Jello Biafra

EB: I thought we could start off by doing a rundown on the leg story.
JB: That's getting a little tabloid for me, I'm really sickened at the way the corporate wolves have descended on this I story. It probably would've been worse if O.J. Simpson hadn't done me a favor and whatnot. I mean, people who normally wouldn't have known that I or Alternative Tentacles exist, like Rolling Stone, BAM, and New York magazine all did stuff on this. Some of those people have not mentioned my name since the Frankenchrist bust. So in other words, if he puts a new record out, don't say a word, but if something bad happens to him, hey, this'll sell papers. I guess the only update is that the knee is stronger than it was three months ago, but I'm still on crutches, and I don't know how much longer it will last. I'm hoping to be hobbling around on it by the end of the summer, and there's still a small chance that I may not get cut open after all, 'cause the anterior cruciate ligament, the one that ends many a sports career, that goes in through the middle of the knee and keeps the bones from going all over the place and buckling, if it's torn in half, does not heal. So people either have to build up their quadriceps and other muscles to the point where they don't need one, or they have to get part of their kneecap tendon cut out and put inside their knee. Neither one is a very good option for me, so I'm hoping to avoid the surgery because I don't think I want to run around without one for the rest of my life. A physical therapist who plays in an Italian hardcore band called Keanis sent me a note saying, "Don't let it go, even if you're strong, because you're going to get arthritis on account of that later." It happened to Al Jourgenson years and years ago, and he told me, "I can do everything as good as before except run very far." That, to me, is not acceptable. It's frustrating that I can't go to a lot of shows right now, or travel or anything, 'cause if I stand on my other leg and keep the bad one vertical for too long, the knee starts to grow to the size of a grapefruit, and starts to throb and everything, that can get really frustrating.
EB: Yeah, I was surprised to see you out at shows again, I would have thought you'd be nervous about getting knocked over or something.
JB: Yeah, especially after the Cynics' singer jumped off the stage and landed on the leg. Had I not built a barricade of chairs and crutches around it, he would have gone right through the middle where the knee was fucked up. I don't like watching shows from the back, but it looks like that's what's going on right now. It's a very humiliating thing, and that's why I was mad, because I'd been through this before with a severed Achille's tendon years and years ago, due to a stupid mishap that was my fault, running around town with Darby Crash. That was '79, my Germs scar to bear. But the bigger complications are humiliating shit like not being able to jaywalk, every time I get some food off the stove, it's like turning Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton loose in the kitchen to get it to a table.
EB: So is there any news on the legal side of it?
JB: Well, the people who know them down here continue to protect them, and keep in regular contact with them, apparently. The one
main one is hiding out in Eugene, Oregon, another one, the one who called up MTV demanding a paid interview to brag about it, is
following the Grateful Dead around now. He was the one who was saying, "Oh, he probably ens' 'h ❑inney in hip pocket to pay the
medical bills, and he deserved it," and it turned out the guy is a fucking rich kid. Some people were saying, "We're just protecting one of our own in the squat scene," by not saying where he is, well what kind of ass-backward attitude is that, to protect thugs? That sure ain't my definition of punk. I mean, that Cretin asshole was last seen leaving Berkeley with a shotgun, what happens if he's squatting at your place and you're a woman alone, and his dick is hungry, and he's got that gun? That is a real ass-backwards value system at work. The other one that certain people are spreading around is, "Biafra was irrational, he didn't take the thing properly." I mean, fuck that! I knew as soon as it happened that I was going to be on crutches for a long time, I knew I was seriously hurt, what am I supposed to do? "Hey bro, let's just let bygones be bygones, you just fucked up my leg for life, so let's just forget about it." Sorry, that's just not the way it works when you have the human being factor involved. I don't accept that. So in that regard, the controversy surrounding it, it's been one hell of a long, hot summer, and the last thing I needed.
EB: So do you think there's still a chance that they're going to find these people and...
JB: What worries me is if somebody else finds them first and decides they're doing me a favor by beating the crap out of them. It's a disturbing statement on our times that more people come up to me and say, "Yeah, we're gonna find them and beat the crap out of them," than any real leads. I mean, as much as I hate the existence of police, as long as we live in a society where we need laws and need cops to keep people from killing and beating the crap out of each other, they're going to be there. And in this case, it's far better to do it the legal way than to do it through the law of the jungle and escalate the gang violence. Another ass-backward attitude plaguing our beloved underground.
EB: OK, well, I don't want to dwell on that too much because it's all pretty well documented.
JB: Yeah, and it's also... it does really piss me off that I've wound up in physical danger because of things that people have said about me that aren't even necessarily true. I nearly got jumped in Texas about six weeks before this one. Same deal, "You're a sellout, man, you're a sellout." Ten people surrounded me in the street, wanting me to throw the first punch, and I never threw a punch, so they couldn't jump me, and settled for kicking in the sides of a rented car that the two women who were giving me a ride to the show had. It scared the shit out of them. Then another friend of mine in New York, people were trying to pick a fight with him on the streets of New York because he had a T shirt with my name on it. Why? Because I was a supposed sellout. There are people nowadays who come from twelve years of Reagan and Bush and violent TV who want to solve problems with violence, if they think somebody's a sellout they go and beat them up, they don't even go up and talk to them. And they has been escalating, I hear somebody in Rancid got jumped as well for having a video on MTV, I hope that ain't true. I wouldn't say that MRR is directly responsible for that, but for encouraging that atmosphere they have played a role, and more importantly they're powerful enough that they could take the responsibility of steering action against so-called "selling out" away from violence and into a more constructive format, like honest debate instead of dishonest smearing.
