Filmage: The Story of Descendents\All Page #9

But by the time I was sending him stuff, I think

he was starting to head into being pretty sick.

TIM:
We were doing a record almost

at the height of Bill's illness.

And we didn't know

what was going on.

We just knew he was really

unhealthy and getting unhealthier.

DAVE:
Every time I saw

Bill he was looking worse.

ZACH:
Everybody could tell

something was a bit wrong.

KARL:
I thought it was a nervous breakdown,

because he's a workaholic kinda guy."

BRETT:
The last time I had spoken with him, he

seemed like he was in outer space or something.

CHAD:
He started getting mellower.

Started putting on weight.

MILO:
He wasn't going

to the studio anymore.

He was sitting in front of the TV like a

vegetable and getting incredibly large.

He peaked out at 385 lbs.

TIM:
We were worried about him but

completely clueless as to what to do.

GREG:
I heard this story about

how the neighbor saw his dog

out front and went and knocked

on the door to check on him,

and Bill was out of it. Called an ambulance,

and the next thing, he's in the E.R..

MARK NEAGLE:
I got a call

from the E.R. doc that there

was a guy downstairs who

was in pretty bad shape,

who had a pretty large

pulmonary embolism, which is a

blood clot that traveled up

to the lungs and got stuck.

This was a clot about a foot and

a half long. It was enormous.

I recall at the time showing

someone the CT scan,

"Hey, look at this." And they were like,

"Oh, did you get the autopsy?"

And I was like, "He's alive!"

When it became apparent that he was

gonna live through this thing,

I started talking to him and said, "You said you

were in the music industry. What did you do?"

And he said, "I was in a band, I played the

drums. Some people would call it punk rock."

At which point, I'm very interested. I

said, "Anybody I would've heard of?"

And he said, "Black Flag. And

the Descendents. And ALL."

I was like, "You're hallucinating." And then I looked

down at the chart, and it said John W. Stevenson.

And I said, "So you're Bill Stevenson." And he

said, "Yeah." And I'm like, "I know who you are!"

Because he's looking at me as some

dorky doctor, not as someone who,

back in the '80s was a huge Descendents

fan or anything like that.

MILO:
I went and visited him and he was

better but still out of it a little bit.

MARK:
It became apparent when he a came back

to see me that everything was not okay.

And that was when he had the MRI done of his

head that revealed he had a meningioma,

which is a benign tumor about

the size of a tennis ball right

in the middle of his head,

compressing both frontal lobes.

The cure for the tumor is surgery.

You can't do surgery on someone

when they're on blood thinners.

And when somebody has an enormous blood

clot in their lungs, you have to wait.

At five months, I said,

"I know if we're gonna get him any better," and

boom, he was in the operating room in three days.

There was no guarantee that taking this tumor

out was going to bring back his personality.

He might get worse, or he

might make no recovery.

ZACH:
For us, he's this

unsinkable person.

TIM:
I couldn't imagine

not having Bill around.

MIKE:
It's f***ed up.

BILL:
So they put me under,

and they sawed my head open,

and they removed a 6.5 cm

meningioma out of my skull,

and bolted my head back together

with titanium plates. And here I am.

MARK:
We were all prepared for a long

rehab process, but that didn't happen.

ZACH:
He survived two things

that would kill a normal person.

BILL:
When I came up out of the anesthesia, I lifted

my head out of the pillow and I remember going,

"Yeah! Yes! I knew I

wasn't getting old!"

MILO:
He called me two days

after they removed it,

and he was on cloud nine. It was

like a veil was lifted.

CHAD:
It was like BAM! That's the

Bill I met when I joined the band.

BILL:
Because it had grown exponentially

in a parabola over years,

I had acclimated to that pressure and I just

thought that's what a person's head feels like.

And that that's what I was gonna be like. I

was gonna be an old, lame, huge, fat guy.

So it was so cool when they got it out of

there. Everything just became really easy.

BRETT:
It was literally a rebirth. His

personality was back where it had been gone.

DAVE:
He's really rejuvenated and excited about

playing and excited about life. And he should be.

KARL:
And he's drumming

better than he has ever.

MARK:
It's almost like a novel.

BILL:
I woke up,

and this Black Flag fan had saved my

life.

And he lives a block

from the studio.

It was so awesome. He made

being sick really kick-ass.

MIKE:
But I think it put in him, if there could be

such a thing, even more drive, more earnestness.

You know, I gotta get done what I

gotta do with the time I have.

BILL:
I'm a lucky man. I'm lucky to

be here, and I'm happy to be here.

And it's just rad.

It's rad to not die.

STEPHEN:
With Bill's health

issues now resolved and the

massive debt that was incurred

when Bill couldn't work,

with medical bills stacked on top

of that. I think Milo was like,

"Maybe we ought to

take a few shows."

REPORTER:
"At FunFunFun Fest

today we have the Descendents!"

MILO:
I really wanted to see

him back on the drumset.

I wanted to be able to turn around

and watch him doing the Bill thing.

MILO:
Which, sure enough, that's how

it's been. It's been incredible.

I look back and he almost always has a

smile on his face. He's back there like...

As you might expect from someone who almost lost

their life twice. He has a new reason to live.

He's living it back there on the drums with

this big sh*t-eating grin on his face.

STEPHEN:
Milo figured out, "I can do this in this

limited way and it works for me, and it's cool."

Just blast in there, have a ton of fun,

and then go back to my science thing.

KARL:
It's fun, man. It's easier now because a

lot of the problems that might have existed

personally and professionally don't exist

now. We certainly all have separate lives,

and we get together and do this music.

It's a little bit like a time machine.

Part of you is still existing in the

time and space where you wrote the song.

BILL:
We can bring our kids to our

show and be like, "Check me out!

I'm rockin'!" Miles is like,

"Yeah, my dad shreds on drums!"

MILO:
I figure I gotta do it now

before, A) I'm too old, and

B) they're teenagers and what

to have nothing to do with me.

DAVE:
They still sound amazing.

Just as powerful as they have been.

It's nice to have the

audience really dig them.

JOEY:
They're maybe even better than

they were, which I don't understand.

DOUG:
It's not like, "Wheel out the geezers

and let them play!" These guys are doing it!

That's difficult music to play!

And they're blasting!

SCOTT:
I didn't even watch any of the show. I

sat just facing the audience the entire time,

because I just couldn't get over it. It

was like f***ing Van Halen or something.

MIKE:
They've got such passionate fans.

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