Interview with Fat Mike of NOFX

Fat Mike, the old punk who won’t lie down, tells Truepunk about success-hungry kids, the Scarface of Ecuador and NOFX’s new old-school album Coaster.

NOFX – May 2009 By Steve Tauschke

Hi Mike, are you guys still only touring about three or months a year these days?
“Yeah although it just so happens I went to Japan last week and I have to go to Europe tomorrow so I’m only home for seven days. But we rarely do that but there’s a couple of really big festivals we had to take so ..”

Japan - do you enjoy it there?
“It’s probably my favourite place in the whole world to go but not for normal reasons, my festish-y weird reasons. They’ve got some really weird creepy bars there that I love going to. There’s a place called Osaka Jail I like to frequent, your basic bar with a dominatrix and you get a good tie-up and some needles through your tits, that kind of thing.”

I imagine your new DVD Backstage Passport chronicles such footage from your travels.
”Yeah, there’s some footage from Osaka Jail in the DVD actually. It’s hard when you’re in places liken Singapore or Indonesia finding some creepy places because the countries is so creepy already that you really don’t want to find the underbelly. But we did, we went to our share of cool places. Once in Ecuador, which is a pretty poor country, we played a show at a country club and we asked ‘who’s the richest kid in town - let’s have a party at his house!’ So we had an after-party at his house and that was awesome. He was like the Scarface of Ecuador.”

You mentioned last time we spoke how CD piracy pretty much generated your tours of various third world countries given your albums aren’t officially available in these places.
”Right, it’s all word of mouth and kids giving it to each other somehow. But when we used to tour Europe in the 80s we didn’t have distribution there either and kids still knew who we were and knew our songs. Back then it was cassettes tapes from person to person and now it’s a lot easier.”

Having flogged yourself across US and Europe so many times, it must be fun to play to new audiences?
”It sounds stupid but it was really exciting and fun for us because it had been really long time since we got off an plane and were thrown into a culture that you’re like ‘what the fuck is going on here?’. We got off the plane in the Philippines and it was weird.”

You’ve sold six million albums without mainstream promotion and yet you advise young bands against pursuing the whole DIY thing these days. Why?
“I just don’t think kids these days have the stomach for it. The first six years we were touring no-one liked us and there was no hope of ever getting bigger. But it’s fine for us because we’re alcoholics and we really like being on the road. But kids today they want to make it, they don’t want to play in garages for six years like us with no hope. They want to get in a band and within two years they want to be big and if it doesn’t work out for them then they’ll start a new band. They’re worried about their career rather than having good times. You see them gang up on one band member for being too drunk one night. I’m like ‘are you fucking serious - this is rock n’ roll and it’s about fun and excess. Fuck moderation!’.”

Is that a generation Y instant gratification attitude?
“Absolutely! Instant gratification! So if you’re in band and get a major label opportunity then go for it because those labels will be going under within a year or two anyway. I mean with the record industry, our depression started four years ago.”

People are still buying records though.
“It’s not like it’s totally dried up. I don’t think people can just live off songs, a single here and a single there. People still for a long time will want an album. Bands put 12 or 15 songs on one album for a reason, because the songs belong together. It’s a point in your life that you can remember, an album you were listening to, whereas you don’t really remember just a song you were listening to.”

So how do you look back on your 90s albums such as Punk In Drublic?
”I think White Trash Two Heebs and A Bean is really our first listenable record, that I can listen to. And Punk In Drublic is our biggest but at the time it wasn’t a big deal at all, it wasn’t like that album came out and we got huge. It happened slowly and we’ve held onto it. And I’m just really stoked and flattered and couldn’t be happier that the attendance of NOFX shows hasn’t gone down at all.”

Not bad for a band that recently celebrated its 25th anniversary!
“Yeah it’s pretty crazy. We did I think make a really good move in the mid-90s when a lot of our friends were making videos and signing to majors but we thought ‘you know what – I’d rather have a long career. Let’s just go with what we do and play clubs and not fuck with success’.”

There’s nothing flashy about new album Coaster .. it has that consistency we’ve come to expect.
“I think we’ve made a record that I would have enjoyed when I was 14 more than any other record because it does kind of have an old school sound. NOFX started from hardcore and we got more melodic whereas with this record it’s more of a throwback to ‘81/82 LA punk rock. It’s slower and kind of more manic and the sound is a lot cleaner.”

Producer Bill Stevenson must have helped there?
“You can’t go wrong with Bill and Jason because they’ll give you the sound that they want and they know how to get it. You’re not going to get bad-sounding record with them. And Bill, he listens to old punk every day, he’s obsessed with it and if he’s not listening to it he’s talking about some old Black Flag story. He made us listen to this Suburban Lawns song every single day and we watched the video called I’m A Janitor and I can actually hear some of the influence of that song on our record.”

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