X’s “Los Angeles” Turns 40: An Essay and Q&A with X: THE UNHEARD MUSIC collaborators

This Sunday, April 26, marks the 40th anniversary of X’s landmark debut, Los Angeles. To celebrate, we asked our friend Tim Stegall of the Austin Chronicle to say a few things about the band and their seminal album. Plus, we’re now releasing our Q&A for X: THE UNHEARD MUSIC with X founder John Doe, director Bill Morgan, and producer Alizabeth Foley. Read, watch, and enjoy!

“She Had To Leave Los Angeles….”: X’s Debut Album At 40

An appreciation by The Austin Chronicle‘s Tim Stegall

As the world’s population hunkers down in their individual bunkers, garlic garlands surrounding the doors, warding off the evil viral invader COVID-19, X released their 1st album since 1993’s Hey Zeus! Even cooler, since Alphabetland features the prime lineup of L.A.’s premiere punk band – co-vocalist Exene Cervenka, bassist/co-vocalist (and latter-day Austin resident) John Doe, drummer DJ Bonebrake, and guitarist Billy Zoom. Then it gets cooler still: This is the first new material from classic X since 1985’s Ain’t Love Grand, and the first proper full-length since they reformed in the late ’90s to play their hits to throbbing live audiences once again. And wouldn’t you know it? It sounds like an X record! For the first time since 1983’s More Fun In The New World.

Isn’t it curious they chose to drop it digitally via Bandcamp 40 years to the day after Slash Records unleashed their 1st album, Los Angeles? No, no pressure at all, Alphabetland. Great as you are – you are instantly as classic an X album as any of their 1st four – just compete with a game-changing motherfucker of a debut album….

No one expected, in the year The Clash’s London Calling and PiL’s Metal Box saw US release, for a band from LOS ANGELES, of all places (!!), to release a punk rock record that would completely field strip and dissipate those two titans of modern sound. I mean, wasn’t this the sun-and-fun entertainment capitol of the universe?! How could credible punk rock come from there?! What did Angelinos have to rebel against?!

Turned out Los Angeles succeeded on several levels. X were no musical slouches, for one. Doe was a veteran of Baltimore’s bar band scene. Bonebrake had played in symphonies. Zoom had played with rockabilly titan Gene Vincent, ferchrissakes! The latter factoid proved to be a potent secret weapon – he could link Johnny Burnett to Johnny Thunders! This was punk that did not reject rock ‘n’ roll roots, but revved up the original Fifties rebel spirit to pogo specs, with love and affection. This was an embrace of tradition that could peaceful co-exist with punk’s now-now-now modernity.  Only Cervenka was a novice. And what she brought was a sense of harmony closer to Gregorian chants, or even Richard and Mimi Farina. Somehow, the discordant vocal blend with Doe worked.

But what was especially exciting was how this record served notice that a new school of punk songwriting had arrived. Doe and Cervenka’s lyrical sense owed more to L.A.-based writers like Charles Bukowski, Raymond Chandler, or Nathanael West than Chuck Berry. This was hard-bitten poetry about life in L.A.’s margins – more bohemian and hard-boiled and literary than the Sex Pistols. This was poetry without the pretensions of New Yorkers like Richard Hell or Patti Smith, a more down-to-earth way to be punk and artistic. This was Bukowski’s fictional alter ego Henry Chinaski in a punk band! Inadvertently, X was creating a new school of punk songwriters: The Flesh Eaters’ Chris D., The Gun Club’s Jefferey Lee Pierce, The Blasters’ Dave Alvin, The Germs’ Darby Crash, even The Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn. All Los Angeles-based, they benefitted from the door Doe and Cervenka opened. Coincidentally, all were also signed to Slash Records.

But the private nightmare Doe and Cervenka spun across Los Angeles could only have come from their eyes and their pens. Seeing heroin addiction grip friends they’d made in the cramped, toxic basement that was original Hollywood punk palace The Masque, they responded with despondent, pissed-off observations like “Your Phone’s Off The Hook, But You’re Not”: “And now all our money’s gone,” Exene moans with the despair of one jonesing for a fix, but whose partner scored and shot it all up without sharing. “Jonny Hit And Run Paulene” seemed to cross addiction with an ugly rape scenario: “She wasn’t what you call living, really/SHE WAS STILL AWAKE!!” Doe screamed in utter terror. The title track documented the escape of a toxic friend who apparently hated every race, creed and color, and found Hollywood too oppressive: “She gets confused/Flying over the dateline/Her hands turned red….” Grand finale “The World’s A Mess, It’s In My Kiss” appears to deal with some sorta infidelity: “No one is united/Everything is untied/Perhaps we’re boiling over inside/They’ve been telling lies.”

Yes, X’s Los Angeles was dizzying musically, aesthetically, lyrically, conceptually. No one expected it, and it was explosive in what it delivered. It served notice that one of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest creative forces had arrived, even if only a fraction of the world would pay heed. Blame it on the fecklessness and willful ignorance of radio, bemoaned on “The Unheard Music”: “We’re locked out of the public eye/….No hard chords on the car radio.” And unlike some of the music made in the punk era, this record still sounds fresh and vital. Even as X release new music to rival it. Happy birthday, Los Angeles!

X: THE UNHEARD MUSIC Q&A

Haven’t seen the film or want to watch it again? Watch it now on Tubi for free >>