THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN IN THE MAKING FOR A LONG TIME, ALMOST A YEAR... I SHOULD HAVE HOOKED UP WITH FALLING JAMES IN LA IN PERSON WHEN I WAS THERE, BUT SHIT HAPPENED AND I HAD TO COME BACK TO EUROPE BEFORE GETTING THIS INTERVIEW DONE. TIME PASSED BY, AND WE ARE JUST NOW ABLE TO DELIVER YOU THIS AWESOME CHAT WITH ONE OF THE MOST UNDERRATED BANDS IN THE HISTORY OF PUNK ROCK. BORN WHEN PUNK ROCK ITSELF BORN, THE LEAVING TRAINS HAVE ALWAYS WALKED A SHADOWED PATH, NEVER GETTING THE TRUE HONOURS THEY ALWAYS DESERVED, AS OFTEN HAPPENS WITH GREAT, TRUE TALENT. ENJOY THESE WISE WORDS, AND LOOK AT THE PICTURES I TOOK DURING THEIR GIG AT SPACELAND, LA SUPPORTING THE AVENGERS.

GD- Please introduce the band to the unaware readers and tell us a bit of the Leaving Trains' history.

FJ- Well, you can blame the Sex Pistols for our existence. We were bored high school school students in 1978, ages 16-17, when we started our first band, the Mongrels, as a joke. None of us were musicians, but the example of the Sex Pistols and things Johnny Rotten had said in interviews about how anyone could be in a band -- as long as you have real passion -- inspired us to try it. We started in our bedrooms and our parents' garages, making trashy joke cassettes to give to our few friends at school. We called ourselves the Mongrels because we were a mix of influences, with four different singers. At first, we didn't have electric guitars, just boring acoustic guitars, and the drum set was a battered old high-hat stand that didn't move, and an empty big cardboard television box! We sounded horrible! We were going to play at the high school talent show, but the school's principal apparently canceled the entire event because of rumors that a punk rock band was going to play. (No wonder I later loved the ending of the Ramones movie ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL so much!) The Mongrels never did play a real concert, although we did practice a couple times at the legendary Hollywood punk club the Masque. Current Bad Religion guitarist Greg Hetson was in the Mongrels for a few weeks, long enough to steal one of our songs, which he took with him and used twice when he was in Redd Kross and later the Circle Jerks. His plagiarism was our introduction to the non-idealistic side of the punk rock business. The Mongrels broke up when two of the band moved out of Los Angeles to go away to university, but I started a new band in the summer of 1980 with Mongrels guitarist Manfred Hofer and his younger brother Tom Hofer, a real musician with genuine musical training who sometimes sat in and played with the struggling Mongrels. There were only four punk rockers at our entire high school of 900 people. Everyone liked either disco or Led Zeppelin. There was almost nothing in between or underground back then. Manfred somehow knew about all of this new music coming out of New York and England, and introduced me to punk rock. There were several unpopular science and math class nerds and geeks (I was a literature geek) who'd hang out together protectively in the physics teacher's classroom during lunch period, and they'd crank out great, new rock on the classroom's gigantic speakers. The intellectual nerds would play good progressive stuff and imports like AC/DC and the Sex Pistols, rare records that wouldn't be well-known until much later. Manfred and Tom and I had these boring, dull days at this sunny beach-side high school that was mostly populated by surfers, and at night we'd hang out at degenerate punk rock clubs like the Starwood and the Whisky and the Vex and meet much wilder & stranger freaks who felt more like family to us.

We called the new band the Leaving Trains because I loved this one lyric in an old Creedence Clearwater Song, "Hideway," about people leaving town on trains and never coming back. It was always stuck in my head, so we just used the it to name the band, even though it seems to me now like a boring name that doesn't really reflect the band's sound. We used to get in trouble at gigs in other towns, where the club owners hadn't seen us before and expected that we'd be a country or blues band with a name like that, instead of an antisocial punk rock band. And yet we couldn't fit neatly into any musical scene. We were inspired by punk, but for the first few years we couldn't play that fast and instead did these long, repetitively hypnotic 20-minute songs that were more similar to the Doors, Siouxsie and the Seeds. We had some melodic, '60s garage-rock sensibilities, too, which is probably why we were associated with Los Angeles' Paisley Underground scene a few years later. Ultimately, though, we were trying to be punk, and mixing psychedelic rambling songs with short, fast, political, angry bluesy punk. We seemed to always have two eternal themes, songs about love and war and usually both at the same times. Since so many singers have bad lyrics, I was trying to bring a poet's attitude toward my lyrics, which tended to be minimalist like the Ramones, but with more of a ambiguously evocative shadowiness inspired by disparate writers like Sylvia Plath, John Fire Lame Deer, Raymond Chandler, Dr. Seuss, Jan Kerouac (Jack's daughter), Richard Pryor, and Darby Crash.

