Pennywise

There’s not enough words in the English language to describe how excited I was for this interview nor how well it went. After all, it was Pennywise, one of the most influential punk bands of the early 90’s; I had to make sure the interview went well; and I couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. I had the chance to sit down with guitarist Fletcher Dragge for thirty minutes on their tour bus and talk about all sorts. It was an old punk telling stories of the good old days, passing on the ways of old to a newcomer in the new, commercialized punk rock scene. I learnt so much, heard some amazing stories, and saw how sincere Dragge was in everything he said. I loved doing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it. Thanks to Fletcher for doing it, and to Keith for setting it up.

Please Note: Most photos were taken, without permission, from the band’s official site and is copyright their rightful owner.

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Bobby: Okay, so starting with the basics, you guys have been on tour with Circle Jerks, Ignite and Brown Brigade for a few days now; how’s that going?

Fletcher: Really cool. It’s an awesome lineup, it’s phenomenal. Really, really good. I mean, Circle Jerks are one of my favorite bands of all time. Ignite, they rip it up. Their new album is incredible. And Brown Brigade, you know, I mean, Brownsound. Yeah, it’s been really good shows; really, really good.

Bobby: Has there been any really memorable moments from the tour so far?

Fletcher: Memorable moments? Me getting into Canada was a memorable moment. Yeah, me getting into Canada is a big deal. A little bit of a checkered past, a little criminal history; it’s really hard for me to get in here. I really have to do a lot of work. Last time I wasn’t aloud in, the guitar player from 98Mute had to fill in for me. I had Warren from the Vandals ready at the airport to come up and take over for me if I couldn’t make it. But at the last minute I got a permit thanks to some good lawyers and the kind people at the Canadian consulate in New York. And so, yeah, that was a big moment. Every night’s been great. Just watching the bands is a pretty big deal. The Vancouver show was awesome. I haven’t been up to Canada for a while, and it was sold out and just a totally crazy crowd; and tonight I think it’s gonna be twice as crazy. I’m looking forward to it.

Bobby: Before this you guys were in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, you’ve been touring all over the world the past couple months. Does this constant touring schedule ever get tiresome?

>Fletcher: Yeah, it gets kind of hard. We don’t tour like other bands that do it like seven, nine months out of the year. We do it for like three weeks, come home for three weeks; do another three weeks. But the short time in between the tours when you go home and you have to take care of all your shit at home, all your business whatever, then all of the sudden… Like I didn’t even unpack my bag. I unpacked my bag from Europe and washed the clothes, and put them right back into the bag – that’s like how fast it turns around. It definitely gets tiring, I mean, when you’ve got people coming to the shows and the turnouts are good and kids are singing the lyrics. I mean, just meeting people. Cruising the mall was really cool here, seeing some shit like a water park inside a mall. You know, it’s the adventure of life. It’s tiring, but at the same time it’s really fun.

Bobby: You guys were supposed to play Australia back in January, but then you had to cancel due to unforeseen circumstances. Then the rumors went crazy saying you guys broke up, do you think the rumors on the internet ever go a little too far?

Fletcher: Well, basically what happened was the tour got confirmed without everyone in the band approving of it, on the dates. Some people didn’t ever actually see the exact dates. I was like “well, I can’t do that.” The booking agent kind of confirmed the tour without it being talked about with the band. And so we didn’t actually cancel; I mean, we cancelled it, but we more postponed it to do the dates later. And somebody got on the internet and just made up a completely false statement saying “oh we got it from the band, they broke up, it’s over, they called it quits” all this shit. So that was a pretty big rumor and it kind of created a little bit of tension in the band. It was like “what the fuck? Who’s saying this?” or whatever and it turned out to be some random kid just making up total bullshit. We already had a US tour in January that was booked that we were doing. We didn’t cancel the US tour, only the Australian tour. If we were broken up, why would we still have the January tickets on sale? Anyways, we’ve already been back to Australia and made up the dates. And yeah, of course, it’s just stupid. There’s a lot of kids out there that are bored and just want to do something and talk some shit or make something up and just kind of sit back and feel like they did something important. Whatever, no big deal, here we, Canada, everyone in the band’s getting along great, getting ready to start a new record, having a great time. So no, we’re not breaking up today.

