CBS SF talks to pioneering skate-punk band the Boneless Ones (Part II)
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Three members of legendary '80s East Bay skate-punk band the Boneless Ones recently spoke with CBS SF about the upcoming release of Back to the Grind, the group's first album in over 35 years.
In Part II of the interview, band members Max Fox (vocals), Craig Locicero (guitar) and Chris Kontos (drums) discuss their plans for releasing the new album, some of the stories behind the new songs and how the Bay Area fostered the combination of punk rock and metal during the 1980s in the thriving local music scene.
CBS SF: So are you guys putting out the CD yourselves? The release said it was coming out on Thunder and Lightning Records...
Chris Kontos: Yeah. Basically it's come to the point to where what can a label do for you that you can't do for yourself in the current climate of the industry? The way records are sold, the way the customer gets the music, with streaming and online and stuff, we just figured it would be best for us to retain the rights, to own everything, not owe anybody any money. To not have any record-label constraints and just go ahead and do it ourselves. So for us to own the rights and everything right, it really behooves us to go about it that way.
CBS SF: You're releasing new recordings of the old songs from your 1987 demo on Back to the Grind, but has the band had any thoughts about putting the demo itself out at some point?
Max Fox: Yes, we almost released the demos two years ago through a label on the East Coast. We had been looking for the demo forever, and then Troy found the demo. He found the cassette. We sent it to get it mastered to Dave Klein, who's the big mastering guy down in LA. And he said, "This sounds great dude! I don't know if I would do anything to this." So those tapes have all been digitized. There are talks that it will come out. But it'd be kind of self-defeating right now. We won't put it out for a while. We wouldn't put it out for another year or so.
CBS SF: "I Wish You Were Beer" is simultaneously hilarious and poignant. It's clever and funny, but musically kind of tugs at the heartstrings, which is not something one expects from a skate-punk crossover album. What was the genesis of that song?
Craig Locicero: That's so cool you say that dude! I love that song. Max has got the real story, but I'll let him tell you and then I got my point of view on that song.
Max Fox: I don't know how many shows the Boneless Ones played in the four years we were together in the '80s. We played probably a thousand shows and I'm not exaggerating. We used to go to Fresno once a month. This is when you go play in veterans halls and all sorts of places in '84. Our first guitarist -- Tom Montana, who was [Exodus guitarist] Gary Holt's road guy; he was our first guitarist before Luke and was this total metal guy too. He hooked up with this girl in Fresno and so did Troy. There's a song off the first album called "Miss Fresno" that's about that.
This is kind of part two of it, but it's the saga of losing her. "Wish You Were Beer" comes from a specific early write of the song. What's interesting is both me and Craig did the same thing separately. I Googled "beer phrases. And Craig, at one point went [makes typing motion] "beer phrases." And we kind of met.
Craig Locicero: All the old advertising jingles...
Max Fox: So it's a combination of "Keg Kept a-Flowin' Part 2" and "Miss Fresno Part 2." That's the Boneless Ones humor: beer. You'll notice they're all '80s catchphrases. They're all, "If you've got the time, we've got the beer," that kind of s--t. So it's all throwback. That's really the root of it. But then it went way farther with the post-production.
There was a little vocal track me and Troy did a long, long time ago. I live in the woods, so I recorded this vocal track all quiet at 3 a.m. We get into post-production. I listened to the song. "Wait a minute. Where did you get that vocal track?" It was a sample WAV file that I'd sent to Troy. Troy sent it to Craig, and Craig sent it up the ladder to Matt Winegar. And I'm like, "You pulled that track out?" So Matt Winegar appears on that song.
Craig Locicero: Matt plays plays the strings parts on keyboard. He gets this mellotron sound...
Max Fox: Craig, you take it from here.
Craig Locicero: So here's where I come in. At the first practice, or maybe it was the first day we had a meeting, they said "We want to do this song called "I Wish You Were Beer" and you'll help us write it. And it's going to be like a power ballad." I'm like, "Okaaaaaaaay." And I thought about it and I realized "Oh, it'll be great. It'll have a "Wish You Were Here" rip in there somewhere." But that came later.
So we're talking about it and came up with the chorus and the intro and it had a different verse, which had a weird, almost reggae vibe to it. And it just wasn't jiving. It felt really awkward. And then I was sitting there with Troy before Chris and Max showed up to practice one day, and I said, "Listen to this other riff I came up with." I was playing him this thing and as he was learning it, Chris walks in and goes, "Guys, we've got to talk about that "I Wish You Were Beer" song. That verse, that reggae s--t isn't working. I just heard you playing something. Can you play that again?"
And I played it and I realized, "Oh s-t, there's our verse! That actually fits in there perfect. And we put them back to back it, and then it had the modulation, it had this key change, which nobody does really anymore much. And the whole song just popped together.
