The Prodigal Rogerson: The Tragic, Hilarious, and Possibly Apocryphal Story of Circle Jerks Bassist Roger Rogerson in the Golden Age of LA Punk, 1979-1996
96
The Prodigal Rogerson: The Tragic, Hilarious, and Possibly Apocryphal Story of Circle Jerks Bassist Roger Rogerson in the Golden Age of LA Punk, 1979-1996
96-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781621063032 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Microcosm Publishing |
| Publication date: | 05/16/2017 |
| Series: | Scene History Series , #4 |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Sales rank: | 821,332 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 6.60(h) x 0.50(d) |
| Age Range: | 14 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
AUGUST 1996
GREG HETSON (Circle Jerks guitarist): I pick up the phone and this guy's like, "Heyyyyyyyy, it's Roger." I thought it was a joke at first. I'm like, "Who is this really?" He goes, "Really. I'm back in town. Living down in Long Beach."
LUCKY LEHRER (Circle Jerks drummer): We hadn't heard from him in years. Decades or whatever.
KEITH MORRIS (Circle Jerks singer): When he drove away in the van, that was the last time I saw him.
GREG HETSON: He said, "I got these songs and the timing's right and let's get together. I'm ready to be serious." It was as if it was 1980 again, or '79. He was just goofy and talking with weird riddles, with weird phrases like "Horn in, chief out."
LUCKY LEHRER: The four of us agreed to meet at Victor's deli in Hollywood. I ran into him on the street as I was heading to the restaurant. He was really, really wound up and wild. I don't know what kind of drugs he was on. He had these gigantic pork chop sideburns. We saw these kinda rough-looking guys who were with their girlfriends, and Roger made some comments about how he wanted to sleep with their girlfriends. They were like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" And he goes, "I'll tell you what I'm talking about. Come over here and I'll fucking kill both of you." They backed away. They were like, "Oh my God, this guy is psychotic." I was like, "Roger, what are you talking about? Leave these guys alone." He was wild and crazy. He was really an insane person.
Things didn't go much better inside Victor's.
KEITH MORRIS: Roger looks like something out of The Dukes of Hazzard, or The Beverly Hillbillies. He had these big, bright red mutton chops. His face was completely sunburned, and it looked like at one point he had tried to wax down what probably could've been a caucasian afro. It was surreal and the conversation was totally laughable. At one point, I looked at Greg and it was all I could do to keep from falling out of the booth and rolling on the floor in hysterics. He presented the scenario where if the original Circle Jerks got back together, we would be as big, if not bigger, than Green Day and Nirvana. And Greg and I had just gone through a situation with Mercury Records [which had recently released the Circle Jerks' major label debut, oddities abnormalities and curiosities to little acclaim and even littler sales] and we knew that wasn't gonna happen. Not even on our best day. Even with the greatest manager and the greatest record company minds, that was not going to happen. I was like, "We've been doing this since you left. Where have you been?" GREG HETSON: Roger's like, "I was married. I was living in Kansas. I was working odd jobs." Just living the civilian life. Not in the music business.
LUCKY LEHRER: The meeting didn't go particularly well. They were gracious enough to come meet with him and talk with him but he was so unrepentant and wound up and manic and psychotic that they kind of felt like "This guy's the same lunatic he always was."
Still, they agreed to meet at Lehrer's house two days later to jam.
GREG HETSON: We're gonna give him the benefit of the doubt but we're really skeptical, especially the way he's acting and he seems a little drunk already but you never know, you know? It could work. It could be fun. It could be this magical rebirth. It's somebody that was an integral part of the band and he's still family. We're like, "What the hell? Give it a shot."
Or maybe they didn't.
KEITH MORRIS: There was never going to be a practice. We were playing with Zander [Schloss, the Circle Jerks' bassist at the time.]
