Gimme Something Better (66 page)

Tim Armstrong:
I knew he was the right cat, the guy who really belonged in there with us.

Matt Freeman:
Lars is a very talented guy, he knew those songs really well.

Lars Frederiksen:
I got up there for my first or second band practice. Freeman took me to this Mexican joint around the corner from Gilman. He ordered a pitcher of beer. This was like 10:30 in the morning. Matt, the responsible guy. I basically drank the whole thing. I think that was his first clue that there might be something awry.

Matt Freeman:
I brought Lars to Jesse’s house, a block down from Gilman, and was like, “Hey, this is my buddy, I’m gonna introduce you.” We got a 12-pack. Lars drank about half of it. Most of it. And just talked shit, just “Rah rah rah rah!”—insulted everybody in the room at least twice, myself included. I was just getting angrier and angrier.

Lars Frederiksen:
I guess I offended some people. Green Day and Tilt were playing at the Berkeley Square later that night.

Matt Freeman:
I knew Tim and Brett were at the frickin’ show. Lars said, “Let’s go.” I didn’t really care at this point. I literally kicked him out of the van: “Okay, Berkeley Square’s right over there.” I locked him out. I was so pissed. I drove back to Jesse’s house and they were like, “That guy’s a fuckin’ dick!”

Tim Armstrong:
I introduced him to my friends, and he was just saying stupid shit. He was getting’ progressively worse, drunker and drunker. He put his arm around my pal Joe. They kind of grew up around the same area. I looked at Joe’s face, I’ve known him for a long time, and he was scared.

Lars Frederiksen:
I guess I threatened to beat up Joe Sibb if he didn’t buy me a shot of Jack Daniels, and so he did. And a beer. I think I squeezed that out of him, too.

Tim Armstrong:
He ended up going pee in front of everybody, as the show was ending. He was on the street, University Avenue, cock out. Genius, right?

Lars Frederiksen:
Pants around my ankles, peeing on people. It wasn’t a very Green Day thing to do.

Tim Armstrong:
Fuck, I’m an idiot. I took him back to my house. He slept on the floor. Next morning I heard some rumbling, it was him leaving the house.

Lars Frederiksen:
This was like six in the morning, and I was trying to get to Ashby BART. I had no money, I figured I’d just panhandle for it. All of a sudden he’s chasing me down the street, “Hey!” He gave me ten bucks.

Matt Freeman:
I called Tim the next morning, “That guy’s a fuckin’ nightmare.” I told him what happened, and Tim was like, “Oh yeah? Guess what he did to me?” And he told me about the pissing. I said, “Well, fuck him. I just went through this bullshit with you, I don’t want to go through it with some guy I don’t fuckin’ know.”

Tim Armstrong:
I said, “He’s got a problem. If he doesn’t drink anymore—or do heroin, PCP—maybe it’ll work.”

We put him up at our place for a couple weeks. For awhile, Cinder was like, “I can’t believe you’ve got that guy in your band, he’s a dick!” I had to deal with that. But I believed in the dude. I could see that he wanted a better life.

Lars Frederiksen:
He found me a place to live and gave me 100 bucks and said, “Here’s your first month’s rent.” He really looked out after me. I think because of my antics at the Green Day show, they saw that that might be every night, you know. But I was already looking for that. I lived there at the Derby Street house for about a summer. And I got a job on Telegraph, making salads.

I know I was probably a little bit more wild than those guys. But I found where I needed to be. I was just stoked to be playing punk with two guys from one of my favorite bands. Cool. I’m not copping on Mission.

My first gig was at fucking Cloyne Court. The pit was crazy. The naked Berkeley guy was in the pit with his fuckin’ little doinker, his backpack on. And I remember just going, “Fuck, bro, put some clothes on. This is a punk show.”

We played Gilman pretty steadily. Any time a band would cancel they’d call us up and we’d be there. We were playing local gigs here and there, driving up to Petaluma. We played down in L.A. at the Hong Kong Ballroom. That was my third show with the band, in front of Brett Gurewitz. Which was kinda nerve-wracking. Richard was with us at the time.