We didn't fit in with most of the macho suburban hardcore punks in the early 1980s, but we didn't always feel welcome with the more nostalgic, retro, classic-rock clones in the Paisley scene either. We tended to do stupid things to make sure we weren't popular: insulting the fans, being drunk and wasted at shows, deliberately changing our styles from performance to performance. At a concert opening for punk rock bands, we'd play all slow songs. At a psychedelic show, we'd speed up and play hardcore tempos and short punk songs. We might have been stubborn and sometimes just stupid but we didn't want to succeed. We didn't like what success was doing to many of the people around us. If you had to sound like the Eagles or Led Zeppelin to succeed, we didn't want to bother. I guess you could compare our attitude and maybe our sound to outsider punk bands like the Replacements and Gun Club, bands that had punk influences but also possessed bluesy and garage-rock influences too. The Leaving Trains began before those two groups, but I could relate to them when we came across them. We were punk but we weren't hardcore. And we'll go off on unknown digressions and tangents, like playing a concert that might be just a single slowly building song for 45 minutes. We like fucking with people.

You must understand that punk rock was driven underground in the early 1980s in Los Angeles. The local government leaned on the clubs and concert promoters, and the police had numerous riots beating up punk kids at shows for no real reason. Eventually, most of the nightclubs wouldn't book punk bands, and most of the former punk musicians themselves started saying they were playing roots music or new wave or rockabilly or country or some other more socially acceptable form of music. Perhaps it was a natural musical change for everyone or perhaps it was hastened along by a policeman's baton. It all depended on your point of view.

Manfred and Tom Hofer left the Leaving Trains in 1986 because they didn't want to tour. I kept the group going anyway because I finally got to travel and see the rest of the USA and Europe on tours, even if some of the lineups weren't always as good as the original. As the singer and obsessed exhibitionist, I've ended up being the only original member through 25 years of Leaving Trains lineups, with more than 50 different members. Even without the Hofer brothers, I've played with some wonderful musicians and partners in crime like former Muffs and Pandoras guitarist Melanie Vammen, drummer Maddog Karla Duplantier (the Controllers, Legal Weapon), comedian George Carlin's nephew Dennis Carlin, Gun Club drummer Terry Graham, the Lazy Cowgirls' Allen Clark II, and Nymphs guitarist Sam Merrick. There was an period for a few years in the early 1990s when I split the lead vocals with bassist Whitey Sims, who usually got naked at every show (which caused all manner of serious trouble with bouncers and police in some cities) and more important, defied me to write confrontational, rude, funny political, social songs with him instead of just sad and regretfully romantic songs about old girlfriends by myself. I had just gotten out of my two-year marriage to Courtney Love, in 1989-1990, before she was famous. White helped me out of my depression with his sarcasm and fearlessness. He had so many ideas that I let Whitey sing many of the lead vocals in the band, and I was content to play guitar and dodge the bottles thrown at us onstage when we'd play stuff like "Fuck You God, I'm Already Living in Hell" and "Women Are Evil." We thought we were being funny but instead angered and drove away a lot of our original fans, which is always a healthy thing to do. Eventually our chaotic lifestyles caused Whitey to leave the Trains, and I continued the band during the last decade with Melanie Vammen and Dennis Carlin. We recently released our first live album, AMPLFIFIED PILLOWS. However, Melanie now has a baby boy, so she left the band in 2004.

Everything comes full circle, so Manfred & Tom Hofer returned to the Leaving Trains last year, saying they were finally ready to play again. I was initially suspicious about reuniting with the original lineup, including Hunter Crowley, the best drummer we played with in the early days, because I didn't want to be a merely nostalgic or boring revival band. I didn't need have worried, as we actually sound stronger now than when we started, and we're already working on new songs alongside our lost hits from the first two albums. We're getting ready to play our first shows in 20 years with this original linep, with planned upcoming shows at Spaceland in Los Angeles and several more in San Francisco in June. I'm hoping this time around that Manfred & Tom will be able to get out of town more often, so we can save the world. Sorry for the delays. We thought U2 would have fixed everything by now.


GD- I know you have been in Italia with the Temporal Sluts, can you tell me more about that experience?

