Waiting for More Lard:

By Gail Worley

The Dead Kennedy's Jello Biafra has offended Jessie Jackson, stood up to Tipper Gore, and been beaten senseless by ruffians he calls "punk fundamentalists," in this forthright interview he confronts his colorful past, allows some optimism for the present, and touches briefly on Lard, his upcoming album project with Ministry's Al Jourgensen.

As the sun begins to set on the fourth day of the new year, I'm walking West on 10th Street, towards Avenue A. I'm on my way to interview Jello Biafra, the man who fronted possibly the greatest and most influential American punk rock band of all time, Dead Kennedys. When I think of Jello Biafra, I think of songs I loved as a teenager, like "California Uber Alles", "Police Truck" and - my personal favorite - "Holiday In Cambodia." I think of the man who stood up to Tipper Gore and the PMRC as his band became almost synonymous with controversy. I think of how I'm about have a private audience with a man who is the closest thing America has to a punk rock John Lennon. For some reason, this starts to freak me out.

I meet Biafra, who is 38, at the East Village apartment of a friend with whom he is staying. He still has that same, almost boyishly handsome face I remember from the first Dead Kennedys show I saw in 1980. The only visible scars he bears from the severe beating he took in 1994, at San Francisco's Gilman Street club - where he was kicked in the face by angry punks who called him "Rock Star" and "Sell Out" - are his perfectly capped front teeth and a scar that runs through his left eyebrow.

He wears these scars well. When I ask Biafra if, in the wake of the beating at Gilman Street, he went through a period of questioning "Why am I doing this?" he answers matter-of-factly "I do that a lot anyway." What I find out over the course of the next couple of hours is that Jello Biafra questions everything.

***

Pandomag.com: With the way you shook things up when you ran for Mayor of San Francisco (1979), have you ever thought about running for public office again?

Jello Biafra: I was toying with the idea of running for Governor, but then my knee got smashed by some thugs at Gilman Street, so I was immobile until well after the election. It's a shame in a way, because what happened in that election was that Jerry Brown's sister, Kathleen, just did absolutely nothing to stand up to the increasingly racist, anti-immigrant diatribes of Pete Wilson. He and the corporate media were successfully able to manipulate the issues as "Who hates Mexicans most?" It just opened the door for all this nasty kind of shit that we were all hoping [had] disappeared when the separate entrances for 'colored people' were finally torn down in the south...here they are, back again.

Pandomag.com: Considering your famous "Grow more hemp" campaign, what do you think of the semi-legalization of medicinal pot in California and Arizona?

JB: I'm disgusted that the Feds are ganging up to try and squelch it, claiming to jail or try and pull the license of any doctor who prescribes hemp in California or Arizona. A lot of people had voted for Clinton saying "Yeah, he'll come around. Pot will be legal in three or four years cause he went through the 60's." Bull shit. He's part of the corporate campaign to squelch everything that was good about that period. So, if nothing else, if they come down hard on an initiative that was passed by a large majority of voters in very conservative states, maybe it will finally show people who still think there's hope for the Democratic party. There really is almost no difference between Clinton and Newt Gingrich.

Pandomag.com: When the Dead Kennedy's made their first record, punk rock was so new and different. You guys went through a lot of opposition over the controversial subject matter of your songs, being up against the PMRC, which culminated in the historical Frankenchrist obscenity trial. Considering how much time has passed, do you think something like that could really happen today? Do you think extremism or controversy has almost become mainstream? For example, a band like Marilyn Manson - who use Satanism as a gimmick - has a number one album...

JB: They're more vaudeville though. They seem a lot more like an Alice Cooper for the 90's, and it stops there. Although I also think that since it's such a whacked-out, conservative-hypocrisy and "Fall of Rome" level decadence, Marilyn Manson could never have come out of anywhere else but Florida.

With Marilyn Manson or Tupac or Snoop Doggie Dog, of course the commercial pop sector has become more extreme over the years...I'm all for more extremism in the mainstream. Even though I'm sickened by some of the violent attitudes towards women and gays coming out of the "gangsta rap" world. I think it's important that people know this mentality exists so that way they'll be ready to confront it and oppose it if it turns up among their own kids or friends.

What's really painful for me is now the Dead Kennedys' Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables album - which scared the shit out of so many people when it came out - is a safe, non-threatening middle-of-the-road album. If I wanted to do something that was guaranteed to please a commercial, mainstream audience, I could just put out a clone of Fresh Fruit and rake in the dough. It's very disheartening in a way (laughs), but I guess it's something I have to get used to.