Bobby: Throughout your entire career, you’ve always released a new album every two years so people are expecting a new album in 2007, you just said you were working on a new album, so it’s true?

Fletcher: Yep, we’re starting. Right now, everyone’s been already working on songs so we’re gonna start getting together in the next coming months and put all the songs together and, you know, get this shit done. Hopefully we’ll have something out before next summer or in next summer. That’s what we’re shooting for, so hopefully it works out.

Bobby: Jim also recently said that you guys filmed a live DVD, where did you film it and when do you think we’ll see it?

Fletcher: It was filmed in Australia at the Horton Pavilion and one other spot, and it’s ready to go. We’re getting ready, we’re in negotiations with the record company right now an they’ve already Okayed it so it’s gonna be coming out. I don’t know how soon, but pretty soon, it’s almost there. It’s pretty cool.

Bobby: The next is a string of questions that took me a while to write because I wanted to get it all right. First off, in the early 1990’s, Jim left the band for a few years. In an interview he did with RockDetector back in August, he said he left because he didn’t like the violence in the scene at that time, and how people would go to a Pennywise show expecting a fight and there’d be gangs and all sorts at a punk show. What do you think of the violence inherent in the punk and hardcore scene? It’s not as evident today, but it’s still there in the roots.

Fletcher: Yeah, yeah. It got really out of control. I mean, punk rock was always, in the 80’s and stuff, the early 80’s it was pretty violent – that was part of the intrigued of it, and the mystery. It was dangerous, you might get beat up and you had the fight the police, and the football players and that was just part of it. It was violent because it was necessary to make your statement that “hey, we’re crazy. We’ll break your windows and fucking beat you up if you’re a hippy.” That was part of the whole thing. And then it kind of turned into, with Pennywise, everyone just wanted to be violent to try and make a name for themselves and be somebody. The L.A. scene was really crazy, with “I’m tougher than you and I’m in a gang and I’m this” and we started getting a lot of violence at the shows. I mean, I remember the show; the last show we played with Jimmy was pretty bad. There was a gang fight going on, I had to stop playing, I got in the fight. It wasn’t even worth doing it. People were going to the shows just to fight. And so, there was a little time period where Jim was out of the band, and just whatever, it was shitty. The violence today I think is a lot less, you see isolate fights, but I think the kids are a lot softer these days. It’s not like you have to go to a punk rock show and be scared. Back in the 80’s, you had to be scared. It was part of what was going on. So it’s a lot better without the violence. We don’t like to see the fighting; we don’t like to see people that are all here for the same reason: fighting. We’ll stop playing and say “hey, no fucking fighting.” So, we’re not into it.

Bobby: What do you think it is about a concert, the atmosphere, the people, the live setting, the energy, that would make someone go, not necessarily violent, but just break loose?

Fletcher: It’s the music style I think, you know, it’s fast, it’s aggressive. It makes you want to start…like you’re driving your car, you hear something, you start hitting the steering wheel and you get pumped up. It’s not like you’re listening to reggae and go like “I’m gonna go smoke a joint.” It’s an aggressive music that brings out an aggressive nature. And that’s what punk rock was always about. It’s about releasing the angst and the being pissed off at your boss, your parents, your teacher, or whatever. Being pissed off and you wanted to explode and you wanted to beat the shit out of somebody but you could go in the mosh pit, or the slam pit as we used to call it – or just the pit – and you could beat the shit out of your friends and everybody there was beating the shit out of each other and you came out of there bruised. It’s kind of like Fight Club, with Brad Pitt, you feel invigorated because you get it out, you get your frustration out but you’re doing it kind of in a way where it’s kind of not really that harmful. You see some assholes that go in there punching people in the face; that’s not cool. But getting out there, it’s no different than playing football. *Stops as someone leaves the bus* Phil, where you going?