As soon as we had all that and we figured out where I was going to play my solo, I kept reminding everybody, "We've gotta do the intro part of "Wish You Were Here" right?" So if you listen to the song my solo starts that, and then we're off. But I had to remind them. I had to make everybody stop and say, "Could do that with me?" So we stopped and did it again, and then everybody heard it. And when Matt Winegar heard it, he's all, "I heard it! I heard it! That's great!"
Max Fox: Dave, do you realized I've never listened to a Pink Floyd record in my life? So these guys are all, "We're going to do this. We're going to do that." I'm all, "Ummmm, what? F--king who?"
Craig Locicero: Which is great! It makes him very sincerely, legitimately punk rock!
Max Fox: No dude! That was one of the things I got to later on in life. I was like, "Man, I was such a mean punk rocker guy. I never did this and I never did that." Which is the truth. But that was the opening up. That was part of the whole process of writing these lyrics. But it was like this, the two things. And I went, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Let's get back to the music!" And they're like, "Pink Floyd! Pink Floyd!"
Craig Locicero: I just want to close the loop on this little part of the story by saying, once Matt started mixing, I was like, 'We gotta add this intro that I heard." I did get it from Troy. It had the character in it. It wasn't perfect, but we kept the bass and the vocals from that, and then just built this mellotron, kind of "Strawberry Fields kind of sound to the back of it. And Matt totally got it. And he added that same strings after the first chorus. He's a genius. Matt is a great guitar player and musician. On top of whatever we say about him as a producer is equaled as far as guitar and bass and keyboards. He's phenomenal. He had fun.
Max Fox: At the video shoot [for "Back to the Grind], we played the record because God, we'd already played the one song f--king 10,000 times. So we spun the record afterwards. And I guess somebody came up to Craig or something and said, "Dude, what band is this?" when they heard "I Wish You Were Beer." I heard that and I went, "Oh f--k." They went, "Dude, what the f--k is it? What's with the Beatles riff?" I mean, not bad, but I went, "Oh God." Just because I knew it was the first review, if you will [of the album].
Craig Locicero: It was a little different context. They literally went, "Well, that was a great album. Now who's this?" And I said, "This is the album too." And then they got all stoked about it.
CBS SF: "Crossing Over the Bridge" is another great song, one of my favorites on the album. I wanted to talk a bit about crossover and the combining of punk and thrash metal that the song celebrates. The Boneless Ones and Attitude Adjustment -- the band Chris was in at the same time -- were at the vanguard of crossover, coming right after DRI and SOD. Were you conscious of how groundbreaking that was?
Chris Kontos: I think you never know what's happening when it's happening when you're a kid, right? You don't really realize it. But somehow in the Bay Area, the bands that were getting together, we all had such a eclectic musical tastes. And this goes across the board, from classical music all the way to Slayer, you know? Everybody was into so much different music that I think we all were kind of aware that we had this different flavor going on here.
The rest of the country wasn't accepting of punk rockers coming to metal shows or metal heads coming to punk rock shows. And that was just happening here: good, energetic, awesome music that's gonna make you either slam dance or bang your head or stage dive or fist bang. Everybody's like, "Come do your thing!" It was all kind of bred out of the Ruthie's Inn scene, the Keystone Berkeley, Wolfgang's shows, the On Broadway. A seminal moment for the Bay Area was a weekend where Motorhead played the Stone, and the next night, GBH played the Rock on Broadway. Everyone stayed. It was like all the punks were at Motorhead, all the metal heads were at GBH, and it just kind of set the tone.
With Attitude Adjustment, we had Rick Strahl on bass; he was a German metalhead across the board, but loved punk rock. And then you had Eric McIntire, who was hardcore punk rock, but love metal, and myself who kind of gave myself no limitations musically. I was Cro-Mags/Mercyful Fate, you know? I loved it all. If it's good, it's good and I'm not gonna shy away from it.
So with a song like "Crossing Over the Bridge," LA bands gave us a lot of s--t up here in the early budding stages of crossover. New York bands could not relate at all. Because it was still fisticuffs, it was still f--king go time if a long hair showed up at the punk gig or somebody with a mohawk [at a metal show]. "Where are you from, Mars? You freak!" It wasn't happening everywhere else and it kind of took a while to catch on. And with bands like DRI Verbal Abuse, the Boneless Ones, and Attitude Adjustment, it all started to just make sense to everybody. And everybody's like, "Hmmmmm, why not, you know? Broken Bones are amazing. And the next night, we're gonna go see Exodus! Why shouldn't this work?"
