Hello My Name is Exene from X • LA’s Seminal Punk Band on their Final Album and Tour

     1977. In a word: Whoa. While it never occurred to me at the time, as a college freshman back in Indianapolis, just starting to cover music for my school paper, in hindsight, it’s 20/20 clear just how lucky I was. Arguably, it was the year that punk rock broke and sped past all of the relatively tortoise-slow heavy metal that was the accepted standard one day before. And while I could never fathom that I would somehow still be filing reports 47 crazy years later from my beloved adopted city of San Francisco. I also had no idea I would have cool companions on my journey, artists I spoke to back then, who I would continue interviewing in the interim, and who are still making great music now. Bands like seminal Los Angeles punk juggernaut X, whose four founding members — vocalist Exene Cervenka, bassist/vocalist John Doe, drummer D. J. Bonebrake, and perpetually-pompadoured guitarist extraordinaire Billy Zoom (who never appeared to sweat onstage, no matter how frenetically he’d be playing) — have just issued the power-chord-pummeling Smoke & Fiction, what they’re ominously billing as ‘X’s final album,’ to be accompanied a The End Is Near Farewell tour.

        Ironically, this is all occurring roughly the same time I have been seriously considering retirement. When it comes to music criticism, I think I’ve said just about all that I can say in the past four and a half decades, and I’ve truly lost my once-strong-and-guiding FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out (it doesn’t help to be afflicted with Parkinson’s now, either, whose medications I was given sometimes proved more destructive than the disease itself). So it made perfect symmetrical sense that — after covering X that long for most of its group recordings plus a bevy of great solo efforts — I should speak with fellow punk-path traveler Exene Cervenka at least one final time. That was one of my core aesthetic tenets from Day One: As long as a performer kept making good music, I would continue to cover, and I ended every interview with this faithful sign-off: “Great new album. Now, I will do my part and spread the word.” And the star would usually laugh, but I wasn’t kidding.

      My Midwest credo, which quickly coalesced in 1977, included other key concepts like doing my best never to do print harm to an interview subject, so consequently, I’ve sat on countless caches of dishy dirt, knowing that its public revelation might prove damaging, maybe devastating. Additionally, in accordance with my belief that all Art kind of —for want of a better term — stood in a circle and held influential hands, I gradually began bring a carefully selected book to all my in-person chats with musicians in hopes of their possibly enjoying it (see my early-pandemic “My Back Pages” IE, wherein I finally chose to share some of those referrals with readers, at a dark time when I thought fellow bibliophiles out there most need the info). And I was always pleased with the serendipitous ways my private Book Club boomeranged back. For instance, on a solo-set press tour, I once gave Doe a copy of the hardboiled Japanese murder mystery “Out” by Natsuo Kirino, thinking he’d dig it. A year later, discussing Cervenka’s latest disc, she thanked me profusely for the novel. Once Doe finished it, he gave it to her, and then she duly passed it on to Zoom and Bonebrake. And so, I reckoned, Art got passed along, passed around, passed into the hands of fans who would happily devour it. I was just the middleman — no more, no less.

        And if time proved anything, it clarified this: You should never count a composer down, leave the table, or get out of the game. Because they just might surprise you. As X did in 2020, mid-pandemic, with Robert Schnapf-helmed Alphabetland, a riveting, kinetic comeback that few expected, and — although few sets could hold a Roman candle to the definitive 1980 debut “Los Angeles,” which blueprinted Doe and Cervenka’s unique off-kilter harmonies and their yoking to jagged, propulsive rhythms, a totally inimitable style that hasn’t changed to this day — one of its catalog classics. So, make no mistake. You can’t take the longevity of X for granted. And although they sound more vital than ever on the Schnapf-produced “Smoke & fiction” — from the stomping opener “Ruby Church,” through hyper “Flipside,” the jarring ’77-reminiscent single “Big Black X” (with a tandem vintage-themed video0, and mortality-toned reflections like “The Way It Is,” “Winding Up the Time,” and “Sweet ’Til the Bitter End” (complemented by occasional Cervenka stargazing on the “Face in the Moon” ballad) —

