Words by Brendan Monteiro

Not many people would have a clue of who you are talking about if you mention the name Kevin Wasserman, however mention his alias Noodles and everyone would raise an eyebrow and say “ohhh”. The Offspring have gone further than any other punk band of their time, their list of achievements runs right out the front door and about 37 blocks down the road. Take for instance the album Smash, which is credited as the highest selling record by a punk band and highest selling independent album of all time, out ranking some of the biggest names in the world of rock. With all this success his biggest trait is how humble and down to earth he is, for 15 minutes Clink got to sit down and talk about the state of punk, former presidents and geek out a bit on setups.

Who do you think these days decides what is or is not punk?

I think everybody decides for themselves, you know it means something different to everybody. Everybody who grew up in the punk rock scene back in the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s, we used to have arguments amongst ourselves about what was and wasn’t punk. We absolutly did and some people thought it had to be a fashion statement, some people thought it meant not eating meat and some people thought it meant not drinking or doing drugs.

Do you feel that after so many years in the business that The Offspring still remains at the core a punk band?

I think we have always been a punk band but I think that we have also been more than that, certainly since smash at least. We’ve branched out and tried different things but punk rock is always a guiding example for us.

Your apparently in the process of sorting for a new album already and it is said to contain some songs that didn’t make the cut on ‘Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace’, ‘Splinter’ and even ‘Conspiracy Of One’.

Possibly, yeah we have been looking at songs that we have done in the past that we didn’t finish or songs that had really strong parts to it but we didn’t know how to put the chorus and the verse together, that kind of thing.

With that in mind, there will always be people who trash talk albums, was there any fear of that with regard to reworking old songs?

No, that’s just the starting point because we are touring so much right now. So rather than starting in the studio and starting from scratch and having to put it all aside while were touring, Dexter met with Bob and they kind of looked at some of the old stuff as kind of a starting point for the new album really. Were going to write a whole new album so it is not going to be rehashed B-sides. Furthermore there’s a lot of stuff, over the years we have written a lot of stuff that has potential but we just never flushed it out completely. So we are not going to just put out crap just for the sake of putting crap out.

Sometime giving things a bit of a break and coming back to them with fresh ears can spring new creative ideas that you would never have had before.

Absolutely.

The latest album that is out didn’t feature any radio friendly or “pop” styled songs like the last three predecessors, did you stay clear of that on purpose.

Not really, it wasn’t conscious, it’s just kind of how the record was written I guess. There is a lot going on in the world and the songs we wrote were a little more serious. I don’t know if it’s just where we were at at the studio, it wasn’t like we were bummed out in the studio though because we always love making new records. The only song that is kind of tongue in cheek is Stuff Is Messed Up, but then again it’s a view of, well there’s a lot of shit going on in the world and it’s a view of how the media kind of covers it.

While were on the subject of Stuff Is Messed Up, in the video for it don’t you think that Dexter looks like one of the bank robbers from the movie Point Break.

Ha Ha Probably yeah, he totally looks freaky. It was freaking, we were all freaking out at how presidential he looked. I don’t know though, it would have to be a cross between Carter or maybe Clinton, he might of looked a little like Clinton.

It gave me a chuckle when I saw it, back to the music now. Conspiracy Of One was probably the first album to feature a more mellow side to The Offspring in the form of Denial, Revisited, is that something that the band is getting more into lately?

OK, I’m trying to thing what the hell was on that record, ha ha, I always like that one too.

Its just that song really stood out for me as a change from your previous material. A little more serious sounding, as is the case with Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?

I think with that song Dexter was just thinking about that because it’s based on a true incident, someone that he knew when they were growing up. I think that song came to be by just sitting with an acoustic guitar and thinking about that. Another softer song on the record is A lot Like Me but there are also some pretty heavy bits where the rest of the band joins in. That is probably one of my favourite songs on this record, it is fun to branch off and try different stuff, I also like Trust In You which is probably one of the best songs on this record.

It’s great to see a new a fresh side to the band.

Sure, I like that A lot Like Me has Dexter kind of singing out of his comfort zone a little bit. He’s singing in a lower register that he’s not used to. That was fun and I think it worked great.

Can you tell me why was there such a big gap between ‘Splinter’ and ‘Rise And Fall’?

There were a couple of reasons actually, we did spend almost two years making this record and really in that time we only had about six months of time off. After Splinter we toured on that for a year and then we did some recording the greatest hits record, then we did warped tour and toured Australia, Japan, South America on the greatest hits record. So that took us all the way through to the end of 2005. So the first six months of 2006 we didn’t do anything, probably jacked off at home. So then we started in June 2006 and didn’t finish until April 2008 so it almost took two years to make this record.

That is a really long time for yourselves.

Yeah, we have never spent that much time. Usually we will spend a few months in the studio, six months maybe with some breaks in between. But this time we didn’t have any demo’s, usually Dexter will write and make some cheap demo’s and bring them in and the songs would be well flushed out. This time however he wrote in the studio with us.

Do you think that fact helped shaped the form of the album in a different way, making it better?

