Filmage: The Story of Descendents\All Page #6

"They're now out of Brookfield,

Missouri and simply called ALL."

MIKE:
You know, they got this

thing, "We're gonna tour a lot."

"Why not start from the middle?"

So they move to Missouri,

this little f***ing town and,

"we're gonna tour from here!"

KARL:
That was a

financial necessity.

Because L.A. at the level of poverty we

were at was not that easy of a place to be.

We were living in a practice

space for crying out loud.

STEPHEN:
I mean we made nothing.

It was just impractical for us

to live in California, and we

weren't there that much anyway.

So Bill came up with the idea, "Hey, my dad has this

house out here in rural Missouri where he grew up."

And it worked out to be really good

for us because it enabled us to

have bedrooms

and neat sh*t like that.

"To have your own room, that in of itself

is just like, "Wow, this is rad!"

"Where I guess a lot of people my age would

sort of be wanting to have a house."

KARL:
The chemistry developed

and it was basically

go out and tour, make a

record, go out and tour.

We got to know each other

better than I think families do,

and I think

it very much is a family.

Bear in mind all this while that our fortunes rose and

fell together. We were all living in the same place.

Kind of like The Monkees on the TV

show, only with dirt and smell.

SCOTT:
When I was in the band, it was

when we were at our most urgent.

We really needed it to succeed.

We were broke and filthy

and we lived like animals.

If you listen to Percolater, this

is where the rift started with us,

because our philosophies

began to diverge.

When we went to record

the "Dot" video,

it was apparent that Bill was

dissatisfied. He wasn't happy.

BILL:
At that point I was idealizing

we would put our foot forward

visually with a song that had more

of an eighth-note drive to it.

But on that record I didn't have

any good songs, so it's like,

"Okay, a lot of lip from you, Stevenson! Where's

your good song? And it's like, "I don't have any."

SCOTT:
The four distinct musical camps, and I

think they're all very strong in their own way,

made for a pretty eclectic

collection of songs.

STEPHEN:
I think people didn't

react well to not having a

consistent sound and knowing

what the band sounded like.

SCOTT:
If you consider music our child,

our baby, you got four different parents.

What are you gonna do? It's

gonna f*** up eventually.

At the end I just wanted so

badly to go do something else.

STEPHEN:
We had a

great run with Scott.

BILL:
He has the best sense of humor and

he's so sharp-witted and just so fun.

SCOTT:
Every decision I've made since I

left the band has been the wrong decision.

On the one hand, I wanted my independence.

On the other hand, ironically,

that's why I'm a bar back now.

KARL:
Chad was really good to have come into

play at that time because he was very laid back.

Chad's very laconic to the

point of speechlessness.

CHAD:
Uh... it was killer. Uh,

I was a huge ALL fan... uh...

I grew up with Descendents and

stuff... uh... and whatnot...

STEPHEN:
Chad had been sort of a fan

that we just got to be friends with.

KARL:
We didn't really know

he was that good of a singer.

BILL:
It was like wow, man.

Listen to those pipes!

It's quite striking really,

if you've never heard him

and then you just hear him

sing, it's like whoa!

STEPHEN:
I'd say there

are few people with more

of a lucky, natural gift

for singing than Chad.

DONI:
Bill told me about Chad.

He said Milo Got great.

It took him a while.

Chad Was great.

MILO:
Bill said, "Hey, we're trying

this guy out for ALL,

what do you think?" And I heard his voice

and was like, "Yeah! Get that guy!"

BILL:
"Breaking Things" was an

accomplishment for us. I think I was

harboring some yearning for that kinda

Black Flag power in the guitars."

But I don't think it has the intrigue of musical

diversity that "Saves" or "Revenge" has.

You're comparing and

contrasting these things,

but it doesn't' work that

way, cuz ultimately it's

just us expressing our ideas

in our bedroom and then

playing them in a garage together

and there's no direction for that.

There's no rudder. So the records

come out how they come out.

You have to keep moving forward

as a band. And sometimes in

order to get from point A to

B there's that middle point

where the result might not be what people expect

or what they want, but it's part of your journey.

Because, otherwise, are we gonna just

do "Milo Goes To College 19.0"?"

We don't wanna do that.

KARL:
It was the 90's, they were just throwing

money at anyone who could hold a guitar.

INTERVIEW:
Have majors been talking to you

and trying to steal you away from Cruise?

BILL:
"Not blatantly, We've been in

the music thing and long, long time."

KARL:
It was weird for us because

suddenly all these doors were open.

BILL:
So it's funny, people are

like, "Oh, the major label..."

and it's like, no, we don't

think about that stuff."

The major label

bought this stuff.

STEPHEN:
The money that we

got from the major label

deal, we just built the

Blasting Room with it.

Which was the single smartest

thing we ever did, really.

TV:
"Next up it's a live performance

by ALL, who stopped by the studio

earlier this week and played a few

songs off their eighth album Pummel.

CONAN:
"Ladies and gentlemen, Pummel

is the new album from my next guest.

Give a nice, warm

welcome to ALL!"

BILL:
"We write about things that

we have gut feelings about."

"Not stuff that we've analyzed intellectually

and want to write a doctoral thesis on."

KARL:
"In summation, we write about the way

you feel more than the way you think."

That was the last boom time the major

labels shall see, so we got our licks in.

And I think we got out of it a lot

lighter than a lot of people.

STEPHEN:
We'd gone through our normal touring

cycle, started writing a bunch of songs,

and just right after that

Milo approached Bill.

KARL:
Said he had a bunch of songs and

wanted to do stuff. Simple as a that.

MARK:
The Descendents were reforming.

That blew our f***ing minds!

We were gonna get a chance to see

the Descendents actually play,

because I had never gotten a chance

to see the Descendents play.

BRETT GUREWITZ:
I got a call from Bill saying,

"Would you want to do a Descendents record,

not an ALL record?" And I was

like, "Hell yeah I would!"

MILO:
It was pretty exciting at that point

because we just had so much material.

It was like, how are we gonna pare

this down to the critical number?

But part of that equations makes you think

it's gonna be a f***ing great record.

GROHL:
When "Everything Sucks" came out, it was,

"Okay, this is it! They're gonna f***ing happen!"

People are gonna finally recognize

that the Descendents are awesome!

HERRERA:
Every song was amazing,

and it sounded so huge and

so present. The guitars were

right there in your face.

BILL:
That's when Karl really, to me, stepped

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