In a pulsing excerpt and personal Q&A, John Doe from X recreates an unforgettable night at the Whisky a Go Go and reflects on his journey from the early days of punk L.A.
Something’s Happening Here
It could’ve been 10 p.m. in July in a painted, plywood hallway upstairs at the Whisky a Go Go. There was a corner w/ red & black linoleum squares on the floor. This corner was at one end of another short hall & staircase that led down to the stage. I stood there breathing short breaths waiting for the rest of X to join me before we’d walk down those stairs. I imagined Jim Morrison & Ray Manzarek or Otis Redding or Arthur Lee or Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell standing on the very same spot, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to them. It wasn’t the first time I’d been here & this had become a kind of ritual. But it was the first time in 1978 that the show was sold out & the Whisky added another. This was a place where you knew that something was definitely happening, that you were definitely headed somewhere. I would look down at my shoes and those red & black squares and think that we were part of something, like others had been part of something else. Where the people in their audience had known something that other people did not & were about to see something the rest of the world might see soon.
When we walked down those stairs, I knew it would go from zero to a hundred in a blink, cymbals would crash & DJ Bonebrake would hit his drums so hard that he’d probably knock something over or snap a hi-hat pedal in two. I might pull the cord out of my guitar & stop the giant, rumbling bass. And we would forget about the asshole soundman who said we were too loud. After all the nights of rehearsals & learning songs, bad equipment at the Masque & other DIY shows, this would be louder than hell & there would be sounds hurtling past & swirling around us all & somewhere amidst that mayhem, there would be a moment when everything would slow down & I would see things slo-mo. I’d catch someone’s face distorted by a shoulder or the palm of another’s hand. Or Exene’s hair would rise into a fan as she flipped it into or out of her face. I would glimpse her dark red lips making wonderful sounds that I knew were the only sound that could be made at that moment. She would tell the truth to all these people who knew she would tell the truth. There would be flashing lights & sharp, piercing guitar notes & monstrous chords & Billy would look like he was straddling a wide creek w/ a smile that was genuine & scary & somewhat practiced because a fan of his rockabilly band had said he looked like he wasn’t having fun while he played. I knew Exene & I would bounce around the stage unhinged, but Billy would stay still, play so fast & true & smile & wink at girls. There would be people’s faces upturned to the lights & we would recognize over half of those faces & they knew where & about who the songs had been written. There would be sweat and DJ would have no shirt on. He would shine w/ the power of his driving hands & arms & legs & his eyes would roll back in his head & his chin would tilt upward and sometimes steam would rise from his back. And we knew then that we were unstoppable & that we had power. And that something was definitely happening here.
There had been so many other nights when the roles were reversed and Exene & I were in the audience seeing something—a band?—that was not fully formed but breaking something to pieces, getting to the bottom of some core. When The Screamers stretched heavy, black plastic across the entire front of the stage to obscure all that lay behind, only to slit it open w/ a knife & begin their jagged, distorted performance, it didn’t matter what the sounds were, whether they were good or smart or accomplished. It didn’t matter if they were pretty or polished. They had an edge & were cool & probably dangerous. You could just tell. And it was happening now, right now, in front of your face & no one had seen this before. Tomata du Plenty could’ve been wearing a straightjacket, could’ve escaped from the asylum, no one knew, but our imagination allowed anything to be possible—the wilder the better. It throbbed & pulsed & was part music, part theater & all live experience. No one cared whether they could buy a record later. No one cared to have a souvenir T-shirt. The band, any band, dropped complete onto this stage, right now & we may never see them again after this night was over. Rik L Rik from F-Word or John Denney from The Weirdos both seemed to move like they were dodging imaginary bullets, swerving & bending, choking the mic stand as their eyes bugged out of their heads. They had practiced & were prepared to meet whatever was thrown, sometimes literally, at them, but there was nothing calculated in what they did. The bands pounded & roared & droned & fell down & broke shit & got too high to play right, but it was all happening right there in front of our eyes.
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Excerpted from Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe with Tom DeSavia and Friends. Copyright © 2016. Available from Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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AFLW: The excerpt and the book are about a specific place and time in the music scene and the people who fueled its energy and creativity in Los Angeles. How do you feel the city played a central role in defining X and the L.A. punk scene in a way that couldn’t have happened anywhere else?
John Doe: What happens in every scene from any era is totally shaped by its environment. There was decay everywhere in Los Angeles in the mid and late ’70s. This also affected the scene in NYC in the mid ’70s. The main difference was the openness of L.A. versus New York. Cars and landscape made for a wild freedom in the West.
AFLW: Your excerpt title seems to allude to Buffalo Springfield’s song “For What It’s Worth,” describing the Sunset Strip riots a generation earlier as a movement formed around the Whisky A Go Go. What were some of the early challenges that helped you personally develop a thick skin to be ready for that moment for X at the Whisky?
JD: I worked construction and other odd jobs. We all knew straight jobs weren’t an option so we did what we had to, to make ends meet and reach our goal to become artists. We played many other rented halls and DIY venues before the Whisky but it wasn’t an epic arrival, the struggle for respect continued.
AFLW: It sounds like the performance in the excerpt hits the points in our theme perfectly: “all the wild, darkly humorous, joyful, painful, challenging, amusing, futile experiences and more that are part of a full and interesting life.” Off-stage, how did L.A. in the late-‘70s mirror these emotional states and experiences for you? Does one specific memory stand out?
JD: The West Hollywood duplex where Exene, Billy and I lived is chronicled in the book and the best stories are there. Life on and off stage were part of one piece. On stage was where the stories off stage were told in a compressed fashion.
AFLW: As a longtime L.A. musician and resident, how did your journey into the past change how you live and create now? Has glancing back altered your view at all?
JD: Actually, I moved from Los Angeles in 1988, but the disposable, pop culture of Southern California greatly influenced X. Nowadays I’m inspired by more permanent and elemental parts of the world. Seeing everyone’s different truths in one book makes me proud and grateful to have survived and helped tell that story.
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John Doe has worked as a roofer, an aluminum siding mechanic, a manager of poetry readings, a musician and an actor. He met Exene Cervenka at a Venice poetry workshop in 1976 and hooked up with Billy Zoom around the same time. When DJ Bonebrake joined X in mid-1977, the lineup was complete. Doe currently tours with X and as a solo artist in support of his latest record, The Westerner. Doe lives north of San Francisco.