Filmage: The Story of Descendents\All Page #5

he said, "I got to focus on my

studies and do something real."

I mean, we were making five or 10

dollars per day and that's it.

We had nowhere to live,

so you can see how a guy with that kind

of brainpower would say, "You know what?"

"I don't have to sleep next to Bill's

drum set in the practice room."

MILO:
Part of it is that I never

really considered music a career,

and so whenever I would

leave the band it was like,

"I'm doing this for fun, and my

real career in this other thing."

And actually, the more

that the music started to

seem like a career, the

less I seemed to like it.

In '87 I left the band, and

we did the final tour.

There wasn't like, "Well, I'm gonna go do

this for a while and come back to the band."

It was like, "I'm embarking on

my life's career to do this."

KARL:
At the end of the

day, his gift is science

and he chose that road,

and I think that's great.

But from the standpoint of the guy in the

band with him, there's that moment of,

"Oh f***. What do we do now?"

JOEY:
Somewhere in the late

'80s, things got really lame.

Their answer was to form ALL.

MIKE:
I think Billy didn't push so

hard to become "new Descendents."

I think he wanted ALL

to be a new band.

DAVE SMALEY:
I get off the plane,

and they're all in the van.

They drove me to Alfredo's, we ate at

Alfredo's, and we f***ing practiced.

I'd been in a plane

for 30-million hours.

Alfredo's, practice, go!

BILL:
Here's your spot on the floor.

Here's your microphone. Yeah.

DAVE:
We've got three Descendents, a

Dag Nasty, and a Black Flag. ALL!

BILL:
I wasn't writing

for a band name.

I was writing because some

girl was treating me poorly,

and I was expressing myself

about it. Catharsis.

It had nothing to do with Descendents,

ALL, Dave, Milo or anything.

MIKE:
I know it was Billy

now in charge totally.

RICHARD:
ALL is Bill, Bill is ALL.

The concept of ALL,

you focus what you want like a dog

on a piece of meat and grab it and

you don't let go until you've eaten

the whole thing plus the bone.

MIKE:
He wanted to try this thing

where everything was very focused,

and nothing is derivative. No creeks

or streams coming off the river.

Just Niagara Falls.

KARL:
Bill is very patient,

and part of the byproduct of

that is he will make you go

over the part as many times

as necessary to get it down.

And I think most people

aren't used to that.

STEPHEN:
He would just push and push

and push and it could be really hard.

DAVE:
I don't know what

you're talking about.

Just because I had to sing

"Just Perfect" for like four

hours in the studio before

he got the take he wanted.

BILL:
He probably told you that

it was excessively meticulous?

DAVE:
I said, "Dude, I'm really hungry. Let's

take a little break and I'll come back to it."

He comes back with

this big Snickers bar.

He tapes it to the other

side of the glass:

"When you're done

you can have it!"

And I'm like, "Oh my god!

Are you f***ing kidding me?

All right, f***ing push play!"

RICHARD:
It was constantly

a battle with him.

He had ideas of the

way things should be.

Of the way the sounds should be.

Of the way the mix should be.

Of the way the songs

should be sung.

And it had to be his way.

It had to be his way.

And he was usually

right, I gotta say.

GREG:
People literally didn't

know who they were when I'd say,

"Hey, are you going to the ALL

show?" They're like, "Who's ALL?"

Milo was kind of iconic.

He had his own logo.

And with ALL it just never

took off the same way.

DAVE:
I was on the road for 9

and a half months in one year.

And I remember, we were

doing laundry, and

Bill started talking

about the next tour.

We were gonna get back in two weeks, and he was

already planning the next one and the next recording,

and he looked at me and said,

"You're not staying, are you?"

BILL:
We just went out

and out and out and out,

and I think he did what any smart

person would do and moved on.

KARL:
There's that instant thing

of, "Who do we get as the singer?"

And the obvious choice was

the boy next door literally,

because Scott was practicing

with his band next door to us.

SCOTT REYNOLDS:
I had nothing back then.

I had no money. I was living in my car.

I couldn't even get a shower. I was

basically a bum, a homeless bum.

And to be on tour playing music

was the whole reason I left home.

Even though I am too disorganized

and right-brained and

underachieving to ever be the

poster boy for the quest for ALL.

KARL:
Scott's got a great voice.

I think he'd got a better

range than most of these

guys I see on American Idol.

STEPHEN:
You can just

throw him anything in any

key and he can just sing.

He's just awesome.

BILL:
It was like we had

discovered some great gem

sleeping in his car outside

our practice room.

RICHARD:
It seems like on each album,

Bill would have the song that he

knew was gonna bring people to the

band and bring people to the record.

And "She's My Ex"

was one of them.

STEPHEN:
That was where Scott got his first

taste of how absolutely particular Bill was.

SCOTT:
I've never been in a band where phrasing

was so f***ing important as this band.

Karl would do some of that, too.

Not as bad a Bill. Oh God, Bill.

He'd just stop the tape. And it's terrible

because you're going "She'll always be..."

and then all of a sudden

the tapes stops.

And you're like, "What?" And

he's like, "You're flat."

And he goes back. So we got all done

with this thing after days on one song,

and he goes, "That's awesome. We're done." And I'm

like, "Phew!" And he goes, "Okay, let's double it."

STEPHEN:
"When Dave

was in the band,

we intentionally didn't do

any of the Milo songs."

And then we went ahead and introduced

a few into the set with Scott.

SCOTT:
The first show I ever played, one dude was

yelling, "You're not Milo!" the entire time.

MALE VO:
Hey! Where's Milo!

You're not Milo!

SCOTT:
A lot of what we did was we called in

the Descendents crowd, come see this band.

And they'd go crazy when we'd

play "Suburban Home,"

but I don't think that a lot of people that

might have liked what we did

got to hear it, because the Descendents/ALL

thing, we just pounded it down people's throats.

MILO:
It bothers me because

every single record they ever put out,

I just think why

isn't this top of the charts?!

If I could take a fan and

shake him and just go,

"No! That's not the way it is!

That's ridiculous."

SCOTT:
To this day, I still get a

lot of that, "You're not Milo,"

and I love the Descendents,

don't get me wrong,

but we never found our

niche because we were

always trying to get back

into that other niche.

REPORTER:
"In our first story tonight,

since this band's inception in 1978,"

"they've released over a

dozen albums,

they're headed for Australia,

Japan, and even Europe"

"to tour and yet you've

probably never heard of them."

"They're formerly called the Descendents,

they hail from Los Angeles, California."

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