X marks the end: L.A. punk band winds down after nearly 50 years together
In front of a handful of Alex’s Bar employees hustling to prep for a sold-out club show on a recent hot summer night in Long Beach, the members of X are busy warming up at soundcheck for the first of two local gigs last month to kick off the cycle for the album that the iconic L.A. punk band says will be its last. John Doe is holding his bass and tackling vocal duties, while his longtime tag team partner, the band’s sparkplug Exene Cervenka, is also testing the mic with her vocals. Billy Zoom swaps between his guitar and saxophone while D.J. Bonebrake keeps the beat moving.
Unlike other local underplay kickoffs, this show in support of their final album, “Smoke & Fiction,” carries an extra bit of urgency. The lengthy tour extends into 2025, with no true end in sight, but this evening, it’s business as usual. New songs, like the title track and “Flipside,” pack a punch, while the band’s classics “Water & Wine” and “Come Back to Me” retain their urgency.
Once Zoom and Bonebrake leave the stage, Doe and Cervenka soundcheck a cover of the Blasters’ “4th of July.” As they trade vocals, the pair lock eyes, their on-stage connection as strong as ever.
“We know where each other is going, even if it’s a new place or phrasing,” Doe says backstage as he nurses a ginger beer. “So we do share a brain in that way. In a lot of respects, I think Exene is one of the best writers ever.”
“We’re just a band,” Cervenka says a few days later at the band’s rehearsal space in Orange. “People have so much attached to bands. It’s just people playing music. It’s not a big deal.”
Depending on which member you ask, there will be a different answer as to how and when the decision came for X to hang up their gear. But, specifics aside, it was a mutual decision in which all the members agreed that the time was right to call it a career. “It really is our last record,” Bonebrake insists backstage at Alex’s Bar. “Sometimes you just have to say, ‘OK, this is it.’ But we had to have one last hurrah.”
Unlike 2020’s “Alphabetland,” the band’s first album in 27 years and first with Zoom since 1985 — recorded the year before and completed just before the pandemic — “Smoke & Fiction” came together quickly. Doe started writing in November 2022 and as the songs developed, X tested them out on last year’s tour. Cervenka says “Alphabetland” and “Smoke & Fiction” are companion albums thematically.
By the time they went into Sunset Sound to record in January, they knew what they wanted to do. There, along with producer Rob Schnapf (at whose studio they completed the album), X decided to keep things lean and punk rock, spending just three days in the studio to lay down the basic tracks paying for the sessions themselves.
“It’s like a military campaign to write the songs to get them in shape to figure out how you want the whole thing to hold together,” Doe says.
“We’ve been talking about this for a couple of years,” Bonebrake says. “We were prepared when we went in, and from there, it was easy.”
“We probably won’t make another record because we probably don’t have it in us,” Cervenka recalls thinking at the time. “So, let’s just do this one and make it great.”
The album’s emotional centerpiece is “Big Black X.” Throughout the song, with Zoom’s buzzsaw riffs leading the way, Cervenka references moments from X’s career. The title of the song is a reference to the visual of the band’s name lit up on a white marquee. Additionally, lyrics like “Cherokee alley/something about a basement” refer to the long-gone Masque. The song isn’t sentimental, but rather looking back on what happened.
“If I could sum up our career in a song, I would say there it is,” Doe says of “Big Black X.”
“It’s a funny song,” Cervenka adds. She compares it to “In This House That I Call Home” and “The Unheard Music.” “It was just a lot of freedom [in the band’s early days] and wildness that kids might not have as much of now.”
The band says despite plenty of references to punk’s bygone era, the spirit of the album makes an effort to push past plain old nostalgia.
“It just became clear to me that lyrically, this is a good way to wrap up,” Doe says. “But we may record a song or two here and there, but you never know.”
“When we moved here in ’76, there were still a lot of remnants of the real Hollywood,” Cervenka says. “I like to remember that and put it back in the world. It’s not nostalgia, it’s appreciation.”
Cervenka says themes of love and love lost, and exploring place and time, are present throughout the album.
