Craig Lee (writer for the L.A. Times and the L.A. Weekly and x-writer for Slash Magazine not to mention former invader, Bag, Catholic Discipline and Bonehead) was interviewed in September of 1981 by Shredder from Rag in Chains and Paranoia.
Interview with Craig Lee of the Bags
By Shredder
Flipside Fanzine #27
October 1981
Shredder: What about all the flack about articles, the Surf Punk article....
Craig: Ok, the Surf Punk article, ok, I'd written this thing for the L.A. Weekly about Darby right after he died, maybe I should start with that. They called me up two days before they were going to press and they wanted something on Darby, Darby had just died. Everybody was really freaked out about it. I didn't know Darby personally - the last time I was around him was when the Bags and Germs went to San Francisco... I didn't know him that well, so I had to call up all these people and they were all freaked out. I called the house where he lived and they didn't want to tell me anything... but I got their side of the story, which kind of put Casey in a bad light. And that was all I had to go on. Casey was in the hospital so I couldn't get through to her - and she claims I ruined her life! It made it seem like she was real suicidal and that she was a big influence on Darby doing that....
Shredder: I got the feeling Darby led her into that, like "Follow me."
Craig: Probably, that's probably more accurate, anyway, I said he shot her up and all that, the thing was no way was Darby gonna kill somebody else. He intentionally gave her a small dose and then killed himself, but the whole thing about it- the people at the house told me Casey had stolen the rent money, later Casey told me that was not true. And Casey had felt I did her a great injustice and gave me alot of flack. I'd only had a day to write about somebody I didn't know, I had to call people up all night and interview them. And then I see something in - No Magazine saying anybody who wrote about Darby was fucked as if he was the only one who knew Darby! That was Chris D., I don't think anybody has the right to say they know what the story was because the only one that knew was Darby himself. All these people run around saying they're such close friends of Darby and that's bullshit!!... so I'm gonna be writing something about the Germs and I've been talking to Rob (Henley) and I think he should tell his side of the story cause he was really close to Darby, I want to talk to the people who really knew Darby, like Rob, Melissa, etc.... The way I like to write, I like to stand back and look at something, I like to be as clear as I can be. See it from a realistic objective viewpoint, instead of putting in all my own feelings and opinions, like too many people tend to. It's just their viewpoint - not all angles.
Shredder: Some people think that if you don't put in your viewpoint then the article is just a run-off sheet and not really an article with any opinion.
Shredder: And then the surf punk thing....
Craig: Weekly wanted me to write this surf punk thing and at the time I was bummed out about alot of what I was seeing. I thought about kids that were getting into it that didn't understand or really didn't know what punk was about - I mean who am I to say anything about what something's about, but it seemed like alot of them were ex-football jocks who just like "Oh, this is cool" and got into it without having any feeling about what it really meant.
Shredder: Kickboy said it was without the initiation.
Craig: In a way, yeah, it just became so easy and so cool for some kids to just cut their hair. I don't like fads, I like people that think for themselves and do something because that's the way they really feel, not because their friend across the street is doing it or it's the cool thing to do in high school. You make a commitment. Like when the original punks started in Hollywood, they were outsiders - they were total outsiders! It was not a safe thing to do, it wasn't part of a club and it's still not easy or safe, bouncers still beat the shit out of punks and cops harass them. But now they run in these big packs and like I see all these groups and they're all like each other. They're not doing anything that's unique or original anymore!! Not making any statement - just following a trend. A friend of mine was saying - what's the difference between Rednecks who go to a bar, drink alot of beer, listen to loud music and get into fights and punks that go to a gig, get loaded and beat the shit out of each other?? I mean what's that changing, what's that altering?
Shredder: How different was it way back when?
Craig: The difference was it was like a revolution! We were gonna change the boring old rock cliches, we were not gonna be rock heroes. There was gonna be energy again. Everybody was so passive and dull then, you know James Taylor, Carly Simon. It was like a real revolution then.
Shredder: Now it's not because you can get all these so called new punk rock records very easily....
Craig: I'm glad a band like X are accessible because it's a good alternative to have, but then I see alot of other groups who do it to coast on it. They say this is an easy way for me to play a gig- get in a punk rock band. It's not that they really believe in the music. And alot of the fighting shit really bugs me. When the Masque first started, punks didn't beat up punks, that was bullshit, you had the cops beating you up. Why beat up somebody that's into the same thing that you are?
Shredder: They'll argue that it's not beating anybody up, just their dance.