Yeah, I saw this record coming into being over a long period of time. When we would get something that we thought would really work. Whether it’s Hammerhead and that monster riff in that song, it felt so good that you get excited. When you have a whole song punched out already and your so sick of it, or not sick of it but just confused by it. Like A lot Like Me where there is a lot going on, I just kept having that stuck in my head out in the middle of nowhere but it’s an exciting feeling thinking that you have something.

I guess constructing this record for that amount of time there must of been some instances where you needed to get away from certain songs.

Yeah Yeah, you kind of need to do that. You put it aside and then you hear it in your head and a lot of the times when you listen back to it and you go “well that’s not how I heard it, I heard it like this” and you try to change something. Sometimes you really do need to shelve something, especially when you have heard it so much that you don’t hear the meaning in it. So you got to sometimes put it aside and come back to it. It’s like a little gelato between courses, it kind of cleanses the pallet.

In the past you used different guitars and now you tend to only stick to Ibanez, why is that?

I just like the guitars that I’m using, I did change them out a little bit, I’m still using the Talmon which just feels really good to me because they’re light and they kind of have a retro feel to them, but I have got P90’s in them now. I had a set neck custom shop Telecaster and it’s got P90’s in it and it has a great sound, really growly and so I took the Talmon and put P90’s in it to see how that would work and it works great.

You also changed your amp setup a while back too.

I just changed them again actually.

You had quite a complex setup before of running a Mesa Boogie and a VHT at the same time, what are you running now?

I’m running an Egnater modular, the head has got four different modules in it. It’s got a really clean module, then it’s got a sort of voxy module and then it’s got two heavy modules and each one has two different channels on them so that I can ramp them up on different gain levels. So that runs through a pre-amp and then I have Egnater cabs. I was running a VHT and a Mesa Boogie Mark IV and it just got to much. To dial them both in and they each sounded good at different parts and they kind of filled each other out but with this new setup it just simplifies it and I’m loving what I’ve got going on now. I might use that other stuff for recording but for the live setup this is just great.

Support from: Broadway Calls and Rival Schools

Words by Brendan Monteiro / Photos by Daniel Gray with permission from www.chasingsafety.co.uk

It’s 6pm on an average london day and sitting on the steps of the Brixton Academy, I catch a glimpse of a a chav looking girl walking past the entrance to have a glance at the upcoming shows. “Who the F*ck is all dees people that no one gives a F*ck about, dis is supposed ta be Brixtion, supposed ta be for black people” she mutters, but the long winding queue of fans around the corner waiting for The Offspring kind of contradicts her just a little I would say.

All fans in the safety of the non chavvy Academy and soon enough Broadway Calls are firing off shots of punk fury at any one bearing a set of ears, they start the set off with To The Sheets, with it’s rip roaring melody it certainly gets me listening. The entire band puts it all into their live performance, Ty musters every ounce of emotion into his voice, Josh rattles every loose fitting in the venue with his solid drumming. Next up in the proceedings is New York’s Rival Schools. As with the opening band there is not much attention from the audience, which is really sad as they do a good job of their time on stage, with new song 69 Guns really standing out, keep an eye out for their upcoming release.

Thunderous sounds and flashing lights from well constructed and illuminated rigs make for a good entrance, Noodles cranks straight into Shit Is Fucked Up and so begins an hour and a half of non stop action from the Californian punk veterans. The setlist encompasses pretty much all of their 20 or so years. Bad Habit is the first crowd pleaser, its riot inducing lyrics take me back to time when all I wanted to do was stick a middle finger to anyone in a position of authority, and tonight as the whole venue screams in unison “You stupid goddam motherfucker!” all those old feelings start to resurface. From this moment on it doesn’t feel like the crowd or the band dies down at all for the remainder of the set, kids and old timers alike are screaming and moshing about to classics like Come Out And Play, Have You Ever and All I want. The energy in the crowd and onstage builds and builds. Dexter has all his past hits at his disposal but I find myself equally interested in the new maturer material like Kristy, Are You Doing Okay? and Gone Away which is impressively done entirely by Dexter on piano. Noodles is on fire as always and Im pretty certain the man cannot play a wrong note even if he tried, on top of that, it’s great to see that with all the success he has had, he still manages to support other bands, sporting a True Sounds Of Liberty shirt. Pete Parada, formerly from Face To Face is in control of the rhythm section with the added help of Greg K, and in control they are. Pete might not have been in the band for that long but he definitely seems to have fitted right in and pounds away non stop. The songs fly by with the unlikely suprise appearance of INTERMISSION and soon enough it’s the encore. Hammerhead’s ferocious riff’s rip a whole through my ears and once again my head is off on it’s own little mission.

Before I know what’s happened Want you Bad is over and they pretty much rolling to the end of Self Esteem and the feeling of sadness inside me is almost tangible. With time speeding so fast and good times had all around it’s hard not to feel a little sad that it’s all over and all that looms is the long wait until these legends grace our shores again

Setlist:

Shit Is Fucked Up
Bad Habit
You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid
Come Out and Play (Keep ‘Em Separated)
A Million Miles Away
Have You Ever
Staring At The Sun
Gone Away
Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?
INTERMISSION
Americana
Hit That
Half-Truism
Why Don’t You Get A Job?
All I Want
Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)
(Can’t Get My) Head Around You
The Kids Aren’t Alright

Encore:

Hammerhead
Want You Bad
Self Esteem