PUNKERS’ PROGRESS : Catching Up With X and Social Distortion

For X and Social Distortion, the auldest days of auld lang syne happened during the Carter Administration.

Old acquaintance won’t be renewed tonight, when the two bands play separate New Year’s Eve shows in Orange County’s two major concert clubs. But the coincidental holiday bookings do bring back memories that span virtually the entire history of alternative rock in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Formed in 1977, X was the leader of L.A.’s first punk eruption. Songs written by singers John Doe and Exene Cervenka depicted gritty, street-level realities, and they hit with a wallop, thanks to the duo’s agitated harmonies and original guitarist Billy Zoom’s frantic, rockabilly-fueled guitar blasts. X irrevocably dispelled the ‘70s nostrum that Southern California rock musicians collectively had checked into an insular, comfortably enervated Hotel California of the mind.

As punk rock grew in Los Angeles, suburban kids began to take notice (kids who also had tuned in to the punk exploits of the New York-based Ramones and the London brigade led by the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned). Sometime in 1979, Mike Ness, an uncommonly pugnacious young punker from Fullerton, began making regular treks to Los Angeles to see bands like X and the Blasters.

Before the year was over, Ness had launched a band of his own, Social Distortion. Taking the Clash and the Rolling Stones as key influences, and later incorporating traditional blues and country sources, SD has gone on to become the most successful and longest continuously running product of Orange County’s own early-’80s punk rock boom.

“X influenced us with their individuality. They were different, and they stayed different,” Ness said recently from his home in Costa Mesa. “We used to go see them at the Hong Kong Cafe, the Starwood, or the Fleetwood”--all old Los Angeles punk venues. “We were always sneaking backstage, helping ourselves to the bands’ beers.”

John Doe doesn’t begrudge Ness those mooched beers--or the success that Social Distortion has built during the past four years, a time when X itself has been either woodshedding or, as Doe put it, “on vacation.”

“Them attaining the success they did was terrific,” Doe said over the phone this week from Hollywood. “It’s not particularly polished or virtuoso, but it’s got a feeling.”

In a separate interview, Cervenka also praised the alternative rock movement that gained momentum while X was on hold. “I’m really happy that all these bands are having so much success on their own, and by their own standards,” she said. “I love Nirvana, Hole, and all those bands. L7 is my favorite.”

One of X’s most distinctive early songs was “The Unheard Music,” in which the band sang about the marginality of what later came to be known as alternative music. The lyric vented X’s spleen (and perverse pride) at being “locked out” of a rock mainstream that allowed “no hard chords on the car radio.”

“Times have changed, definitely. Everything from radio to MTV has become a lot more open-minded,” said Cervenka, who is willing to bask a bit in the role of honored influence. “It’s one of those things where you think, ‘Maybe we were ahead of our time.’ But that’s just a cornball concept. We did a lot of good stuff and held the door open so other people could go in. That’s a good legacy, and I’d be happy with it if we never did another record.”

But X has done another record. Doe and Cervenka were speaking from the studio where the band was putting finishing touches on “Hey Zeus!,” its first album of new material since the 1987 release “See How We Are.” In 1988, X issued “Live at the Whisky A Go-Go on the Fabulous Sunset Strip,” then went on hiatus.

“One of the reasons we took a vacation was to take a look around, see what influences we could incorporate,” Doe said. He acknowledged that the members of X--which also includes original drummer D. J. Bonebrake and guitarist Tony Gilkyson, who joined in 1986--weren’t positive they would regroup when they parted in ’88.

X took a two-year layoff, then reformed to play four shows at the end of 1990. “When we saw what the audience was like, we understood we still had validity and the audience wasn’t a bunch of crabby old people,” said Doe, who is in his late 30s.

X decided then to do another album, but proceeded slowly as Doe and Cervenka continued their own projects--including records for each, film roles for Doe and a writing project for Cervenka, providing background and commentary for “Just Another War,” a just-published book of battlefront photographs from the Persian Gulf War.

By late ‘91, X had signed a deal with an independent British label, Big Life (U.S. distribution of the X album will be handled by Mercury Records). Even then, rather than rush out an album, Doe said, the band decided to take a more deliberate, painstaking approach to recording than it had in the past.