Craig: I'm not talking about dancing. It's the factions - here the kids from Torrance are gonna beat up the kids from Fullerton or shit like that... so anyway when I was writing that story I came in and had three different versions. They had Janet Duckworth's story and didn't want to use it - Janet basically said that punk media violence was a hype, it didn't exist. They didn't want that. So I wanted to get all the angles: I had Mad Society - that was one angle, I had a kid on speed that was another angle - all stuff that exists.
Shredder: And Mad Society aren't from the beach, in fact most of them aren't.
Craig: yeah, they're from the Valley or whatever. I feel bad about it now. (Craig describes the many changes that were made to his story and the frustrations of trying to get the story right in his and the editor's eyes). At that point I was negative about things, I don't feel that way anymore. I think it's cool. This really is what people wanted when things first started. Just like alot of original Hollywood people couldn't handle it because it wasn't their scene anymore, it was out of their control and they flipped out - but what did they expect?? They say "Oh we did that 3 years ago" but it still means something to a lot of people, it still has that energy, it's still passionate, it's still real.... bands like TSOL, it's real, you know.
Shredder: Alot of kids get into it for three months and come out of it with an attitude that they've been at it for years.
Craig: That's always happened. What makes me laugh is I'll go out to shows and alot of new kids don't know who I am and of course I'm older than them and maybe they'll give me shit or make fun of me and I'll just laugh inside "You fool, you have no idea," or they put down La De Da and say who is this asshole. They don't know what I've been through... Like there was this whole period when bands could not play anywhere - like the Bags, X, Germs - no place. There was a real struggle to keep things alive. And people don't realize that when they say "Oh X, sell-out, they play the Greek." They don't realize.
Shredder: Do you feel cheated when you see people abusing clubs and you worked...
Craig: It's so fucking lame! That really bothered me. Like being in the Bags when we played shows it was real exciting, people dancing all over, and people used to love to show how much they were into a band, I did too, there was no difference between band and audience. I'd be screaming, dancing and applauding to the Controllers, then I'd get on stage and play with the Bags and they'd be screaming and applauding for us. Everybody was excited and real happy - then there was this turning point and people were out there going "Oh, it's too cool to applaud, fuck you. I'm not here for the band, I'm here for myself." What the fuck is that? Then I'd get pissed and yell at the audience and I'd get spit on or whatever. So fucking negative. When people trash clubs they're just trashing their own scene, why are they fucking trashing the clubs they go see music in?? That was bugging me - it wasn't a music scene anymore, it was a hanging out and be cool for our friends and nobody was thinking about the band on stage. (Talk goes on to cliques and being accepted if you are persistent)
Shredder: You said people were worried about poseurs, now poseurs are scared away but don't you think alot of cool people are too?
Craig: I've always thought that was a problem. Like I'd see weekend punks beating up a hippie - and I'd say, that guy is there watching the band, why the fuck are they picking on him, he's into the band. What difference does it make?
Shredder: Alot of people would say if you're not gonna commit yourself by showing that you're different....
Craig: He was showing, he was making more of a commitment to having long hair than they were dressing exactly like their friends. Commitment doesn't come out of the clothes you wear, anybody can wear a Black Flag T-shirt. Anybody can cut their hair, but it goes deeper than that.
Shredder: But going to school and having short hair is a commitment.
Craig: I don't go to school, I don' know the scene there.
Shredder: Or just walking down the street.
Craig: Well in Hollywood, they don't care, but it is more of a statement living in the suburbs (talk goes onto a brief history of punk bands in L.A. - the generations associated with the opening and closing of clubs - then on to how all the early bands considered themselves "punk" bands but all strived to be different). alot of bands now I think tend to just copy each other, like what's the difference between Wasted Youth and... whoever, its just like get onstage and DADADADADA, WAAAAAAAA, what's the difference? Ha. That's why I like TSOL, because at least their songs are different, or the Circle Jerks or 45 Grave. They're so unique.
Shredder: Why do you think people are afraid to play different music?
Craig: They're playing it safe, but I shouldn't speak for them, they're probably really into what they're doing - but why not find something that's your own? (Talk about some of Craig's bands like Boneheads and Catholic Discipline and how they strived to be different - then on to people being original)... like when I first met Helen (Killer), what's real funny, she had short hair on top and hair sticking up on the sides - like Sue Catwoman (famous Bromley Set scene maker in London 1976) and then I went out to a show a couple of months ago and there was a girl looking like Helen did 4 years ago, and looked like Sue Catwoman did a year before that! Fucking hell! 4 years ago, come on! And she probably thinks she's the coolest punk on the block.
Shredder: Do you think she saw pictures?
Craig: She had to cause it was exactly like them.
Shredder: She could have just gone to Atilla.