Richard the Roadie:
I was doing shows with them before, and suddenly there was this new guy in the band, Lars. Which was awesome. It totally changed the sound, and made ’em a lot better band.

Lars Frederiksen:
Richard was one of the stinkiest people. But the motherfucker could work. He wouldn’t let you carry your amp into the gig. He’d be like, “No, no no, that’s my job.” And then he’d put it on his shoulders and carry it in.

Richard the Roadie:
In the beginning when I started, we were just playing a lot of house parties, small shows. People up here fucking thought they sucked. If you listen to the first 7-inch, I thought they sucked, too. It was so different from Op Ivy and any of the other stuff they’d done.

Then I saw them play an acoustic show at the Occidental House on 61st. All of a sudden I got it. And I have fucking absolutely loved them since then. At that point in ’93, I thought they were probably one of the best punk bands in the U.S.

Lars Frederiksen:
There was no other band like Rancid going off at that time. It was all the pop punk shit like Green Day. Or like Econochrist, Grimple, that kinda shit. There was nothing like Rancid, that was like fast, melodic, Discharge-y, GBH shit. Mixed with the Ramones and the Clash.

Mike Avilez:
When I first moved up I did a zine called
Piece of Shit
and Lars was one of the first people I interviewed. They were totally nice to me. I asked Rancid if they had done much touring and they said, “We’ve been up and down the coast like no one’s business but we haven’t done any major tour.” Their first album on Epitaph was just about to come out.

Lars Frederiksen:
I didn’t go outside the state of California until I joined Rancid. On Rancid’s first tour, on the visor, it said “States Lars has never seen.” So each time we’d go through a state I’d give it one to five X’s, on what I thought of the state. Matt would always be giving me the Sharpie at seven in the morning. I think Texas got a 5X. I liked Texas for some reason.

Richard the Roadie:
Rancid was no bullshit. It was five dollars, all-ages, or they wouldn’t play. They had a booker, Stormy Shepherd, which was really unusual at the time. She was awesome. She’s not nice when you try and screw her, which I’ve seen. She really opened up doors for them.

Stormy Shepherd:
Tim and Matt had been booking their own tours for years. Rancid are still self-managed. That band divides up everything between the four members and they do everything themselves. They are extremely hands-on, which is just unheard of for a band of that size.

Richard the Roadie:
We were basically all sober. And we were all really young, or relatively young. It felt as close as what I read about Black Flag. We were just going for it. We were all in this tiny windowless van, and every single night they played as hard as they fucking could. Once they started they would just go full on until they stopped. They wouldn’t fuck around and talk. They were on fucking fire, those first two years.

Lars Frederiksen:
We took the Swingin’ Utters to Europe with us, took them out on tour. It was really fun. I think we paid for them to come out there.

Johnny Bonnel:
Opening up for Rancid was crazy. It was packed. They still had the buzz from Op Ivy. Lars was helping us out big-time. He got us these shows and eventually went on to produce
Streets of San Francisco
. Always said great things about us.

Lars Frederiksen:
It just snowballed. Green Day was blowing up, Offspring was blowing up. We were playing fuckin’ Vino’s Pizzeria in Arkansas when we found out that somebody was playing “Salvation” on the radio.

Martin Sprouse:
Not that they should be compared, but there was something that organically, naturally happened with Op Ivy. I think Rancid was preconceived. They’re very real guys. But they were trying to set out to do something.

Lars Frederiksen:
Although it’s two totally different animals, people were curious.

Anna Brown:
Jesse was sort of the soul of Operation Ivy, but Lint was the one who became the star. It became very clear early on when Rancid started doing videos, that they were going to be big. They had this tough thing going on that was really different from the peaceful Op Ivy thing.

A. C. Thompson:
People didn’t think they were as smart as Op Ivy. Their songs weren’t as immediately catchy.

Matt Wobensmith:
Tim is a sweet guy. But then you go see Rancid and it’s, like, überpunk. Who do they think they are? Affecting like they’re from the streets. There was this tough gang sort of aesthetic, which is totally not them at all. They’re from Berkeley and from around, and they’re just soft guys. The greater public ate it up.