They have become a thrumming, tight-knit unit that has played hundreds, thousands of gigs worldwide in 2024, which eerily parallels my own vocation, having personally interviewed and supported hundreds, thousands of artists this year for my part. Cervenka once told me that her favorite X performance of all time went down in Indianapolis back in May of 1981 (right before I ventured West to SF in ’82), when our parallel lines/lives first intersected. I interviewed her then at a dinky 200-capacity venue called Crazy Al’s Pizza Parlor, where the stage was only an awkward single foot off the floor, but the band tore it up like it was Madison Square Garden. The small crowd — all of us in the town’s diehard punk scene — absorbed that energy and darted it right back to the members, who in turn were inspired to rock even harder until everyone was whipped into a joyous frenzy. And she still marvels over that show today. “Oh, that Pizza Parlor I Indianapolis!” She purrs. “There was something about the appreciation level of the audience that night, and I think it was also the idea of just being able to actually play Indianapolis. We didn’t have to just play Chicago, New York, L.A., and San Francisco — there were people out there who really wanted to see X, and they were smart, and they were appreciative. I think we got three encores that night, and I just remember getting to talk to people there and see people. It was a place where, for the first time, we felt like, ‘Wow! If the whole tour is gonna be like this, we’re all gonna change the world!’ It was that kind of moment.”

       Punk’s genesis? I was magic, Cervenka adds wistfully. “And we’ll never recapture it, never recapture that magic again. But it’s great that you got to be there, and I got to be there, and that that was the bridge between the hippie generation. I mean, the hippie thing started in ‘’72, and the punk thing started in ’74, ’75, so it wasn’t like light years apart, although it seems like it in concept. But the thing was, this was before cellphones or the Internet and all that stuff. So there was just this…this MAGIC. Because it had to be magical. It had to be in the air because you couldn’t find each other through magic and didn’t have a way to just look things up online.” But there are a few advantages to our current hi-tech, connected culture, she admits, which is most evident at packed X concerts. “Because sometimes we will have three generations of fans there — we’ll have the grandparents, the parents, AND the kids, and it’s awesome. But Hey — I’m happy anytime anyone’s standing in front of me, you know? As long as there are people there to see us, I’m happy.”

IE: It’s kind of an ominous phrase when you really think about it — “‘Smoke & Fiction’ — X’s last record ever.” 

EXENE CERVENKA: Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don’t think that I can predict the future, but as far as studio albums go? Yeah, last record. But as far as recording a song here or there goes, we’ll probably do that.

IE: How did I feel going into these sessions? Plus, you had returning (Alphabetland) producer Robert Schnapf on board for some continuity, right?

EC: And he was just like (“Los Angeles”) producer Ray Manzarek, in that he wants you to be your best self, and he’s not trying to change you. But that’s just his ear. He was kind of like, “Hey, Exene! That was great, the way you just sang it. But do it again.” And you do it again, and he says, “Okay, you’re doing it a little TOO much now — play it back.” And you go, “Okay,” and do it again, and he goes, “Okay! We’ve got it!”So it’s just easy with him because he knows we’re almost there since we’ve already rehearsed and played these songs live a lot. But his mixing is just great, so yeah — he is just what he’s supposed to be.

IE: So there were specific songs personally crafted by you alone, right?

EC: Yeah. There are specific songs that I wrote all the words to, and then John kind of bent them around a little bit around the music, like “Smoke & Fiction” and “Flipside.” And then the ones that I sing on, I wrote everything, and then I worked on some of the stuff that he wrote, so sometimes it’s just a way of jumble writing a song, where I’ll say, “You know what? That should be the first verse instead of the second verse,” or something like that. So we write the songs together, overall, because we’re constantly editing and doing other stuff. But it’s just nice to be able to sing on a song and not have to worry too much about the writing. So I guess I wrote “Big Black X,” “Flipside,” and “Face in the Moon.” And I wrote the full chorus for that song. And “Winding Up the Time,” too. And I can’t remember all the songs right now because they’re not right here in front of me.

IE: The moon pops up in a few numbers this time. Were you feeling the lunar pull?

