Bad Blood Is Epitaph for Once-Close Label, Band

The Offspring’s messy falling out with Epitaph Records put a smudge on the platinum-plated success of the “Smash” album.

It had been a fairy-tale partnership, Cinderella at the moshers’ ball, as the little punk band from Orange County and the little punk label from Los Angeles crashed the music conglomerates’ party together.

But Holland said he began reading reports and hearing rumors that Epitaph’s owner, punk musician Brett Gurewitz, was being courted by major-label princes seeking to buy a share of the company. The Offspring had refused even to talk to the majors, Holland said.

“We felt really betrayed, like we couldn’t trust him anymore. We thought we’d be sold off like a [expletive] commodity. It was so far from where we started with this guy,” in what the Offspring had regarded as a “brotherhood of Epitaph.”

If the band was going to be treated as a commodity instead of a blood brother, Holland said, it would choose its own buyer; hence its decision last year to leave Epitaph for Columbia Records, which offered lucrative advance bonuses and royalty rates.

Gurewitz hotly denies betraying any trust; he says he did meet with some big-label executives he respected for building small companies into large ones, but only to seek business advice, not to negotiate business deals. He said he promised the Offspring that he would retain full control of Epitaph and never take on a major-label partner.

Gurewitz has not sold any part of his company; he says he got $10 million from Sony Music, Columbia’s parent company, when he reluctantly sold the rights to the third and final album called for in Epitaph’s contract with the Offspring.

Holland “stabbed me in the back, and now he’s going around trying to make me look like the bad guy,” Gurewitz said. “They were at the optimal point in their career to cash in their chips for the most money. . . . That’s what they did. For them to paint any other story is criminal.”