Look, there's not enough room here to recount legendary L.A. outfit X's entire sordid and triumphant history. Every self-respecting rock fan should know it, but dozens of more motivated, obsessive and scrupulous music writers have told it better than I ever could. So have the band members themselves, in excellent films like The Decline of Western Civilization — the first one, not the one where W.A.S.P.'s Chris Holmes gets shitfaced in a pool and Warrant won't let bimbos into their apartment without a bag of groceries — and The Unheard Music. So we won't go into the whole story of how four disparate yet kindred souls found each other at the tail end of the '70s, got "discovered" by The Doors' Ray Manzarek, fell in and out of love, made a shitload of passionate, visceral music and helped define Los Angeles as an underground-rock Mecca along the way.
Know this, however: The impact X made on rock music in general, and punk in particular, cannot be overestimated. The hardcore purists who pine for Black Flag's heyday and assert that X was only a punk band for a few minutes in the beginning are missing the point entirely. The quartet not only exemplified the emerging genre's cultural frustration and nakedly cathartic bent, but also ignored its quickly developing stylistic dogma by nurturing its talents and following its own inspirations and collective heart. They kept it open ended, exciting and unpredictable, and in doing so, contributed immeasurably to L.A.'s fringe-rock fertility. X tilled the soil that yielded everything from Tex & The Horseheads up through Concrete Blonde, Thelonious Monster, the Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction to upstart contemporaries like Campfire Girls and Your Enemies Friends.
"Of course I think about it," says vocalist Exene Cervenka, after being asked if she ever considers her band's legacy of influence — and joking about whether or not she should lie in the name of false modesty.
"I'm pretty comfortable with what we accomplished and where we are … maybe we did a good job of staying in the middle and keeping our integrity. It's nice being in the position where some people know you and think you did good stuff, but not everybody knows you."
By the time Hey Zeus!, their last album of new material, was released in 1993, the then 16-year-old X had assumed a lesser role in the lives of its members, in the wake of their country-flavored side project The Knitters and a long hiatus. Cervenka had a solo album out and a rising profile as a poet and spoken-word artist; songwriter/bassist/vocalist John Doe was likewise a solo artist and budding actor; drummer DJ Bonebrake played on numerous friends' albums; and original guitarist Johnny Zoom was long gone, having split in 1986. The next five years saw little X activity beyond sporadic hometown shows with Zoom's replacement, Tony Gilkyson, as the members pursued their individual interests.
But in '98, Zoom returned to the fold — reportedly to raise money for various other endeavors, but who cares, really? — and the original lineup began performing live much more regularly, undertaking national tours whenever schedules permitted.
"I think [X is] the main focus, more than not," says Cervenka of their current mindset. "We've been pretty serious about putting tours together for a couple of years."
In 2001, Rhino Records began reissuing the foursome's catalog, raising their profile anew in a climate desperate for raw, real sounds and not coincidentally providing some product to support on the road. While some of the later releases contain bonus tracks, however, don't expect anything in the way of new X tuneage for the foreseeable future.
"I'd like to do that, but I don't see that happening any time soon," Cervenka says, adding the hopeful caveat, "that could change, of course."
The presence of reissues and original-lineup tours combined with a lack of forthcoming new material will undoubtedly engender the usual grumbling about cashing in, of wringing a notable past entity in the name of marketable nostalgia for every last dime. Even an outfit as iconic as X will draw some fire in that department, and Cervenka, it seems, could care less.
"The day you attack an undertaking of any artistic sort, you're going to be met by cynicism along the way. People are just that way," she says. "But there is a nostalgic element to it.
"I'm into the past, anyway. I'd rather drive an old car, live in an old house, listen to old music. It's what I like."
Given the band's outspoken opinions regarding the precedence of art, and life itself, over commerce, the idea of X as a whole reheating the hits for a paycheck is a dubious one. Plus, the three members not yet 50 are encroaching upon it, and that's an age at which you generally don't subject yourself to outdoor summer stages, anonymous hotel rooms and endless highway miles unless you love it. And Cervenka, the next-to-youngest of the four, says she still does.
"I've approached it from so many different ways … sick, well, pregnant, on hormones, off hormones. Some people really hate touring, and I really love touring. I wouldn't want to do it if I was doing all the work, road managing, pushing everything ahead, doing all the interviews and making very little money — I wouldn't do it.
"As far as X goes, I could do it forever. It's not the playing that wears you out, it's, 'who's got directions? Nobody? OK.' You know what I mean? When things are easy, they're fun."
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2003.