EC: I dunno. I wrote “Face of the Moon” a long time ago — most of that’s from 15 years ago, and I just found it again. But I think that that’s just something that comes up a lot for me in a lot of my writing, and I don’t know why that is. It just happened that way, and I don’t have a reason or explanation for that. And then working on that song, because I’ve had it for 15 years, I really wanted to finish it, so I probably just threw more of that in, and then I didn’t even realize it, like, “Oh, that’s also on this other song! But okay — cool.” Because John wrote (the moon-and-stares-referencing) “The Way It Is.” I didn’t write that. 

IE: And it’s rather ironic that — during the album’s genesis — Elon Musk’s newly-acquired Twitter suddenly morphed into a, ahem, Big Black X.

EC: Well, I was a little ahead of the curve on the ‘X’ subject, even before I met John, and I, in fact, did that back in ’76, when I changed my name from Christine to Exene, because Christ was an ‘X,’ so I’ve been a little bit ahead on that ‘X’ thing. But I don’t care what people do with ‘X.’ It’s just a letter, but I think it’s kind of funny that it became a very popular thing so many years after we started doing it.

IE: Dare I even ask? Is X actually ON X at all?

C: I am not. I don’t use social media, and I haven’t for ten years, maybe? I haven’t gone on any social media. I never had Facebook or any of those things, like TikTok and all that stuff. So I don’t even look at most of that stuff because it’s just gossiping, and it’s quite dangerous, so I avoid it like the plague that it is. I just don’t do it.

IE: An offbeat question: Does “Big Black X” possibly reference the late Steve Albini?

EC: I don’t know anything about Steve Albini. I mean, I know Big Black, but No, I don’t have any connections to that at all. So it comes from the night that John and I were driving in the car, and we drove past the Starwood in West L.A., and there were some names on the marquee, like some hair band names, and I said, “That is so stupid. If I had a band, I would just have a big black ‘X’ up there.” And John said, You mean the band would be called Big Black X?” And I said, “No, I’d just put a big black X up there instead because the band shouldn’t have to have a name. I think it’s stupid to have to call yourself ‘The’ Something, like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, you know? So I just was being, well, ME, and so when I was writing “Big Black X,” it wasn’t a song, exactly — I was writing prose, and I was working on it in the studio, and John said we could turn it into a song. And then we turned it into a song.

IE: Call me curious, but what was the side story about searching for Errol Flynn’s mansion?

EC: So there was an old house in the Hollywood Hills that was torn down, and I think it had an old broken-down swimming pool that was empty, so it was just like the remnants of a mansion, and it was ruined. So the word that was going around was that Errol Flynn used to live there, but in the late ‘70s, kids still knew who Errol Flynn was because they still had some sense of history and film and music, so I guess it was still used to live in. So we used to go break in over the fence and go hang around there and drink, and when we were up there, there would be some other kids up there who’d heard about it from someone else because, of course, no one had phones or anything. And you’d just go up there when there was nothing else to do. Like, there would be a rare night when there wasn’t a show to go to, or you weren’t rehearsing, and you’d just go, “Hey! Let’s go up there!” And you’d drive up there and climb up the hillside and see who was up there, so I just referred to it as “Errol Flynn’s abandoned mansion.” I think I probably went there twice — it wasn’t like I went there every night.

IE: How was it doing John Mulaney’s Everybody’s In L.A. program, with the fab Fred Armisen hosting?

EC: Well, it was super fun because we were all there for twelve hours, and we all got to just hang out and talk to each other. And they only used two seconds of our twelve hours. But we played music together, just jamming for forty minutes, and it was super fun being with Penelope (Houston, from The Avengers) and (FEAR anchor) Lee Ving. And they were just made-up songs — we all just made up stuff to sing and play, and I’m so glad we got to do it. And Fred and those guys were there, too, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that we all got to hang out together, and there was all this time to sit around and talk and do things. And they only wanted to use five minutes, and that’s fine — I don’t care how much they used because they were just facilitating our group of people getting together. So they gave us a really big gift, and I’m really, really grateful for that. 

IE: Did you learn anything from any musicians you interacted with then?