Phil: Gonna smoke a cigarette.

Fletcher: Yeah, we’ll we’re gonna hit up some Lost in a minute. I think that it brings something tribal out in the listener; and that’s what we want to do. We want people to release the fucking energy and the pent up bullshit that they have inside them.

Bobby: When you guys formed, back in 1988, I wasn’t even one yet. I was crawling around, crapping my diapers at night like all good babies should. Isn’t it weird now, thinking that now, seventeen years later, you’re still playing for the same people you played for back in 1988, but you’re also playing for their kids and people like me who were one when you guys formed?

Fletcher: It’s pretty crazy. It’s really weird. I have trouble deciphering time and days and years. I don’t realize how old I am, I think I’m like twenty years old. Like I could sit here and talk with you and I could feel the same age as you for some reason. It’s kind of like a time warp. When you hang out with young kids, you go to shows, you’re hanging around with the “scene” stuff; it keeps you young in a way. It’s crazy. I don’t realize it as much as I should. But there are people that have had kids that are taken to the shows that are sixteen years old and weren’t born when we started, and that’s really crazy to think about. But it’s been such a fun, non-stop experience that you kind of forget about time and age and all that kind of stuff; if that makes any sense to you.

Bobby: Yeah it does. At the same time, think about the entire revolution that has happened over the past seventeen years. Like I was reading an interview you did with Punk-It.net in 2005 and you were saying how now kids don’t really understand the punk attitude that people like Jimmy Gestapo of Murphy’s Law had, and people just don’t understand that. Do you think the scene is missing that punk attitude? Why do you think they don’t get it?

>Fletcher: Yeah, of course. It’s because in the 80’s and the early days, you really had to pay your dues. You weren’t welcomed by society, you were unwelcomed. You were different, you were scary, you looked different from the normal person and you had to really have a lot of fucking balls to walk around with a Mohawk or a Black Flag shirt on back in those days. So that made you tough. You had to be tough, you had to get your ass kicked, you had to earn your stripes. You didn’t just get to go to the mall and buy a shirt and get a tattoo and dye your hair green and then go to the show and go “hey, I’m punk rock.” You had to earn your way in with the punk rockers in your city. For me, I remember it like yesterday. It was constantly getting “Fuck you poser,” “Fuck you, get out” you know, “fuck you.” My friends that I hang out with now would call me names, they were older guys. “Fuck you, you little fucking faggot poser.” You’re scared, but you know this is where you belong. I remember there was this game of football going on in the ring and all the guys were older and bigger than me. I used to be pretty skinny, about your size or smaller. I said “I want to play”. “Oh, you want to play?” And they just fucking beat the shit out of me. After a while it was like “okay, this kid’s alright. He’s pretty tough, he keeps getting up. He keeps getting the ball and getting the shit kicked out of him.” So you had to earn it, and you felt like you were a part of something that was changing how society thought about whatever. Nowadays it’s just so easy to download a song onto your iPod and order a shirt online and say you’re part of something. So it’s kind of missing the roots attitude and the pay your dues and it was about being unpopular. It was about not being cool. It was about not looking cool. It was a place for the fat, ugly, skinny, fucking zit-faced guys and girls to go and have a family while all the pretty people were over here at the ASB meetings and on the football team and the wrestling team. We were the ones that didn’t fit in. Nowadays, you don’t have to do that. You just say you’re a part of it and you’re a part of it. You want to be in a band, you get the guitar and the finger nail polish and the bad hair and the tight pants and all of a sudden you’re cool. I don’t know man. My day and age, you had to earn that shit. I think the attitude, and the spirit, and the true nature of it is kind of missing for kids today, which is not their fault, it’s just all be done. Like if you tell me you’re seventeen years old and you take your shirt off and you have fucking tattoos down to here up to your neck, it doesn’t surprise me. If you have your ears pierced and your gums pierced and your nose – like what’s shocking in society today? What is shocking about music or fashion? There’s nothing, nothing is shocking.

