Earlier this week, Canada.com conducted an interview with The Offspring‘s bassist Greg K., who explains what it’s like to be in a punk band, their early career and how the success of their 1994 album Smash prompted them to leave Epitaph and sign to a major label. About being a punk band, Greg states:
“The irony of it is that punk rock was formed as a rebellion. (It was about) not having any rules and then all of a sudden … people decided to create rules for punk rock. You can’t do this and you can’t do that if you want to be considered punk, and that was the whole thing that punk was against in the first place.”
On Smash‘s success, “When Smash came out, I thought it could sell 100,000 copies … Epitaph was like, ‘Are you crazy?’. We never thought this could happen with this type of music.” Later, he adds, “We definitely felt attacked at some times, and we thought, ‘for what?’ We just put out an album that got good reviews in (punk fanzines) Maximumrocknroll and Flipside … and we were still on an independent label. But once we were on MTV and the radio, (some fans) turned on us.”
Greg also confessed that leaving Epitaph was a tough decision. He clarifies, “It was tough to (leave). We liked Epitaph and we liked being on an indie label, but things kind of deteriorated, at the end we had to go. When we signed with Sony … we had freedom from the start because of our success with Smash. They trusted us. And they always have.”
Last Tuesday, the band released their new album Days Go By on Columbia Records.