With all the Simple Plans and Good Charlottes cluttering up the MTV airwaves these days, it's easy to forget that 10 years ago, Orange County's the Offspring were in the same position, peddling punk rock in an easy-to-digest, pop-friendly format—and taking plenty of criticism for it. Although now they're the genre's elder statesmen, and younger bands seem so much more calculated in their reaches for the top of the charts. "It's certainly not what it was when we got into it," says guitarist Kevin "Noodles" Wasserman, as the band is about to embark on a U.S. tour to support its seventh album, Splinter, released in December.
When they got into it was 1984, the year that high school classmates Wasserman, vocalist Dexter Holland and bassist Greg Kriesel put together a band inspired by punk heroes like Social Distortion and Bad Religion. They put out a raw, self-titled debut in 1989 before heading to punk powerhouse Epitaph Records, headed by Bad Religion's Brett Gurewitz, for their more-polished 1992 effort, Ignition. But it was the band's 1994 album, Smash, that put them over the top, riding the alternative rock wave and kicking off a punk revival, along with Green Day's Dookie. The album sold 11 million copies, the best ever for an indie label record. It also touched off a backlash against the band for being too radio-friendly, and not punk enough for the underground.
"People would level those charges against us, that we can't really be a punk band, either," Wasserman says. Clearly the band's gotten over those accusations. "I think the harder you make the argument that you're punk, the less punk you become, and it just becomes so much posing at that point," he says. "When we're coming up with a new record, we just try to write good songs."
Splinter continues the band's evolution of writing straight-ahead punk songs alongside more pop-oriented rock tunes. The album's first single, "Hit That," featuring a bouncy synth line and lyrics decrying sexual carelessness and irresponsible parenting, ended up at No. 1 on modern rock radio, another in a string of hits the band has impressively kept going for the last decade. Like their breakthrough hit, "Come Out and Play (Keep 'Em Separated)," which dealt with gang violence on school campuses, "Hit That" disguises its serious social message under upbeat, catchy rock.
"We've always kind of asked questions in a kind of political but personal way," Wasserman says, seemingly wary of being labeled a socially conscious band. "We're not going to be one of the bands that really tells people what to do in music, just because it's not natural for us to do that." At the same time, he adds, "I'm trying to get more and more involved in a political way, just personally, as Noodles, not as a member of the Offspring, so much."
After two decades in the business, the Offspring experienced a shift on Splinter, with original drummer Ron Welty leaving the group, replaced on the album by veteran studio drummer Josh Freese, and now on tour and for the foreseeable future by Atom Willard, formerly of Rocket From the Crypt.
"I think that Ron and the rest of us were just kind of going in different directions," Wasserman says of the split. "We just had different ideas about what this band, and what it meant to us as individuals, and what it means to us as a whole, and where we should be going and how we should be doing things." Although they would have loved to keep Freese on board, his prior commitments to the Vandals and A Perfect Circle left him unavailable to commit to the band, so they turned to Willard, one of Freese's recommendations. "He's just a heavy hitter. Super-solid playing. Just a super-solid guy," Wasserman says, clearly invigorated by the infusion of new blood into the group.
On this tour, the Offspring is playing a mixture of headlining dates and radio festivals, and their own shows are generally in mid-size amphitheaters. In Vegas, they'll be at the Cox Pavilion. Although the band has come through town many times and played many venues, Wasserman's favorite Vegas memories are of the band's early days, when they were one of the handful of out-of-town bands who braved the trip to the desert. "The funnest shows we ever did in Vegas were back in the day," he says, "when we would pile in a van and head out there, and some kid would set up a generator out in the middle of this flood-control ditch out there. And they would charge like five bucks a car for people coming in, just to pay the bands' gas money for getting out there. If you get outside of the city, there's some beautiful areas out there. That's what I like [about Vegas]. That, and drinking."