Interview with Rancid
 
  

Dave: Hi, I’m Dave and welcome to Joe’s Blue Plate Special. I’m talking to Lars from the band Rancid. They just put out a new album on Epitaph records, Life Won’t Wait. First of all, would you mind telling me a little bit of history about the band ...

Lars: Tim and Matt were in a band called Operation Ivy. Tim got out of the Salvation Army and homeless shelter and he wanted to play music. He got a hold of Matt and he was living with little Brett, and they started the band Rancid and they played a bunch of shows. They were together for about a year, and I joined about a year later, and the rest is history.

Dave: When did you guys get signed to Epitaph?

Lars: Well, they did one single with Lookout Records and I don’t think Larry was very interested in continuing to work with Rancid, so Brett Gurewitz had heard the demo tape and said it was the best thing he had heard in ten years, so obviously you want to go to a place where you’re loved.

Dave: Absolutely. You guys have a lot of songs about brotherhood and people that you’ve known. Where do your songs come from?

Lars: Just personal experiences. ______________________. It’s just about _________ warm, you know what I mean? There’s really no right or wrong way to write. It’s just what you feel.

Dave: So does everyone in the band write songs?

Lars: Tim writes the majority. He’s got a guitar ________________. This new record is far more political than any of our other records. I don’t know why that is. I think it’s just the scope of where we were. I mean, every record that we do is kind of just a sort of documentation of where we are at that point in time.

Dave: Dirty socks. Ee gad. You change your underwear too?

Lars: No. I play in the same pair of underwear for the whole tour.

Dave: Lucky underwear.

Lars: I’m superstitious.

Dave: No, I understand.

Lars: We all got a very superstitious __________________.

Dave: How come?

Lars: Don’t know.

Dave: Raised that way?

Lars: Think so.

Dave: Tell me about your upbringing. Were you guys all from East Bay or where?

Lars: Tim and Matt were from Albany. Brett was from like Oakland, East Bay. So they’re pretty much East Bay guys. I was a South Bay guy, San Jose. I’m actually from a small town called Campbell, California. Like the soup. And pretty much single parent homes. Kind of the misfit. Not able to fit in anywhere. And then we all found punk rock. It was kind of like a saving grace for all of us.

Dave: Absolutely.

Lars: I think this music saved all of our lives. We were all downtrodden, going nowhere fast.

Dave: Did you have personal stuff that relates to that? I mean, were you....

Lars: ....beat up people, like old ladies, get their money. That was fun.

Dave: Yeah, I heard a story about you charging into a mosh pit one time when some skinheads were beating up some kid. Is that true?

Lars: Um, maybe. I don’t know. I normally don’t...I don’t know. I always hit the dicks in the pit, you know, no matter who they are, punk rockers, they’re dicks. I’ve seen jock ___________ who were dicks. I’ve seen skinheads that were dicks. But, I mean, there’s a bad element in everything. There’s a bad element in punk rock. There’s a bad element in skinheads. Some skinheads believe that it’s a skinhead to be a Nazi when it’s not. A skinhead is about Jamaican culture and reggae and ska, so, I mean, how can you be a Nazi while listening to that music? Kind of dumfounds me.

Dave: Does not make sense.

Lars: No, but, I mean, you have your bad element in everything. I think it’s just the media’s way. Sometimes they try to capitalize on everything that’s negative about a certain culture or sect of people, try to make it a bad element. I remember in the early 80’s when every T.V. sitcom had the punk episode, you know, like Chips or Quincy, and everybody’s running around thinking that your name was Chemical Waste or something like that.

Dave: Speaking of ska, are you guys more influenced by the Jamaican ska of the 60’s or more like the English two tone kind of stuff?

Lars: Stones, 60’s stuff, Desmond Decker, _______________, Eric Thomas, and 70’s stuff like the Wailers, Bob Marley of course, and now the rebel rock era. And even the dance hall stuff. ___________________. We went so far as to get him on the record.

Dave: You guys recorded part of Life Won’t Wait in Jamaica, is that right?