Craig: Yeah, maybe, maybe. but it's not making a statement anymore, at the time it was real shocking to people, it scared them, it's not shocking now, they just go "oh, it's punk."
Craig: If you live in suburbia it might scare them but if you go to Okie Dogs at 2 in the morning it doesn't mean a thing! It's all running with the pack, where's the revolution is that? How are you provoking people, how are you changing people?... A lot of people don't understand, they wonder why I write about alot of the things that I do in the column or they complain about Robert Hillburn or some other writer and they don't realize that in that position you're dealing with alot of different groups - alot of contingents. The L.A. scene is a small facet, a drop in the bucket. If I wrote about Black Flag every week, I'd be fired. I have to cover as wide a range as I can.
Shredder: And write the way the editors will accept?
Craig: Well, I get away with alot, but not like when I wrote for Slash. I could say anything. So people bitch about Robert Hillburn hopping the bandwagon, but he really is into what's going on and wants to support it. He's a man writing for a major American newspaper with a circulation in the millions, and the fact that he writes about stuff like Black flag in a favorable light is really great. So what if he's being trendy or hopping the bandwagon, at least he's doing it! He's not writing just for punks, but for all kinds of people. He has to relate, Flipside is for a definite group of people, but he has to make an outsider understand what it's about.
Shredder: What did you think about your part in the Decline?
Craig: that's a sore subject. Originally we weren't supposed to be in the movie a all because Alice - the first time we met with Penelope, Alice and her didn't hit it off. Alice didn't want to be made to look like a fool - she wanted to see the film before they used it in the movie. Penelope was insistent that that not happen, she had to have total control. And when anybody tries to pull total control, Alice rebels against it. But the editors of the movie kept saying, "Look Penelope, it's a good band, it fits in the movie." And between that time and the movie, we lost our bass player... real petty... I don't know why they wanted us - cause Alice was a real strong woman performer - cause the movie already had the male macho punk stereotypes. So the night we were filmed at the Fleetwood, there was a big screw up. We originally set up the show with the promoters, and they said Fear and the Gears were also on the bill, so we said ok, but we want to be 3rd or 4th but not last... so the Urinals played and Gun Club played and we were setting up and here's Fear's equipment up there, what the fuck's going on! So Fear's manager Danny Hutton formerly of 3 Dog Night, comes up and he gives us this bullshit, and here's Fear fucking us over. Fear used to open for us!! And the Gears were saying, "We're not going on either." So Alice flipped a coin and we went on last. We almost didn't get filmed and we were really pissed. Then we saw the film - they did three songs and it looked really really good. Then, I don't know why, they really cut down our stuff and they did weird things. There's this guy who wrote "I want your body" on his arm and he's reaching out to Alice and they put that part in Fear's section! And another part in the middle of a song - they use a clip from later on in the set, not the same song.
I think Penelope really liked us, but it is obvious it was basically a Slash promo film, cause Bob Biggs, Penelope's husband, is the head of Slash records and who has the big sections in the film - Germs and X, cause of course he felt those were the most important bands.... When I first started writing for Slash, Claude Bessey and me got along real well, I could write anything I wanted to. And so how Biggs took over and he was real cold to me. I always felt there was this latent anti-Semitism that runs around the scene. And Biggs would make jokes like "Oh there's the Jew, maybe he'll clean the toilet." Cause I wasn't cool, I didn't fit Bigg's stereotyped image of what a punk rocker should be or Chris D's image (Craig goes on to say what kind of harassment he gets at parties from anti-Semitists, but really doesn't blame them because everyone's drunk and doesn't care). Darby used to make those cracks all the time, or I'd be sitting to front of the Whisky and De Detroit would be saying "there's too many fucking Jews in this town." What a lame anti-Semitism is so boring, old fashioned... or I'd get phone calls from Joe Nanini at 4 in the morning going "fuck you Jew," but that was all because of Dangerhouse... so the Decline, Bob Biggs didn't like us, I don't know why. I went in to mix the 2 tracks I was on, the one being Catholic Discipline, that was cool, that was Claude so we spent alot of time and it sounds real good. The bags, we spent alot of time mixing "Prowlers" which sounded real shitty, we had a bad engineer. Then they played "Gluttony" and I said wait a minute, this sounds fucked, it needs a different kind of mix, I needed to remix it and Bob says "No, it will be ok, we don't have any more time." I asked him what song they'd use in the movie and he says "Gluttony," so they just throw it on, he didn't give a fuck. The song gets cut off before it's over - like "Oh just throw this piece of shit on the record." It sounds terrible! The mix I did for the movie sounds better than the album... but that's sour grapes. Lots of people get fucked over. You would think everybody would want to work together. All these people are so competitive and so jealous. "We have to headline..." it's so ridiculous you finally give in. That's why I didn't want to be in a band anymore. You were gonna get rid of the old rock superheroes but what's happened is you just replaced them with a whole new breed of rock superheroes.