Bobby: Exactly. Still reading that interview you did with Punk-It.net, you said “When I went to a show, I was scared for my life.” You said you could get beat up by the cops cowboys, football players…

Fletcher: Or the punkers.

Bobby: Yeah, even the punkers. Just for wearing a Black Flag t-shirt to school or something like that.

Fletcher: Yeah, yeah. I remember vividly. Loving to see… like watching Black Flag and the Adolescents and being so stoked to see them and feeling the energy but at the same time being so scared that some big fucking older punk rock guy is going to come by and know that you’re new. You don’t just walk in like the new guy. Everyone knew each other because it was a small scene; so if you’re the new guy, you’re gonna get your ass kicked and they’re gonna fucking check you like “what’s up you fucking little punk ass fucking poser?” Poser, that’s what it was. There was no word “bitch” it was just “you’re a fucking little poser” and they’d beat you down. And if you fight back, then maybe you’re accepted, if you don’t fight back then they just kick you to the curb and leave you there and piss on you or something. So it was a scary time and that’s what made it feel so… it made it such a once in a lifetime experience. Those four or five years were, you could never replace that feeling and I don’t really see how anyone is ever going to have that feeling again because everything’s been commercialized, everything’s safe, nothing’s shocking. I mean, Harley Davidson’s fucking bikers, Hell’s Angels, what, now Shaq O’Neil and fucking Kid Rock are riding around on two hundred thousand dollar Harleys. Back in the day, if you pulled up on a Harley and you were in a fucking biker uniform you were considered an outlaw and people would go “wow, holy shit, there’s some bikers in here” and you’re a bad person and you walk that walk. Now you pull up and it means you’ve got some money and you fucking own a chopper. Everything’s been ruined, all the cool shit’s been ruined by commercialism man. What’s cool man? Probably like going fishing in the middle of the fucking ocean, by yourself, with a couple friends, a couple beers, you know? I mean, look at Hot Rods, you know? Now everyone’s into Hot Rods and they’ve got their fucking Levi’s rolled up and their Hot Rods t-shirts and tattoos and they think they’re from the fifties. Mike Ness was doing that twenty-five years ago. He was cool twenty-five yeas ago. Now you’ve got all these people that just go out to the store and they buy the shirt, they buy their Levi’s and they slick back their hair and they get the car and spray paint it primer black and then they’re cool. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of people out there that really have it in their heart and soul and they do it because they love it, but there’s a lot of hanger-ons that just do it because somebody in a magazine said “hey, this is the right thing to do.”

Bobby: How do you think that entire revolution ended up happening? From being the outcasts going to the punk rock shows and the outlaws riding the motorbikes to now, with the high school jocks that used to beat up the punks are now the ones going to the punk shows. How do you think that whole revolution ended up happening?

Fletcher: That’s a good question. I think that’s when the tough guy thing came, you know, like they knew if they went to a punk rock party or something… Like in the early days of Pennywise, the jocks would come and they would just fucking get in fights with all our friends and the punkers. It was like they knew they could get some action. They could go there and be like “hey, fuck you!” you know. They were football players or wrestlers or whatever and then I think they just slowly started liking it. They slowly started thinking “well, if I go to a punk show, I could get in a fight there. I could get in the pit. I don’t really have to get into a fight; I can just listen to the music and be the tough guy in the pit and knock people around.” And I just think they slowly morphed into it. I mean, none of us played fucking sports. Like they said we were a jock-rock band. I didn’t play sports; I was smoking PCP and fucking playing in a punk band and surfing and skating everyday when I was freshman in high school, when I was fourteen years old. I mean, I’ve skateboarded my whole live, surf my whole life, but we didn’t play football, we didn’t play basketball. We did when we were little kids, but like Jim wasn’t on sports teams, Byron wasn’t on teams. It was really weird how we got labeled “the jock-rock band” but it was because of the fans we were bringing in. All of a sudden, people wanted to be a part of something different and we wound up attracting a lot of tough guys, jocks are tough guys. I don’t know, I mean it’s kind of strange. Because we’re definitely not into that mentality but we’re not into a lot of things that people that come to our shows do. We had a lot of friends that were bad kids, wrong side of the tracks, going to jail, convicts, prisoners, crazy. We had a lot of that going on, so a little bit of everything.