Lars: Yeah, we did some vocals there. Tim _________________________...like kids in a candy store, did some background vocals ___________________.

Dave: Was it a good time?

Lars: Yeah.

Dave: What did you guys do down there? Just record or did you party it up?

Fill this in!

Dave: How did you stop with heroin? Did punk bring you out of that?

Lars: It wasn’t really punk.

Dave: That’s a huge life accomplishment. Life change.

Lars: I mean, ever since I was a little kid, I don’t know, just trying to fit in or whatever, knowing I was going nowhere. My mom still pretty much lives in the same project housing that we grew up in. I don’t know, you just do things. At first it was experiment, experimenting with things, and then the next thing you know, it isn’t fun anymore. And I pretty much burned every bridge and was very paranoid. I don’t know, I had to find it within myself. That’s all I really want to talk about it. I just try to stay humble about it. It’s not some big thing. ____________ a lot like Sid Vicious. It’s fashionable to do that.

Dave: It sure as hell is. We’re losing them by the dozen.

Lars: But whatever. You know, people gotta make their own choices and do what they want to do. I mean, this world’s pretty fucked up, and if that’s your escape, then go ahead and do it. Do whatever you want to do. Smoke pot, drink beer. I just don’t do it. It’s my personal choice. I can’t, ‘cause I’ll buy or I’ll kill. Either or, so, on both sides of that coin for me, my personal experience is, I can’t do that. But, I mean, if somebody can, and that’s what they want to do, find out their own path and that’s their life. I’m not gonna look down upon anyone for being that way or not that. I just got love and compassion. Try to treat everybody ___________ just like human nature. Treat with human nature and Rancid as a band have always tried to keep our humility glass filled, ‘cause right around the corner from where you are is where you came from. It’s a pretty short distance.

Dave: Also speaking of that, you guys decided not to go for a million and a half deal and some other stuff with a major label and decided to stay with Epitaph. Why did you guys decide to do that?

Lars: With Epitaph we create our own destiny, do one-record deals. We’re not locked into some seven-year major label contract, you know. Like I said, there’s good and bad elements in everything in life ___________________ makes everything tick. And now this thing with Epitaph. Epitaph was a gut instinct, and that’s what we’ve always followed. ‘Cause when you got nothing, you...

Dave: What do you guys consider "making it" in the music industry. I mean, has that ever been a goal of Rancid’s or anything?

Lars: No, if it ever happens to this band, by accident. We’ve done over 30 tours. We’ve done almost a thousand gigs in like four years. And we work. That’s what we do. So, obviously you’re going to build a little bit of a fan base when you’ve been on that many tours, played that many shows. And the radio just started....I mean Offspring was _____________, Green Day was blowing up Logical Step __________________ I guess. At the time, we didn’t know what the fuck was going on. It was like a crash course in music industry 101 for weeks. And the shit that you go through getting there is the most valuable sort of lessons you can learn, you know? It’s better than any school, you know? What do I need to know about fuckin’ Europe, you know? This is my life, you know what I mean? The capital of North Dakota _________________.

Dave: What are your personal goals then? Do you have any?

Lars: Get my mom to a nicer place to live. That would be nice. I don’t know. I think all of us are pretty much family oriented. I think the band is number one priority for all of us, you know. I mean, Tim’s got Hellcat Records now. He’s giving back to the scene. I’m really proud of him, ‘cause he’s given bands opportunities. It’s kind of like what you guys do, you know what I mean? Gives bands opportunities to make records on a label that’s not gonna rip ‘em off or, you know, especially with a guy, you know, it’s kind of like Brett Gurewitz, too, you know, I mean, he knows what it’s like to make records from turning the knobs to getting the sounds shrink wrapped. He knows what it’s like to be out on tour and fucked out in the middle of Phoenix, Arizona with no alternator and having to get t-shirts to the next gig that’s in Texas, you know what I mean? And Tim knows all about that, so obviously where do you want to be? Do you want to be with some CEO who thinks ________________ Janet Jackson, or you want to be with a guy who knows what it’s like to be in a band on tour? And obviously the choice is easy, ‘cause if you’re in a band....

