“A woman got shot not too far away from my club downtown last week—a stray bullet from a shootout in Juarez, which is maybe the equivalent of six or seven blocks away,” says At the Drive-in guitarist Jim Ward over the phone from his home in El Paso. “The violence rarely spills over, but you can feel it, you know. If you want to kill someone, all you have to do is go to Juarez, where the law is all but obsolete and the consequences are either retaliation or nothing at all.”
“It was one of the most fucked up places back then," says Jim of his hometown, where he lives now with his wife. "But it wasn't anger fueling the music. It was just being frustrated from living in El Paso. It was such a clusterfuck. But everybody was in it together. Everybody played with everybody's band; everyone knew each other. It was like a gang." According to Ward, it’s this mentality that brought the band back together for their Coachella appearance. "There's no amount of money in the world that could make this worthwhile if it wasn't for the friendships." he says. "If it didn't feel comfortable, we wouldn't have done it. I mean, I love these guys. We grew up together. And in a way, you're fucking with your history. You're opening your book and starting to write again—and we were fine with our history. We can all sit in a room and get along, but if the music isn't working…
“Anyways, it was only yesterday when we plugged in and started rehearsing. Within a nanosecond we knew it was perfect, and that was it. If that wasn't there, there'd be no point.”
While Coachella also marks other reunion firsts—Swedish hardcore veterans Refused and the Buzzcocks' classic lineup among them—there's arguably few with as chaotic and confusing a past as At the Drive-In.
Listening to Zavala and Ward speak, it’s evident a lot of that chaos and confusion traces back to those formative days in EI Paso. For any band currently laboring through the unforgiving times of Could it be more felicitous that At the Drive-In's sound was birthed a mere few music business ebb-and-flow and the dying throes of AOR rock, the singer says. "I was trying to escape as a kid, and I was lucky enough to tour and travel young," adds Ward. "But kids in those port cities, sometimes they just want to get the fuck away. That’s one reason so many get jobs on ships. When they tell me that, I get it. It's the same now; it really wasn't much better in the mid-‘90s, either.”
“We were basically the black sheep of EI Paso," Zavala recalls of their first few years. "No one was really stoked on us. I think if there are any true fans there; they'll remember that a lot of the time there were maybe three people at our shows—like Omar's dad and two other people."
Ward freely admits to having a love-hate relationship with his hometown. It's where he helped start At the Drive In at age 17, and where the band ultimately agreed to put it on hiatus some seven
Despite playing to small crowds in smaller venues, the band's
determination only grew. "If people hated us, it only incensed that gang-like
years later—a band break that never officially ended. But Ward is also quick to
attitude," remembers Ward. "People would be in the front row, booing us and
credit the town with helping birth their own sui generis brand of rock 'n' roll. It's
telling us we sucked, and we were just like, 'Fuck you, we have the mic, and
*i
a sound that's likely flustered many a fan who would attempt to describe it to a
we don't care if there’s a thousand of you. We're still gonna do what we want."
friend, if only in hopes of categorizing it: post-punk, noise rock. Sewn together
Eventually their on-stage performances caught the eye of fledgling indie label
with Zavala's cut and paste prose, ATDIs music played like a mutant brainchild
Flipside, who signed ATDI the same night the band played to a crowd of only
between latter day William Burroughs and a '90s, ADHD-afflicted youth. A
nine people. Thus followed touring, three albums (the third, Relationship of
Command, on the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label), some MTV exposure via
counterculture hungry for something not too Blink-182 but also not too Mr.
Bungle. A Frankenstein of sorts, forged from caustic beginnings in both El Paso
their video for "One-Armed Scissor," and still more touring, Soon the road began
to take its toll.
and its violent sister city across the border.
THERES NO AMOUNT OF MONEY IN THE WORLD THAT COULD
MAKE THIS WORTHWHILE IF IT WASNT FOR THE FRIENDSHIPS."
"People kept trying to book shows," remembers Ward scornfully. "There was no
In its own way, none of this intermittent chaos seems surprising to Zavala and
record company telling us what to do, but the frustration came with touring
Ward. Maybe that's because both, in their own respective ways, have been
and the exhaustion that followed. It kept going. No one ever stepped in to stop
surrounded by death and drama their entire lives. Ward lost his cousin to an
it, evon though they could see what was happening to us. No one ever bothered
apparent heroin overdose in 2003. In 1996, Zavala's close friend Julio Venagas
to say, “Slow down.” One day, Omar and Cedric said they were gonna go their
committed suicide, and his friends Laura Beard and Sarah Reisler (both from
separate ways, and I just felt this wave of relief." He’s quiet for a moment. "It
another ElPaso band called Fall on Deaf Ears) were kılled in an auto accident
wasnt hard; we were just kids. It’s not like we had mansions and mortgage
that same yoar. Zavala credits being able to perform live as a primary reason he's
payments to make.
still sane.
