Who’s Punk?! What’s the Score?!…Songs #18/21: Ruby Soho by Rancid, Drain the Blood by The Distillers and No One Knows by Queens of the Stone Age.

This is one of those posts where if ya know, ya know. The three bands mentioned in the title are all connected by the base desires of lust, sex, jealousy, revenge and, of course, by great music. One of the dividing lines that separates them into factions and characterizes much of what went on between them all has to do with lifestyle choices associated with drugs, sex, violence and alcohol. This is a story of not just the bands but also their fans. It is a story that spans decades of time and several continents of the world. This is being posted during the week of Valentine’s Day to act as a sort of anti-Valentine’s love story. There is no happy ending here for anyone involved except to say that all of the players you are about to meet are still alive and performing today. There is some solace to be found in being a survivor. Without further delay, let’s meet the bands, the musicians involved and find out the details of this whole sordid affair. Here we go!

Rancid was one of bands that came out of the same San Francisco punk scene that produced Green Day and Jawbreaker. *(You can read posts about those bands here and here). They formed from the ashes of several other bands including the locally influential band Operation Ivy. Rancid was led by singer Tim Armstrong. Like many other punk rockers who cut their teeth on the stages of Gilman’s, Armstrong had very strict beliefs when it came to the DIY ethos that guided many emerging punk bands. Rancid wrote their own songs, produced their own cassettes and albums, promoted their own shows, set up and took down their own equipment and much more. Armstrong was also an adherent of the philosophy of abstinence that was put forth by Minor Threat and their Straight Edge movement. *(You can read about that here). So even though the members of the band had spiked hairstyles, wore ripped clothing and thrashed violently about the stage, all of their shows were drug and alcohol free. Armstrong believed that having a clear mind allowed him to be more in control of the band’s musical direction and his own sense of creativity. The final thing that set Rancid apart from other bands in the Bay area was their inclination toward Ska music. Ska was a form of R&B that originated in Jamaica and became almost as synonymous as Reggae as a musical genre on the island. Like Reggae, Ska music became popular in the UK during the time of the great Jamaican emigration wave of the 1960s and 70s. There were many popular UK bands that incorporated Ska into their musical repertoire such as The Specials, Madness, The Beat and to some extent, The Clash. By incorporating Ska into their music in America, Rancid was able to occupy a unique niche in the punk marketplace. Their most well known and mainstream song is called “Ruby Soho”. That song came from the band’s third album called And Out Come the Wolves. That album spawned three singles that all ended up being aired on heavy rotation on MTV. The album also came out at the same time as hit albums by Green Day, the Offspring and fellow punk legends NOFX. The simultaneous success of these four punk albums caused major record labels to come calling, hence the title of the album. However, Rancid stayed true to their punk roots and rebuffed all major record labels, signing for the long haul with Epitaph Records, run by a man named Brett Gurewitz of fellow punk band Bad Religion. Throughout the whole length of their career, Rancid has maintained a strong connection with the original fanbase that stood with them in the early days at Gilman’s. Rancid proved that a punk band can be successful, earn enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table and even have a few hit songs to their credit yet remain punk to their core. This strict adherence to the punk ethos and the sense of self-discipline with which the members of the band conducted their business came to define Rancid. It made their fans extremely loyal and it set the stage for what happened next in this story.

By the time the boys in Rancid hit their late twenties and early thirties, they had long outgrown their San Francisco stomping grounds and were a band that played the festival circuit and traveled the world. And so it was that Rancid found themselves playing on the bill of a music festival in Melbourne, Australia. As often happens during these festivals, it is a chance for touring bands to meet with other bands, watch them perform and basically catch up and hang out with their peers. While Rancid was doing just that as the Aussie festival transpired, Tim Armstrong happened to catch the set of a local punk band called Sourpuss. Fronting that band was a raspy-throated sixteen year old girl who reminded Armstrong quite a bit of singer Courtney Love of the band Hole *(You can read about Courtney Love from a previous post here). The young Aussie girl went by the name Brody Dalle. Impressed by Dalle’s performance, Armstrong approached her backstage and introduced himself. Dalle knew who Arnmstrong was because she had a keen sense of punk history and knew all about Rancid and their career. Despite the age difference (Arnmstrong was 30) the two hit it off and spent the rest of the day together. That first encounter laid the foundation for a connection that grew into a romantic relationship and then, to Armstrong inviting Dalle to leave Australia and come back to California to live with him as his girlfriend. Brody Dalle was the stereotypical young, wild and free person who absolutely entranced someone like Armstrong, who had experienced enough of life by age thirty to have started becoming cynical and jaded. Armstrong was very much taken by his new girlfriend and Dalle was very much excited to have a strong, older, wiser mentor to help guide the next stage of her career. So she agreed to leave for Los Angeles with him when Rancid’s Aussie tour was over.