And I think both sides took things that were positive from both scenes, with the circle pit and the head banging. I know I banged my mohawk out of my hair at shows. Stage diving, head walking, all that stuff. It just worked here. It made sense and it all came together. So like I said, you're not fully aware as it's happening, but you knew -- deep down inside -- we were kind of pushing the envelop and making it happen. Booking gigs with punk bands and metal bands; Death Angel with Suicidal [Tendencies], Sacrilege with Attitude Adjustment. These combinations were working, so we were kind of like, "Let's do more of that. Let's get these mixed Nick shows going!"
CBS SF: I didn't go to a ton of Ruthie's shows, but I did go to a few. One was a GBH show. I think the Boneless Ones played, and Death Angel definitely played. And Suicidal just showed up and played like a 20-minute set on somebody else's gear because they were there. So yeah, that was hugely formative for me.
Chris Kontos: It was a wonderful time. It's got this mythos. I get asked by younger kids, or even people from other countries who are my age, "What was it like at Ruthie's?" I'm like, "Well, on a Tuesday it was empty as s--t, but we were there all the time." So not every show was this magical thing. Wes Robinson, the guy who ran the place, he made it happen. It was our proving grounds. It was also our live stage for rehearsal. He was letting us play the club all the time, and throw gigs and kind of learn the ropes and understand what it's about, to not only be a musician but an entertainer and hone our craft.
I think we were very, very lucky to have that outlet at a young age. We were all 15, 16, 17 years old. To have that place where we could go and have a Honeycomb Hideout that was also our proving grounds. You couldn't get away with sucking there. If you suck, you're gonna know about it. Ruthie's tore a lot of bands apart that never showed up again. You got to bring the heat, because there was a standard and a bar to be met. You get your shot and if you suck, you suck. That was kind of the brutality of that place, you know?
I mean, Ruthie's Inn is famous for a very infamous night where Slayer played the Keystone Berkeley the night before, and they had the eyeliner on right and all the leather. And the next night was Ruthie's Inn, and the brass of the Ruthie's scene told them, "Hey, you guys kick a--, but that make-up ain't gonna f--king cut it tomorrow night at Ruthie's. Just jump on stage when you come out of the van, because that ain't gonna fly." And that was the last time Slayer ever wore makeup. So the club and the scene itself already had the f--king balls to like tell bands like, "Hey, you're gonna get f--king spit on if you come on stage with all that poseur s--t, because we got Paul Baloff chanting 'Kill poseurs!' constantly. It was an intense place. A lot of crazy s--t went down there. And it was also very formative for bands that went on to be massive.
It was a very tight-knit scene. I met my wife, who I've been with for 37 years now, in the infamous Big O parking lot across from Ruthie's. She was throwing a graduation party that Exodus was headlining under the name "Dill and the Dos" and Attitude Adjustment forced our way onto the show. We met that night and have been together ever since. It's cool to look back and see everybody wearing each others' t-shirts. Rick Hunolt from Exodus in a Boneless Ones shirt or Jason Newsted wearing a Laughing Dead t-shirt. You look back and you're like, "Wow, we were all so supportive of each other."
Max Fox: By the end of our three and a half year run, we had ended up doing three tours or anything and the last tour was a long one. We toured with the Circle Jerks for about three weeks going through the Southwest. And then we did a few headline shows and we met up with DRI on the East Coast and toured back with them. So we were playing 3,000 people shows as little kids. Troy was maybe 18. Luke, our guitarist, had brought a bunch of tapes. Now I had never listened to any of this kind of music. I was brought up with listening to punk rock as a little kid. I skipped over Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden and all these different bands. I just didn't listen to them. It's just not what I was into.
Luke had brought a bunch of tapes with him -- I mean, it was '86, so it was tapes. We're talking about Iron Maiden, Y&T, and Ozzy Osborne and Metallica and all this stuff. When we came back, we were more of a metal band. We were like, "Dude, we're going to do metal music!" We played at Paul Baloff's house once for a party in the front room and all of the metal guys were there. You'll notice that there's a change in the sound on those demos. It's more "chunka chunka chunka," you know?
Craig Locicero: Great guitar sound, I thought.
Max Fox: The term ahead of its time keeps coming up with the Boneless Ones. I don't know. I guess.
Craig Locicero: I hear it. I definitely hear it.
Max Fox: As far as the lyrics, "Church of Violence is about a real event that happened where we almost got stabbed to death for riding our skateboards, but the other songs like "Tied to a Stake," They're all inspired by Exodus.
Craig Locicero: Which I really leaned into when I did my version of that song. I definitely leaned into the Bonded by Blood attack on the guitar.