LUCKY LEHRER: When the meeting at Victor's is over, he turns to me and goes, "Come on. Let's go hit some strip clubs." He's like telling these strippers that, "Oh, we're gonna get back together, we're gonna be bigger than the Beatles" and these broads are like, as if they could give a shit, you know. It seemed very, very disconnected to reality. It's like you're not gonna impress these girls. What impresses them is giving them money. He kept complaining that the beer was watered down. The beer was bullshit and the club was bullshit. Very argumentative, very psychotic. It was kinda like the same old Roger but very antisocial.
We were supposed to get together at my place two days later and he never showed. Greg was there. Keith was there.
KEITH MORRIS: I wasn't there.
LUCKY LEHRER: Roger never showed. How ironic. The very person who was calling each of us, hounding us and did more than anybody else to advance the concept of a reunion, the guy doesn't show up.
CHAPTER 2BACK TO THE BEGINNING
ROGER ROGERSON: I've got one fuckin' thing to say. I've been playing guitar for fifteen years. I went to college and I can play classical music. I can play [Beethoven's] "Fifth" with my dick tied around the fretboard on any guitar but I'd rather play "World Up My Ass" or "Deny Everything," which is a great song I wrote, I can play in my sleep. But this is the most energetic, statement-oriented band I've ever been in, including 47 cover bands, 4 punk bands that never made it out of the Masque, a disco band, country western. ...
INTERVIEWER: [To the rest of the Circle Jerks] Where did you find him?
Flipside #35, 1980.
He came from Kansas. Bonner Springs, to be precise. It's a small town about 20 miles from Kansas City.
JOHN INGRAM (Teenage bandmate): We just jammed Led Zeppelin in my parents' basement in Kansas. Roger was playing guitar and bass. He could play anything, really. We're talking like 1974, '75, something like that. We're like sixteen, seventeen, somewhere in there. None of us was enrolled in school. Roger could basically play anything pretty much right off the record of anybody you could think of. He was trying to be a rock star. Eventually, his dad got a job out West and so Roger and his family moved away. Mighta been Reno.
GREG HETSON: He drove out to Hollywood to be a rock star. I think probably around '78.
CHAPTER 31976 OR '77. OR '78. OR MAYBE EVEN 1979
JACK POET (Friend): I met Roger at [famed Hollywood punk club/rehearsal studio/flophouse] the Masque. I was in the fresh juice business so I'd go in there and hang out after deliveries. It mighta been the summer of '76 or '77. Actually, I was twenty-years-old, so that'd be '78. I think. Roger was laid back. Kind of a stoner guy. He was in a band called Red Army.
GABRIELE MORGAN (Bandmate): I answered Red Army's ad in The Recycler, which was the local free classified ad paper. It was the first week of April 1979. They were looking for a singer. They had been an established group and then two of their members quit, which is why they ran the ad. Their thing was that whenever they played a gig, they all wore Army outfits and everybody dyed their hair red.
JACK POET: There were a bunch of guys in Red Army — a guy named Ray Cyst and Big Dave.
GABRIELE MORGAN: They were down in the Masque. They had their own room down there. There were three of them: a tall, nineteen-year-old redhead named Ray, who was the founder; Roger; and I forget the drummer's name. Roger was the guitar player and I think he also was the synthesizer player. Their music was kind of futuristic new wave. Very fast, very high energy.
Morgan got the job.
GABRIELE MORGAN: They spray-painted everyone's name on the door of their rehearsal room. Like it said, Ray, Roger, and whatever the drummer's name was. And they spray painted my name on there, too.
Her tenure in Red Army would be tedious and short-lived, however.
GABRIELE MORGAN: The main thing I remember us doing was sitting around this tiny little room in this spray-painted, dank, beer-smelling dungeon trying to write songs together. Roger didn't like it. He was quiet and didn't seem particularly energized or animated at all. He mighta been kinda high or something 'cause he seemed sorta out of it. After a couple weeks, they told me they had decided to just go forward as a three-piece and not have a separate singer. They would sing or something.