Pandomag.com: I know your views on major labels and the battles you've had with them. Considering the financial hardship and resulting break-up of the Dead Kennedys, do you ever think that things might have turned out differently, at least as far as financial assistance is concerned, if you had had a major label behind you during that trial?

JB: I would have self-destructed quicker than Kurt Cobain. Once you sign with a major label you cease to be an artist and thereafter are an employee of a multi-national corporation, who employs you to dance around and act like a pop-star cartoon so they can make money off of your hard work. I've seen this happen with people whose records were selling millions, but they weren't seeing the money except a tiny little per-diem and a bag of dope. It kept them exactly where their handlers wanted them.

Pandomag.com: So, a major label would not have fought for, or supported, the side of Dead Kennedy's?

JB: They would never have allowed any of my records to be released to begin with. They were sniffing around Dead Kennedys around the time of Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, but their common line was "We'll give you all the artistic control you want, if you'll just change your name." We were on a semi-independent at the time. They acted just like a major label, trying to get me to pose for a "Creem Dream" page and floating rumors around L.A. every few months that we'd changed our name to the DK's - just to see if it would stick - against our will. Needless to say, they forgot to pay us later, too. It gave me a good whiff of what I wanted to avoid.

Pandomag.com: You made a comment in another interview where you said "People are getting into punk now for the sound (of the music) but aren't aware of the ideals behind the original punk movement"...so do you think the label "Punk Rock" really means anything anymore?

JB: Hey, that's a good one. To me, punk is more of a state of mind. Many of the people playing so-called punk music today have absolutely nothing in common with the original punk state of mind, which was much more questioning and rebellious. Inevitably, each radical art form, when it reaches a pop mainstream, gets watered down. It's just that punk got very spoiled, because it only got watered down in Britain. The Sex Pistols and the Exploited were not best-selling chart bands over here the way they were over there. They remained underground a great deal longer. The major labels kept trying to feed us things like The Knack and Gun 'n' Roses. Finally they realized, around the time they finally decided to sign independent bands after all - starting with Husker Du and, more importantly, Sonic Youth and Nirvana - "Oh my gosh, here's all these white, suburban kids growing up, and they really aren't interested in the new Eric Clapton or Bob Seger album! Gosh, what are we going to do?"

Even if punk hasn't had the political impact some of us have hoped for - what it did do, most importantly, was bring back the idea of an independent record. Before 1977, a handful of major labels decided what everybody listened to. At least punk has accomplished that.

Pandomag.com: A lot of people who seem to enjoy complaining say to me "The music that's out today is the worst. 90's rock sucks" What do you say to that?

JB: In a way, I think that the best time for music is right now. Because unlike the 70's, or even the 80's, when you had only so many flavors to chose from, now you can chose from anything you like and you're going to have it available to you. In the 60's and 70's, what were you supposed to do if you liked rockabilly? There was nothing there. Same for the 70's and then there was no pyschedelia or garage punk except for a few of us who had Stooges records. But now you can get original and current rockabilly, you can get every era of punk available on reissues or CDs or whatever, plus a whole slew of bands trying to imitate the 'old style' and the same with 60's, psychedelic stuff and yes, even 70's stuff.

Pandomag.com: I know you're not real big on nostalgia. Do you think there's even a need for a nostalgic movement considering, like you just said, everything you can be nostalgic for is available, and still viable, right here and now?

JB: Yeah, but that's just music. The sadder ones are people who reminisce about the 'good old days' because they haven't really found a life afterwards. I mean, Maximum Rock & Roll is notorious for this and is preaching that as almost a religious credo. My attitude is "Why don't you fucking stay curious?" There's always new shit that's cool. There's always more out there for those who have an insatiable appetite to broaden their brain. I have very little sympathy for the uncurious. If you want to live in the past that bad, it's no different from selling insurance in the same town you grew up in and reminiscing over high school year book pictures at the 10 or 20 year reunion. Some of us want more (laughs).

Pandomag.com: What's the story on your falling out with Tim Yohanan (Editor of Maximum Rock & Roll)?

JB: I'm not on terms with him at all. I resent being lied about and set up for acts of derision and violence over things I didn't even do. I also think that either closed-minded fundamentalism or dishonesty alone are poison, but when you combine them together you get something really dangerous. The current official policy of MRR, [is] that punk is supposed to sound one way, people are supposed to think one way, and anybody even so much as seen talking to a band on a major label is automatically evil and should be kicked out of the scene. I call it "Punk Fundamentalism" and I have no trouble opposing that just as much as I would Tipper Gore or William Bennett.

