CIRCLE JERKS
from Hard Times #6, April/May 1985Interview by Ron Gregorio
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| PHOTO: MURRAY BOWLES |
Fighting off my usual four month long winter cold, I dragged myself to CBGB the following afternoon for the Sunday matinee. Despite the bedlam that was occurring backstage, I was able to interject a few questions, answered by a seemingly uninterested Keith Morris, who tried his best to answer them in one sentence.
Keith: We call ourselves "ROCKCORE." It's not the slap in the face like "punk rock" or "hardcore." "The mellow sounds," with the waves splashing on the beach and the violins. Music to relax by. Music to unwind.
Greg: Remeber, rockcore was invented at the Iwo Jima hotel of Washington.
DJ from Glassboro State: So are you going to go top forty?
Keith: Have you seen our video on MTV?
Ron: No. Did anything ever come about as a result of that Rock Palace thing (on NBC)?
Keith: We were supposed to go on Dance Fever but that never materialized. The executive producer of Dance Fever was there when we did the Rock Palace thing and said, "We just have to have you on our show," but...
It seems like all these rock star geeks - come from the East Coast.
Amy Beth Yates: What about David Lee Roth?
Keith: David Lee Roth is too cool to be characterized.
Ron: He was at the Minutemen show last night at the Ritz in New York. It was him or one of those heavy metal guys because everyone was going, "Hey, that's whatshisface with the long hair!"
Keith: They all like this stuff but they won't admit it.
DJ: Do people on stage bother you, what with your backbrace and all?
Keith: It's just when they try to become a member of the band - when they trip over the chords or knock into you. We don't have any spots to be filled. Fuck 'em. I mean, I'll pick up something and I'll hit them. I'm a pacifist but there comes a time when you have to defend yourself. I don't mind if they get on the stage, dance, and jump off but...
DJ: How'd you hurt your back?
Keith: I've been telling everybody that I fell off a wall, but I was pushed off a wall.
Amy: Who pushed you?
Keith: I don't know. I was watching some salsa band.
DJ: What about before the Jerks? Black Flag...
Keith: Black Flag. Before Black Flag it was El Camino Jr. College. Before El Camino Jr. College it was Meracostal (?) High School. Before Meracoastal H.S. it was Pier Ave. Jr. High. Before Pier Ave. Jr. High, it was puberty.
DJ: Let's go a little forward.
Keith: After puberty? Black Flag was my first band.
DJ: What about when they released Everything Went Black?
Keith: I never got any royalties from them. I never asked for them and I doubt I ever will. They throw me records, tee-shirts and stickers now and then.
Bouncer: TEN MINUTES!
Ron: Ten minutes for what? Did they finally launch the big ones?
Bouncer: YOU GOTTA LEAVE IN TEN MINUTES.
Greg: He's very friendly, I thought.
Keith: You're in Trenton NJ, you can't expect too much.
DJ: Any new records coming out?
Keith: No new album. We're never going to record again. We found that recording is just not worth it. It's like, "Let's put out an album and sell five copies," and your parents buy two of them.
Greg: We're going to do like Duran Duran and make erotic videos in Rio de Janiero.
Keith: We're serious.
Greg: We will never tour again. Tomorrow's our last live gig. After that, we're going to become like the Beatles.
Amy: If you're not going to tour and you're not going to record, what are you going to do?
Greg: Movies.
Keith: Full length pornographic movies.
Greg: Circle Jerks star in A Hard Days Circle Jerking.
Keith: Actually, we'll probably end up like the guys that drive around and drop off the newspapers for the newsboys, or working at a Taco Bell.
DJ: Seriously, is this really it or is this just a lot of bullshit.
Greg: Are you kidding? We'll be back.
Keith: We might come back in six or seven months and have another new song to play. We came up with like four songs last year. Two of them aren't even ours.
We've got two new guys in the band and we've been real lazy. We never practice so we can never get our shit together, so we're like learning these songs on the road.
Ron: So then, is there another album coming out soon?