Wendy: If you weren’t going to be a musician, what do you think you would be?

Lars: Dead. I don’t know. I was just headed that way. I’d be digging ditches probably somewhere trying to get something out of somebody, ripping off somebody.

Dave: Has Rancid had some hard times? Have things fallen apart before?

Lars: Well, I mean, I don’t know if it’s really. See, that’s the thing. I mean, when you look back in retrospect, they don’t seem like hard times. When you go through these things, it’s always when you get through certain things in life, it’s always better. I think faith is one thing I’ve always had, and I don’t know what faith, what I mean by that. I just mean faith in making a better life for ourselves. That was the main goal, if there was any. I mean, we just want to be in a band, a band with people who you’re friends with, family, ‘cause none of us ever had one, you know? So, hard times, I mean, we’ve all known what it’s like to be evicted and come home from tour and not have a place to live or whatever, but I’m sure everybody in the country knows what it’s like about that, you know what I mean? Being able to make ends meet and not being able to meet. And I think that’s what success to us was always about. ....get some food. I mean, pretty much basic ___________ of that. That’s success, being able to eat.

Dave: As a successful band, do you have any advice for bands that are coming up from the bottom, folks like on Hellcat...

Lars: Play hard, you know, play hard. Trust no one, you know what I mean? There’s a very few people you can trust, and once you meet the ones that you can, you know it. And as long as you ____________ you got it, you know what I mean? Trust your band. Your band is the nucleus. Make sure that stays the healthiest part of anything. Money and all that other bull shit doesn’t mean shit.

Dave: Do you have any stories from on the road when you guys were touring anywhere? Any crazy shit go down, anything like that?

Lars: We got pulled over once, twice in about 45 minutes in Mississippi on the highway. Had a drug dog through our van and got pulled over by a cop with a Grateful Dead sticker on his car. It was pretty weird.

Dave: Because you are punks?

Lars: Yeah. It was a windowless van. We had to get from Little Rock, Arkansas to St. Petersburg, Florida in a day, a day or a half or something.

Dave: Haulin’ ass across good old Mississippi?

Lars:

Our roady at the time, Richard, ‘cause we were pretty much five guys in this red van, it was on the first tour, and he was kinda tired so he was kinda swerving. They thought we were drunk. Which we weren’t, but, it got to be hairy. Every band’s got the horror stories. I mean, there’s been one time where our alternator broke in the middle of going from Los Angeles to Phoenix, and we didn’t have an alternator and we drove 80 miles on battery power, and we had to get a jump start. We were on the side of the road, and Matt made me and Tim stay in the van ‘cause our hair was all charged up and a sign that said jump start and nobody would pull over, so they made us sit in the van, like 108 degree weather. Finally got a jump start and then made it to this gas station and Matt had a flashlight holding it out the window, and drove to this one place to get an alternator and got there five minutes before...we still made the gig. Rancid has only missed one gig out of every one of our tours. It was in Germany and I had pneumonia and couldn’t walk. I played five gigs with it.

Dave: With pneumonia?

Lars: Yeah. We’ve all done shit like that. I mean, we’re kinda like the show must go on. We know what it’s like to wait for your favorite band or a band to come for so long and then finally when they’re supposed to come, they don’t show up because of things like that, so I think we all know what it’s like to __________ for that shit. So we just play, no matter what.

Dave: What’s the first thing you guys do when you get into a town?

Lars: Scope it. And most of these places you’ve been before, so....maybe sometimes it’s easier to find arcades, whatever.

Dave: Does anyone in the band have a girlfriend, wife, anything like that?

Lars: I’m married.

Dave: Is that tough with a heavy touring schedule, or do they come with you?

Lars: They come out once in a while, but, no, I mean, I think we’re very fortunate _____________________. Here I am. Now I’m 27.

Dave: Little Lars?