Shredder: But you're still gonna be hanging out and...
Craig: It's getting harder to hang out because people are giving me shit all the time. Everybody's got their great god damn opinion and they have to come up to me and say the column's sucked...
Shredder: Why don't they write a column of their own?
Craig: Hey, that is what I tell them exactly. Write a letter, don't tell me at a club, I'm here to enjoy myself just like you. It happens alot. This guy at Black Flag comes up to me and takes a swing "Hey you faggot you don't know what skinheads are about - you put my picture on the cover" and I didn't put his picture on the cover. But people don't use their brains, they don't talk to you, just beat you up and walk away. That's back to baby baby sandbox level. And when some guy comes up to me at Al's Bar and says, "What's the sermon gonna be tonight?" There are people who will say "I don't want to tell people what to do, we're not ordering people or telling them what to think" and then they're singing "Revenge." So they ARE "telling people, that's such a cop out! People should be opinionated, that's what you have a brain for. That's what the whole thing was for. If they disagree, then they should say what they feel. Like I went to interview Black Flag....
Shredder: For the surf punk thing?
Craig: No, they felt they were getting bad publicity, they wanted to clarify things, so they were telling me this stuff, which sounded ok, I like them, they're nice people and stuff, but then the music editor was pissed because he realized they were going to every paper in town... (talk goes on to super star punk groups, like Twisted Roots, who start out by headlining the Whisky). It's just the same rock and roll, show business hype, game playing and I guess it will always exist and it will never change. And I don't have to like it. The best thing is to be talented, to really say something, to really believe what you're saying and be good and clean about what you're doing. I still think alot of people fall for hype. It really bothers me that me and Pleasant could make something up in The Weekly and people would believe it. It's ok if it's a joke and you know it, but people do it on a serious level. I want to see people stop being robots... (talk drifts into dancing - with and without getting hurt then on to trashing clubs like the Troubadour and Madame Wongs)... Kids give me shit now cause they don't know me, but every time the Bags would play, things got trashed. We played at Madame Wongs, the first attempt to have a punk band there - the tables got trashed, soy sauce all over the floor. That's why they never had punk there again, it's not that we wanted it cause we couldn't play anywhere anymore, I'd say "come on you guys. We want to play here again." Someone has a tape of me saying that at Madame Wongs and people said "so what, you shouldn't play here, this place is fucked." And I used to argue with Flipside people about that. Al and I would get into arguments and he'd say "Well that place sucks!" But who are you to say where we can and cannot play? or Black Randy jumping on the toilet bowls to break them. I went to Polish Hall and the place was destroyed. Is it more important to break a window or see a band? What's more important? So when I wrote that Surf Punk article, I was pissed at stuff like that and negative came out.
Shredder: Unfortunately it wasn't balanced by a better side.
Craig: I tried to show a better side. I said here's Mad Society, they're not into that. People misinterpret things -they're too busy thinking about what they think instead of reading exactly what's there. If people would just open their eyes... Penelope of the Avengers singing "Open your eyes! open your eyes!" and people still don't open their eyes. Anyway I guess that's enough!!
THE END.
(To say that the kids in the suburbs weren't doing anything original or taking chances with being punk is just incorrect. In the suburbs, everyone looked THE SAME - you had to. You had to fit into a very rigid behavioral standard. The suburbs were not a place where cultural experimentation was tolerated. None of this is true of Hollywood - Hollywood after all, has always been a mecca for social misfits, the one place where being a cultural outcast has always been tolerated. It's the home of the homeless, pimps, aspiring stars and prostitutes. If one walked down Hollywood Boulevard in the 1970s in a crazy outfit, you did not face the type of social resistance that suburban punk kids in the 1970s/80s faced on a daily basis. When I was in high school and decided to become a punk in 1977, there was no "in-crowd" to join and hang out with. It was just me and I had to FIND the only other 3 punks that were hiding out at my high school. We faced a very hostile high school environment. I got called "Seymour's fright night" and food thrown at me in high school - I worried about being beat up every day as I walked home. Did punks in Hollywood have to worry about that level of harassment? In Huntington Beach, there was a slightly higher population of punks (at Edison High School) so the specter of being beaten up was certainly lessened and that was an advantage, however, they were being targeted by the police department, being stopped and harassed and forced to have their pictures taken for inclusion in a type of mugshot book.
