Jello Biafra interview transcript

Hi, /r/punkers. This is a rough transcript of my interview with Jello at a Guantanamo School of Medicine show in Sacramento, CA sometime in 2010. These notes were transcribed from the original recording after the interview but were never edited or published. As I mentioned in my Reddit post, I have probably lost the original recording and have no way of verifying every word or phrase. Similarly, because I was using a cheap audio recorder and we spoke in the parking lot of a punk club, the audio quality was extremely poor and I wasn’t able to hear everything Jello said. In the interest of transparency, I present these notes in their original, unaltered form, with omissions indicated with ellipses (…) and clarifying additions indicated with (parentheses).

Me: (fumbling with recorder)

Jello: Make sure we’re rolling. Make sure everything’s cool. Unlike Spin magazine.

Me: What were you like as a teenager?

Jello: Boy, like most teenagers, that would cover a book to try and explain. Obviously, I was one of the weirdest people in the class, but luckily I grew up in a place where there were a lot of freaks in the school, which is what long-haired outlaws were called back when long hair was dangerous. I didn’t even know all the weird people in my school. Looking back, … at least I didn’t come of age in a time where there’s this new pressure through Facebook and MySpace and (other websites) that you must market and advertize yourself. That’s how you make friends. You are who you are advertized to be, and I didn’t have that pressure. I didn’t care if the jocks or the pretty people didn’t like me. I had interests of my own. By parental pressure I was a pretty good student, but I was never very interested in school. But I’m glad I finished, because at least it taught me how to get hard projects done. A lot of people (I knew who dropped out) never got their act together. They come up with great ideas for bands, for films, for this, for that, but they never finish them. Those really hard term papers are what prepare you to do your own thing — and actually do it — later on. I played Scrooge once in A Christmas Carol…

Me: What drew you to the punk scene?

Jello: I always liked really wild, hard music, and right when I was coming of age, all the cool (music) of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s was dying out. I lived in Boulder, Colorado, and you couldn’t even get good drugs anymore (there), when I finally wanted to try them. It was all about adult rock, soft rock, and every crappy band that wanted to be the Eagles seemed to be based in the Boulder area, playing for adults. I didn’t want ‘adult’ music. What made punk so special to me was it brought back the true spirit of rock n’ roll, in a more extreme form than ever before, right down to dark, sick humor (and) negative, topical lyrics — which were my favorites. I thought, ‘Hey, I wasn’t born too late. I was born at the perfect time’. I’d been to San Francisco earlier, on a family trip, and just liked the place. It was a pretty new punk scene there, so I still had a chance to break through and try and do something, or at least see some great bands. It was much more primal than New York was by then. New York was an over-21 scene, and San Francisco (was) all-ages. That was a key reason why the early punk and hardcore bands were so much more intense (in San Francisco) than what was going on in other places at the time.

Me: Do you think the Sacramento area is at all like that?

Jello: I haven’t been here enough to know. I know there (have) been cool bands who have come out of here every once in a while. I also know that we once played a place called Club Minimal here, for a crowd that had just gotten their mohawk (done) the day before, so it seemed. They booed the Butthole Surfers relentlessly, because they didn’t sound enough like GBH or Black Flag. So that didn’t (improve) my feelings about the collective I.Q. of some areas of Sacramento scene. There was another band who were pretty intelligent called Rebel Truth, who caught a lot of (abuse) from the same people, and they’re a Sacramento band. I guess there was a rivalry …

Me: What tends to inspire your lyrics?

Jello: It’s really hard to put that into (words). I’ve saved practically everything. I’ve recorded every idea I’ve had since … 1978. It’s all catalogued, so I’ll never run out of (ideas) at this point. But lyrically, as long as people — especially Americans — behave as stupidly as they do, I’ll never run out of material.

Me: Any cures for songwriter’s block?

Jello: I would say just not to worry about it. Document every crude idea you have, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s any good at the time. Save it, any lyric you (write), just save it somewhere. I’m not very efficient. (If I get an idea for a song), I’ll write little bits of it as it comes to me and then put it aside, write some more, and this may go on for years. (The lyrics) all pile up, and later I have to figure out, they’re all in a different meter, they may not fit the music I finally chose, or fit the vibe of the song. Getting the atmosphere right between lyrics and music is where (my) acting training comes in handy. It’s not very efficient, but as Morris the Cat once said, ‘It pays to be finicky’. Once I worried about it. In ’84 or ’85, I was running out of ideas, and I (asked myself), ‘What are the coolest riffs I have in my head that haven’t turned into songs yet?’ I got about two dozen of those. ‘What are the song topics I really need to do that I haven’t found music for yet?’ I got another two dozen of them. So I (thought), ‘Okay, I’ll never run out of ideas. I’m not going to worry about it anymore’. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music besides punk, and I never know when something is going to pop into my head that’s really cool.

