Redd Kross
LA ROCKS! vol 2 no 6
Sept 4, 1987
REDD KROSS - by Ruben McBlue
BLUE: Okay folks, we’re here with REDD KROSS’s Steve and Jeff McDonald and friend David. The guitar player and drummer couldn’t make it cause they had pressing engagements.
STEVE: They had satanic rituals to perform…before midnight.
BLUE: We have Steve and Jeff here, the two brothers that started the band. Right?
STEVE: Yeah, the only important ones…(laughter)
They might be important to their girlfriends, I guess…(laughter).
BLUE: Okay, when did you guys start?
STEVE: My heart started beating when I was four.
JEFF: We started in 1978.
BLUE: How old were you then?
STEVE: I was 25, he was about 30, then(laughter) naw, I was 11, he was 15.
BLUE: And you actually started then?
JEFF: Yeah, we learned how to play instruments, write songs and started REDD KROSS all at the same time.
BLUE: Well, that’s different…(laughter) and were you a punk band then? What did you play then?
STEVE: Well, RICK JAMES kind of ripped our thing off, James, but we were a punk funk band, that was our thing. We were called punk funk.
JEFF: We were heavily influenced by the “Busting Out” album by RICK JAMES, but we were beginning to sound like the RAMONES. We couldn’t pull of major fame.
STEVE: It goes back to our New Delhi roots, actually.
JEFF: Oh, that’s such a long story.
STEVE: I know, a lot of people know about it.
JEFF: Wes used to live in India when we were kids, cause our Dad was in the military. They started like, folk music there, and we came back to America and punk rock was just starting and it was so easy to play, so…
STEVE: We were kind of like Hindu Folk, a folk duo (laughter).
BLUE: Did you have a sitar?
BOTH: No.
JEFF: It was like instead of Americans playing Indian flavored music, it was Indians playing American flavored music…
STEVE: My guitar might as well have been a sitar, cause I played it the way I would play a sitar.
BLUE: So where did you play? Hong Kong Cafe?
STEVE: Oh no, there were a lot of folk type places in New Delhi.
JEFF: Oh you mean after we came back.
BLUE: Yeah.
JEFF: Oh, we used to play the Hong Kong, the Fleetwood in Redondo Beach and Bijou.
STEVE: Which was once called the Cokes Theater.
JEFF: We used to do all the clubs that were happening back then.
BLUE: And your named was spelled like, Red Cross, then right?
STEVE: Yeah, the American Red Cross.
BLUE: What happen, you had a law suit or something?
JEFF: You can’t really just go ripping off peoples names.
STEVE: It’s like my brother’s name, Jeff, you know there’s other Jeffs, he’s ripped them off (laughter).
BLUE: What about the Dead Kennedys?
JEFF: There was never a project or organization called Dead Kennedys.
STEVE: There were many Kennedys that were dead at the time (laughter), so they copyrighted the concept I guess (ore laughter).
BLUE: Okay, so you just changed the “K” and the other “D”?
JEFF: We got radically sued. You go to court so you can lose like hell.
STEVE: Yeah, I used to go into court crying a say I couldn’t finish my homework and my grades were getting really bad.
JEFF: We ended up owing them $3,000 in damage, so we had to pawn all our equipment, but we were okay, we bounced back.
STEVE: Yeah, we bounced back, and jumped into prostitution (laughter).
BLUE: Actually, you’ve been progressing every since?
STEVE: Yeah, I think the prostitution period really… (laughter).
JEFF: I liked the prostitution, we had two girls in the band…
STEVE: See, when that happened we were like, what are we going to do, so we decided on pimping. We got two chicks and put them in the band as a really good cover up.
STEVE: I like lost all my equipment and I was 13 too. They were coming down hard on me.
JEFF: We thought they wouldn’t pick on us cause we were just little kids.
JEFF: That was Jan and Tracy.
STEVE: Yeah, Jan and Tracy, and me and Jeff became professional pimps. We didn’t know what else to do with them in their spare time.
JEFF: Yeah, then they started getting too old and we had to ditch them.
STEVE: They started to grow chest hair.
