Following the leave of the Offspring from Epitaph, the feud between them and Brett was carried out very publicly. Brett regrets having said all the negative things in press shortly after The Offspring left Epitaph. He said he shouldn't have taken it personally when they left for Columbia. A lot of the tension was based on whether or not Brett wanted to sell the record or the label. [1] [2] While Brett claimed he never wanted to[3], The Offspring argued otherwise[4].
Brett said he loved Smash and that "it was a very good record". Yet one week after the release of Ixnay on the Hombre (1997; not on Epitaph), Brett said it was "uninspired derivative pablum" and asked "you guys actually like that crap?". Then he added "on a serious note, there's really nothing original on the new Offspring record. One song sounds like Jane's Addiction, one Bon Jovi, one Blind Melon, one Bad Religion. They've become an unimaginative copycat band...".
Greg said that in part the reason The Offspring got so big and sold millions of copies of Smash is that Bad Religion left Epitaph and so the label was then able to focus on other bands. Brett on the other hand said the departure of Bad Religion didn't help anything; and said the fact that The Offspring got huge as soon as Bad Religion left Epitaph was the dictionary definition of "Ironic".
Jay: "I won't say that because Bad Religion left it allowed The Offspring to take off, because that's taking responsibility for something way beyond something that I ever would".
The Offspring leaving Epitaph also played into Brett's decision to leave Bad Religion.[5]
Bad Religion were supposed to play with The Offspring in Argentina in 1999 but didn't end up playing. Contrary to rumors, this didn't happen because of the Offspring wanting to be the headliners and not share the stage with BR. Jay: "The entire issue of the South American show came up when the promoter asked us to come out and play without telling The Offspring, meanwhile, Dexter had invited the Vandals to play (because they were on his label at the time). The Offspring were the headliners, of this there was no doubt, and we were just along for the ride. Dexter was upset that he had made a commitment to the Vandals, and since it was their show, they wanted the Vandals on the bill as direct support."
After someone from the NME published that Bad Religion were such a rip-off of The Offspring that they deserved to be sued by them, Bobby and Jay were asked what bands have influenced Bad Religion: "The Offspring... we saw them live in 1980 and totally ripped them off, we stole all their stuff".
All I Want (1996) was written as part of a Bad Religion song writing contest. The original song was called "Protocol" and featured complex vocabulary. Dexter wanted to play it to Brett but was told to "play it on acoustic later or something" whereupon he felt rejected and rewrote the song. The chorus of Protocol was: "Your backs to the wall / That's protocol / It's sequestering your spirit / Misleading us all".
| 07/31 | added sources to offspring and epitaph - By wrong planet |