Lars: I don’t know. I mean, if they say that your kids come out ten times as bad as you were when we were a kid, I don’t know if I want to unleash that on the Earth, you know? Luckily, I’ll probably be the guy that gives birth to a new Hitler or something, you know, some little fuckin’ freak who burns down the Earth, you know what I mean? They turn out opposite of what you are and I’m gonna have some fucked up kid.

Dave: Either that, or they’ll be little yuppies, it would be great.

Lars: Then I’d have to kill ‘em. Back to square one. Whatever.

Dave: Are you quite a workaholic?

Lars: My wife probably would say yes to that. It’s not so much a workaholic. it’s just keeping your brain _______________. But I mean, everybody gets a chance to relax, no matter what kind of job you do. You should always take time out. Make sure you take care of yourself. Don’t take your body for granted. ‘Cause you’ll start breaking down and have an unrepairable knee that pops out, in and out every time you bend down.

Dave: Is that what happened to you?

Lars: Oh, man, I fucked up my knee on the Warp Tour in St. Louis, and I just do this and it hurts like amazingly bad. It hasn’t healed. But, hey, you know, for the kids, right?

Dave: Who’s the member of the band that really keeps things together?

Lars: I think it’s a joint effort. That’s the thing. There’s no hierarchy in this band, you know? Everybody’s treated equally. That’s the secret.

Dave: Everybody works hard as hell.

Lars: I mean, everybody, like, you know, a lot of people that we’ve met along the way go, "we’ve never met a band like you guys," or interviewers or people, they’ve never seen a band like us, ‘cause we’re so tightknit, we’re not complaining about this or that. Bull shit, jealousy, and fighting over stupid things. Got no time for it.

Wendy: Do you find that stuff you’ve used in the band, __________________?

Lars: Well, I think the band is kind of __________________, but it’s different than that as well. It’s like a family. Of course you’ve got your little argument, your little tiffs. Just because if you fight doesn’t mean that you’re not family anymore. It just means you’ve had a little fight and you repair it. Obviously when you have a little fight with a family member, afterwards you all of a sudden become closer, and that’s just what being human is. Making mistakes, learning from them. Whether they’re with people or with your penis, or whatever. Yeah, or the other thing. The other part.

Dave: How do you guys respond... just the other day I told someone I was going to come interview you guys and they said, "Wow, I think they’re kinda sellouts from the last album," I don’t know...

Lars: Suck my dick. Club across the street is sold out for our gig.

Dave: That’s right.

Lars: So it’s ___________ they know about it. Most of the people __________________ the ones who still live with mommy and daddy have no idea what it’s like to actually get out in the real world and be a part of it, so. They’ll be the first to go when the revolution comes.

Dave: First against the wall. What do you do to keep yourselves entertained on tour? Video games?

Lars: Me and Tim like to watch a lot of horror movies. Go see every horror movie that comes out. We just went and saw "Chuckie Gets Lucky" the other day. It was great.

Dave: What’s your favorite movie?

Lars: Zombie or ______________ Death.

Dave: Speaking of horror movies, you into the Misfits? How come you guys didn’t put something on the Misfits tribute album?

Lars: I don’t know. We never were asked.

Dave: Ah, that’s too bad.

Lars: _________________. I don’t know. I think we’re more apt to be part of a motorhead tribute or a ______________ tribute, but I don’t know. The Misfits were a great band. I’m sure they had some ________________ some of us individually.

Dave: What do you think the Internet will do? Have you thought about that at all?

Lars: Well, I think it’s going to open up a lot of minds, but I think also at the same time it’s going to destroy the world.

Dave: How so?

Lars: There’s no privacy anymore. It’s easy. You can send a bomb through the fuckin’ ___________________. That’s just the way it is. I mean, technology will destroy man. Cars kill people. Technology. Planes kill plane. New viruses kill people because you chop down the rainforest. Government kills people. Things like AIDS. _______________________. What’s the biggest threat to the American government? American people, you know I mean? Think about it. There’s 35,000 people _______________ law enforcement. ____________ odds. So let’s kill ‘em. I don’t know. It could be true. I mean, here’s a country that made you believe that one bullet killed a fuckin’ president. You can’t tell me that they’re not lying about some other shit. Technology, I think, is one of those things that you have to treat with respect. Things like TV’s and things like that. I like TV just as much as the next guy, but you just gotta kinda be careful and sift through.