JEFF: So we greased and shaved them, then put them on their way. (laughter)
BLUE: Are these real girls, are they going to be offended if we write this?
JEFF: No, you can write it, they’ll probably be offended.
STEVE: I think they told their parents by now. (laughter)
BLUE: So where do you guys live? Where do you hang out mostly?
JEFF: I try to hang out in North Hollywood as much as possible.
STEVE: I’ve been staying in Shirley McClain’s guest house lately.
BLUE: Aren’t you guys from Hermosa Beach somewhere?
STEVE: Our guitars are from Hermosa Beach (laughter). It’s a small island in the South Pacific. It’s getting hard, we’re having a hard time commuting back and forth to rehearsal in Hermosa Island. A lot of people get Catalina confused with Hermosa Island, but (laughter)… I’ve been staying in Shirley McClain’s guest house, she lives in Lawndale (laughter), and it’s a really nice pad.
BLUE: I hear Lawndale Rocks!
STEVE: Well, you mean the band or the city?
BLUE: The city.
STEVE: Sort of like the band or the magazine! (laughter)
JEFF: You see, Lawndale was really happening back in the early 70’s when people like Edgar Winters, were going to clubs down there, but it kind of died.
STEVE: The club circuit kind of died in Lawndale. The most incredible landmark was the Robin Trower riot.
JEFF: That was incredible!
STEVE: It was insane. That was like ’69 or ’70.
JEFF: For some reason, they had a strip like Sunset and they had all these major clubs where major acts played and stuff in the 70’s. ROBIN TROWER, EDGAR WINTER…
STEVE: FOGHAT, MOLLY HATCHET, so that’s what influenced us, we came from New Delhi and came to Los Angeles, and hung out in Lawndale and Hawthorne, that’s where our parents lived. But there’s no more club circuit there.
BLUE: Do you guys still live there?
BOTH: Yeah!
STEVE: I’ve been staying in Lawndale.
BLUE: Were you guys in on this Bomp Records movement when they tried to have the Cavern Club and all this 60’s psychodelic stuff?
JEFF: No, we’re just trying to start a punk revival. We’re producing a band called ANARCHY 6 right now. We had to shy away from the 60’s underground, we thought there was no future in the 60’s. We thought the real future was in the 70’s.
STEVE: Especially like the punk rock 70’s.
JEFF: Hardcore punk rock!
STEVE: A lot of people don’t realize that hardcore lives.
BLUE: So you’re really producing a hardcore band?
STEVE: Yeah, ANARCHY 6.
JEFF: We’re kind of like the Rick Rubin, we’re like the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards.
STEVE: We’re kind of like the Glimmer Twins of ANARCHY 6.
JEFF: Of hardcore punk rock.
STEVE: Kevin Flemme, Joe Hardcore on lead guitar.
BLUE: So you lost hop in the 60’s and you’re into the 70’s.
STEVE: See we were in New Delhi when everything was going down.
JEFF: Actually there is no future in the 70’s, we’re going back to the 50’s, cause we feel the doo-wop has been ignored. (laughter) We’re trying to incorporate our REDD KROSS flavoring with doo-wop.
STEVE: Yeah, there’s a lot of poseurs, like SHA NA NA. People just get a misconception of what doo-wop is all about (laughter)
BLUE: But don’t you guys wear, like paisley shirts and striped bell bottoms?
JEFF: no.
STEVE: Some people confuse us with SHA NA NA, cause we wear the gold lame jumpsuits (laughter) but, the thing is our crotches are much larger than theirs. (laughter)
BLUE: How do we tell when you guys are serous and when you’re not?
JEFF: We’re basically always serious.
STEVE: We’re very serious, we don’t joke.
JEFF: We jok…
STEVE: I mean there are times, I say like “knock, knock who’s there?!” You know, SHA NA NA! (laughter) But, our band is very serious ya know, we wouldn’t be telling you these deep inner thoughts about our musi in ou past if I wasn’t serious about it. So…
JEFF: You’re not going to smoke another cigarette, are you?
STEVE: Yes, I’m very serious about it. (laughter)
JEFF: Yes, cancer is very important, it helps build one’s mystic.