And that seems to be the last anyone ever heard from Red Army.
CHAPTER 4FALL 1979
Roger answered a "bass player wanted" ad in The Recycler and found himself playing in an unnamed Hollywood punk band with Metal Mike Saunders, who was moonlighting from the Angry Samoans, and Andi Hayes of the recently defunct Terminals.
ANDI HAYES: What attracted Roger to us was we both liked Iggy Pop.
METAL MIKE SAUNDERS: Roger was the first of three bass players to pass through this band.
ANDI HAYES: I think Metal Mike wanted to call it the Lurchers. We never played out. We never settled on a name because Metal Mike ran off all the bass players.
METAL MIKE SAUNDERS: We covered "Open Up And Bleed" by the Stooges, compressed down to an insanely cool, not-even-three minutes length. It was probably the coolest thing I've ever gotten to play guitar on.
ANDI HAYES: How many practices was Roger at? I would say about two. He didn't talk much. I thought he was a quick learner and cool. But Metal Mike just got on his case. "No. Don't do it that way. What are you, stupid?" I was like, "Oh my God. This guy's gonna walk out." And he did. Mike doesn't mean to be mean. That's just his personality. A little abrasive. Maybe a little Tourette's.
CHAPTER 5A LITTLE BIT LATER IN THE FALL OF 1979
LUCKY LEHRER: Greg Hetson and I were hanging out at the Church in Hermosa Beach, and that's where Keith Morris was hanging out. The Church was a rehearsal place for several bands, including Red Cross and Black Flag. I had just auditioned for Red Cross. Greg really liked my playing but the other two in Red Cross didn't. Actually, it was nothing against my playing but I had just come down from Northern California, where I was living, the week before and I still had some of the affectations of being a New Waver rather than a punk. I wasn't hardcore enough looking. Greg was kinda pissed about it, and he quit Red Cross and said, "Let's just start our own band." And a week later, Keith Morris got into his own dispute with Black Flag, and so he quit Black Flag. Greg told Keith, "Well, I know this guy who's a drummer." So now all we needed was a bass player. So the real question is "How did Keith Morris meet Roger?"
KEITH MORRIS: I happened to be sitting on the sidewalk, loitering in front of the Anti Club, and look up and there's this goofy looking guy with a 40 ounce bottle of whatever he was drinking in a paper bag and he looked down at me and said, "You want a drink?" And I said, "Sure."
The four threw in $8 dollars each to rent two hours of rehearsal time at Stone Fox in the San Fernando Valley, where the Dickies practiced.
LUCKY LEHRER: So we all plug in. I don't even know if they tuned up. You know the attitude was kinda like, "It's punk music so whatever. Tune up or don't tune up." We warmed up on a couple Sex Pistols songs or Ramones songs.
Morris' recruit more than held his own.
LUCKY LEHRER: I was pretty impressed, you know. I mean, of course, my expectations were pretty low. I'd been playing drums since the elementary school. I was the lead drummer in the college band. I was comfortable in a wide variety of styles but it also seemed that Roger had some musical training, too.
GREG HETSON: His music ability was great. He was a lot more accomplished as a musician than I was. His personality was really, really animated. Funny and over the top. He had this crazy laugh. Kind of like a giggle laugh. He was very enthusiastic. I think he was probably carrying a fifth of something in his hand when he showed up. He definitely was drinking a bit.
KEITH MORRIS: Roger was a guitar player. And in the Circle Jerks, he played bass. He actually looked forward to playing bass because he described it as "the party instrument," where you really didn't have to pay attention and could just get wasted. He said, "It's two less strings to worry about."
GREG HETSON: He was just like kind of a happy-go-lucky guy. Like, "Hey, where's the party?" but on top of that, "I can also play so I can justify my being fucked up because I can probably pull it off most of the time even though I'm shitfaced."