Me: How do you feel you have matured as an artist since the Dead Kennedys?

Jello: I try to avoid maturing as an artist at all. Every time an artist comes out trumpeting some new product saying how much they’ve matured, to me, that’s a codeword for ‘Oh, now they’ve started to suck’. I think adulthood is one of the great enemies of punk and rock n’ roll — and hip-hop, for that matter. Sure, some of my (music) varies in tempo and how wild or quiet it is, and I still may do an acid folk album someday. … I think if I mature as an artist, I’m dead.

Me: Is this the first time The Guantanamo School of Medicine has played Sacramento?

Jello: Yes. We barely played in the Bay Area at all. We’ve mostly played overseas, actually.

Me: What do you think of the modern punk scene, and the current generation’s appreciation of your music?

Jello: I’m really flattered that anybody under 50 appreciates me at all. In a way, it’s really cool. When we were first starting the Dead Kennedys, it wasn’t as though people were putting Jefferson Airplane or Chuck Berry on the back of their jackets. It was all new, and out with everything … old. Now, there’s more of a continuum, maybe because punk never got commercially acceptable until Green Day … so there was a rebel-underground feeling (of) ‘This is our music, and all you normal people can go screw yourselves’. It also has become so huge now, (that) there isn’t just one punk scene anymore. There’s the commercial corporate pop-punk scene, there’s hardcore, some people say there’s horror-punk, funny-punk, goth-punk, psychodelic-punk and what have you. I think one of the reasons the Dead Kennedys has held up as well as it has over the years is that we were all and none of those things, at the same time. I can’t think of one Dead Kennedys clone. That’s the way I still like to work. I approach each song as a song, … and that means they don’t always come out sounding the same, although you can kind of tell they’re mine. Some people complain (punk has) gotten too big, and in some ways, it has, but I tell people, if you’re that upset about Green Day getting big, or the Good Charlotte factor, or something like that, why don’t you just turn off the TV and stop listening to that. Support music you like. If you’re tired of the big bands, go find an underground band in your hometown that’s really cool. Who knows — one of my favorite bands from Sacramento in recent years would not really be considered a punk band at all, but they sure had real teeth — the Low-Flying Owls. … Even some of the bands that are generic now (should still be supported), because today’s generic band might be tomorrow’s great band. Exhibit A — the first Dead Kennedys demo. The important thing is, start (making music) when you’re too young to know any better, and don’t give up.

Me: What are your plans for the future, both as part of the Guantanamo School of Medicine and as a solo artist?

Jello: In a way, this is a solo (project), because it’s my band, my songs, … but this was meant to be a band I wasn’t borrowing … This is a working band that practices regularly, and is going to keep making more albums and things like that. I have a huge backlog of songs written and finished that nobody’s ever heard, so the clock is ticking. But on the other hand, even though the album came out in September, it’s still a new, unknown beast to a lot of people, so we’re going to do a lot of touring over the summer, mainly in Europe, some Canadian and American (shows) in the fall, and South America. (Then) it’s time to work on some new songs.

((And now, get ready for dated stuff! I’m a bad journalist!))

Me: In the past, you’ve had a somewhat negative view of Jerry Brown. Who are you supporting in the California gubernatorial race?

Jello: I haven’t decided yet. I’m registered Green (Party), and I don’t know who won the primary yet for the Greens. Neither candidate struck me as being all that strong. On the other hand, Jerry Brown is already refusing to try and put an end to Proposition 13, which is gutting the budget of our school system. He’s not interested in decriminalizing marijuana, even though a friend of mine used to smoke it with him. It’s going to take something to get me to vote for him. I think I overreached on California Uber Alles, thus the (updated lyrics), but at the same time, Brown said when he was governor the first time, ‘I’ll move left and right at the same time. You watch me.’ I predict there will be a few good things (for) environmental issues, but on budget-cutting to the schools, and things like that, he may move to the right. Plus, he may not even be able to outspend the Queen of eBay, (and she will) really put the whole state up for sale, including (schools).