There's an old cliche that "everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Punk band the Circle Jerks turned that idea on its head. The group took just 15 minutes to deliver 14 songs on its 1980 debut album, making themselves punk legends in the process — legends that are still stirring up mosh pits across the country 43 years later.
That album, Group Sex, sparked the most recent reunion of the Los Angeles band for a tour to celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2020. COVID, of course, delayed the tour a bit, but now singer Keith Morris, guitarist Greg Hetson, bassist Zander Schloss and new drummer Joey Castillo are on the road delivering sets laced with Group Sex songs that still resonate with anti-authority fury: "Deny Everything," "Back Against the Wall," "Live Fast Die Young," "World Up My Ass." On Saturday, July 22, Circle Jerks will rip through songs from Group Sex and their other albums at the Knitting Factory.
Morris says that while the touring life is a bit rougher than the old days when adrenaline (among other things) kept his engine revving through endless van rides and late nights, there's really no other option for a punk-rock lifer.
"There is no retirement plan," Morris says, joking that the guys in the band are "older, grumpier, grouchier, and whine a lot more."
"I'm going to be 68 years old in a couple of months, and people want to know what that's like, and there's some ups and downs. There are some difficulties. Being diabetic, a lot of times I find myself in situations where I don't get to make healthy choices when it comes to the food I'm consuming. I find my glucose levels going up and down like a rollercoaster. It gets scary."
The danger of an inconsistent diet is not exactly the kind of danger Morris is best known for creating. As co-founder of Black Flag and then Circle Jerks, Morris was at the center of the Southern California punk scene in the late 1970s and early '80s. Shows by those bands and their peers in the Minutemen, the Weirdos, Saccharine Trust and others were often hit-and-run affairs staged in nontraditional venues to stay one step ahead of local police looking to crack down on the scene. And even when the cops didn't show up to harass them, the punk community was more than capable on its own of turning a show into a chaotic scene of smashed bottles, bruised bodies and destroyed spaces.
Morris recounted the early days of West Coast punk in remarkably vivid and entertaining detail in his 2016 book, My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor, including his split from Black Flag and joining forces with Hetson to start the Circle Jerks. It's a story that shows how insular and incestuous the scene was in the early days. Morris came from Black Flag. Hetson left Redd Kross to join him in Circle Jerks, and also joined Bad Religion during the Circle Jerks' 1980s run, juggling both bands for several years. Schloss joined Circle Jerks a few years into their run after doing a little acting, including in cult classic Repo Man — a movie the Circle Jerks also appeared in before Schloss joined the band.
The Circle Jerks grew in popularity thanks to the skate and surf communities embracing albums like Wild in the Streets (1982) and Golden Shower of Hits (1983), but relationships among the band members cracked over divided loyalties with members' other bands, substance abuse and frustrations with a failed major-label deal that resulted in the band's 1995 album Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities. While Morris is proud of most of the Circle Jerks' albums, he sees that one as a disaster.
"That record never should have been made," Morris says. "It was just rushed. We didn't have any songs. I guess that was our version of [the Sex Pistols'] Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. Just take the money and make a recording. It was really short-sighted. There was no reason for us to make that record. It was, 'Let's hurry up and make it, I have a Bad Religion tour to go on. I've got a Sweet and Low Orchestra (one of Schloss's other bands) tour to go on. Let's hurry up and make this because tax season is coming.'"
The band splintered, seemingly for good, just three weeks into the tour for that album, but they'd occasionally re-form for tours up until 2011, when attempts to make a new Circle Jerks album broke down over the classic "creative differences." Morris says the other guys didn't want to work with a young producer he trusted, so he left Circle Jerks behind and started a new band, Off!. Every now and then Circle Jerks would get an offer to re-form — including, Morris says, $200,000 for a 45-minute set at Coachella — but he couldn't stomach the idea of working with Hetson and Schloss again. That started to change as the 40th anniversary for Group Sex approached.
"I had a bunch of free time, and I said to myself, 'I need to get over this hurt. I need to get over this hatred. They are my friends, no matter how I was treated by them. I'm just going to have to swallow my pride and push my ego aside,'" Morris says. "And here we are, coming up to play, and it will be great." ♦
Circle Jerks, Negative Affect, Scowl • Sat, July 22 at 8 pm • $30 • Knitting Factory • 919 W. Sprague Ave. • sp.knittingfactory.com
