Zoom left in the mid ‘80s and was briefly replaced by Dave Alvin (The Blasters) and then Tony Gilkyson. X put out a couple more albums and delved into the fun, alternative folk side project The Knitters before Zoom returned in 1999. In the interim, X tunes like “Los Angeles,” “White Girl,” the Troggs cover “Wild Thing,” “Burning House of Love,” “The Hungry Wolf” and Alvin-penned “4th of July” became flashback staples at college and alternative rock radio.
The group has toured steadily ever since, performing more than 4,000 concerts across 40+ years. Now the musicians are putting a lid on taxing cross-country club tours (but not ruling out one-off theater gigs or festivals) as it promotes the ninth and final studio album Smoke & Fiction through 2025.
A rousing effort, Smoke & Fiction is definitely one of X’s best. Highlights include “Big Black X,” a reference to the group’s logo on a venue marquee where Cervenka deftly sings about the old days: notably The Masque club, a then-deteriorating H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D sign, Errol Flynn’s abandoned mansion and bikers on the 101 freeway. The hard-charging title track, led by Zoom’s taut guitar work, details the state of the world and recalls past X classics. A fast and furious “Ruby Church” displays Doe and Cervenka’s distinct harmonies and boasts a ripping Zoom guitar solo.
Then there’s the pile-driving “Sweet ‘til the Bitter End” and moody gem “The Way it Is,” where the co-vocalists recall how “we did what we did to get along.” Bonebrake’s drums thrash in all the right places, while Zoom’s frequent tremolo effects are enthralling.
Rock Cellar caught up with Doe for an in-depth chat from his home in Austin prior to the band launching the “Putting the X Back in Xmas” West Coast tour. The interview has been slightly edited for clarity.
Rock Cellar: Does X have anything special planned for the holiday concerts? Will you include any Christmas or New Year’s-themed songs you’ve recorded in the past, such as “Goodbye Year, Goodbye” in the sets?
John Doe: We are doing “Goodbye Year, Goodbye.” We did some Christmas songs; it must have been 10 years ago. Maybe even longer. We recorded a few, and we put them in the set. I didn't think there was a remarkable rendition (among) any of them. [Laughs] They were serviceable.
After we did that for a couple of years, I took an informal poll with the band, asking them, “Did anyone remark about those songs? Did anyone say that they liked it, or they didn't like it or anything?” Everybody, including our crew, manager, and the band, said, “Not really.” I thought, “Well, fuck it. Why should we do this?” If we don’t think it’s particularly amazing, and nobody else does…
Rock Cellar: Have you noticed a change in demeanor among fans who won’t be able to see you perform in a club anymore?
John Doe: Yes, in the smaller markets, there’s twice as many people. When we did Columbia, South Carolina, which I don’t think we’ve ever played, there were about 500-600 people. Then in Albuquerque, there were a thousand. The smaller markets, for sure, are turning out and we’re all very grateful. But there comes a time when you feel like, “We’ve done this a lot, and so maybe we need to do it a little less, and we can continue as a band longer.”
Rock Cellar: Has there been a residual melancholy or wistful feeling after playing some of these small venues for the last time? Last June, for example, X performed at the legendary Troubadour in West Hollywood. Did The Troubadour present many punk rock bands in the early days?
John Doe: No, they did not. We played there once before. And that was when Doug Weston - Rest in Peace - was still active in that club. The place was jammed, 500 people, however many people they could squeeze into that place. That was when I was the one who would go settle [up at the end of the night for our money].
Weston pointed to this sign that said “Capacity: 167” or 210 or something; what the fire marshal would say was the capacity. And he said, “Well, you guys filled the place. So, here’s your $900,” or whatever the hell it was. I said, “That’s bullshit. There were twice as many people. Probably 500 people.” And he goes, “No, that's our capacity. We don't let in any more people than what our capacity is.” Something dodgy like that. And I said, “Cool. See you later.” That was the one and only time we played there, except for this year. I don’t feel wistful.
Exene and I might go back and do a duet thing, or I might play there with my solo band. But you are grateful and then you graduate. I like playing a theater. I don’t mind if people sit down. They’ll figure it out and stand in the aisles on the side. It’s more rewarding to play to a couple thousand people…Hard to say. Sure, you have moments of wistfulness, but then you think about what it smells like when you walk in, and it smells like bleach: “Oh right, that’s why.”
