Thursday, February 16, 2012

The Great-Ness

Three Decades in the Making

 









Social Distortion’s Mike Ness and Jonny 2 Bags talk about love and loss, music and fans, addictions and parenthood—the ups and downs of the seminal punk band that brought them together


IE Weekly
 
When a 21-year-old Mike Ness rolled up to his friend’s half pipe, 16-year-old Jonny Wickersham had no idea he was looking at his future sitting on a stolen 10-speed. 
The lead singer of then up-and-coming punk band Social Distortion who was five years Wickersham’s senior already had the sort of cult of personality that announced his presence—even from behind a spray painted black bicycle with flipped-up, handle bars. 
The two young men, who lived a block away from one another in the Costa Mesa apartment clusters, bonded over their love of punk rock music, skateboarding and general disenchantment with the world.

Wickersham and his friends had recently witnessed Ness and company’s performance in Pomona. “He thought of me more like a kid coming around, like super fandom,” Wickersham says. As he got older though, the two became peers in the music business, their Orange County-based bands sharing stages and fans.

Wickersham, now known as punk rock guitarist Jonny 2 Bags—who has done time in Cadillac Tramps, Youth Brigade and U.S. Bombs—took over as guitarist for Ness’ wildly popular, three decades-old punk rock institution. He got the job after Ness’ friend and band co-founder, Dennis Danell, died on Feb. 29, 2000, from a brain aneurysm. 
More recently, Wickersham and Ness are in the midst of more than a year of touring to promote the band’s most successful album to date, 2011’s Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes. Social Distortion stops in at the Fox Theater in Pomona Friday and Saturday, February 17 and 18. 



Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell
Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes premiered on the Billboard charts at No. 4, securing the band’s immediate future on the road. The Ness-produced album, Social Distortion’s seventh studio recording four years in the making, is the band’s first Top 10 showing. 
“I guess it was a critic’s record,” Ness says. “To get this kind of recognition this late in the game is great.” The record’s success is due in part to the chemistry between Ness and Wickersham, who share songwriting duties on many of the tracks. Bassist Brent Harding and drummer David Hidalgo Jr. currently round out the lineup.

Danell’s death put the band’s future in question for many. Danell’s footprint on the band was so huge, it meant very big shoes to fill, Wickersham says.

“Although I wanted to do it, and I wanted to play in the band, it was such horrible circumstances,” Wickersham says looking back. He himself a big fan and close friend of Danell. “Like I was an imposter.”

Despite having filled in for Danell in 1997 for part of the band’s European tour, Wickersham’s next gig with Ness was possibly his most somber: a benefit for Danell’s family at the former Irvine Meadows Amphitheater, now the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. Danell’s wife, Christy, helped ease the load Wickersham carried.

“When she got there, she walked up to me and said, ‘You must really feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders today,’” Wickersham recalls. “I mean, she’s grieving, and I couldn’t believe she thought about how I would be feeling. That made me feel a lot better.” 

A New Era
Not long after, Ness asked Wickersham to join the band full time, and a new working relationship was born, as well as a new era for Social Distortion. The two immediately collaborated lyrically, a role in the band Ness rarely shared with his oft-rotating players. Danell had been the only constant besides Ness, and one of the few to share songwriting duties with the band’s front man.

“It felt really great,” Wickersham says about the confidence Ness showed. The two started writing together for what turned into 2004’s Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll.  “The chemistry in that sense was really strong at that time.” 
Ness had plenty of confidence in Wickersham. “He’s a guitar player, and he grew up listening to this band,” Ness says. “We had chemistry. It’s a rare thing. Some artists can collaborate with just anybody. For me there has to be that level of comfort, trust and respect.”

The two grew up in similar situations, hailing from broken homes and finding solace in punk rock. “We understand each other,” Ness says, adding that their long history together helped cement the bond. 



Punk Lives On
A decade later and the band shows no sign of slowing down; its audience continuing to grow. With the support of its new label, Epitaph Records, Ness opened up to trying new things to reach a bigger audience, confident in the label’s authenticity while flirting with mainstream success.

“We kind of always had the mindset that there are hundreds of thousands of Social Distortion fans who don’t know it yet,” Ness say. After years of keeping a stronghold on the Southern California scene, and remaining a go-to guy for punkers of all varieties, he’s finally breaking through, becoming genuinely famous in other circles.

“When there is someone who I have a relationship with outside of work that is not a typical candidate to be a fan, or they read about it and got the record and they really like it, that’s always cool to me,” Ness says. “Even back in the day, I didn’t only want to play in front of punk rockers. I wanted to get all kinds of people to hear it.”