A. C. Thompson:
They went from playing house parties to being on MTV in six months. It was really quick.

Ben Sizemore:
One day I came home and Rancid was filming a video in our apartment. I knew it was going to be happening. There was a camera crew there. I was like, “This is fuckin’ nuts.” They had catered some Chinese food, so I got a free plate of food out of it. I went in my room and shut the door. It was a little cheesy, you know. Lip-synching a song on MTV.

A. C. Thompson:
Tim came over to my house and showed me their first video. I thought it was kind of bullshit. This cartoony stereotype of punk rock, where he’s carrying around a baseball bat and acting macho. I told him what I thought, and I remember him being kind of bummed about that. When I look back on it, the song is really excellent.

Lars Frederiksen:
I always looked at videos as a way to just document shit. You can see me by the loft, kinda hanging out, rockin’ out. I’m not really in the band yet. There was always a joke that when Rancid plays songs off the first record—that a loft is gonna come out and I’m just gonna put the guitar down, and hang out in the loft and watch.

Janelle Hessig:
It’s so funny. After they started getting big, in one of the videos there’s a picture of them looking all thugged out in this graffiti-covered tunnel. But it’s this tunnel that goes along Solano Avenue in the most affluent area of town.

Richard the Roadie:
Most hardcore East Bay punks thought Green Day were stupid, but nonetheless they were able to find a local following. Rancid never did. That was always the joke. We’d go to Seattle or L.A., and it was absolutely fucking amazing. And come back to Gilman and get treated like shit.

Sergie Loobkoff:
That kind of punk, with mohawks and leather and spikes and stuff, that wasn’t really what Gilman was about. Just as much as what Samiam was doing wasn’t really what Gilman was about.

Richard the Roadie:
It was a weird time in the East Bay. Green Day was signed. Samiam signed. Jawbreaker. Screw 32 and AFI were slowly building up at the same time. If your band was doing well, because Green Day and all these other bands signed to majors and were getting bigger, you got the same venom as everybody else. A lot of it was misplaced.

Jesse Luscious:
When Rancid were talking to Sony, I was like, “Matt, that’s a shitty idea.” But they didn’t jump. Fuck no, they didn’t.

Richard the Roadie:
Rancid, Jawbreaker, Green Day, we’re all scum-bags, but everybody had their little niche. But Rancid, it was almost worse for them. It just got out of control. It was a really bad environment. Tim, walking down Telegraph, would be threatened by people.

A. C. Thompson:
Part of it was that people felt resentful. These guys were going to make money and live comfortable lives, and our lives were all fucked up and janky. People who were subcultural purists didn’t want their subculture being disseminated to the masses. Even though they said they had a political message that everyone should hear. So there was this cognitive dissonance.

John Geek:
I liked Rancid a lot when they were peppier and more angular, weird punk. But then they got really big. I remember going to the show and the line was around the block, and I was like, “Ah, this is just not my thing anymore.” It just didn’t feel like home so much. Me and a bunch of other people were feeling the same way.

Eric Ozenne:
I remember Tim riding his bike down to Gilman. All those Rancid guys were going to shows a lot. It was starting to get hard for them, because people were constantly giving them shit. But they still were going to shows pretty consistently. I got to see it from their perspective. My wife and I and Lars all moved into a house in Berkeley. I watched them go through the process of making . . .
And Out Come the Wolves
. I realized these guys are totally passionate about what they do, and they’re not trying to screw anybody. And they’re also giving back to the scene. It was a really interesting time, for sure.

Greg Valencia:
I remember being in the Rancid guys’ shit. I was younger and I didn’t really get it. I don’t have any problem with those guys these days. I still have respect for them. At that time, I think it just sucked more ’cause their heads got giant.

Kate Knox:
I used to know Lint. He used to lie about his age to get with the younger girls. I remember him being at a party and being like, “Look, I got Madonna’s phone number!”

Orlando X:
Some people did treat those guys bad, when they started getting big. Especially Tim. Which was kind of fucked up.

A. C. Thompson:
I saw Tim in South Berkeley and he said that he felt really out of place, people were hassling him and yelling at him on the streets. Overnight, he had gone from being a celeb in that DIY world, to being someone who was cast out. So he moved to L.A. He took the fuck off. I think it was a scarring experience.