Were the beach punk's clothing style necessarily original? Don't take my word for it, see Lisa Francher's article on the "beach punks" which follows in this series. There may have been a mass adoption of this look, but it was still THEIR look.
However, I can't argue with Craig when it comes to the violence that seemed to permeate shows of certain bands (like Black Flag, etc.) but that type of violence was not part of the pre-1980 beach scenes I was familiar with and wrote about. So where did the violence come from - who were the perpetrators? I don't know if we'll ever be able to determine the dynamics that created the hyper-violence of the 1980s. We know it seemed to be associated with certain bands for whatever reason and having known some of the people in some of those bands, it wasn't the people in those bands standing up on stage inciting violence (the controversy surrounding Circle One and Suicidal Tendencies not withstanding). Why particular bands attracted violent crowds? - your guess is as good as mine. By 1980-81, it seemed pretty obvious that many of the troublemakers were in fact jocks masquerading as "weekend punks" - and for whatever reason, these jocks were automatically assumed to be from the beach scenes, whether or not that was the case. The beach punks I knew had no idea who these troublemakers were.
But back to the stigma that seemed to develop almost immediately between the Hollywood "A-list" and the suburban punks. I personally think there was a vast cultural difference between those two groups. I suspect most of the Hollywood punks had actually been bona fide outcasts of society whereas this was not necessarily the case with the punks I met coming out of the Huntington scene or the OC scene. The Huntington Beach punks may have seen things differently than the status quo jocks of the day they saw at high school, but I don't think many of them were social outcasts. (I've got no evidence to support this, by the way). Most, if not all Hollywood punks, appeared to be out of high school (were not living at home, had Hollywood crash-pads like "the Canterbury" ,etc) so there may have even been a good 5-year difference in average age between the Hollywood punks and the Huntington punks. Many Hollywood punks had a cultural background that included David Bowie and earlier glam scene bands. And most of the Huntington scene punks were in fact of high school age and as far as I know did not have a rocknroll pedigree that included listing to old Bowie or glam bands of the earlier 70s. The Los Angeles vanguard also had a high tolerance for homosexuality. There were a number of prominent LA scenesters who were openly gay and the whole art punk scene had a significant gay contingent. Whereas the Huntington Beach scene was a 100% heterosexual scene and experience and I don't think if someone had "come out" as gay, that it would have been tolerated considering the hypercharged heterosexual environment of that scene (maybe I'm wrong - you're welcome to write in). In sum, I think the Hollywood scenesters felt threatened by the beach bands and their followers - perhaps because they felt overwhelmed by the energy that came with the younger high school age kids from the beach or.... (you're welcome to take a stab at this). What I'm saying is that I suspect that there was a huge cultural divide between the Hollywood vanguard and the Huntington Beach punks.
Again, I'm not here to attack Craig Lee, who after all, was writing about this in 1981 and has not the benefit of taking a historic view of it today. I'm trying to open up a discussion. However, I do find this xenophobic viewpoint that the "suburban" scenes (eg. San Fernando, Torrance, Long Beach, South Bay, Huntington Beach) were all the same scene - to be insulting. To say we're all the same and that we were responsible for all the violence is scapegoating. For the purposes of the historic record, I'd like this addressed. I do think it is telling that he's lumped all these actually very different groups into one category - the category of "other" - a group of people whom he feels was a threat to the entire Los Angeles punk rock scene. My second point is that we need to rectify a long-held myth that it was the "beach punks" who caused all the violence at gigs. What's really funny about this too, is that the various beach punk scenes are seen as "one" - the South Bay, Huntington Beach and Long Beach scenes are all lumped together, when they were actually all three very different scenes. I came from the South Bay scene, but felt more at home in the Huntington Beach scene. For example, it's my observation that The South Bay beach punks were more mellow than the punks in the Huntington scene and the bands that came out of that scene were more compatible with the Hollywood scene (Redd Kross, Ella & the Blacks, etc). As for Long Beach, I am totally unqualified to even comment on that scene because I never spent any time in it. Yes, sometimes these bands from the various beach cities played on the same bills, but that doesn't mean they were from the same scenes.
It's kind of funny because this issue of violence at gigs really came to a head around Issue #40 or so (I'll have to dig those issues out and put some of this material up in this discussion) and was associated with the aforementioned Circle One and Suicidal Tendencies. This was quite a controversy at the time and prompted Flipside Fanzine to interview these bands and defend the charges being made against them by Flipside readers that their followers were nothing more than punk rock gang members. People were writing in saying they were being stalked and beaten up!
If you would like to chime in on this topic, please drop me an email. I will post the emails I receive on this issue on a page here within this discussion section. - Michele)