LA Punk Legends X: ‘Violence didn’t bother me until I spit!’ , Goon

lOs Angels was so foundational to punk-rock pioneers that they named their 1980 debut after it. For Brooklyn-raised bassist/vocalist John Doe, the city heralded a whole new frontier. “I saw Talking Heads at CBGB’s, the Heartbreakers at Max’s Kansas City,” he says. “I wanted to be in a band, and I packed my stuff and moved to L.A. because I loved movies and literature. , and because there was no punk scene yet.” For singer Axen Cervenka, it provided an escape from a deadly life in St. Petersburg, Florida. Stressed, an avid hitchhiker, she was “always exploring, with my antennae open, just to see what’s out there in the world”.

At age 20, Cervenka took those antennas to Hollywood, where she met Doe and Illinois-born guitarist Billy Zoom, and they formed some of the first – and undoubtedly most enduring – of L.A.’s punk-rock groups. Did. 1977. Documenting a nihilistic L.A., and soon investigating Bret Easton Ellis’s equally mind-less 0, they went local, later national, before losing their way amid friction, disruption and primary label misdirection. Punk became a hero.

Now despite this, the gang is releasing a new copy of Smoke and Myth. Presented as their peak, it’s impressive: a discussion with their present that somehow doesn’t boil down to mere nostalgia, a report that somehow sounds just as wry and poetic and fiery as their debut. . “It’s made by the same people,” Cervenka said by way of explanation. “None of us died, so we were lucky in that regard.”

Success used to be a normal player in X-Story. After succumbing to L.A.’s siren name, Cervenka discovered painting near Baroque in the prestigious Venice Beach art district. At a poetry workshop, she sat down with fellow brand new arrival Do, who decided this was the place to be. Have to find “good soul”. Requested by the workshop-leader to name 10 poets he admires, Doe left Cervenka off his list. “John studied poetry,” she says. “I wasn’t educated. I was not educated. I left school at the age of 16. But in Florida, to entertain ourselves, my sister and I would buy old books from the thrift-store and fill them with words and pictures. I loved writing.”

Cervenka and Doe temporarily turned into friends and later archenemies. Doe asked Cervenka if he could use one of her poems as the lyrics to a song with Zoom. “That’s when I realized I had something that could be worth something in this world, and I better not just give it away,” says Cervenka. “So John said, ‘Okay, will you sing it?’ And then I was nervous, because I had never sung in my life.” However, as Doe defined it, punk was “all about free expression and entertainment. I knew Axen was a great writer. She was fearless. She had already lived a life. I could tell she had Had the potential to become a lead singer.

Welcoming “Buddha-like” drummer DJ Bonebrake, . As documented by filmmaker Penelope Spheeris in The Subside of Western Civilization, those teams lived fast, and some – notably Darby Accident, the Germs’ auto-destructive frontman – died young. Although songs of the era such as The International’s A Mess: It’s in My Kiss chronicled this environment (“We were like: Everything’s happening so fast, it’s about to explode,” Doe recalls), Was on a unique path. The influx of suburban skinheads in the early nineteen-eighties radicalized Hollywood punk and, says Doe, the gang realized that “our pretty little bubble wasn’t there anymore. There was too much testosterone, and overt violence, and some homophobia. And there was racism, and it was not what punk was ever supposed to be.

“None of them bothered me as much as spitting on them,” says Cervenka. “I just wanted smart people on my show.”

However good fortune had made the gang an unlikely champion. He added a punked-up rendition of Doorways Soul Kitchen to his curiosity, catching the ear of that team’s former keyboardist, Ray Manzarek. By now, “We loved Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran,” says Doe, “the imagination, the economy of storytelling, the truth.” Manzarek recognized a homogeneous poetic risk for his personal team in those new streams of Los Angelenos, and produced their 28-minute first copy. “All of those tracks had the same darkness that drew Ray to us,” says Do. “Los Angeles can be a dark place under the sunlight.”

Over the course of 3 additional albums with Manzarek, his songwriting matured, fielding works of complexity and nuance such as I Don’t Have to Believe in Bad Thoughts Anymore, his “satirical state of the world, taking into account wars and colonialism “, says Do. However, frustrated by its mediocre gross sales, Generation released 1985’s Ain’t Love Elegant! For Christian Metallers Stryper producer Michael Wagner replaced Manzarek. Although it used to be their biggest seller, Doe says, its effortless college-rock “didn’t sound like us”. Soon after Zoom came out, Era Doe and Cervenka, who had married in 1980, divorced in 1986 (“I didn’t understand a lot of things about myself,” Doe explains. “I didn’t understand the ego. “). The departure did not lead to a signing at the top of the X, although his returns were significantly reduced. Their albums became uninspired, and during the nineties, as Nirvana finally took punk-rock mainstream, “It was disappointing,” Doe says.

Zoom returned to the ranks for the latter’s 1998 tour, with Doe pursuing a solo business and an acting side hustle, and Cervenka pursuing poetry and mixed-media artwork on the side. A reunion tour followed almost a decade later, but they didn’t report a new copy until 2020’s Stinging Alphabetland, their first in 27 years, which was much better than it should have been. Meanwhile, Smoke and Myth is a revelation. The cornerstone overview, Large Unlit Ax, revisits wild kidnappers in ’70s Hollywood, all acid and fairy slime and drunken expeditions in search of Errol Flynn’s isolated mansion.

“Rumors spread, like, ‘There’s an amazing place with a swimming pool where we can skate and drink beer, and no one knows it’s there’,” Cervenka recalls. “I don’t think it was actually the Flynn mansion,” says Doe, “but we all snuck into the Hollywood Hills. The shit hit the fan pretty quickly: Police cars showed up, and Axine and I slid down the hill. Gone and parted ways. Hirani later smiles. “It was all just youthful mischief.”

The copy has been made accessible for later viewing, along with the tour that promotes it. “It was hard,” Do says of creating Smoke & Myth. “I’m not sure we have the will or the energy to do anything else. As far as touring goes, I never want us to be a shadow of what we were, I want us to go out on top.

But while X is in a borrowed life, the friendship between Doe and Cervenka deepens. “After the divorce, there was estrangement,” Doe admits. “But I made my amendment. It was hard to break up and still be in a band, but we thought it was worth it. “We’re probably better friends now than we were when we got married.”

“There is no roadmap,” Cervenka suggests in conjunction with the unexpected path his generation may take. “We cannot know the future, we can only choose the best option. But life is long, life is hard, and life is rewarding.” She pauses for a while, possibly remembering that night in the Hollywood hills, when she was looking for Errol Flynn’s mansion, evading police officers, all that chaos and possibly someone Not witchcraft. “The way things change and change is amazing.”