jesus:
You’d see NOFX, and four bands that were exactly like NOFX. A lot of it was the booking agents, and the way they wanted to do things.

Jesse Michaels:
A lot of the stuff, like on Fat, sounded so unbelievably cookie-cutter to me. I just thought of it as something completely different and alien, that I didn’t have much relationship to. I’m sure lots of people before me would have thought of Op Ivy that way. Like, this is nursery school stuff. Compared to the Fuck-Ups, or whatever they listened to, it was probably a joke to them.

Fat Mike:
What’s hard is fighting your ego. When everyone tells you you could be bigger, that was the hardest thing. Green Day used to open shows for us all the time. Offspring paid us to go on a tour with us in Europe. These bands that were smaller than us, they all got big. To a lot of bands, that makes them feel really insecure. “All these other bands that opened for us are getting bigger than us. What are we doing wrong?”

Sergie Loobkoff:
Besides Green Day, which bands signed to major labels actually did anything with it? I can’t think of one. The only other bands to get sort of big like that were Offspring and Rancid. But they didn’t even take the same route.

Lars Frederiksen:
We were never in competition with Offspring or Green Day. We figured if we could be like Bad Religion then we were cool. The only time that we thought about majors, I was like, “Well, maybe if I get some dough I can get my mom out of the projects.” My brother had gone to jail and all this bullshit. When we realized it wasn’t right for us, we just stayed with Epitaph. But everybody had opinions. It was just like, Jesus fucking Christ!

Fat Mike:
Hollywood Records, the guy was telling us what he could do for us. He was like, “Oh, you guys are so great, we can make you this big.” We were like, well, we have all that. We have a big fan base, we have money. We sell lots of records. And he said, “Well, if you guys want to be second fiddle to the Offspring your whole career . . .”

I was like, wow. So that’s what you do. You make people feel unsure about themselves. That’s how they get bands. We just told our lawyer, there’s no fucking way we’re doing this. I think we made the right choice. We don’t answer to anybody. We just do everything ourselves.

Adrienne Droogas:
It was hard for Green Day because they were just so wildly popular. I don’t think that any of them could go anywhere without people freaking out. Grocery shopping, anywhere. They were in a tough position.

Lars Frederiksen:
You didn’t know what was going on, you knew there was some crazy shit happening with your life. You’re playing
Saturday Night Live
, you’re on MTV, you’re playing gigs, your records are selling pretty damn good. But at the same time you wanna keep your feet on the ground, because it’s not gonna last forever.

I remember being at my mom’s house, the “Salvation” video came on. And she said, “I hate this song.” My mom’s got the silver tongue, likes to bust my balls a little bit. I said, “Really? Well, it’s paying your fuckin’ rent, isn’t it?” I got her back.

A lot more people wanted to talk to you. I was at a Walgreens once, looking for a halogen bulb. And this girl came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re Lars Frederiksen, right? What are you doing here?” I was like, “Buying a halogen bulb. What are you doing here?” She said, “Don’t you have somebody to do that for you?” Like I got my halogen bulb guy. Joe. “Yeah, Joe, check it out, the bulb burnt out again. Can you go down to Walgreens and get me one?”

Adrienne Droogas:
It takes it from something that you know, family and support, to this place that’s so far removed. It happened with Lars. I came over to the warehouse that he lived in, and I remember him going, “Hey, I just got this note from Madonna.”

Lars Frederiksen:
We were on tour with the Offspring, late ’94, early ’95. We were at the Roseland Ballroom. She was there. And she wanted to say hi to us.

I was trying to get my shoes on, I had these creepers. I didn’t tie ’em, for some reason. We went and met her. There was like 100 people in the hallway. Offspring was pretty big at the time. Madonna was at this end of this room. We met her, she bummed a cigarette and asked if we want any food. She said, “I really like you guys’s band. I like ‘Harry Bridges.’ ” She was knowledgeable about our stuff. We’re just like, “Fuck, Madonna. Like a Virgin’s here.” She was just really cool. I got tripped out a little bit by it. I ran out of the room, and I lost my shoe on the way.

She said, “Oh, Lars . . .” In front of 100 people. And I said something like, “Don’t be a stranger.” Or something stupid. It’s fucking Madonna! The next day we played in Baltimore. And of course Noodles, the guitar player for the Offspring, was going, “Oh, Lars, you forgot something!”

So there was this basket with some fruit and a bottle of hand lotion, weird stuff. Champagne and shit. We gave the booze to the Offspring. And there was the card. It said, “It was really nice to meet you guys.” It was on Madonna stationery, sealed with a kiss. And there was a photo in there, from her
Sex
book. A Polaroid of her bending over this stool, kinda doing the Marilyn Monroe trip. It was like a frontal shot, but you couldn’t see anything. You couldn’t see any ass. It had a caption out of her mouth that said, “Sign with Maverick,” which was her record label. And a copy of her record,
Bedtime Stories
.

Everybody made a big deal out of it. They all fucking came after us, man.

Jeff Ott:
I think you can make a living off of music, I just don’t think you have to go this well-trodden path to do it. My feeling is if you have moral issues you feel are important, that’s more important to follow than to take the path that’s easy. My problem with Green Day and Rancid and Offspring is that I felt like they took the well-trodden path, and didn’t really reflect too much on the path they were taking. And they got really pissed off at you if you criticized. They just felt like they were being attacked. But what do you expect?

Ben Sizemore:
The most self-righteous people are only into it for a couple of years, so those of us who have been into it since, like, 13, we see these people come and go. A lot of people who were calling Green Day sellouts in 1994 are probably like stockbrokers now, sellouts themselves. Looking back, it seems silly to hold such animosity.

Dave Dictor:
It’s a big joke. At Gilman they had a big calendar board, what’s going on for November and December, and they had this big thing, “Upcoming shows: Green Day, Rancid.”