Bobby: Right now I’m in my first year of university and I’m taking a music class. When we were studying the rise of Elvis and the rockabilly scene in the 1950’s, our teacher showed us this graph about the entire music scene on how it’s on a constant revolution between Industrial Logic and Cultural Logic. Cultural Logic would be some sub-culture that will rebel against the norm and make a new sound and genre, and then the major corporations would pick it up, use Industrial Logic to mass produce and make lots of money of it which will piss off kids and start another Cultural Logic revolution and it just keeps going and going and going. You guys have been in the scene for like seventeen years now; you’ve seen so many sounds from metal, grunge, ska, punk, nu-metal and emo now. Do you think this entire Industrial Logic/Cultural Logic graph flow is a good way to describe the musical industry? How it’s a revolution in the underground and then mass produced?

Fletcher: Yeah, I think that’s a really good way to describe it. I’ve been saying that for years. But the problem now is with MySpace and major labels and ClearChannel and MTV, it happens so fast. I mean, think about it. Punk rock, 1978 basically all the way up until ’93, ’94 before it really hit with like Green Day and Offspring. That’s like fifteen years. Now, nu-metal, emo, ska, or whatever, emo/screamo. They’re on it. The Strokes, that whole scene. The fucking major labels are on it immediately. Commercial, commercialize it. Boom. Let’s grab it; this is the next big thing. There’s a thousand kids going to these nightclubs to see this band, they’ve sold some records, they have a MySpace, they have eight-hundred-thousand plays on their video. Boom. Let’s grab it. Let’s industrialize it, let’s make our money of off it and then the kids are pissed off. Now it’s happening so fast that you can’t even really be part of a scene. There’s no real scene anymore. It goes by so fast, it gets so mixed together. Screamo, or emo as they called it, was all of a sudden. Then it was screamo. Which one’s which? Then it was “oh, we’re not screamo, we’re hardcore.” Like they’re trying to split these channels and trying to make a different sound and then “oh, we’re influenced by punk.” Well, what is it? Where does a kid fit in? Does a kid listen to Less Than Jake, Pennywise and Thursday and Thrice and Converge or something? There’s so many options out there and it’s so undefined now, the borders, that it’s just another example of how commercialism is trying to get their hands on everything to try and make it profitable and there’s no time for it to boil under the surface like the old days and really create a cool vibe where no one knows about it. “Hey, we’re going down here to see this band. They’re cool, they’re not popular, they’re not on the radio, they’re not on MTV.” You feel like you’re part of something special. It’s gone! Name me one thing that’s happening right now that’s super fucking underground that no one’s heard of.

Bobby: I could not name a single thing. Everything I would know would be from the internet.