EC: I always learn everything from everyone, every day. But we were just hanging out, and there was a lot to talk about. But it wasn’t like, “Oh, remember that time?” We weren’t doing that. We were just talking about things like “What have you been doing? What’s been going on? How are your kids? Are they in school? How’s YOUR son?” Like all that kind of stuff. So we were just talking about life, not too much about rehashing anything.

IE: I remember interviewing Willy ‘Mink’ DeVille on his tour bus back in ’78, and I asked him if the ultra-hip girl sitting with him, Toots, was his wife. And he said, “Let me put it this way. What Toots does for me, she don’t do for NOBODY else.”

EC: Ha! That’s so great! Oh, God! But isn’t it great that they would say Yes to interviewing with you? That was part of that time, too. And how great was that? Like now, it’d be like, “Well, we don’t know if we can authorize this particular outlet or whatever. We’ll have to talk to The Team. And X? We don’t have a Team. We have a manager and two roadies.

IE: And the fabulous publicist Melissa Dragich, who’s been treating me kindly and fairly for several productive decades now.

EC: Melissa **is our team! Melissa’s the best, and I love her so much. And she’s just such a nice person, you know? And that’s the thing I love about her: she gets the job done.

IE: Let me bounce a few newsworthy names out for you to comment on if you wish. Like Kamala Harris and the sense of relief many of us currently feel.

EC: Yeah, that’s quite the nightmare of the regime that’s in power right now — I have no idea who’s running the show. Who is in charge? And who has been in charge? That’s the scary thing to me. No matter who the next president is or any of that political stuff, it’s scary to me because I’ve been waiting, like, “Who is running the country?” And we still don’t know. So whatever happens after today, I hope it’s better — let’s just put it that way. 

IE: Some doomsayers are worried about impending nuclear war.

EC: Well, at our age, we know that that’s always been the threat. I mean, the Universe is big, and the Earth is moving quickly through it, and we’re overdue for the polar shift every 3-, 6-, and 12,000 years, so who knows if that’ll happen. So we’re not in control of the Universe, we’re not in control of Earth’s changes, we’re not in control of the magnetosphere or the galactic plane. We’re not in charge of volcanos. There have been cataclysmic events on Earth throughout history, even before humans, before humanity’s time. So we don’t really know what the future holds — we just know that we’re not in charge, and we have today, so all of that other stuff doesn’t matter. The people in power are beyond what we can conceive of their machinations, so we have no idea what they really are, what they really do, what the future is that they’re planning for humanity, what the global agenda is. We don’t have any idea what that stuff is and no control over it. So we just try to make the best-informed decisions and help the most people possible. Because you can go, “Well, this person seems like they’re gonna be best for the country — I’ll just push the button for that person.” And then we find out later that they’re completely not, that they’re these evil, real bad people in cahoots with other real bad people. But we do our best, you know? But I don’t participate in all the political stuff because you can’t. 

IE: What’s your take on climate change?

EC: Well, I think the Earth is going through some incredible changes due to where we are in the Universe and where we are on the galactic plane, which has nothing to do with human activities — it’s geologic history, which. It is a better system to judge these things, so there have been cataclysms like the Great Flood, which almost every culture references. And humans didn’t cause that — it just happened. But if they can monetize it for themselves and blame us, it’s a win-win for the people in power because things are certainly changing for people on the planet, although why is a different subject altogether.  

IE: How about the sudden spate of violent global conflicts? Israel vs. Gaza. Israel vs. Iran. The Sudan, where an entire generation is starving and dying. 

EC: Yeah, well, let’s just remember about proxy wars. There’s a saying that I like, which is that all wars are bankers’ wars. The Napoleonic wars were bankers’ wars, you know? And so was the war in Syria. So, all war is about people getting wealthy and powerful, and Yes, it’s sad because all war is bad. But we’re pretty lucky because we live in a little bit of a bubble here, you know?

IE: Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask…how was it recently throwing out the first pitch at the Dodgers game? And then singing the National Anthem with John?