Rock Cellar: I noticed from your recent setlists that X has been playing songs off the exceptional new album Smoke & Fiction and 2020’s solid Alphabetland. How have fans reacted to them?
John Doe: Some people sing along, and some people fake it. And that's always fun too. No one has said, “Boooo! Don't play anything new.” There’s no cold beer cans being heaved at the stage, thank goodness. That’s another thing I don’t miss about the old days. Anyway, people dig it. We do too. I'm proud of the new songs. I'm proud of us making this new record. I feel like we might be going out on a high note.
Rock Cellar: If there are new songs in the sets, it makes everything more interesting for you.
John Doe: Yeah. If it were just up to me, I would play a different setlist every night. But it’s (hard) to get the pacing and everybody on the same page. We end up playing more or less the same 25 or 30 songs, which is OK by me.
Rock Cellar: Turning to the latest album, what was the process like recording with producer Rob Schnapf (Beck, Eliott Smith, Guided by Voices) again and doing it at the Legendary Sunset Sound studio?
John Doe: Sunset Sound is awesome. They have a perfect combination of great gear and an easy vibe. Fortunately, because of the price of the room per day, we only spent five days there. I’d love to have done the whole record there, but that wouldn't be smart. If you have a budget, know the songs, know what you’re going to do, know how you want to record it, and you have a good engineer and producer, you only have to spend four or five days. And that’s like four or five grand. That’s not a lot. We got all of the drums and bass and some of the guitars down. Rob knows the band. He’s willing to work with all of us. Exene and I got our vocals very quickly and he worked with Billy really well. He doesn't put his own stamp on it. He’s done a variety of different kinds of music. Rob’s a great guy.
Rock Cellar: You've said in a recent interview that Smoke & Fiction was a hard album to make and yet it was done quickly. Were you referring to the lyrics, music, or both?
John Doe: Both of them, but more musically. I’ve worked pretty hard at getting rid of my ego. It only limits you if you say, “This is the way that I wrote the song, so we have to make it work” - which I used to do. Nowadays, I'll say, “That doesn't seem to be working. Let’s just make some different music.” You have to learn the song one way, and then learn it a different way. Then we’d be changing the lyrics, and sometimes I'd throw out whole sections of verses.
“Face in the Moon” was completely different. You have to learn it, relearn it and change it to get the best song. If you're a real hard head about it, then you probably spend more time working on it because you're trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole. But this way, you’re constantly fluid and that’s difficult.
Rock Cellar: X road tested several of the new album’s songs last year. Did that make the recording process easier since you knew how they worked live prior to recording them?
John Doe: Yeah. That's a great luxury that most people don't have. Because we had decided well in advance that we were going to make a new record, Exene and I were able to get busy writing the songs. Then, as they developed, we could play them live.
There's a different level of intensity when you play something live and not just in a rehearsal hall. Your adrenaline is higher. You can’t stop and say, “Wait a minute. We messed up that part.” You just keep going. I think we did that for only the first two records. For most bands and artists, singer/songwriters - I don't even know about modern R&B - a lot of that (material is) written in the studio. You have to figure it out on the fly as you rehearse. Then you record it. You don't have the luxury of playing it several times and really getting it under your fingers.
Rock Cellar: Exene has said that she badgered you guys to make a new studio album for 15 years. Why the long wait? Was retaining the rights to your recordings and teaming with Fat Possum Records the impetus for it?
John Doe: [Laughs] That was part of it. Sometimes you have to wait until the time is right. I wasn’t willing to put all the time and effort into something that wouldn't be released. This latest record was difficult because we were touring, rehearsing, and writing - all these things back-to-back-to-back.
Once Rob proved that he knew what the band should sound like after doing the “Live in Latin America” album [released in 2018; recorded on tour with Pearl Jam in 2011], and we signed to Fat Possum, and got our masters back, I realized that I was out of excuses.