All relationships have that initial honeymoon phase when everything is wonderful and both parties are deliriously happy with each other. That applied to life back in California for Armstrong and Dalle who agreed to marry. He enjoyed squiring this young dynamic beauty around the state. In return, Dalle enjoyed meeting some of her punk rock heroes as Armstrong introduced her around. In time, Dalle made enough of her own contacts that she was able to put together a new band of her own that she called The Distillers. Dalle’s new band was signed to the same indie record label, Epitaph that Rancid was. The Distillers released a total of three albums. Dalle wrote the music and lyrics for every song on all three albums. Unlike Rancid and that band’s definite Ska influences that they wore on their musical sleeves, The Distillers were more of a hybrid punk and alt-rock band. Dalle’s whiskey-throated song stylings and the darkness of her lyrics brought The Distillers some notoriety and caused them to be offered the opening slot on tours by No Doubt and Garbage. As Dalle and The Distillers began establishing their musical roots by touring throughout California, it became quickly evident that The Distillers were not proponents of the Straight Edge lifestyle. Dalle’s relationship with Armstrong changed from one in which Armstrong offered a safe harbour from which Dalle could acclimatize herself in America and launch her career anew, to a relationship characterized by tension as Armstrong sought to rein Dalle’s wild ways in so that she and her bandmates would perform drug and alcohol free as Rancid did. Armstrong and Dalle’s relationship did not survive the post-honeymoon phase. For three years, Brody Dalle sought to untangle the bonds that tied her to Armstrong personally and professionally. The whole time, Armstrong fought back against her wishes, seeking to bring her to heel. Armstrong even released entirely new Rancid albums called Life Won’t Wait (in 1998) and Indestructible (in 2003) that contained songs written directly about his relationship with Dalle, their breakup and subsequent divorce. But what actually ended the marriage for good was a photo shoot that Brody Dalle was involved in for Rolling Stone Magazine. The article was about young music stars on the rise. Not only did the article feature Dalle and The Distillers but it also featured a tall, chiseled young man named Josh Homme. Homme was the lead singer of the rock band Queens of the Stone Age. In the RS article, Dalle and Homme (who at 23 at the time was still older than Dalle but much younger than Armstrong) were placed together and photographed in an embrace. Not only did seeing Dalle with another man seal the deal for Armstrong with regards to divorcing Dalle but, it set off a chain of revenge-oriented retribution against Dalle, the young men who played with her in The Distillers and against Josh Homme as well.

Once the Rolling Stone article went public, Tim Armstrong publicly responded by slamming Brody Dalle’s character and reputation in print and on social media. Not only that, he threatened to blacklist any musician who agreed to work with her. Because Armstrong was held in such high regard by members of the punk rock community for his faithful adherence to the DIY punk rock ethos, punk fans rallied to his defense as the scorned husband. Rancid fans formed a protective circle around him. As part of this defense, Rancid fans issued death threats against Dalle, her bandmates in The Distillers and against Josh Homme and his band, too. Eventually, restraining orders were required.  In the end, Tim Arnmstrong and Rancid moved on and went back to focusing on their career. In time they teamed up with the WWE wrestling organization by sponsoring a female wrestler who they convinced to adopt the stage name Ruby Soho. The band has taken to appearing at higher profile WWE events in which “Ruby Soho” is wrestling and performing their song live as she enters the ring. In this way, Rancid is connecting with an entirely new generation of fans and tapping into a new social demographic at the same time.

