MUSIC INTERVIEW: KEITH MORRIS

Black Flags, Circle Jerks and Super Groups: Finding the Off! Position

By: Team Buzzine

May 27, 2011

Geographically speaking, Keith Morris has not gone far: in his fifty-some years on this planet, he has never strayed much from his childhood home in Hermosa Beach, California. But in artistic and musical terms, he has been to the mountaintop and back -- first as a founding member of Black Flag, then as the leader of The Circle Jerks, and now within his new punk rock super group, Off! Morris is now an elder statesman of the punk scene who is still more than able to show the kids (and everyone else) a thing or two, both about the world of music and the world in general. Buzzine recently sat down with Keith on Record Store Day at Fingerprints in Long Beach, California to talk about the beginnings of his new band, the lessons he has learned, and why it turns out that music is better than drugs.

Stefan Goldby: What was it about playing with Dimitri, Steven, and Mario that made you want to start a new band once again?

Keith Morris: I’ve been in a couple of other bands, and I’ve always had fun in those other bands, and one of the bands I’d been in for over 30 years, which is over half my life. And all of a sudden, things started to get ugly, like these really horrendous decisions are being made, and all of the decisions affect me, and I’m an older guy. I don’t have time for these childlike decisions.

We started working on a new album, and the gentleman that was going to produce the album and I ended up having to write the bulk of the album. What happened was the other guys in the band fired the producer who I’d written all of this material with. And I wasn’t going to look for any kind of rip-off situation, behind the back, swipe this from him… I’d already been through all of that early on, so I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.

Dimitri, the guitar player in Off! and I looked at each other. I said, “Dimitri, we’ve got to have a Plan B because they’re gonna flush the commode and they’re gonna want us to go down in it, and we’re not doing that. These songs are too good, they’re too vital, they’re too urgent, they’re too energetic, and I’m dealing with a bunch of burn-outs and I don’t want to hang out in that situation.” That’s where Off! started.

We had our Plan B, which was: Make a list of bassists and drummers that we would play with. And at the top of each of those lists; bass player - Steven McDonald; drummer - Mario Rubalcaba. Now Steven had played with Sparks, Beck, Tater Totz, Courtney Love… he had his own band, he still plays with his older brother Jeffrey in a band called Redd Kross, and all of these bands and musicians are all amazing. Mario played with Hot Snakes, Rocket from the Crypt, and the list just goes on and on and on and on… Battalion of Saints were like the best punk rock band from San Diego… And they both said, “We’re in.” All we played for them were three songs that was Dimitri just jamming and whamming and banging on guitar in my living room, and they were both sold on it.

SG: So that became four EPs and 16 tracks in 18 minutes. Was it as quick to record as it is to listen to? Was it as much fun?

KM: Two days. And it was broken up… I think the first recording was maybe nine songs, and the second recording was the remaining seven or eight…because we recorded an extra song that’s not included. We played the songs just like we rehearsed them, just like the first time we got together. Dimitri ran through the song a couple of times, the guys got their ideas, and then we played them. And that’s what we have.

SG: What are you happiest with about this record?

KM: The thing that makes me the most happy is that all of these guys are enthusiastic about it, even though we’re all older guys. Our last tour, we were 200 people short of selling out a string of dates, so that was amazing. I love playing with these guys. There’s some head trips, but not like ultra-mega-major-stab-you-in-the-back kind of psychological head-game trips – just like;

“Okay, so you’re a dad and you can only be out for two-and-a-half to three weeks?

That’s fine. I’m a diabetic. I can only tour two-and-a-half to three weeks myself, so everything’s cool.”

SG: What do you think is the biggest difference between the musician sitting here today in Long Beach and the one that started out 30 years ago in Hermosa?

KM: I’m not a musician to start off with, so let’s shoot that down immediately. I’m just a guy that, when I come up with an idea, I’ve got to have a guitar player or a bass player, or another musician around me… And the difference is that I’ve learned to be more comfortable in my own skin, and not as uptight, even though I still scream and yell and I still bark at people. It’s a two-way street; it happens. Things get heated, something gets said, “Hey, fuck you! Go sit in another room…with a dunce hat. Go sit in a corner.” [Laughs]

SG: We are at Fingerprints and you’re here because it is Record Store Day, and you have been DJ’ing before you have to dash off and play at Coachella tonight. Why are you involved in this? Why is it important?

KM: Because it’s records in a record store, as opposed to CDs and 8-tracks and cassettes and reel-to-reels… It’s vinyl! You can hold it in your hand. It’s not like you’re looking at some little thing on the little screen in your handheld doodly-mabob, whatever you’ve got in your pocket. You can hold on to it. If it’s a fold-out, you can roll joints; the seeds will fall into the fold. You can see who recorded it, you can see the guys in the band; you can see what they look like. You can maybe read some lyrics, you can see some production credits.

SG: And this is the place that you come to get connected to that…

KM: You go to a record store to buy records. Yes, of course: it all makes perfect sense.

SG: Tell us about the record stores you went to as a teenager…

KM: I went to a place next to my dad’s store in Hermosa Beach – my dad owned a fishing tackle store. A couple of stores East of my dad’s store was Rock & Gravel, where I bought Captain Beefheart, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Blue Cheer… and then around the corner was the record store that sold all of the English imports, so we got David Bowie & the Spiders from Mars, and Mott the Hoople, and Trapeze, and Genesis, and Gentle Giant, and Yes and all sorts of stuff…

SG: When you close your eyes and think about those places, what did they look like? What did they feel like? What makes a great record store for you?

KM: This [Fingerprints] is a perfect example of a record store. They’ve got a really great record section, they’ve got CDs for all of the people that need something to put in their car to listen to when they’re stuck in traffic on the freeway – when they’re in bumper-to-bumper gettin’ home. There’s CDs for the boom box for the party on the beach – everybody roll out the kegger, grab a couple cases of beer and let’s start a fire and roast some wieners, and there’s the boom box and we can listen to our music, and once we get the party going, everybody can dance around and take it from there. They’ve got their t-shirts and they’ve got some great posters on the walls. They’ve got a really great record section downstairs – used and brand new records.

SG: You’re a man who’s been in a couple of record stores over the years. What’s the single best moment that you’ve had in one?

KM: That’s a difficult question because I’ve been in so many record stores. I was on a tour with one of my other bands, and one of the guys in the band kept complaining about, “I don’t have any money, I’m on this tour to save money so I can pay my rent and buy food, I’ve got to buy auto insurance.” And here we are in a record store in New York, and he’s got $500’s worth of stuff on the counter, and I’m like, “I don’t want to hear you complain. Obviously you’re rewarding yourself for all of this pain and misfortune. If you’re gonna do drugs and you’re gonna drink, somebody else is gonna be supplying that because you’re not gonna be paying for all of that stuff out of your own pocket, so you might as well buy this stuff. It’s kind of like buying drugs.”

SG: Music: It’s what you buy when someone else buys your drugs?

KM: The thing with drugs and booze is you drink it or you snort it or you smoke it, or whatever you do, and the next day, you don’t have it. But if you’re buying music: the next day, you have it.

Off!’s ‘First Four EP’s’ is out now on Vice Records, available on vinyl, CD, and the little screen in your handheld doodly-mabob.