BLUE: So your music is kind of like, uh…
STEVE: Like trash.
JEFF: No it’s like THE COWSILLS meets BLACK SABBATH. DAVID CASSIDY meets…
BLUE: It’s not the PARTRIDGE FAMILY meets KISS?
STEVE: It’s kind of like the cast of Three’s Company got a band together, a bad combo of them and the cast of Wonder Bug.
BLUE: Let me ask you about some of the songs on the new record. “Peach Kelli Pop”, what’s this song about?
JEFF: It’s about Public Kelli, she was a character in a Hostess cartoon show in the late sixties. The song is basically talking about L.A.
BLUE: That’s the song that says something about The Rainbow.
JEFF: The song has nothing to do with The Rainbow, the only reason we mentioned The Rainbow is because she was busted for ripping off something at a boutique on Sunset, and she went to The Rainbow and got busted, cause she was trying to ditch the cops.
BLUE: What about “Love Is You”?
JEFF: “Love Is You” is like, about Love is you, no, Love is you…
STEVE: Love is you, no love is you!
JEFF: I guess love is a badf concept and you just go to bed just calling them ‘love’ and they say, ‘no, love is you’ and you say, “no, Love is you”. We live in a society where hate was, like good, and love was bad, and you don’t want to insult anybody for saying that.
STEVE: I didn’t realize that myself.
BLUE: And then “Neurotica”, what’s that one about?
JEFF: “Neurotica” is about being really sane and having a real mellow life.
STEVE: It was sort of inspired by Eddie Van Halen and Valerie’s marraige.
JEFF: We went out with them one weekend and it was just too heavy.
STEVE: Valerie Van Halen has just been blowing minds lately, she actually invented the hammer-on technique (mimics the famous guitar hammer-on technique). That’s what the song is about.
BLUE: What about “Janus, Jeanie And George Harrison”? Who are Janus and Jeanie?
JEFF: Janus and Jeanie, they’re girls and George Harrison.
BLUE: And what do they have in common?
JEFF: God.
BLUE: What about your music, are you more heavy metal, pop or psychodelic?
JEFF: We’re kind of reggae, or doo-wop even. We’re actually kind of heavy metal like EZO.
STEVE: We’re kind of like, if Mick Mars and Linda Grace had babies (quadruplets), that’s like our music.
BLUE: If we did this interview tomorrow, would the answer be different?
JEFF: They’d be exactly the same everytime we do interviews they think we’re joking, but we’re serious, just because we have smiles on our faces.
STEVE: I don’t have to stay in Shirley McClain’s guest house.
BLUE: What’s your favorite band?
BOTH: Salty Dog.
BLUE: What’s your favorite club?
BOTH: Coconut Teazer.
JEFF: Do you have a restroom here?
BLUE: Yea, right around the corner. (Jeff leaves to sink his lemon)
STEVE MCDONALD INTERVIEW
STEVE: Is this the Steve McDonald interview now?
BLUE: Are you the older or younger brother?
STEVE: Younger, Jeff’s ten years older than me, he’s 30. Don’t tell anyone, though.
BLUE: He’s more talented then.
STEVE: I’m more talented, ya know, the gods gave it to me.
BLUE: Has the band always had the same members?
STEVE: Well, I’ve always had the same members on my body. We’ve had quite a few, I already told you about the prostitutes in our band.
BLUE: How many albums do you have?
STEVE: Four, counting EPs and some songs on compilations.
BLUE: How often do you guys rehearse?
JEFF: Hardly at all, it takes some of your soul, everytime you rehearse.
STEVE: It’s like soul-stealing.
JEFF: It’s like cameras and tape recorders.
STEVE: Cameras a like portable soul-stealers.
BLUE: We’re stealing your soul right now.
STEVE: Someone like Ron Keel, they don’t take many pictures of him, see, it’s because he doesn’t have a lot of soul left.
BLUE: Anything else you guys want to say?
BOTH: Be uptight, have a horrible time, quit school, move to… Montclair, and smell the glove.
BLUE: If you’re serious about your life, go see REDD KROSS Sunday, Sept 6 (1987) at the Hollywood Hills Music Festival.
