More Fun In The New World: X’s Exene Cervenka On The Nearing End & The Beginnings

On Oct. 30, X played the final date of their “The End Is Near Tour” at Columbia, South Carolina’s The Senate. Then there’s their annual West Coast Xmas run in December and, after 47 years of making incredible music, the influential L.A. punk band is winding things down. Though they’ll still play occasional gigs, there wont be any new albums or extensive tours. It’s a shame, though, as X, featuring the seamless honeyed vocals of John Doe (71) and Exene Cervenka (68) and the raw power of Billy Zoom (76) on guitar and DJ Bonebrake (68) on drums, is easily one of the greatesr and most influential punk bands to ever rock a club, hall, theater, fest and/or hovel (see Masque shot above). From the heady days of 1977 onward, X produced a classic catalog of underground hits off landmark albums, like Los Angeles (1980), Wild Gift (1981), Under the Big Black Sun (1982), More Fun In The New World (1983) and See How We Are (1987). This past August, the band released their excellent ninth and final album Smoke & Fiction (Fat Possum, produced by Rob Schnapf). Pollstar caught up with the inimitable co-lead vocalist Exene to find out more about this new world, sadly with less X in it, what it was like back in the old world, and what lies ahead.

Pollstar: So the end is near for “The End Is Near Tour” -– how’s it feel? 
Exene: Well, it’s always been that way, right? Because you never know. People ask, “You’re still touring. What do you attribute that to?” And of course, the answer is luck. I play every show like it’s my last because that’s the way I can do the best performance. It’s not artificial, it’s me, it’s the best I can be that night physically and emotionally, my voice, everything. Every night I play like it’s the last show and could be the best show ever.

Are these shows more special now that you’re winding down? 
We’ve been doing this for over 45 years. It’s just really who we are and what we do. The future is uncertain and the end is always near, like The Doors. I have learned over the years to live more in the moment.

Are fans more emotional on this tour? 
People are really happy to see us. Maybe they’ve never seen us before or they think they’re never going to see us again. There’s more people coming and bigger crowds. There’s an exuberance, a kind of celebratory feeling of like, “Oh, we’re all here together And this is so great, what an event!”  

When you add in it’s some of X’s last shows, it’s sold out, there’s so much love for X and the associations from so many parts of one’s life —“I must not think bad thoughts,” which helped me so much, thank you for that —  the shows must elicit so much appreciation, gratitude and love. 
That’s the same feeling that we have, which is “Wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this. This is so great. You know, this is so fun.” I started saying this lately, I just kind of blurted it out and I think it’s true that I’m in the business of making people happy. Because live there is that kind of letting go and celebration and crazy fun, and being wild and loose and just not caring, like “I’m gonna do this right now! This is great with all these people.” There’s a shared experience that people are having and I think that’s one of the more important parts. We’re just facilitating them all getting together, right?

So the tour looks like you played a bunch of shows then took a couple of weeks off and then went back out?
It’s like two weeks on, two weeks off, two weeks on, two weeks off it. It’s easier that way because it’s so grueling. What people don’t understand is that the hour and a half (on stage) is great,  but like dragging your suitcase around and packing and unpacking every morning and every night and the long, long drives and getting exercise between. You don’t really eat much because our hospitality is bare bones. We eat just like really small, healthy things. And it’s a lot of physical work. You get up at seven in the morning and you go to work at nine o’clock at night. It’s all backwards, it’s difficult and most people can’t do it.

How are you traveling? 
We have a van with equipment and gear and a couple of crew people. And then we have another van with people, merch and suitcases and stuff. 

Are merch sales through the roof? 
We are blessed with the best merchandise seller that anyone could ever have. We have a really great crew. We just have the best people working with us and they do such a great job. We have great merch. I’m not responsible for any of that. That’s our manager and our team.  I just go, “Wow,” when I get there.

Who’s your manager?
Our manager is Mike Rouse. He’s a super genius. He comes up with all the merchandise, ideas, the routing. He’s just really smart and really loves and cares about the band. And he’s scrupulously honest and a blessing. Without him, none of this would be happening. He’s the guy that was friends with Billy and when we decided to get back together in the nineties, Billy said, “I’ll do it, but only if this guy’s on board” and he’s been with us ever since. 

What was your first gig?
It was the house that John and I lived in. It was a big old house. Of course it got torn down like one of those big old 1920s giant houses with the stairways and everything. Billy used to live there, and he moved out, and we practiced there. And we played our first gig in the living room of that house. And KK Barrett from The Screamers was the drummer because we didn’t have DJ yet. So it was us with KK playing drums, We played seven songs or something just on the floor in the living room.

Where was that, Hollywood?
Like the Wilshire District where all the cool old houses used to be that all got torn down.

There are a lot of reasons why a scene gets made, but a lot of it’s economics, that people can come from all over and afford to bunk up, get a day job and maybe get by, which is much harder now.
Rent at my first apartment was like $100 or $80 a month in Venice. It’s now like you couldn’t live in that neighborhood for under a million dollars. It was like that all over the country.I don’t know how a band can do what we did. I don’t know that it’s possible, but you just have to want to do it. Everything is possible if you want it enough, I guess.