Fletcher: The internet is like, if something’s cool, then it’s all over the internet that it’s cool. Then it’s all over the fucking MySpace, checking out why it’s cool. Then they’ve got a million plays and the label’s going “hey, I want to talk to you about this.” Then some seventeen year old kid’s going “you want to give us how much money? Oh fuck yeah, cool, cool.” Boom. Skip from point A to fucking point F, all the fucking bull shit of touring in a van and buying your own equipment and working a summer job to buy your guitar and earning your stripes. You’re just right here all of a sudden. Eighteen years old in a band with a half a million dollar record contract on a fucking tour bus and you think you’re a rock star and it’s the greatest thing in the world and you’ve got a fucking attitude problem and you think you’re somebody. It’s just fucking disgusting. The world is a fast-food society. People want everything and they want it now and they want to just fucking chew it up and then just spit it out and go “you know what? I’m on to this thing, I’m onto that. Oh this is cool. This style is cool, I’m gonna wear this, I’m gonna wear tight pants, now I’m back to baggy pants.” No loyalty. No direction. People lack imagination, they don’t want to follow their hearts, they want to follow what the media and the commercial powers at be tell them is right. They don’t want to just go “you know, I really like this and this is all I’m into. This is where I feel right.” They’re all over the place and that’s exactly what punk rock was created to be; anti-establishment, anti-corporate America, anti-fucking shoving shit down people’s throat. “Hey, this is good, we’re gonna play this song seventy times a day.” And that’s why it was created and now it’s just… We’re caught in it. Pennywise is caught in it. Pennywise gets played on the radio, gets played on video channels. I mean, we’re just a guilty as everyone else. We try to keep it underground; we’ve never even taking a meeting with a major label. We’ve tried to do things the right way and maybe we succeeded. I mean its seventeen years later and the club’s sold out. There’s seventeen hundred kids waiting in line right now, we must be doing something right.

Bobby: Yeah, you must be. The one thing I find interesting about that are the trend hoppers who go from one thing to another and then deny every liking the other. Like this one kid I know was this extreme hardcore vegetarian and straight edge, didn’t drink anything and then drank a beer for a girl and denied ever being straight edge.

Fletcher: Yeah, well people just want to be accepted. Kids, they want to hang out with the popular kids. They want to do something, be a part of something. All of a sudden if there’s some vegan guys are school and that seems like the right thing to do, you do it. Not because you want to be a vegan, not because you don’t think animals should be killed, because it’s cool. We never wanted those kinds of fans. We never wanted people listening to Pennywise because it was the cool thing to do. We want them listening to Pennywise because they understand our lyrics, they understand where we’re coming from and they want to be a part of it. It’s up to the individual to find their own destiny and their path in life and my advice is just to follow your heart, be who you want to be. Put the blinders on and turn the TV and the radio off and the newspapers and just say “what do I want to be? What kind of person am I? What kind of life am I going to lead?” And be comfortable with yourself and who you are and don’t take shit from anybody. I don’t give a fuck and if people look at me and say “hey, that guy’s this. That guy’s that.” I don’t care what you think of me. I’m not trying to fit into some mold that society created. I’m trying to fit into the anti-mold. When I walk in, I want people to go “wow, that guy looks kind of scary, maybe we should stay away from him.” I don’t want to be a part of something. I mean, I want to be a part of Pennywise, I want to be a part of the punk rock scene but I don’t want to be a part of the normal. That’s what I decided when I was fourteen years old. I’m not going to be part of what’s right. I’m going to be a part of what they think is wrong but what I know is right. So be yourself, do your own thing, whatever it may be. Don’t waste your time fucking jumping around on trends and getting on boats that lead nowhere. Don’t be one of those emo kids that’s gonna wake up with tattoos from his fucking knuckles all the way to his neck and wake up one day and go “wow, I don’t even like music. I jus want to be a fucking computer programmer and now I have tattoos all over my neck. What am I going to do with my life?” I know fucking guys that are twenty-one years old that have almost their whole body tattooed. Why? Oh, because it looked cool and you saw it in a magazine and that’s what all the other guys are doing in bands? Don’t just go out and get a fucking tattoo for no reason. You get a tattoo when you want something to be on your fucking body forever. You don’t walk in and go “give me that little heart with the wings, that looks cool. Here, put it right here. Oh, I can put a skull here…” You go out and you get shit that means something. That’s another thing that got ruined, tattoos. Everybody’s got tattooed. But I’ve got cool ones, see *he shows me a selection of tattoos he has on his arms, including a Black Flag one and others.” I like to burn myself too. *shows some scars* All burns. It says “Pennywise” right there, but you can’t see it anymore. Yeah, so you know, be yourself. Do your own thing. Fuck what society tells you. Fuck what commercial radio and fucking MTV says, fuck everybody. Break shit and make people uncomfortable.

Bobby: Thank you very much.

Fletcher: Thank you.