Max Fox: I don't even hem and haw about what inspired that: it was Gary [Holt] and Rick [Hunolt]. I grew up with Rick, as little kids. And everybody took lessons from Joe Satriani. I'm sure Chris mentioned that to you. Troy took bass lessons from Satriani. It's like, "Hey, what was in the water in the Bay Area in the early 1980s with all this music? Lȧȧz Rockit and blah, blah, blah?" And I go, "Ummmm dude, it's Joe Satriani."
Craig Locicero: Joe does deserve a lot of credit, but I never took lessons from him. But I was inspired by people that did take lessons from him, and I was inspired by Joe. And you can hear some Joe in my playing on Back to the Grind. There are a lot of little harmonic chirps that are expressive and stuff like that.
Max Fox: We had a pretty good idea [about crossover getting popular] after the tour with DRI. Our brother band Verbal Abuse was getting pretty big. I mean, they were playing the Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland with f--king Exodus and doing all these things. The term crossover was just really being coined at that point like in '85, '86.
CBS SF: So Chris, I have to ask: what's it like being the BMX guy in the skate-punk band? Does Max give you the business because you ride BMX?
Chris Kontos: It's kind of funny, because I took drumming so seriously that around 1983 to '85, I pretty much stopped wanting to fall down and get hurt. People were in casts, people were coming up on crutches with broken ankles. I was in multiple bands and I always had a gig coming up. So I was kind of self aware that like, I can't get hurt, you know? So I kind of left that all behind very early.
My BMX transition came after I was in a coma in 2013. I had two saliva glands removed and during that surgery, I fell into a coma. When I woke up out of the coma, all I could think about was racing BMX. And it started this whole progression for me. At the time, I was like 329 pounds, really partying like crazy. In seven months, I lost 149 pounds and won a state championship and a couple of nationals and then I went to the Grand Nationals in Oklahoma and won that. So that whole transition was very intense and I was out of music for like five years.
But like with crossover, there was a crossover thing going on with BMX. Rick Hunolt from Exodus was a BMX guy. So you had BMX riders riding around and you had skaters all hanging out. There wasn't this battle going on between the two groups. In the song "Crossing Over the Bridge," there's a line, "We rode our boards, we rode our bikes/We had to get there at any price." It was pretty much about whatever wheels are gonna get you there, get there. It was all about whatever your mode of transportation and getting rad was, it was all gonna get you to the show. So it's not really a thing for me. I mean, I I bounce around on the skateboard a little bit, but again, I just can't fall down and get hurt. It just kicks me off the drums. But I do love it and I do a lot in the in the BMX community, so it's super important to me. It saved my life.
CBS SF: One thing that's interesting about the Boneless Ones is the early rock and roll references that I don't think you got with a lot of punk bands from the '80s. "Keg Kept a Flowin'" is a take on "Train Kept a Rollin'" by the Yardbirds, which was the Yardbirds covering like an earlier blues song...
Max Fox: Let me just say this: think about starting a band in 1982 or 1983. You're referencing things that are not only going on around you at that time. To be perfectly honest, that was referencing Aerosmith Live! Bootleg. That's where we pulled that from. So it's 1982, 1983; that album came out in '78 or '79. You have to realize I went to Berkeley High. Half the kids were Pink Floyd/Led Zeppelin kids, and the other half were skateboard, punk rock kids.
I knew the other guys, I just didn't hang out with them. But we still had references and we still had input from that time period. How could you not? Cheap Trick Live at Budokan and Van Halen I and all this different kind of stuff, you know? So to me, that's the input. As far as the new album, you probably want to talk to Craig. I mean, Craig is like an Encyclopedia Britannica of music and all the people he's played with and all the people he's worked with and nobody even knows about. Craig can reference things on a musical level that's ten stories above it. I'm dead serious.
Craig Locicero: I have that. And Chris does as well. We're both that guy. We were both that guy in different bands and different careers and now we're both that guy in one band. Like Chris, I was part of all of it. I didn't pick a side. When I was playing Ruthie's Inn, I was 15 years old. I was already hanging out with the punk rockers and the f--king thrash guys. I ended up sliding in just kind of under the radar, this cocky kid, but I wasn't making enemies.
I ended up being friends with both sides. To me, it's just the natural order of things. I like what I like, you know? So it was never a thing for me. Like Max said, I did a lot of different things. I went on to have a rock career that lasted over 12 years, 13 years. I did a record with Rick Rubin. I have a different background. And I actually got out of thrash metal without stigma, which is f--king hard to do.
Max Fox: And I'm so happy to play in a band with Craig. I can't even tell you. He amazes me and he's gotta be one of the nicest people I've ever met. All the guys in the band are amazing musicians. I honestly couldn't be happier. I think I don't say it enough: I'm super happy.
The new Boneless Ones album Back to the Grind will be released on May 13th. The band is hosting a Facebook livestream event to celebrate the album at 4 p.m. that day.