EB: I don't understand, do these people give specific examples of how you're selling out, or do they just have this general impression...
JB: I think it's in general, and because I was easy to pick on because I wouldn't fight back, and easy to pick on because I was somebody you'd run into at a show. The great irony of this is that none of this bullshit would have gone down if I really did sell out, signed to a major label, surrounded myself with minions, and just go to entertainment industry shows and Bill Graham shows and shit. I mean, that isn't me! I'd rather see a Gilman show right up at the front, where I can see the sweat drip off the guitar strings, than hang out with glitterati backstage at Nine Inch Nails or something.
EB: Well, maybe I'm not that up on things but I can't see what specific things, if you were in an argument with someone over this, what things they could point to that would label you as a sellout.
JB: Jealousy over the fact that I'm successful at what I do. Part of the reason that I'm successful at what I do is that, and this is going to sound like I'm a jerk to some people, but I'm good at what I do. And unlike people who run two of the big independent labels that aren't necessarily targeted, I do not come from a millionaire family, not even close. My dad was a social worker and my mom was a librarian. Anything I've made building up the label or a place to live, it was all done myself without stepping on other people. Part of it goes back to the argument, is it politically incorrect for an artist to become well-known and popular to some degree. Ironically, I probably sell about half the records Ben Weasel does now, he's the one who started all this. Anyway, part of where I've always drawn the line is that it's not politically incorrect for an artist to be able to survive off their work, as long as they aren't an asshole about it. I've tried very hard not to do that. I've probably made some mistakes, human beings do. But as far as people calling me sellout, they can fucking kiss my ass! It was also, in the case of the emperor of Maximum Rock 'N' Roll, some of that was completely personal for disagreeing with him. Me and Lawrence Livermore were the only people who openly stood up to him at the last Mordam convention over whether or not to distribute through questionably corporate distributors such as Caroline. Yes it's a thorny issue, Caroline is owned by a corporate cutthroat by the name of Thorn, who owns EMI, who owns Caroline. Thorn is a weapons manufacturer. It's something I wrestled with a lot, but I also, unlike some of these elitists, have not forgotten where I come from. I came from an area where it was really hard to latch onto cool music unless you were as curious and tenacious as I was. Not everybody is. So basically, I think it's important to get our stuff, my stuff and Alternative Tentacles stuff, into stores, even if it's chain stores, alongside what major labels are promoting as so-called "alternative," so that somebody like me, some weird kid from a small town, can be thumbing through the alternative section and realize that there really is an alternative to Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains. They aren't going to come to us, we have to go to them. Anybody who refuses to communicate on that level is just being an elitist jackass as far as I'm concerned. You know, Tim (Yohannon)'s attitude is, "You shouldn't even sell to chain stores at all, just to cool stores like Epicenter." Fine, how many Epicenters are there? As far as I know, less than five. It'd be great if there was an Epicenter in every town. If I had Nirvana's money, maybe I'd try to open a chain of them, but that's not logical, it's not realistic. There's also, at this point, a healthy public discussion over what is punk and where should it go. Punk to me is more of an emotional thing than some lockstep, conformist Orthodox church, where only one sound is allowed, only one viewpoint is allowed. That isn't what got me into punk at all. And the last thing that I'd like to see is some rebel people coming out of an area where they don't know anybody like themselves to try and find more people, to be greeted with a bunch of grumpy hermit crabs who say, "If you don't agree with us 100% then you must be against us." If you argue on any grounds against not selling to Caroline, you're automatically a sellout capitalist pig. I mean, that's totally... it's the same thing that Alan Ginsberg said when he singled out the Ho-ho-ho Chi Minh demonstrators for driving the liberals into the camp of Richard Nixon in the '68 election. I mean, at some point there's gotta be some communication figuring out what the big issues are rather than the little ones. It's not that important whether Screeching Weasel is more punk than Neurosis when you've got the religious right out there, you've got a whole ecosystem around the world collapsing, America collapsing, and corporations and their minions waiting in the wings to turn us into more of a fascist state than we already are, and in the meantime brainwash people into embracing it by hyping crime stories when there really isn't a crime epidemic according to their own statistics, and say, "No, don't worry about white collar swindlers, worry about O.J. Simpson," or worry about someone's knee or whatever.
EB: That seems to be what kids are concerned with these days, beyond whether or not it's...
JB: Not all, it's not fair to generalize what's going on with underground culture, and especially punk, just by the Bay Area. The Bay Area is this hornet's nest of harder-core-thanthou backstabbers, and once you get out of there it's different. I mean, the sad part to me in a way is... when I do spoken word shows, I do them at schools, colleges and universities. Part of the reason for that is that it's neutral ground, it's not preaching to the converted. Oftentimes, they also have a lecture fund each year that they have to spend, so I get paid pretty well, but the show itself is free, so I can make a living without having to charge a ton of money at the door, and what happens is that it draws a very cosmopolitan crowd. Maybe a third of the people are into my lyrics and my music, another third are civil liberties activists, or people from ages eight to eighty who knew about the Frankenchrist case, and the other third in a lot of these places are people with nothing else to do that night. They're the people that I have the most interest in penetrating. And on one hand, in the Bay Area, you get caught up in this, "You're not punk enough, you're not P.C. enough," and then the next person will say, "Oh, you're too P.C. for me, you squarehead, why don't you ever lighten up," etcetera, once I get out there with real people, it all changes. More questions like, "Well, if you're trying to get a point across, why do you write such abrasive songs? If you sounded more like U2 or REM you might reach people!" You'd be surprised how many times I get asked that question!

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