Ness and the band performed on television for the first time, hitting Jimmy Kimmell Live! last year. Ness also wrote and starred in a conceptual short film for the album’s first single, “Machine Gun Blues.” 

The song strayed from Ness’ tried and true songwriting routine, as he set out to break from writing purely down-on-his-luck autobiographical songs. “I got back into character writing,” Ness says, citing “Gimme the Sweet and Lowdown” as another example. The song portrays someone giving advice to another who is hitting rock bottom.

“That could be about me, or some of my friends, but I wanted to remove myself from the song even though I am still sort of writing about myself,” Ness says. “I didn’t want to fall into any one style of writing. You just don’t want to get stuck. I wanted heavy, I wanted fiction, nonfiction, I wanted slow and I wanted fast. I was basically going back to how I was writing a song back in 1980, when I wrote ‘1945.’”

“Machine Gun Blues” tells the tale of a machine gun-toting, Roaring ’20s gangster in over his head. “It’s the not-so-glamorous side of gangster life,” Ness says. “He genuinely feels remorse, things just got out of control. He’s not a psychopath.”

If that song was about Ness in an abstract way, one might read into it some repentance for past mistakes. Ness famously struggled with heroin addiction in his early years, followed by jail time and rehab to get his mind straight before releasing the band’s second album, 1988’s Prison Bound, the follow up to 1983’s Mommy’s Little Monster.

Prison Bound signaled a crossroads for the band, leaning equally on Johnny Cash and Exile on Main Street-era Rolling Stones. By 1990, the eponymous album Social Distortion went gold, producing the band’s trademark singles “Story of My Life” and “Ball and Chain,” making Ness a bona fide rockabilly and punk rock icon.

The next two albums, 1992’s Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell and 1996’s White Heat, White Trash kept the band touring steadily. 

From Mommy’s Little Monster to Nursery Rhymes
Social Distortion never really required a new album to draw crowds, particularly in Southern California.

“Social Distortion is a good example of a band that has really stayed true to the sound,” Wickersham says. “Mike likes to evolve from record to record but he doesn’t want to completely change the sound of the band. He ignores trends.”

The band consistently sells out House of Blues clubs for weeks at a time—the fans’ enthusiasm always reminding the band of its relevance between releases, motivating them to get back to writing songs.

“I don’t care what anyone says, no matter how hot your band is, 50 percent of the show is the crowd,” Ness says. “When you have that kind of reaction, it inspires you to go in and do something to support that. We definitely feed off of that.”

Each time Ness returns to the studio, he’s armed with an arsenal of songs chronicling his life, a sort of portrait of where he’s at emotionally. No longer mommy’s little monster, he’s more your typical dad in many respects, one who pays the bills with a vintage Gibson and a tour bus. With that comes some grown up angst to boot.

His sons, 20-year-old Julian and 16-year-old Johnny, along with his wife, Christine, help keep Ness grounded and content. Julian, who has joined his father on stage occasionally, is headed for the family biz.

“Julian is the younger version of me,” Ness says. “We cause each other anxiety because of that. Our relationship has gone through a lot of ups and downs. But it’s in a good place.”

The song “Writing on the Wall” was inspired by Ness’ experience on the other side of drug abuse, as a father wondering if his son is lost in the perils of addiction.

“To have made it through that and be on the other side of it right now, it’s just so nice to not have to worry about that,” Ness says. “You still worry if they are going to be able to work and support themselves, but to not have to worry about his safety is so nice.” 
Julian is making his father proud these days, playing guitar in the Orange County band the Breakdowns. The band recently opened for the Cadillac Tramps at the Tiki Bar in Costa Mesa.

Other songs, like “Diamond in the Rough” give a glimpse of a happier, well adjusted Ness looking at a wide-open future as he sings “I’ve got a reason to live another day.” 
“Through the years I’ve learned to get inspiration from the positive things in my life as well, not just the dark, negative, painful stuff,” says Ness, who famously has the words “Love” and “Pain” tattooed on his knuckles. “I think it’s important to balance it . . .  I am different person than I was in 1995. I am older. I am hopefully more mature, and hopefully a little wiser.”

These days, Ness is nearing 50, living on the Newport Beach Peninsula, staying fit through a vegetarian diet and boxing in the ring with Julian. Life is sweet, something a listen to Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes reveals. He remains grounded.

“I think that Social D has gotten successful very slowly over the last 33 years,” Ness reflects. “Our level of success has been very gradual and very organic, a slow upward movement. It helps you appreciate the success a little more, and it helps you keep it kind of real.”

Social Distortion with Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, Sharks at the Fox Theater, 301 S. Garey Ave., Pomona, (909) 865-3802; www.foxpomona.com. Fri-Sat, Feb. 17-18. 8PM. $35.

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