EC: NOW we’re talking! That is like my second favorite day of my life. The first was the day my son was born, and the second was throwing out that first pitch. Because you know what? We were playing the White Sox, which is my childhood team, and I always wanted to be a baseball player. I always wanted to be a pitcher for the White Sox, and I had that bond with my dad. And when I found out we were having Dodger Day, X Day at Dodger Stadium, my first question was, “Can I throw out the first pitch?” And hey said Yes, and then it was only a month later that I found out it was against the White Sox that we were playing. So I felt that stuff like that was my dad kind of being involved in that whole thing. Talk about magic! And we’re talking about politics. But what a waste of time to talk about politics when we can talk about baseball!

IE: Did you have a strong throwing arm?

EC: I practiced for three months. I got one of those where you catch the ball, like kids use. I taped off in my driveway the exact number of feet from the pitching mound to the catcher, and I practiced with friends, and I practiced every day with that. And you know, I threw that ball pretty good! But we didn’t have organized sports where I grew up, in rural Illinois. We didn’t have any sports, especially for girls, in the early ‘60s. There was no baseball, I didn’t have Girl Scouts, I didn’t have Brownies. I had the backyard, as far as my legs could carry me into a field, and that was it. And I had a bicycle, so those were my activities. So, my baseball playing was limited to throwing the ball against the garage door and catching it while imagining that I was on a team. So I’d throw the baseball up in the air and then try to run to wherever it was coming down to field it. That was the limit of my baseball experiences.

IE: Why not put a punk softball team together now?

EC: Because I’m 68. And I don’t wanna break ANYTHING. I mean, I work out, I walk, and I do as much physical activity as I can because I enjoy it. But I’ve been on my feet since I was born, you know what I mean? I’ve been running around, dancing, and jumping off things, so I don’t think that would be a good idea right now. In concept? I would love to. I would love to do that.

IE: Well, you guys all look physically fit.

EC: Yeah. We’re hanging in there pretty good. I think we have plenty of shows left in us, so I think we’re gonna do some club tours until the end of the year and then give that a break, like, “You know what? We’re done with that.” And we’re doing the Little Steven Cruise next May, so I’m really excited about that. I think Little Steven must be a really good person, just from listening to his show and seeing what he’s done with music. And then we have another plan for probably next summer, God willing, so we’ll see. And you know why Rod Stewart does those endless amounts of residencies in Las Vegas? Because he has to still play, and he wants to walk from his hotel to the stage every night and not have to unpack his suitcase. 

IE: Looking back to ’77 again, I’m still unclear on how I wound up in rock journalism. I hand-wrote a review of ELO’s Out Of the Blue album, put it on the college newspaper entertainment editor’s desk, and came into school the next day to find it printed, word for word. That night, the editor phoned me to ask if I wanted to do a few interviews, and I jumped at the chance and ended up talking to Nazareth the next week and, shortly after that, The Ramones. And understandably, I just never stopped. I wouldn’t even call it a career — it was just something I instinctively did.

EC: No — it was a really important component of that whole situation back then. Without that, there would have been nothing. So, everyone had to find out from YOU. And **that’s the thing because you were the bridge between the bands, and who could maybe someday hear about us; otherwise, people never were gonna find out that we existed. Like I said, people didn’t have cell phones, so they had to go to those magazines and underground publications, and college radio to find out what was going on. 

IE:  So, what other irons do you have in the fire right now?

EC: Well, John and I did a tour as a folk duo opening for Psychedelic Furs, and that was super fun. And we’d done that before with Blondie and Garbage, too, so I’m hoping we can keep doing that, whether X keeps playing or not. And we call those shows just John and Exene, and they’re really fun, really great. And I’m doing art shows again, where I do my collage stuff. I just did one, and I have a couple more coming up. So, that came out of the blue, and I just decided to start focusing on that more. But I’m looking forward to having some time off in November, and I’m actually taking a weeklong vacation with a friend of mine. And I’m super excited about it; I’ve been plotting it out, and we’re going to Indiana if you can believe that.

IE: Wait! What? Why?

EC: Well, because it’s beautiful there. So we’re going to Columbus to see the architecture, and we’re going to Martinsville, and we’re going to the famous cafeteria, Gray’s. We’re also going to Bloomington. It’s gonna be so great!

-Tom Lanham

Tags: featured, X The Band

Category: Featured