"We'd had this ‘six month rule' thing, too," he adds, "which meant that before we
"I guess the affinity comes from the frustration of all those years, and channeling
would break up, we’d take six months off to think about it. That’s where it sort of
it into my live show. Sometimes I'm at a loss for words, and if I can dance it out,
went wrong. Nobody ever really honored that agreement.”
if I can freak out and break stuff and knock shit around, then I'm tapping into that
I'm tapping into myself, and when I’m doing it publicly, that’s when it’s
Zavala doesn't hesitate to address all the rother factors that supposedly led to
the truest form of who I am.”
ATDI's dissolution, including what was, by his own admittance, "just all my
As for those stream-of-consciousness lyrics, how do they hold up 11 years later?
shit-talking and hiding behind things." A chronic pot-smoker back then, Zavala
Do fans ever approach him, relating how they relate to them? The
found band life difficult to adjust to. I wasn’t stepping up to the plate. I became
answer seems to be a resounding yes, if not completely the way Zavala had anticipated.
a completely grumpy bastard, and I couldn’t do anything without pot. You know
Jon Stewart's character in Half Baked? I was like that. It was a great way of
distancing myself from people. All I gotta do is smoke and then I’ll get on stage
“One timel I got a phone call from my manager, who put me on the phone with this
and be fine. Now I believe my choices were my choices. I'm not fully better or
kid who was on a ledge, and I had to talk him down," Zavala remembers. "He
changed, in the sense that I still am dealing with my anger issues."
was calling me trom Sweden after we’d played a show there, and he was about
to kill himself. He kept asking, “does this lyric mean this?' I just had to say to
Zavala insists he's neither condemning or condoning his past behavior. "One thing
him that whatever you can get from it, I nope it’s a positive
I've learned is that I can't put other peoples' ethics in," he adds. "lf that's what
thing. I didn't know what to say to the guy. AIl I could think was that he was
works for them then they gotta reach for whatever level in life works for them. AII I
going to kill himself.There was no negative hidden meaning, but I couldn’t
know is that quitting is working for me, and my wallet says,
explain myselt, really. Just, “Don't make life so short. It’s worth living.”
"Thank you. Now we can spend money on studio time for your records.”
Between the touring and the drugs, however, Zavala admits he had trouble
Few would argue that a breaking polnt for the band came with the band's 2001
making himselt believe that credo. He still sounds unsure as to why. "I had
Big Day Out Festival appearance in Brisbane, Australia. Caught in a violent
to go play on stage, and before I went on, other people would come up and tell
me, ‘This song has spoken to me because I had an abortion, and it helped me
mosh pit during Limp Bizkit's set, 17-year old Jeasica Michalik was crushed by
the crowd and rushed to a hospital. Despite being revived, she died of a heart
get through these things." Now you go back and look at the lyrics and you say,
attack five days later. It was an incident some might say the band was prescient
‘holy shit! What the hell was I thinking back then? It took me ten years to go
back and listen and sort of realize that I'm just an antenna—I'm really just
enough to foresee. "We didn’t want to be the soundtrack to broken bones,"
Zavala says, recalling their set earlier in the day. “There were people surfing on
picking up stuff. I mean, I grew up in the suburbs, my parents put food on the
cach other. I mean, thoy were literally taking boogie boards and surfing off each
, and I just got mad at the things a young man gets angry at.”
other’s skin. It was painful to watch, and so we walked off.I don’t favor the brutal. I
meek, especially in a situation like that."
In addition to that rebellious attitude, El Paso also serves as a source of pride.
"When I think of Texas—when I think of EI Paso—I think of the Butthole Surfers
"We'd always watch out for the kids in the front," adds Ward, "but at that
and Scratch Acid," says Zavala. "I think ot Fearless lranians from Hell, bands likey
festival, people just kept on doing it. After that we had to say fuck it.”
that. That stuff was really extreme. When I was just a teen skateboarding around
EI Paso Zorlad Skateboards were the most sought-after board in the state. And
A month after the Australian Festival, At the Drive-In offiçially broke up, citing
it was mostly because ot theur "Fuck You!" attitude. I remember their logo on a
mental and physical exhaustion. The six-month break passed; Ward, Hajjar and
t-shirt, which read, Fuck You, we're from Texas!” We were coming from a place
Hinojos Conzalez formed Sparta, while Cedric and guitarist Omar Rodnguez-
that broke rules all the time, and that was the feeling that came up when Tony
contacted me last time. Just, “Let's do it."
Lopez formed The Mars Volta (later to be joined by Hinojos in 2005). The five
rarely spoke over the following decade.
"We've done a lot ot growing up over the past 11 years," adds Ward. "Finally you find
yourself surrounded by people you trust and love. Those are these guys, for me.”
Canyon.”