LUCKY LEHRER: At that first practice, we wrote this song "Back Against The Wall," which blended kind of a reggae beat with punk rock, and we just figured that if we could write a song like that on the spot having never met each other, you know, we should really stick with this.
So they did. They consulted a slang dictionary and dubbed themselves the Circle Jerks — the term for a practice succinctly described as "group onanism in the round."
KEITH MORRIS: In the beginning, everything was just flying. A lot of things were happening like rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. You know, rapid fire. Everybody racing around. "Where's the party? Where are we gonna play? Let's write songs. Here's a riff. Here's a vocal idea. Here are some lyrics. I have a drumbeat." We were having such a good time and we were swept up in this new wave of bands that were playing in Los Angeles like Agent Orange, the Adolescents, and TSOL.
Roger was unlike anybody his bandmates had ever met. Lehrer, a recent graduate of the University of California at Berkeley who had his sights set on law school, was particularly fascinated by Roger's offbeat personality and hedonistic lifestyle.
LUCKY LEHRER: He lived in a place called the Huxley. It was on Fountain Avenue in Hollywood. It was him and a couple of vagrants that he referred to as "The Stumblebums." They were all kind of squatting there.
KEITH MORRIS: It was just kind of a flophouse. I remember waking up one morning out of a drunken stupor and there being like six guys just laying on the floor. Sleeping on the floor.
LUCKY LEHRER: This apartment had shag carpet in it and they'd look around inside the shag carpet for like little bits of marijuana. In addition to the marijuana, they would grab some of the fibers from the shag carpet, which was made of Dacron. When you smoke Dacron, it'll also get you high but it's probably super carcinogenic. They referred to that as "carpet sauce." They'd put carpet sauce in the bong or on the joint. It was pretty extreme the lengths that these guys would go to to get wasted.
GREG HETSON: He'd like wake up and take a bong hit. I'd go "How can you do that?" And he goes, "How can you not?"
LUCKY LEHRER: He'd drink this alcohol, kind of the cheapest stuff, called "Ten High." I guess it was a bourbon. I said, "Why do you like this stuff?" and he said, "Because it can get ten people high."
KEITH MORRIS: He certainly was a party-meister.
LUCKY LEHRER: He was always on street drugs, you know, but I think he was on some prescribed medications, too, because he had some kind of an imbalance. It's hard to describe his particular condition. He could get very, very manic and, uh, very, very wound up.
KEITH MORRIS: He just struck me as this really goofy, doofy guy. Part of his character was very comic-like.
GREG HETSON: He had a great sense of humor and he had this amazing street philosophy. He was almost like Wizard in Taxi Driver. But funny. He had these amazing phrases.
LUCKY LEHRER: He had his own sort of grammar or lexicon. It was very, very funny. If something was good, whether it was a girl or it could be a piece of musical equipment, anything that was good, he would say that was "sano" for "sanitary" or "select." Another one of his was "You ordered it." If something happened and it didn't turn out the way you wanted but you're the one that made it that way, he'd say, "Well, you ordered it."
GREG HETSON: He would say stuff like, "Play the guitar, don't let it play you." Hilarious stuff, you know. And it made sense. He would have phrases like "Horn in, chief out, take over and shine it on." That was his philosophy.
ANDY PERRIN (Friend): "Horn in, chief out." That was what he said constantly. When he had a plan and he wanted to make it happen, that's what he'd use to describe what was gonna happen next.
LUCKY LEHRER: "Blue facing." That meant talking 'til you were blue in the face. People that were really like talkative and never shut up — those were called "blue faces." Of course, Roger himself was really the ultimate blue face.
Roger was considerably less loquacious when it came to his background. He said very little about anything that had happened to him before he arrived in Los Angeles. That he adopted a slew of phony surnames before finally settling on "Rogerson" only added to the mystery.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Prodical Rogerson"
by .
Copyright © 2017 J. Hunter Bennett.
Excerpted by permission of Microcosm Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.