And then, we recorded four songs. The only new one was “Angel on the Road” and three older songs. It sounded like us, and it was rewarding. It was like, “Obviously we can do this.” So, then we really got busy writing the rest of “Alphabetland” and rehearsing that.
But we weren’t touring as much, and we only had to come up with five other songs. We had nine or 10 songs. “All the Time in the World” was done in the studio, a spoken word piece that Exene had done. It was a little bit easier. Maybe that’s being opportunistic or capitalistic or something. If you were a true selfless artist, you would just make it just for the expression.
Rock Cellar: That can be costly.
John Doe: Fuck the cost. You can do things pretty reasonably nowadays. It doesn't cost a lot to make a record. It depends on how you want to make it. It was more about time than effort. I did two or three solo records during that time.
Rock Cellar: You also had a starring role in the 2022 film noir “D.O.A.”
John Doe: [Laughs] That movie was a whopping two and a half weeks. It was done on a shoestring and I'm really proud of the fact that it came out as convincing as it did. I proved to myself that I could actually hold a movie; I could be the center of a movie. That was cool.
Rock Cellar: On Smoke & Fiction, a reflective thread runs through several song lyrics. Was that something that evolved naturally while writing?
John Doe: There isn't anything that we've done that's contrived or calculated. Really nothing. It did develop as the songs were written, and then once we were recording. Especially that last song “Big Black X.” That was a piece of prose that Exene had written and showed to me. I thought, “This could make a great song.”
But we had to file it down and edit it and figure out what the rhythm of the lyrics were and how they would fit together. On the original recording, each chord had half the number of measures that it does now. Because Exene would say, “It is changing too fast. I can't get a hold of it.” So, I thought, “What if I played bass for twice as long on each chord? That works.” That (explanation) is a little bit in the weeds, but that helped make the decision this would be a good final record.
Musically, there’s some Bo Diddley that you can hear in it. There’s some “In This House That I Call Home” on certain songs, there’s a bit of doo wop with “The Way it Is.” There’s some early Danger House [Records, the LA indie punk label which released X’s first single “Adult Books” in 1978] sounds on “Face in the Moon,” and stuff like that.
Lyrically and musically, it checks a lot of boxes, but that's also what you can do once you’ve written songs for a particular entity. Either you know who you are individually if you’re a solo artist or you know what parameters or what boundaries the band has or what you do well.
And you can, in the writing of it, and certainly in the rehearsal, tailor things so that it makes sense and fits.
Rock Cellar: Anyone who is familiar with X music could identify the band instantly from listening to this album. It’s not as if you went off on a jazz tangent or something.
John Doe: [Laughs] Actually, we did, but it didn’t make the record. Billy had something that he wrote, and I thought, “This is so cool. We worked on it while we were touring. We recorded it and Billy put sax on it. Exene did some other lyrics, and I was all for putting it on there. This is an oddball thing. And everybody else said, “No, this is bullshit. This isn't us.” I was the one who was saying, “No, let's do it. Let's get crazy.”
Rock Cellar: On “Face in the Moon” in particular, Billy's abrasive guitar shards really make that tune stand out.
John Doe: We did that once in rehearsal. And then we tried to do it again and Billy was never happy with it. He didn't care for what he was doing the one time we rehearsed it. But luckily, I recorded it and so he used that as a template. There's a lesson for any guitar players: Record everything…play intuitively rather than all the tricks you've learned, all the knowledge and all this other stuff that is good and necessary. But is it? Does it just get in the way? I think you can make a case for the fact that sometimes it does get in the way because you just want to be intuitive, extemporaneous, and just try it and see what happens.
Rock Cellar: Speaking of Billy’s famous guitar sound, I was reading an old quote that Dave Alvin said about having to learn Billy’s parts when he joined X. He called those arrangements “almost mathematically perfect, put together like schematics.” Do you think Billy’s technique with the rockabilly elements was something that made X stand out apart from your contemporaries early on?
John Doe: For sure. Billy is a terrific amp builder, and he does draw schematics, so Dave's not wrong. It's interesting: It did make us stand out, however, that wasn't the point of what that whole movement was about. Yes, we knew a little. Exene and I had a sense of songwriting. I had a more traditional idea, but that wasn't the point. The whole point was just to try something, not get caught up in virtuosity and perfection and all that stuff, which had led popular music down a really bland path.
