He might play alt-country these days but John Doe is still punk rock to the core, writes Scott Kara
No wonder John Doe started a punk band back in 1977. With the repressed state Los Angeles was in back then the city needed a shake up and X was the group to do it.
"If you wore tight jeans and a leather jacket, even in the weirdest place of all like Hollywood, people would drive by and call you a fag," he hoots.
"There was a lot to rebel against because people were really straight."
With a unique, pulsing, and sometimes dissonant mix of punk, rock'n'roll, rock-a-billy and blues, X, which was also made up of guitarist Billy Zoom, drummer D.J. Bonebrake, and singer Exene Cervenka, became the most influential punk rock band to emerge from Los Angeles in the late 70s.
And according to Doe, who plays a show tonight at the Dogs Bollix in Auckland under his alt-country guise, the people were ready for change.
"Music had become stale and there was a lot of extravagance with people recording records for hundreds of thousands of dollars, doing all these things that were overly manicured and all the music was in stadiums and shit like that. It wasn't actually connecting with an audience."
The band's live shows were legendary and their first four albums, including 1980 debut Los Angeles, and songs like the melodic squall of Because I Do and jumped-up live favourite Johnny Hit and Run Pauline, are regarded as punk classics.
But by 1987 X had started to splinter, with the band never quite making that mainstream breakthrough, and they went on extended hiatus.
It was then Doe turned down the seemingly divergent country music route.
"There is something straightforward and simple about country music and those are two words that apply to punk rock songs, and rock'n'roll songs. And X wrote about relationships, and that has a pretty heavy emphasis on what I do now.
"I'm just thrilled that there is now an actual genre that my solo stuff kinda fits into," he jokes of the term alt-country.
This is his first trip to New Zealand and tonight's show is a double bill with fellow alt-country-ite Jim White, during which they will pair up for part of the show as well as doing solo sets.
Doe's set list takes in X material and songs off his seven solo albums, including the excellent 2000 release Freedom Is ... which "got people thinking that maybe this guy can do a solo record that holds together".
"But the shows are intimate. Just us and guitars. You can't play all of X's songs like that, but you can play some."
He's the most jovial John Doe you're ever likely to meet, with his relaxed cackle and meandering yarns about everything from his on the side acting roles to "the weirdness" of late 70s Los Angeles.
And he's modest too. He makes no mention of his part in the legacy of X, which included writing much of the material, playing bass, and his robust, husky voice being an ideal compliment to Cervenka's banshee yelp. Instead, he heaps praise on Zoom and Cervenka, whom Doe was married to from 1980-85.
"We were lucky to have three or four records that had a really different sound. Billy brought rockabilly guitar into the whole punk rock mix, and Exene is an incredible role model for young, 20-something girls because her style of singing is really unorthodox but it has this really incredible communication with people. So I think that's our legacy."
But what about you?
"What about me? I'm the traffic director," he laughs. "No. I'm the guy who gets all the smart people to do really good things. You know, I wrote most of the music and some of the lyrics and was just the person who became Exene's soul mate [they were married from 1980-85] and even now we have a way of singing that no one else will ever have."
X still play shows, with the next big one at April's Coachella Festival in California, and "as long as we all stay alive" the band will always be around.
"The thing with X is we've gone through all of our fighting and bullshit that you go through and now we just have a really good time playing."
As well as his solo career and reconvening for X shows, he's also a prolific actor. "I usually play a dad or a musician," he laughs.
At last count he'd appeared in more than 60 TV shows and movies including fast-paced flop Torque.
"Ummmm, which one was that?" he says of the motorbike movie.
You know, with Ice Cube. And it's got New Zealander Martin Henderson in it.
"Oh yes, yes, yes," he laughs. "You know, everyone who worked on that film were great except for the director. He had done some very high end Madonna videos, and then he was given $50 million to make Fast And Furious, and then told to, 'Do that with motorcycles'. They didn't even have an ending to the script. Great stunts. But plot?" he laughs.
And by the sounds acting is something that helps pay the bills rather than being a true passion.
"People have to eat so much shit to be in the acting world," he cackles. "If it didn't pay so well they couldn't give people so much shit to do it."
Spoken like a true punk.
LOWDOWN
Who: John Doe
What: Punk rock pioneer turned alt-country outlaw
Where & when: Dogs Bollix, tomorrow, with Jim White
Essential albums: With X, Los Angeles (1980); Wild Gift (1981). As John Doe, Meet John Doe (1990); Freedom Is ... (2000)