More and more of my frustration, especially with the punk underground, is that so many people - especially MRR - want it to be one tiny little womb, where everybody hides from the real world and bickers about "non-issues" such as who is a sell out, what constitutes pop-punk versus garage punk versus horror punk and a million other genres I've never heard of. Keep in mind that when the original punk bands they all worship now started, there were no genres.

Pandomag.com: Would you like to speak a bit about bands Like Green Day, Offspring, and Rancid, bands with an old school punk influence who have gone on to great commercial success?

JB: The thing to remember about [those bands] is that they're all very good at what they do. It was too much to hope for that a sound that everybody who heard it thought it was the coolest music they'd ever heard was gonna stay underground forever. That's where I think the punk fundamentalists and isolationists totally blew it. If these bands get so big, why not keep in touch with them to make sure they remember where they came from? When they don't have anybody from the underground to communicate with, they're more likely to hear-out the asinine ideas of their record industry chums. I think it's important to keep communication channels open so that people who do reach the mainstream - and keep in mind that none of these bands expected to when they started - it's important to keep the ideas flowing as to what people can do with their new found clout.

Pandomag.com: What's going on with Lard (Biafra's project with Al Jourgenson and Paul Barker of Ministry)?

JB: There is a new Lard album coming out, hopefully, in April, called Pure Chewing Satisfaction. I think Al is editing that, finally, as we speak.

Pandomag.com: Were the Lard records at all influenced by the Residents?

JB: Not to my knowledge, but you'd have to ask Al and Paul.

Pandomag.com: I'm referring specifically to the art work on the back cover of Last Temptation of Reid, where you all have insect heads. Those reminded me of the Residents' Eyeball heads.

JB: Oh yeah. Well, that was one of Winston Smith's collages. Often times when I go hunting for album art work, I just go through somebody's art - and bang! This is the album cover, there it is! There was no scientific, logical reason that music critics could pick apart as to why the insect heads wound up on a Lard album or any other of my album covers for that matter, except maybe In God We Trust, Inc., where the record was made to justify putting the art on an album cover.

Pandomag.com: Why are you so antagonistic towards heavy metal artists?

JB: Well, wait 'til you hear "Seventies Rock Must Die" off the Lard album, and then you'll know.

Pandomag.com: By the way, what do you think of East Bay Ray's new band, Candy Ass?

JB: How do you know about Candy Ass?

Pandomag.com: I have my sources...

JB: They're better than his last band. I mean, at least he's starting to use a raunchy guitar sound that people like him and want to remember him for. I mean, I haven't seen them (live).

Pandomag.com: You're not still friendly with him?

JB: Well, we all kind of have to be friendly. It's like a divorced family with kids. Dead Kennedy's doesn't have a manager, so we have to work everything out among ourselves, like what to do about people offering us this, that and the other. It's a division of labor; I own (punk record label) Alternative Tentacles, and that's the label. Ray is the publisher of DK Music. So, it's a system of checks and balances.

Pandomag.com: I notice that you have Hunter S. Thompsons' Hell's Angels here on the table. How do you like his work?

JB: Anyone who hasn't had a few Fear and Loathing adventures in their life hasn't lived. On the other hand, he's paid dearly for his personal relationship with chemicals. So I guess it's another example of how important it is to learn from the mistakes of those you admire.

Pandomag.com: I bet you get asked this all the time, but I'm asking anyway: How did you decide to call yourself Jello?

JB: I don't get asked that very often, really. I picked it at random out of a notebook. Some time, maybe fall 77, me and my best childhood friend, John Greenway - who co-wrote "California Uber Alles" - sat around in Colorado thinking up names for bands, names for people in bands, names for songs. So I took the notebook with me to San Francisco. I can't remember whether I pulled "Jello Biafra" out of the notebook before or after our first gig. I figured it had more staying power than "Smegma Pigvomit" or some of the other ones written down in the book. Can you imagine Oprah Winfrey introducing a guest on her show as "Smegma Pigvomit"? Maybe I did pick the wrong name.

I like the way "Jello" and "Biafra" collide in the mind. For those who don't know what Biafra was, it was a part of Nigeria with the best educated people in Africa, who tried to secede from the rest of the country in the late 60's, early 70's. The Nigerian army - with American and British help - cut off the entire food supply to the republic of Biafra, so there was mass starvation.

All the photos people saw in those days of babies with bloated bellies and wide eyes, cause they didn't have anything to eat, came from the Biafran war. For many years after that, if you said the word "Biafra" people immediately thought of this horrible mass-starvation and squalor. Later, Ethiopia took it's place.

I like the way the images of the ultimate plastic food, versus horrible squalor inflicted by the maker of the ultimate plastic food, affects people in the brain. The only person who ever seemed offended by the name was Jessie Jackson.

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