What was the first proper club you played?
Usually, people just rented halls because the big clubs wouldn’t book us. I don’t know what the first one was. We played The Masque and stuff. And then, people like Brandon (Mullen) and other people would just book a hall. The Starwood, The Whiskey and The Troubadour all started happening at the same time. And then they’d stop having us like when Fear or The Bags played the Troubadour, then they said no more punk shows. But then there was The Hong Kong Cafe, which was great. All that kind of stuff was happening simultaneously.

When the “Decline of Western Civilization” doc came out in 1981, with X and other LA punk bands, Darryl Gates, the police chief, said it shouldn’t be shown in Los Angeles and derided all the “degenerate kids,” did you have to contend with that?
Once in a while, a show would get cancelled or the police would come in and break it up and throw people around, that “Rebel Without a Cause” stuff. So that was par for the course then, where there was still this kind of idea that the biggest enemy in America was juvenile delinquents. I don’t think they have time for that anymore.

So punk rock was demonized?
The media did kind stall everybody’s careers by promoting the sensational aspects, just like they do now. I mean, it’s not any different from any other time, but I think it was still considered dangerous because it challenged the status quo, the dominant corporate structure. It’s brainwashing, it makes people think for themselves. It gives people options. It tells people that they’re in charge of what they want to be and that they can have this kind of freedom, they don’t have to dress a certain way, behave a certain way and that’s scary to the people in power. I think that’s the most scary thing. We weren’t anarchists, we were just playing music and having fun. We weren’t trying to overthrow governments, we were just kids having fun and that is very scary. People in power, they don’t want kids going around on their own without an orthodox united view of what life is supposed to be.

What was it like to play The Masque in Hollywood? Was there even a sound system?
Yeah, somewhat.

Was there a stage.
I don’t know, enough to hit your shins on, that’s for sure. About shin height because I bruised myself up quite a bit standing in front of it.

How many could it fit in there?
I would say never that many, maybe 80? I think somebody just had the nerve to say, “Can I rent this?” and didn’t say what for, And for a long time we got to go in and out. But there was only one way in and one way out, which was these rickety stairs down from this alley. And everyone was smoking cigarettes. It’s such a weird thing to think all these young, crazy people who didn’t even know each other just drinking and smoking cigarettes and playing music in this basement. It’s a miracle we all got out of there alive. But you know, when you’re doing stuff like that, you really don’t care about consequences because, you know everything’s gonna be fine.

How would people hear about shows?
Look, word of mouth supersedes any kind of Internet communication for sure. How did these kind of young gang-banger guys from East L.A. show up at The Masque in an old Chevy smoking angel dust and hanging out with us? How’d they know? You could say, ‘Well, maybe the LA Times’ Robert Hilburn…” But what kind of crazy kid goes, “Oh, I saw this thing in the LA Times and Robert Hilburn wrote this review. I think we should go check it out” It’s not that intellectual. It just happens, They do that by word of mouth.

What were your early tours like?
Our first tour was just driving to New York and playing some shows. We didn’t know if we were gonna go to Austin or Chicago. We didn’t know what was going on. Kids later started up fanzines and college radio was huge and reached certain people. You had to do a lot of little things to find each other and make these little connections that became bigger and bigger connections until finally, yes, we’re going to Arizona. We’re going to Texas. We’re playing Austin. 

Are there any shows that for whatever reason, a festival, a venue, somebody’s living room, that stand out for you?
The one thing that stands out for me was when Pearl Jam took us to South America, Mexico and Central America out of the kindness of their hearts and treated us the best we’ve ever been treated in our lives. We were staying at the same hotel they were staying in. We didn’t have the bodyguards like they did, but we had a driver who followed their bodyguard’s car so we wouldn’t get hijacked. And the way we’d be meeting all the fans, because there’d be 600 people outside the hotel with signs saying how much they love Pearl Jam and they’re all young and they worshipped Pearl Jam. And I would go outside to smoke a cigarette or hang out, and they would just come up to me. “Oh, you’re Exene from X and you know, Pearl Jam.” So we gained this huge life experience and following that we never could have afforded to do on our own. Then they took us to Europe, and that was also amazing. So my highlight of my career as far as X experiences, one of them would be Pearl Jam taking us out into the world and treating us like their honored guests and bringing an audience to us, that was was one of the top highlights of my career.

The other shows whether they’re bigger shows or not, I think playing the Universal Amphitheater with Jerry Lee Lewis and Firehose, The other one was when we had X Night at Dodger Stadium and I got to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game. So those are the bigger things you remember and go “Wow, I can’t believe I got to do this.” What a wonderful honor.

The other thing is just playing those early shows, The Masque and just that feeling of “Wow, this is amazing. I’m standing here watching The Plugz and then I’m gonna be standing there playing to them and everyone’s just gonna be jumping around and having fun.” That kind of stuff, that freedom and that ability to transport yourself into this magical world. I think the idea that we helped build that scene so much is also important. But I can’t really separate all the shows. I think we’ve played, like 6,000 shows or something, so it’s hard.

So your last show is on a boat in May with Little Steven’s Underground Garage?
That one’s booked. That’s gonna be fun. We got on the Flogging Molly cruise a couple of years right after COVID was ending. The Distillers canceled at the last minute, so they needed a band. It was one of the best things ever. I just had so much fun on that cruise, it was like a big family.

So it sounds like you’ll keep doing shows.
I mean sure, if somebody says you want to do a festival, for sure, or if somebody says you wanna open for us for sure. We’re not gonna do the endless van touring because it’s just too hard.