Filmage: The Story of Descendents\All Page #4

all went to the same high school.

That was Mira Coasta

High School."

Some time goes on, and I get

this weird note on my door.

And it says, "Hey, this Bill.

I'm thinking

about doing the

Descendents again."

"Tony can't do it, so I wanted to know

if you wanted to give it a swing."

So we practiced getting

me brought up to speed.

As soon as school

was ready to stop,

Milo jumped in the van, and

we started doing shows.

DAVE NAZ:
"Milo Goes To

College" is the record that

you identify the band

with the most, maybe,

but with "Enjoy", wow. I don't

want to say they polished

their sound, but they

took it to another level.

RICHARD ANDREWS:
I was

a jazz musician, and

I was at Radio Tokyo

cutting my own demos.

And the owner of the studio said if you

want to learn how to engineer, I need help.

And finally I'm good enough and

he's ready to give me some clients,

and he says, "There's this

record that I want you to do."

And I'm like "Alright, a record!

I got a f***ing record!"

And I go in to do it and it's the

Descendents and they're farting.

RICHARD:
I'm a classically trained

musician. I learned to play piano at four,

and I went to a

conservatory for two years,

and I went to Berklee College of Music and

know all this stuff, and Bill's like,

Stick the microphone closer to my

ass so you can hear this fart."

It was terrible.

DAVE:
I think that album

best represents them.

There's a lot of farting, and that goes on

when you're hanging out with those guys.

RICHARD:
But as time went on, I discovered

that it's not about what you know,

it's about are you expressing yourself

authentically through the music.

And these guys totally brought

the idea of authenticity

to my fore and it changed

my perception of all music.

And to have that bing moment from

punk rockers was a real mind trip.

ROBERT HECKER:
I love the

"Enjoy" line up so much.

I think "When I Get The

Time" is so amazing.

I regularly lump it in

my top greatest pop songs

of all time with "Hey Jude"

and "Under Pressure."

It is perfect. It

is a perfect song!

And maybe if it didn't

have a toilet paper roll on the cover,

it could've

sold 20 million copies.

DOUG:
We left at the same time, but

we left for different reasons.

I wanted to keep experimenting and

that's it.

It was like, "Okay cool, you're taking

the ship north, I'm going south! Roger!"

And for Ray, I don't know.

He's not really the kind of guy who would

have that heart-to-heart with you.

A man of few words.

INTERVIEW:
"Ray's bummed. He

has good reason to be, too."

RAY:
"I'm not bummed."

INTERVIEW:
"You're

not bummed anymore?"

RAY:
"I've never been bummed."

INTERVIEW:
"Maybe

just irritated?"

RAY:
"No. You kidding? No."

DOUG:
I don't think he wanted to be in the

center of the tornado of the Descendents.

MILO:
So Bill and I are sitting

there wondering what to do now.

We don't have a band anymore.

And he must've had a

friend up in Utah, and he called him up:

"You wanna

do this bass gig with us?"

And said, "I can't do it." But Karl was

listening in and said, "Give me phone!"

"I'll do it!"

Which was great because he came

down and they locked in completely.

KARL ALVAREZ:
Well, musicians

are a lot like people

in that sometimes they have

a chemistry thing going on.

And I think Billy and I

had a certain connection.

But I can't help but

think, "Well, yeah."

"Because I practiced

bass to his records."

MILO:
So Karl says, "Hey, I think I

know where we can get a guitar player."

KARL:
I met Stephen when we were

twelve years old in 1976

in Bryant Junior High School in Salt Lake.

I literally learned to play with him.

STEPHEN EGERTON:
Karl joined the

band, and I called to congratulate him,

and that's when I found out

they needed a guitar player, too.

KARL:
When I met Stephen, he lived in

the closet of a one-bedroom apartment,

and he owned a bicycle, his skateboard,

a guitar, and not much else.

He didn't have much money. And

the punk rock thing was tailor

made for guys like us, because

it's like, "Oh, all right."

We're not gonna get

anywhere in society anyway

because we're bottom of the pile.

All right!

Very easy to embrace

the idea, right?

STEPHEN:
For me, meeting Bill, beyond

my massive love for Descendents' music

was my massive love for Black

Flag's music, and he had been in both.

So, the idea that it was Karl,

my oldest friend and I joining

this band that was so huge to us,

it was like living on a cloud.

We were like, "Uh,

just what happened?"

"Uh, we just joined the

Descendents. This is gnarly."

BILL:
Stephen harnessed the job of trying

to expand some of the melodic boundaries.

And Karl is a creative dynamo.

So it was like, "Oh man, we're

gonna get some music done now!"

KARL:
We moved into Descendents

Central Headquarters,

which was a storefront on the

PCH in Lomita, California.

We lived in a little room

with three bunk beds

that Doug, Ray, Milo,

and Billy had built.

We had practice space in

between the back room

and where the office was

and that was our life.

Those first tours were

very grueling in the

way that it is when

you're not used to it.

STEPHEN:
There's no money. We're

playing these little, tiny shows.

KARL:
And staying on the floor of whoever.

It's the typical punk rock house where

it's 3 in the morning, the

music is up on eleven,

and people are drinking

and shouting,

and you're trying to find

a place to sleep,

and this girl has this

brain-damaged mouse that can

only run in a circle in

the middle of the room.

This is the kind of

madness that was normal.

So sleeping in the van

was real popular.

BILL:
Karl, I'm not sure if the

word 'savant' might apply,

but he is highly skilled

in very specialized areas.

And then normal people sh*t, he's

not as much into that stuff.

MILO:
In late '86, we started working

up songs for the "ALL" record.

BILL:
Well, the idea of ALL...

My friend, Pat McQuistion, put it into

motion when we would be fishing at night.

Orca was a 16-foot boat, and we

would fill it up until there

was this much room on each side

before it was going to sink.

And I'm like, "Pat, we gotta go

in." And he's like, "No. ALL!"

Seriously, I would have to force him

to not sink the boat with fish.

MILO:
And Bill thought, "Yeah, ALL!

That's cool!" And so he started

bringing in this concept of ALL

and were like, "Yeah, ALL!"

BILL:
The preposterousness

of it

might eclipse the realism of it which

is going for greatness.

Going for the utmost possible, the total

extent, where nothing is left undealt-with.

BILL:
Descendents doctrine

predicates Milo has to quit the

band every couple years.

It's just part of the story.

MILO:
The band was fun

I hadn't achieved ALL,

basically, in

music or in science.

And I got the opportunity to

go try to achieve ALL more

in science, and I decided

to take that opportunity.

BILL:
I toured him to death. We

did all those tours in a row, and

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