That's the problem. Every time I start to answer this question, I get angry and write mean and terribly rude things, and have to erase all my answers and give up and try again later. It's hard to say anything polite or calm about this situation. But yes, I remember back in the early '90, when Giant Sand singer Howe Gelb told me about a new group in Como named the Falling James Band whom he'd discovered while on a European tour. I later met these FJB guys and they seemed cool and we became friends, and even visited each other's hometowns and recorded songs with each other on vacation in Italia and the USA. After the Falling James Band broke up, the FJB singer started a similar band, this time named Temporal Sluts in honor of an old Leaving Trains song. We were still friends until a few years ago when we had a dispute over a woman, and he punished me by stealing some songs I'd recorded with his friends. He refused to even give me a copy of my own recordings, or to allow them to be released publicly. I didn't care if I made any money, my deal was just that I'd record with his band and give them some of my songs as long as they released the music somewhere, so people could hear them. It was never my intention to be trapped in this stubborn man's private punk collection. The thing that makes it even more ironic and painful for me is that this FJB singer isn't doesn't even perform on most of these songs, which I recorded with various Italian musicians, some of his friends. He only sings backup vocals on one song, and quite badly at that. So yes, I'm bitter. So yes, I'm glowering darkly through my eyes like an alligator stewing in the swamp. Yes, that sucks. They're not even his songs, but he's the only one who has a copy of them. Adding to the cruel irony is that the Temporal Sluts singer claims to be a socialist and a man of the people, but he won't share my songs. We had other differences too. He felt his band was the only "real" punk band in the Milano area, and he would get jealous and angry if I tried to talk to other bands at Italian shows. Since I was staying at his place in Como, I felt guilty if I tried to be friends with anyone else beyond his small clique. On my last trip to Italy, I got depressed sitting around at his place, feeling like I was trapped and not allowed to leave Como and have fun. Even though he was imitating me and other old punks, he didn't really understand the reckless, anarchistic, freedom-loving impulses that drove us in the first place. Ultimately, he was into a veneration and embalming and ossification and imitation of punk rock without really living the lifestyle or understanding its countercultural and politically subversive ideals. For him, punk rock was something that had died and should be worshiped, placed in a museum, now that it was safe to get near it. I saw punk rock as still alive, changing its name and its form, still mutating, still angry.

But who cares, really? It's all just loud guitars, isn't it? Beyond all the petty silliness about the disputed ownership of kisses, I had many fun, pleasant times with everyone else in the Temporal Sluts and Falling James Band. Some of those guys were great musicians and nice, humble guys, easy to get along with. However, my despair about their singer stealing my songs makes it hard for me to remember all the good times. Fuck!

GD- Tell me something about your experience in politics, I know you candidated... for what party, and how it ended?

I didn't run as part of a party. I ran by myself, as an anarchist. Since I don't believe in the idea of external government or power being used against people, I would have disbanded the country during my first day in office and given it back to the Native American tribes. I don't understand how the United States can be a democracy if it's founded on the land-left and enslavement of hundreds of indigenous cultures. So this entire country is illegal and must be given back to its original owners. I've been running in presidential elections for almost 20 years, as a leftist anti-war candidate. A punk rock singer running for president. It sounds like a stupid joke and maybe it is. But it's also a protest against the USA's wars and imperialism, not that Italia is innocent either. Oh, you ask how it ended? The election? The American people apparently didn't vote enough for me. But it's so hard to know the truth in this corrupt country. I may have been the real winner.

GD- Your music is actually very rooted in traditional punk rock. What do you think of its current status? What are the difference between now and back then?

Danger. There are always good bands then and now, and it's silly to be too dogmatic and strict about what's good and bad punk. Obviously there is a flood of inauthentic, fake, plastic, shiny, cutesy, happy, crappy corporate-label bullshit faux-punk music out there now. The main difference is the corporate conquest of punk rock, 30 years later. Everything is owned by big-business masters. Only the safely simpering, harmless "punks" get mass exposure, worse than ever. Now, punk rock is mostly defanged and harmless. It doesn't threaten the status quo or the authorities. It's not that we live in happier and safer times, but many modern-day punks act like the revolution is over, we can all party and be cute, narcissistic and lovable. I think we need articulation and sabotage and fierceness and confounded expectations more than ever. Punk should be angrier now, not happier. So, yes, danger is the real difference now. It used to be dangerous to walk down the street looking like a punk. You could get beaten up by cops and strangers.

GD- You guys recorded a lot of stuff for SST Records, now you are on Steel Cage Records. What changed between the two different labels? Do you think you were bigger before?

Well, over the years, SST Records had a big decline and lost a lot of employees and stopped putting out new records, except for various solo projects by Black Flag's Greg Ginn. Nowadays, SST appears to be a small label selling only its once-glorious back catalog and doesn't bother with new bands. Also there were some ethics and honesty issues with that label. As for Steel Cage Records, we're just happy to have excited people who wanna put our record, who don't wanna change our sound, or tell us how to play, or care how much we sell. Plus, we keep the ownership of the master recording and just license it to them, so we aren't losing our musical rights. Plus, we feel simpatico with them culturally, we love the magazine that the people at Steel Cage publish, it's called CARBON 14 and comes with a free 7-inch in every issue with bands like Dead Moon, the Dictators, even the Leaving Trains. The magazine is about sex, music and wrestling, and they just seem very free-spirited and inspired by the same crazy music that we are. SST got pretty anti-punk and anti-rock & roll in the later years, concentrating more on jazz and light techno-rock. I didn't wanna keep apologizing for being punk rock just because the people at SST were getting older and more respectable and conservative and I was still retarded and too dumb to evolve. What can you do?

You can find out more about our sordid past and lazy anarchy at: LEAVING TRAINS OFFICIAL WEBSITE