The best thing that can be said about “Smoke & Fiction,” which clocks in under 30 minutes, is that it has all of the traits of a late-era X album: the heavy punk mixed with elements of roots rock, contemplative lyrics and roaring riffs. “It’s not in our nature to reinvent things,” Doe says. “We have a clear idea of who we are.”
X’s members say that despite the busy touring schedule that will take them into 2025, they plan on retiring from the road, though Doe says that doesn’t preclude them from playing one-off shows in bigger theaters and a select number of dates. “If you want to see X in a sweaty club, do it now,” he says.
A few days later at the band’s rehearsal space in Orange County, Cervenka and Zoom say they’re happy with how the past handful of years have gone for the band. Zoom cites his age (at 76, he’s the band’s oldest member) as a reason to slow down, while Cervenka says the van rides between shows have become physically challenging. Since 1998, X has played over 1,800 shows and over 4,000 throughout their career. By comparison, the Ramones played a little over 2,600.
“Every show is hard work,” Zoom says. “And a big anxiety trip to get over with. It’s hard to get up in front of people and perform. I enjoy it and it’s a good job, but when people ask me what’s my favorite song to play live, I always say the last one.”
“You never know when the end will be,” Cevernka says. “Here’s the thing: making two records in the last six years is pretty amazing. We did that. And I’m happy about that. But what is a tour? We’ve been playing for the past 45 years and we’ll play until people stop wanting to see us. Or, until one of us says, ‘You know what, this is too hard. I don’t want to do it anymore.’ And I don’t know if that’s next week or next year. It’s a good wakeup call for people because we’re not doing this forever.”
Remarkably, when X hangs it up, a part of L.A. rock history will disappear with them. Formed in 1977 by Doe (who’d bring in Cervenka) and Zoom, X became the standard bearers of the punk scene. They conquered now-defunct clubs like the Starwood, Madame Wong’s and Hong Kong Café, and their 1980 debut, “Los Angeles,” is considered a punk classic.
X is the last remaining link to the nascent days of ’60s L.A. rock, with their direct connection to the Doors’ Ray Manzarek, who produced their first four albums. His production influence ensured that X stayed true to themselves and didn’t fall into recording traps that would make their sound of a certain time.
Though they won’t admit it, X’s time at the top of the L.A. rock food chain directly influenced many bands after them. In particular, Cervenka’s poetic lyrics, her and Doe’s vocal harmonies, and their willingness to fuse elements of rockabilly into their sound brought American roots music, along with the Blasters, and later, Social Distortion, back into prominence.
“I think we inspired people by example, by being ourselves or being somewhat eclectic,” Doe says. “Billy, I, DJ, and Exene all have a very rich vocabulary of American music.”
Growing up on a steady diet of roots music, Zoom seamlessly added that element to the band’s sound (he played with early rock legends like Gene Vincent) — so much so that Doe says that the intro “Sweet Til the Bitter End” has elements of Bo Diddley’s guitar style in it. Album nine may be their last, but the band is giving the people what they want.
“I’m in the business of making people happy. Giving people a gift of the X record is all I want to do,” Cervenka says. “If they’re happy with it. I’m happy with it.”
Following the Alex’s Bar show, X returned to familiar territory with a sold-out show at the Troubadour. There, before the encore, they were presented with a proclamation by Dwight Yoakam on behalf of West Hollywood declaring it “X Day,” something that wasn’t lost on the members as they accepted the honor.
For 40 of their 47 years, X’s lineup contained its original four members. Few, if any, bands can boast that level of longevity, even if album releases were few and far between for nearly three decades. They have always remained true to their sonic vision and evolved instead of stagnating (nevertheless surviving), as the first wave of L.A. punk peers could not and did not do.
“Looking back, I thought we were going to change the world,” Cervenka says of the early punk movement. “And all those bands were going to do great. We were all going to tour and be on the radio, and it was going to be great. It was gonna be this great punk rock thing, like rock in the ’50s and ’60s.”
Influencing a generation of bands in L.A. and beyond will have to be a sufficient consolation prize.
“Being authentic is seeing the truth,” Doe says. “You can look back through rose-colored glasses, but it’s false. Things were difficult. But we’re still reaping some of those rewards.”
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