Rock Cellar: I heard your appearance on Dwight Yoakam’s weekly SiriusXM show a few months ago and on it you thanked all the corporate rock acts from the Seventies that spawned X and others into forming punk bands as a reaction against it.
John Doe: It was Exene's son Henry, who first pointed that out and said, “If it wasn’t for the band Boston, you guys wouldn't exist.” You know what? We had other mentors from afar - people like the Talking Heads, the Ramones and Blondie and all the CBGB’s bands. And then of course, all the other people that influenced them, like David Bowie and the MC5 and Stooges. Although I didn't really listen to the Stooges, I came to that later because they just weren't around.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. Because that record [the acclaimed 1976 self-titled debut album] was so influential. Jonathan Richman is just a wonderful person and character. Talk about singing from your heart and your intuition! He cares very much about what he does. But no one's going to tell him, “Don't do that, play your hits.” He's a true artist. Nothing but respect for him.
Rock Cellar: I was listening to your Make the Music Go Bang! compilation in preparation for this interview and while perusing the liner notes, something that Ray Manzarek said about working with X stuck out. He called yours and Exene’s vocal blend: “vaguely atonal Chinese harmony.” What did you like most about working with him? Were you all Doors fans when that opportunity first came along, and Ray wanted to produce you?
John Doe: Exene and I are huge Doors fans. If one of their songs comes on the radio, I still listen to the whole thing. It was an honor, and it was shocking, and we thought, “Maybe we're onto something” here.
Yes, Billy’s playing and Exene and my harmonies did set us apart. I give Exene all the credit for that and me a little bit of credit for saying, “Sure, let's go for it.” She gets the credit because she hadn’t been in a lot of bands and didn’t learn traditional style harmony. She figured it out.
With The Knitters and other things, she does some very traditional harmony. I also read something about Kris Kristofferson that said he had a “pitch adjacent vocal style,” which is one way of (conveying that) it was unusual. It was a pitch indifferent singing style.
I loved Ray. I miss him, and he was definitely a mentor, a father figure. Because he knew he didn't have to reinvent anything. He just had to get good performances. He was a terrific leader and kept us on track. He was wonderful.
Rock Cellar: Most musicians don’t go back and listen to their old albums unless they absolutely have to, but if push comes to shove, what would be the first X album you would pick from your catalog as a favorite or one you believe still stands the test of time?
John Doe: I would say “Under the Big Black Sun,” because it was recorded better. It’s very dark and sad without being maudlin. A good balance.
Rock Cellar: In recent years, X was honored with official “X Day” proclamations from the cities of West Hollywood and Los Angeles, the band was the subject of a Dodgers night, where you sang The National Anthem and Exene threw out the first pitch, and you had the special Grammy Museum exhibit, “X: 40 Years of Punk in Los Angeles” in 2017-18. Do those kinds of events serve as a validation that X was a vital part of rock history?
John Doe: Yes. Everybody likes to be recognized. I would think I can say that without conflict. It's hard to put competition and art together. When the Guitar Center wanted us to put our handprints in their Rock Walk of Fame, suddenly you want to thank your grandmother for immigrating to the United States [laughs], and say, “Oh, little old me?”
X tour dates:
12/27-28 Santa Ana, CA - Observatory OC
12/30 San Diego, CA - Observatory North Park
Special event:
5/9-13 Miami, FL to Nassau, Bahamas - Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise! with Social Distortion, Rocket From the Crypt, Reverend Horton Heat, L7, Old 97’s, Los Straitjackets, Flamin’ Groovies, more, undergroundgaragecruise.com
Special event:
5/9-13 Miami, FL to Nassau, Bahamas - Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise! with Social Distortion, Rocket From the Crypt, Reverend Horton Heat, L7, Old 97’s, Los Straitjackets, Flamin’ Groovies, more, undergroundgaragecruise.com
John Doe (solo) tour date:
2/7-8 Novato, CA - Hop Monk Tavern Session Room*
*with Jill Sobule
xtheband.com
xtheband.com
My interview originally ran at rockcellarmagazine.com
X photo by Gary Leonard.
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