X elected to work with producer Tony Berg, who has shown a flair for ‘60s-influenced pure-pop on albums by Michael Penn and the Orange County band Altered State. Berg “has a home studio, which has allowed us a lot of freedom,” Doe said. “We had the luxury of building up a track to completion, then tearing it down completely. Something would meet our expectations, then we’d realize it could go in a different direction and be more adventurous. When you don’t have the clock ticking, you can rethink things.

“No one’s waiting in line at the record stores to get another X record,” Doe added. “If it’s mediocre, it’s not going to do anything. If it can change people’s idea of what X can do, it’s worthwhile.”

Where Doe and Cervenka’s past practice had been to write songs together, this time they worked independently on most of the material.

Cervenka and Doe, who were married to each other in the band’s early days, both branched out creatively and also raised families during X’s layoff. Cervenka has a son who will turn 5 next month; Doe is the father of three daughters. Cervenka issued two albums of her own, “Old Wives’ Tales” (1989) and “Running Sacred,” (1990). Doe released “Meet John Doe” in 1990 and plans to begin another album when X is finished touring.

Doe also appeared in two films this year, taking a leading role in the little-seen “Roadside Prophets” and playing George Strait’s drummer in the more widely released “Pure Country.”

Asked his future acting plans, Doe said he’s “just waiting for those giant Hollywood moguls to give me a call.” His greatest ambition for the coming year is “to be part of ‘Home Alone 3,”’ he added wryly.

Cervenka is awaiting reaction to “Just Another War,” her first published writings since “Adulterers Anonymous,” a book of poetry co-written with New York punk figure Lydia Lunch. Cervenka said the new book centers on the work of Kenneth Jerecke, a photojournalist who covered the Gulf War for Time magazine. Cervenka’s text appears in her own handwriting. The book also includes a forward by broadcast newsman John Hockenberry.

Cervenka said she didn’t know Jerecke before they worked on the book. “He was an X fan, and he came to me. His photos were censored fairly heavily” at the time of the war, and Cervenka said the book was his way of presenting images too raw for the mainstream press to publish.

“He always says, ‘If you’re big enough to make a war, you should be big enough to look at it,’ ” Cervenka said. “We worked on the book a long time and realized we weren’t going to get anyone to publish it. We started borrowing money and looking for help. We went to Henry Rollins (the punk rocker and monologuist), who has a very successful publishing company (12.13.61 Publications), and he said he’d distribute it.”

Cervenka said the book is being issued on Bedrock Press, a custom imprint she and Jerecke set up. She said her text offers commentary on the pictures as well as historical background and analysis about the Gulf War and its causes. “The story of the war is what led up to it and the way the media covered it,” she said. “The war itself is just another war.”

Recent events may force X to interpret some of its own politicized material in a new light. In “The New World,” from 1983, this band of confirmed left-wingers sardonically vented its gloom over ascendant Reaganism and a declining Rust Belt economy:

It was better before, before they voted for what’s-his-name.

This was supposed to be the new world.

Cervenka said she’ll grant Bill Clinton a grace period before thinking of him as yet another what’s-his-name.

“I do take some hope in the last election. As Reagan would say, I’m cautiously optimistic. (Clinton’s) appointments seem good, and his position on choice is good. It does kind of staunch the fundamentalist flow. It’s better for the arts and environment. The main thing now is to make Clinton-Gore deliver on their promises to people.”

But, Cervenka added, there still are plenty of what’s-his-names around to keep “The New World” current: “There are still these really corrupt guys, giving favors and buying and selling favors. You can always apply that to somebody, somewhere.”

Still, looking to 1993, Cervenka is strictly upbeat. “Oh, I have fabulous plans for the next year. I’m looking forward to all sorts of new adventures. I can’t wait to do shows with these guys (in X), travel and find more new, interesting things to write about, work hard and just be happy.”

As for Mike Ness, New Year’s Eve ’92 marks his achievement of the Orange County dream: After years of living in modest rentals, he recently bought a house of his own in Costa Mesa, and expects to finish moving in today.

He never was the likeliest candidate for the role of suburban squire. Ness was the punk rocker’s punk rocker, a tattoo-covered fellow who earned a youthful reputation for hard brawling and hard-drugging. But in his mid-20s, he had to confront his narrowing options: clean up, or face either imprisonment or an ignominious death. He cleaned up, and over the past five years, Social Distortion, which he fronts as singer, songwriter and lead guitarist, has been gathering career momentum.

