Everybody in the punk scene knows who Dexter Holland is. Not only is he famous for being the guitarist and lead singer of The Offspring, and the founder of Nitro Records, but there is bound to be a good amount of trivial knowledge that you don’t know about the O.C. punk legend who has been active in the music industry for more than 25 years. To test the extent of your knowledge we thought it would be fun to put together a list of 10 things most people probably don’t know about Dexter.
Test your knowledge here.
1. In The Offspring’s early days, they were known as Manic Subsidal.
2. The reason he got the nickname Dexter is because he was class valedictorian and head of the maths team at Pacifica High School, where he met his Offspring bandmate Greg K. at a cross-country team.
3. Dexter has a pilot’s licence and owns his own private jet, which he named “Anarchy Airline” because of the huge Anarchy sign on the tail of the plane. He is also a Certified Flight Instructor who has made a solo trip around the world in ten days.
4. Dexter was a Ph.D. candidate in Molecular Biology at the University of Southern California, but abandoned it because of his desire to focus on The Offspring. He also has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology, both from the University of Southern California.
5. Dexter has his own brand of hot sauce called “Gringo Bandito”.
6. He co-wrote at least two songs by The Vandals, “Jackass” and “Too Much Drama”; the chorus melody of the latter was reused on “Walla Walla”, on The Offspring’s fifth album “Americana”, which came out approximately five months after “Hitler Bad, Vandals Good”.
7. He does not like carrots.
8. “Session”, taken from The Offspring’s seminal 1992 album “Ignition”, was co-written by his wife Kristine Luna.
9. Dexter is father of singer-songwriter Lex Land.
10. In 2006, Dexter participated in the Los Angeles Marathon; his charity of choice was the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic that handles legal cases where post-conviction DNA testing of evidence can yield conclusive proof of innocence.