Meanwhile, when the Rolling Stone article went public and Dalle and Homme found themselves under siege from Rancid fans who wished them dead, the experience forced them closer so as to support each other during this time of trouble. Having their lives and those of their bandmates threatened had the effect of bringing Dalle and Homme together as people who found that they actually had more in common than just lawsuits and death threats. They both began to view each other as musicians with talent. They also discovered that they shared a love of alcohol and drugs. In time, Brody Dalle and Josh Homme married. Together they have three children. However, just as it was with Tim Armstrong, the marriage of Brody Dalle and Josh Homme did not survive for very long. Erratic behaviour by both parties put such a strain on their relationship that the marriage just couldn’t survive. Unfortunately, unlike her divorce from Armstrong, this time there were children involved. In the fallout of divorce no.2 for Dalle and no.1 for Homme, accusations have been aired in public regarding Dalle’s failure to honour pre-arranged legal custody arrangements. As such, Homme has had to file lawsuits in order to gain parental access to his own family.  

As of the time of the writing of this post, Tim Armstrong and Rancid continue to tour and release new music. They remain held up as paragons of virtue within the punk community. Their status as punk pioneers and music legends is a hill upon which many Rancid fans would make their stand. Josh Homme and The Queens of the Stone Age continue to tour and to release new music. Homme has endured several incidents in which he has assaulted fans or else behaved erratically on stage because of the influence of drugs or alcohol. But he and his band are considered one of the true rock n’ rollers performing today, along with bands such as Foo Fighters. *(Note: in the video for the song “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age that I will link to in a moment below, the band’s drummer is none other than Dave Grohl, former drummer for Nirvana and lead singer of the afore-mentioned Foo Fighters. This is an indication of the professional esteem in which Josh Homme continues to be held). As for Brody Dalle, her experience as a young woman in the music industry serves as a cautionary tale. Her upbringing in Australia was never great to begin with. She probably should have had wiser counsel provided to her when making that life-altering decision to leave home as a teenager to live with and marry a much older man who was obviously set in his ways and in his beliefs. Since her breakup with Homme, Dalle has battled drug and alcohol addictions while releasing a solo album and organizing a brief reunion with the original members of The Distillers. Unlike Armstrong and Homme, Brody Dalle does not appear to be thriving at this stage of her career. She continues to receive personal and professional support from the lead singer of the band Garbage, Shirley Manson who, even though I have never written a post about the band, is a talented lady who fronts a highly respected and successful alternative band. But, other than that, The Distillers website seems pretty empty and Dalle does not appear to have a professional website of her own. It’s a sad state of affairs for someone who, under different circumstances and with different lifestyle choices, really could have had it all as a singer/songwriter and musician. 

The worlds of punk and rock n’ roll are not all that different when you get right down to it. Both worlds are fairly primal in many regards. Testosterone fuels a lot of what is deemed to be the best that both genres have to offer. Some women have run the gauntlet and emerged as successful performers. But for every Taylor Swift and Madonna, there are dozens of Brody Dalles who have seemingly fallen by the wayside. This is why I believe a survivor such as Shirley Mason from Garbage is trying so hard to help Dalle rehabilitate her career and her life. The music industry needs more success stories built around women. Unfortunately, at least for now, this story is not one of them. It is easy to leave a post like this and feel that Brody Dalle has been done wrong by the men in her life. However, this is one of those cases when I don’t necessarily paint her as a pure victim. I think that all three people have made poor life choices along the way. But what I definitely take away from this story is that you can survive your poor choices better if you are a man than if you are a woman, within the music industry and in life. And that isn’t fair. I wish all three luck in their future endeavours and in their personal lives, too. 

Happy Valentine’s Day, again, to all who celebrate. 

The link to the official website for Rancid can be found here.

The link to the official video for the song “Ruby Soho” by Rancid can be found here. *The lyrics version is here.  ***For what it is worth, separating the art from the artist for a moment, I have always liked this song and think that you might, too. The chorus is very catchy and acts as a good sing-along song.   

The link to the official website for The Distillers can be found here.

The link to the video for the song “Drain the Blood” by Brody Dalle and The Distillers can be found here. *The lyrics version is here. ***Again, for what it is worth, I like this song and think that it really rocks! Dalle is so much like early Courtney Love that it is incredible. She could have really been a star. Hopefully, she will make it back and climb all the way to the top this time.   

The link to the official website for Queens of the Stone Age can be found here.

The link to the song “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age can be found here. *The lyrics version is here.  ***For the final time, for what it is worth, I have always found QOTSA to be a very muscular band. They are touring in my area now but I fear I may be becoming too old for the sonic onslaught that surely accompanies their show. Keep an eye out for Dave Grohl on drums during this video.  

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