After 30 years of blistering the musical landscape, Bad Religion remains relevant amid the latest generation of restless rebels.
By KELLI SKYE FADROSKI
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
It’s summertime 1980, and to keep from getting bored and going mad in the San Fernando Valley, three teenagers have decided to start a punk band.
Jay Bentley, the smart aleck who’ll later make a habit of dressing in kilts and evenings gowns on stage, just turned 16. He’s learning to play bass.
Greg Graffin, the brainiac assigned vocals, is still 15, at least for a few more months.
Brett Gurewitz, future indie-label mogul, is two years older and preparing to graduate from the Woodland Hills alma mater where all three met. He’s recently picked up guitar.
They’re all into the same records. Some are from this side of the Atlantic: Black Flag, the Germs, the Ramones. Some are from the other: Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Jam.
After two years of band bonding, Gurewitz’s dad loans him $1,000 to make a record. Stewed in the thrashy rhythms and social diatribe that courses through their music to this day, the album, “How Could Hell Be Any Worse?,” was the polar opposite of what was then dominating radio. The group – now named Bad Religion, with Pete Finestone settling in on drums – had created a half-hourlong hand grenade of furious rebellion.
At the time, hardly anyone paid attention to it – and fewer still probably noticed that the record had been self-released under a new label that would eventually become a punk mainstay, Epitaph.
But today, as the band begins to celebrate its 30th anniversary this week with more than a dozen sure-tosell-out shows this month and next throughout the Southwest, that album is considered a landmark – a raw cornerstone of the aggressively outspoken rock that has followed.
Zack de la Rocha, for instance – the politically charged vocalist for one of rock’s most incendiary groups, Rage Against the Machine – vividly remembers hearing it for the first time three years after it first came out.
“I was 15,” he wrote in an exclusive e-mail to us last week. “When the needle hit the record I have to say it was a defining moment for me. The music was darker than most punk records I had heard. It was almost gothic, and there was a genuine sadness to the melodies. Listening to the words I remember being overwhelmed. It wasn’t some revelation that God didn’t exist ... it was more like an injection of the sad truth. That our condition is the product of the mess of our own making.”
“How Could Hell Be Any Worse?” – which many fans didn’t discover until it was reissued in 1988, once the band’s reputation was rising and Epitaph began to flourish – was merely the opening salvo. What followed has been a lengthy career that has affected bands from Rage and Pennywise to the litany of new punk groups that have emerged in the ’90s and ’00s.
After three decades, 14 albums (with another due this year), countless tours and a few episodes in rehab, Bad Religion is now not only one of the most influential – and continuously active – punk bands in history, it’s also arguably more relevant and popular than ever before.
“I think Bad Religion has had more impact on music than they even know,” says Efrem Schulz, frontman for O.C. hardcore outfit Death by Stereo. “There are so many kids out there right now in bands that sound like Bad Religion that don’t even know who Bad Religion is. They think they sound like this other band who copied Bad Religion.”
Meanwhile, Epitaph has grown into a giant of independent music, a force that now has subsidiaries both eclectic (see Anti- Records roster of, among others, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Merle Haggard, the Swell Season and Michael Franti) and old-school (via Tim Armstrong’s purist punk and ska outlet Hellcat Records). The label figures significantly in rock history for its key contributions to 1994’s explosion alone: the Offspring’s “Smash,” Rancid’s “… And Out Come the Wolves” and NOFX’s “Punk in Drublic.”
“One of the great things about this 30-year milestone is the fact that there’s still a scene that continues to evolve and that people still consider us an important part of,” said Graffin, now 45.
Over the years, members of Bad Religion have come and gone – and, in some cases, come back again. In fact, no sooner had they laid down their first manifesto, the band then got severely derailed, veering off into prog-rock for 1983’s “Into the Unknown,” losing Bentley for a time, and not recovering until 1988’s meatier “Suffer.”
No one in the group can pinpoint any secret to their longevity. In an interview last year, Bentley, 45, said the solution was to “stay out of each other’s underwear.” Gurewitz, 47, doesn’t know the answer, either: “I quit acrimoniously once (in 1994, to concentrate on Epitaph) and that was the end for me then – but then it wasn’t the end. It was a false ending.”
Graffin often describes it like a real family, one that has grown up together but moved apart – he now lives in upstate New York, Bentley in Vancouver. But the singer admits that description gets misconstrued.
“There’s plenty of combat and disagreement,” he said. “Each member is committed to a longer-term goal, which is to be a productive member of the family. Sometimes that means you don’t agree all of the time.”
That friction is what fueled them all along. By the mid-’90s, Bad Religion was scoring KROQ hits like “Infected” and “21st Century (Digital Boy).” More recent efforts like “The Process of Belief” (2002) and “The Empire Strikes First” (2004) have managed to keep the band’s music prominent on modern-rock radio without compromising the blueprint laid down with earlier albums like “No Control,” “Against the Grain” and “Generator.”
Through it all, the band has made indelible impressions on at least two generations of young people, receiving an endless stream of stories from fans about how their passion for Bad Religion inspired them to become musicians themselves – or led to suspension or expulsion at school for wearing their T-shirts.
“I really do appreciate when a song makes a difference in someone’s life,” Graffin says. “I’ve had people tell me that if it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t have gone to college. That really means a lot to me.”
Everything has a beginning and an end. There is no talk of calling it quits anytime soon, but everyone in the band knows that day will come.
Graffin earned his Ph.D. at Cornell University and now gives lectures on paleontology and life sciences at universities. He also has released two solo folk albums, “American Lesion” in 1997 and “Cold as the Clay” in 2006. He’s currently finishing his first book, “Anarchy Evolution” (due in October), a memoir of his dual life as punk star and teacher, mixed with his views on evolution and religion.
“I’ve always maintained that there’s more to life than music,” he says. “Music is a really important part of life, but I’ve tried to keep my brain working and working on academic pursuits. … I could see writing more books – writing books and writing songs are both ways of sharing ideas, and sharing ideas in almost any kind of medium is a privilege. I’ve been able to do it in two areas now. I see writing as a pursuit I think I can carry on until I die.”
For now, there’s still plenty going on with Bad Religion, which will follow this House of Blues run by entering the studio to cut its 15th album, due in the fall. There’s plenty of fodder for Bad Religion right now – Wall Street, health care, Toyotas – yet Gurewitz says the new album may shy away from current topical issues to instead get at something more emotional and introspective.
“I’m writing more about the feelings of just living through this time,” he says.
Will Bad Religion make it to another 30? Graffin says he’s frightened by the thought of a world where people would want to see them perform in their 70s.
But don’t count them out anytime soon. He shares a story of a conversation years ago between Gary Tovar, who started concert promoter Goldenvoice, and Graffin’s friend Keith Morris of Circle Jerks – who early on wasn’t convinced Bad Religion could cut it as a headliner.
“Gary shot back and said, ‘No, no, no, Keith, you are wrong. Don’t ever underestimate Bad Religion,’ ” Graffin says, laughing. “I have no hard feelings about it now, and Keith and I are great friends. But to this day, the guys and I still say that to each other: ‘Hey, don’t underestimate Bad Religion.’ ”
Register critic Ben Wener
contributed to this report.