THE POP LIFE; SELF-DESTRUCTION? NOT FOR THESE PUNK STARS
Authors: ROBERT PALMER
Source: The New York Times, Late City Final
Date: Wednesday May 20, 1981
''PUNK rock really represents a return to traditional values,'' John Doe of the Los Angeles punk band X asserted recently. That may sound laughable to rock fans who associate punk with safety pins, leather jackets and green hair, but Exene, who is Mr. Doe's wife and shares X's lead vocals with him, contended that these manifestations are a fashion trend and have little to do with punk music. ''The whole point of punk rock is individualism,'' she said, ''not fashion.'' And increasingly, individualism is taking X in musical directions that are alienating some of the group's original hardcore fans. Pure punk, as introduced by the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and a few other mid-70's bands, is fast, hard, loud and relentless. X's music is more subtle.
''When punk rock came along in 1976 and 1977, a lot of people were feeling turned off by affluence and waste,'' Mr. Doe added. ''And rock had become such a big business, it perfectly mirrored the affluence and waste people saw all around them in the society. Groups were spending a million dollars making an album, or just throwing millions away. Punk rock was the opposite of that - bands playing in clubs, and making a more basic, more traditional kind of music. The punk bands showed people that you can live a pretty simple life and be happy.'' Some of the early punk musicians, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, for example, were also self-destructive. But X and other bands that grew out of the original punk onslaught seem to be more concerned with survival and self-sufficiency.
Steeped in Tradition
Whether most punk rock is ''more traditional'' than the mainstream rock heard on FM radio, as Mr. Doe asserts, is open to question. But X's music is certainly steeped in tradition. Billy Zoom, the group's guitarist, played in the last band led by the late Gene Vincent, one of the original 50's rockabillies, and his guitar stylings echo the work of Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and other 50's musicians. Don Bonebrake, X's drummer, enjoys listening to recordings of 1930's swing bands, and his powerful drumming actually does swing in a jazzlike manner, though it frequently swings at a furious pace, in overdrive.
But music isn't the only thing that's traditional about X. John Doe and Exene are married, and they both espouse monogamy. ''Just about everybody I know that's involved in this music has a steady girlfriend or boyfriend,'' Mr. Doe noted. And Exene added, ''When I first heard that song by Stephen Stills, '(If You Can't Be With the One You Love) Love the One You're With,' I was genuinely shocked. I thought he was going to say something like 'If you can't be with the one you love, write a book.' ''
Several of the songs on ''Wild Gift'' (Slash records), X's new album, champion monogamy. ''White Girl'' is a kind of tract on the pitfalls of sexual temptation, and ''Adult Books'' is a caustic indictment of pornography, swinging singles and other examples of contemporary sexual mores. Some of the songs are about old-fashioned rock-and-roll concerns such as drinking and partying, but with unusual twists. ''In This House That I Call Home'' complains about conditions in a communal crash pad where the partying never seems to stop, and in ''When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch'' Mr. Doe worries about what his wife is doing while he's passed out on the living room sofa. ''Some of our friends do drink too much,'' Mr. Doe admitted. ''But that's traditional,'' Exene argued, ''as opposed to, say, cocaine.'' Drinking instead of drugs, monogamy instead of multiple relationships - listening to X is enough to make one wonder what the world is coming to.
'Midnight Special' on TV
With its provocative lyrics, razor-sharp rock-and-roll attack, and flair for memorable melodies, X is becoming the standard bearer for the punk rock movement. Predictably, the Los Angeles hardcore punk audience is beginning to have its doubts about X now that the group has performed on network television (a ''Midnight Special'' show with President Reagan's daughter, Patricia Davis, as host) and won an international following. Since the release last year of the quartet's first album, ''Los Angeles,'' critics here and in England have been calling X the finest new American rock band. ''Wild Gift'' is a much stronger and more varied effort and can only add to the group's growing reputation. It may also cause a further rift between the group and its original punk following.
''We recently got a letter,'' Exene said, ''complaining that my hair was too long, that John's hair was too long and that Billy's hair is styled.'' Punk hair styles tend to be close-cropped, or studiedly disheveled. ''Other people have said we should go back in time two or three years and learn how to play real punk rock again,'' Exene continued. ''I think the hardcore audience is real confused right now.''
The suggestion that at this point X is too sophisticated to be called a punk group initiated a round of soul-searching that seemed to be typical of the way the band makes musical and other decisions.
''There was a time when we really wanted to be called punk rock,'' Mr. Doe said. ''It was the one term people like Linda Ronstadt wouldn't use. She might call something she did 'new wave,' but she would never call it punk. It's like in the 50's, when there was just popular music and then rock and roll came along. People who were part of the older popular music didn't want to be associated with rock and roll, and the rock-and-roll people didn't want to be considered part of the older pop. When punk came along around 1976, the punk rockers didn't want to be part of the older rock-and-roll thing, so they resisted being labeled rock and roll. Now, though, the term punk rock is losing its meaning. I'd rather just call it new music.''
Exene disagreed. ''I'd rather just call it rock and roll,'' she said. ''A lot of the people whose music we appreciate are early rock-and-roll or rhythm-and-blues people, or blues-and-country singers. Most of them didn't get much fame or money in their lifetimes, but I don't think they were doing it for those reasons. That's a tradition I think we'd all be proud to be a part of.''
Distinctive Harmony Singing
One of X's more distinctive qualities is the harmony singing of John Doe and Exene, which sounds more like the ''ragged but right'' harmony singing of traditional blues or mountain music than contemporary rock and pop. According to the group, the effect isn't intentional, but it does give X a sound unlike that of any other group, especially when the two are singing over Mr. Bonebrake's piledriving drums and Mr. Zoom's metallic rock-and-roll guitar.
These distinctive musical qualities help X communicate viscerally, even when the lyrics of the songs are more poetic and elliptical than those of ''Adult Books'' or ''When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch.'' One song on the new album is about a soldier on a bus who goes berserk, begins screaming obscenities about Elvis Presley and demands that he be taken ''back to the base.'' Other lyrics are more obscure. It turns out that John Doe and Exene were poets before they formed X with Billy Zoom in 1977 (Mr. Bonebrake came later). Mr. Doe named Baudelaire, Faulkner, Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Charles Bukowski among his literary influences. (If punks are supposed to be illiterate, Mr. Doe hardly qualifies.)
But labels aren't the point. ''The point,'' said Mr. Doe, ''is that the music should be more important than the stuff that surrounds it - more important than labels, more important than fashions, more important than money. Our main motive is to play good music and have people get enjoyment out of it, and maybe learn something or just think about things a little bit more. Our other motive is to have fun doing it.''
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