Greg: As soon as we can. We don't know when.
Keith: We don't have a record label. We don't have any management right now either. We're sort of in limbo. We only did this tour because one of our firends said, "Let me try to book a tour and see what I can do."
Ron: What happened to Frontier?
Keith: We left because we thought we had a better opportunity with Faulty Products, which turned out to be a real fiasco.
When we get home, we're going to record three or four songs for a demo. Capitol, EMI, and possibly A&M are interested. I'd rather go with a major label.
If I got on a major label, I'd use the money to try to pay back somehow... I don't know - it would be like promoting concerts or starting a record label... Just try to do something to pay back the community. There's a lot of bands that say, "We don't want to play small places," and shit like that, but I'll always do that because... Say we had a chance to tour with Van Halen or someone like that. We'd do it in a minute. We'd do it in a minute and everybody in the world would say, "Your're just copping out. You're selling out," but what we would do is after that tour we'd do another one. We'd turn around and play places like this or the Court Tavern in New Brunswick (NJ), which holds maybe three hundred people. The thing with playing with a bad band is that you're exposing yourself to people that otherwise wouldn't hear you. They can either throw things at you or buy your record. I'm not writing songs so that five people think it's great and five people think it's terrible and that's it. Don't you want a lot of people to read your fanzine?
Ron: But do you think it's possible to sign with a major label and have control over what they want to do?
Keith: If a major label was interested, I'd listen to them. I'm not going to close my ears to them. They might even come up with a few good suggestoins. Maybe they'll come up with some total bullshit. Then I'd say, "Hey look, I can't live with this."
We want a label we can feel comfortable with, whether it's a major or an independent, just as long as we can get what we want out of it.
(The following took place at CBGB's.)
Ron: You've had a personnel change?
Keith: We've got Ted on bass and Adolf on drums. Ted's been with us a month, Adolf's been with us about four months. Greg and I have been together for five years.
We've gone through like five bass players and five drummers. It's a long story. PBS could do a mini-series on it.
Greg: It wouldn't be a very good one.
Keith: One guy turned to Christianity. One guy tried to strangle Greg. One guy wanted to be a carpenter.
If Greg or I left, I don't think it would be the Jerks anymore.
Unknown: How's New York compare to L.A.?
Keith: More people show up at the shows in L.A.
Ron: Do they beg at the door like they do here?
Keith: Yeah. You'll always have that no matter where you go. "Can you put me on the pass list, please."
Ron: What changes have you seen in the past five years you've been doing this?
Keith: Larger crowds. Things can get more out of hand, but the larger the crowds get, the more problems you're going to have, no matter what.
Ron: How have you changed?
Keith: I've become more jaded, cynical.
Ron: How do you think the Circle Jerks have affected the music scene and the bands that have come along since?
Keith: A lot of people don't like us, a lot of people do. We've influenced a lot of bands, just as we were influenced by other bands. That's how it will always be. Everyone's influenced by what's come before them.
Ron: How do you think the music industry has changed in the last five years?
Keith: There's more smaller, independent labels who've forced the larger labels to look at the bands that are coming up that wouldn't get consideration otherwise.
Ron: You write a lot of songs with sarcastic lyrics about the government and society in general. What about punk as a social movement?
Keith: We'll take a subject like building bombs, which we're opposed to. At the same time, you have to understand that arms manufacturing is a big business. Sure, we don't want it going on because it's probably going to end up being thrown in our faces one of these days, but right now, if you eliminated all of this arms manufacturing, tons of people would be out of work. It's a catch 22. It's always gone on and it'll always go on so what can you do? We try and live our lives as best we can and be the best human beings we can be.
I wouldn't mind making a record for the people in Ethiopia, but I wouldn't do a piece of shit like all those people in England did. How much of that money will the Ethiopians get after the record company takes their cut? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the record company's saying, "Yeah, it's a good cause. We'll donate our share and write it off as a loss."
Ron: Yeah, then we end up paying for it out of our taxes!
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