“Definitely, it feels good,” Ness said of having arrived at the point where he can afford to buy a house. “Everyone in the band (which also includes guitarist Dennis Danell, bassist John Maurer and drummer Christopher Reece) owns some type of property. We worked hard for it. We certainly weren’t an overnight success.”

Ness noted with a trace of proud punk petulance that his vision of the suburban dream is a little . . . different.

“I painted (the house) pink. The neighbors are bummed. It doesn’t seem like a pretty popular color nowadays. They weren’t out-and-out rude, but it wasn’t the choice they would have picked.

“I wanted it to look like that TV series ‘Crime Story,’ which is about when the mob moved to Vegas,” added Ness, who has always drawn a good part of his inspiration from outlaw lore. “A real Hollywood kind of glitz. It came out perfect. The inside is Atomic, which is a period of design from the ‘50s--post-nuclear.”

Ness has earned the right to relax and consider such matters as interior decoration, the collecting of ‘50s erotica, and the custom retooling of vintage ‘50s cars with “crazy flame paint jobs, crazy colors,” all of which are among his extra-musical interests.

“This was by far our busiest year,” he said: touring in support of its fourth album, “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell,” the band was “home just two weeks” between March and November.

When the album came out, Social Distortion was seeking to double the solid base it had established in 1990 with its major-label debut, “Social Distortion,” an album that sold about 250,000 copies. Instead of boosting SD to the next level of success, “Somewhere” proved to be a smaller step ahead.

“It did a little over 300,000, I think,” Ness said. “We had to do our part, and we certainly did” by touring exhaustively across the United States and playing their first-ever dates in Europe. But with Epic label-mates Pearl Jam turning into the hottest alternative band around, SD may have received less promotional attention than it expected.

In any case, Ness said matter-of-factly, “We wanted a gold record (500,000 sold), but we didn’t get it. That’s all right--maybe the next one.”

The band did pass several notable milestones in 1992. Among them: It got its first extensive feature treatment in Rolling Stone magazine. Ness, meanwhile, turned 30. And he became a father.

His son, Julian James, was born Friday, March 13--during the same week that SD’s superstition-defying song “Bad Luck” was peaking at Number 2 on Billboard magazine’s alternative rock chart. Ness said, though, that he is separated from the baby’s mother, a former girlfriend who lives with the child in San Luis Obispo. “Me and the mom are on good terms, but they live kind of far, so I don’t get to see them as much as I like. As he gets older, he’ll be able to visit me.”

Ness said his first order of business for ‘93, after settling into his new house, is to finish overhauling one of his old cars, a ’55 Pontiac.

“The same insight I have with the band, I have with these cars,” he said. “I’m always looking for other ways besides the band to express my creativity. Some day, it might be acting; it might be getting back into art. Throughout school, I was pretty good at (painting). I’m out of practice now.”

Not that he plans to let his music slide. In fact, he said he surprised himself by writing several songs while Social Distortion was touring. “I always thought I had to wait ‘till I got home (to write music). Now, I know I can do it on the road. I’ve got five pretty powerful new songs. I don’t want to rush the creative process, but I would think by May we could probably do another record.”

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Since its first singles and its debut album in the early ‘80s, SD--like X--has expanded basic punk rock sources to reflect a love of ‘50s-based roots music. Parts of “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell” found the band cranking out a sort of turbo-charged version of traditional country music.

However, Ness said, “the last thing we want is for people to say (that) Social Distortion is a country band. Actually, I’m going the opposite way now. My favorite CD right now is ‘The Avengers,’ ” a reissue of work by an obscure, late-’70s punk band from San Francisco.

Ness thinks SD’s next album will be “real primal, rock ‘n’ roll punk style, (although) not necessarily fast. The last two records had a little country flair. This record might have a little more punk to it.” He also said he is injecting more creative fancy into his lyrics, as opposed to the autobiography that has dominated past albums.

But whatever he may do, he said he has no plans to tinker drastically with Social Distortion’s always-aggressive sound, which has been honed but not radically changed from its earliest recordings.

“The four major influences are punk and rockabilly and country and blues, with a little glitter in there from the T-Rex, Bowie, Lou Reed and Stones era. Absolutely, those are the guidelines.”