Dave: Figure out what they’re saying. Yeah, they’re all out there.

Lars: Well, you never know, man. I mean, stranger things have happened. Just to a lot stranger people.

Dave: Reality is stranger than fiction.

Lars: That’s true, man. I think it’s true. I think it’s good, though, in some aspects. Like I said, there’s good and bad in everything, and the good is that maybe ____________ who would never get hurt can get hurt through some kid downloading some shit. But then again you can order bombs through the mail and shit and blow up your neighbor. People can come into your house. It’s strange. If your door is not barricaded. A computer crash, Y2K, all your money’s gonna disappear, you know what I mean? That’s pretty scary, that all the world’s computers can shut down just because they forgot to put a date in. What’s gonna happen ________________. Are they gonna suspend the Constitution? Revoke it? State martial law? Is that what they’re gonna do? If they revoke the Constitution, there’s no way to....

Dave: Yeah, what do you think’s gonna happen?

Lars: You have to write a new one. Gonna let the powers that be write a new constitution in this day and age? I don’t think so, you know what I mean?

Dave: What do you think’s gonna happen on the 2000....

Lars: ....punk rock.....put in prison camps, doing all the dirty work. You never know. Stranger things have happened, you know what I mean? So.

Dave: It’s funny how the pendulum swings, you know? And we’re swinging so far up. I wonder where the point is, though, ..........to where it starts going back the other way.

Lars: War is big business, you know? Countries don’t make money unless they’re at war. Why would you try to avoid it? It’s the obvious, you know what I mean? It’s the total obvious, and I think more people are aware of things like that. I think that scares the powers that be. If more people are aware what the true enemy is....it always kind of amazes me how we get a different enemy. You know, we had the Cold War....

Dave: Every couple years, yeah.

Lars: ....threw Castro in there just for a little bit. Had Ayatollah Khomeni, Muammar Khadaffi, Saddam Hussein....

Dave: Don’t forget about Vietnam.

Lars: Vietnam. Ho Chi Min.

Dave: Pol Pot?

Lars: Pol Pot. I mean, so you’ve got all these like little things, you know? You gotta go destroy....Afghanistan was the newest one. Everybody knew that was just to hide Bill’s _____________________. He should be fuckin’ his wife, you know what I mean? Whatever. It always seems like people who are considered fucked up by society are the ones that always have the highest like morality. You know, like, well, I’m not going to cheat on my girlfriend, and yet the rich people who are supposed to be the stature of American society are always the one that go and fuckin’ fat girls, you know what I mean? It’s like, when’s the last time, if I can quote ___________________ child molester looked like me. Think about it, you know what I mean?

Lars: St. Louis. Screwy in St. Louis. Actually, having that bus is a lot cheaper than having a van. First of all, if something breaks, you don’t pay for it, you know what I mean?

Dave: The Ryder van you mean?

Lars: I mean, you’re paying just as much in gas on a week as you’re paying for the fuckin’ thing ___________________. Got a place to even sleep. It’s easier. Definitely touring has gotten a little easier.

Dave: Part of being successful is to tour all the time... People don’t realize what it takes.

Lars: Well, the more popular you get, the harder work becomes. People have this fascination, the living room theory. If you’re in somebody’s living room on their TV, you’re actually in the living room. You’re not actually there. They can’t touch you. Makes sometimes maybe people think that you’re better than what you actually are, you’re better off. And that could be the case. In some cases it can’t be. So, it’s the living room theory. People magazine theory. If you’re on the cover of People magazine, people treat you a little different.

Dave: Or Rolling Stone.

Lars: Shit and piss like everybody else.

Dave: Okay, thanks very much for coming down for the interview, and I hope you had a good time.

Lars: Thanks a lot.