Interview: John Doe of X

Photo by Kristy Benjamin

Since their 1980 debut album, Los Angeles, X have been regarded as one of the most influential and innovative bands in punk rock history. Now, however, the group – which has long consisted of vocalist Exene Cervenka, bassist/vocalist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D. J. Bonebrake – are about to set off on their final tour (see full list of dates below). They’ve also just released what they say will be their last studio album, Smoke & Fiction, via Fat Possum Records. Calling from his home in Texas, John Doe tells The Big Takeover why he and his bandmates decided to scale things back now, what might come next, and what he thinks of X’s legacy.

It seems bittersweet to talk to you about X winding things down.

JOHN DOE: Yes and no. We’re not hanging it up. We’re just cutting it back. Rather than playing 75 shows, we’re going to play, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty. We’re going to give people an excuse to take a road trip. Because we’ll play a couple of nights in New York, or we’ll play a couple of nights in Chicago. It’s just getting too much [to tour]. It’s a lot. The hour and a half you’re onstage, and if you’re lucky enough to have good friends or family in a town, then that’s great. But the other 22 hours is less rewarding. I don’t want to be part of something where the wheels are falling off. I haven’t been a part of that, and I’m not going to be a part of that. I want to go out when things are still good. And we’re still good. We’re still real good.

What can people expect when they come to one of your upcoming shows?

JOHN DOE: Fucking rock and roll! [laughs] With a few different shades of what X has done. We play new songs, old songs. Right now, we’re doing four songs from the new record, and a couple songs from the one just before that, and songs that people are fan favorites.

What’s it been like to play the new songs for audiences for the first time?

JOHN DOE: It’s great. The most luxurious part of making this record is that we played four, five, six [new] songs live for most of 2023 – as we’d write another song, we’d try to put it in the set. That way, you can work through all these different variations and figure out the best way to get from one part of the song to the next. It’s a trial by fire.

What are you going to do with all the extra time you’re going to have after this?

JOHN DOE: Oh, I’m going to enjoy it. I have a horse. And my wife and I love to just be together. And I’m sure I’ll write songs for solo projects, and Exene and I might write songs for the hell of it. Who knows? It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to mount another campaign to release a full record. And the other thing about making a full LP is that it’s kind of passé now, right? You just do a song, and then you release that and see what happens.

That said, how does it feel to release a full album out now – and the final one for X?

JOHN DOE: It’s satisfying and rewarding and validating. It feels great, because it wasn’t easy. It was a difficult record to record. We did it quickly, but the process of writing, rehearsing, rewriting, relearning… I mean, we didn’t think of it as being a last record as we began it. That came later.

How did you finally come to that conclusion?

JOHN DOE: It just seemed like it. The lyrics and the kind of music that we did on it, it seemed like we used so many different parts of our musical history and what we love. And then the lyrics were very retrospective. Not nostalgic. We’re not looking back and thinking, “I wish I was 25,” or something like that, because you make a lot of mistakes when you’re that age. And trying to accept that, and if you have to make amends or just own it, then you do that, too. And that’s part of the [new] song “The Way It Is.” And then “Big Black X” has a lot of imagery from crazy shit that we did back in the earlier days. The title song, “Smoke & Fiction,” has that element to it. There’s some conflict between what you can and what you want to do, and you have to accept that.

Why you choose that as the album title?

JOHN DOE: It’s just a good title. That’s the nature of art: it’s not smoke and mirrors, but it is ephemeral, like smoke is. And it comes from some fire. It’s true.

What do you hope people will take away when they hear these songs for the first time?

JOHN DOE: That’s up to them. I release it. I think it’s a great term: you release a record. Now it’s out of your hands and into anybody else’s hands. And like anything I’ve been a part of, or the band has been a part of, we hope it resonates. We hope it’s meaningful. We hope it inspires people, or gives them some joy. Maybe they jump around their living room to it, or they see themselves in it. Any way that you could relate to a record, that’s what you hope for. The most basic response is to enjoy it. To feel like you’re being told a secret. You’re being let in on something that you can make personal.

Photo by Michael Hyatt

How did you know you should be a musician in the first place?

JOHN DOE: I just didn’t want to have a straight job. I would probably be OK at it; I just wouldn’t like it. And the fact that oftentimes on tour I don’t have to know what day it is, that’s great. [laughs] I do work hard, but I don’t work for the man. I mean, I have to answer to tasks and obligations, but a lot of it is on our own terms. And I was determined. When I lived in Baltimore, I got to see Talking Heads and The Heartbreakers, and in New York, because my folks lived in Brooklyn. So I got to see them in ’76. But I didn’t want to live in the East Coast because I was tired of it; I grew up there. So I went to L.A., and there was this punk rock thing. Patti Smith had released her record, and MC5, which I didn’t know at that point. But there was a thing that was going on. So without that, I don’t think we [X] could have existed, or would have been as powerful without the scene. The scene was a lot. It influenced us a lot. It was bigger than just one band.

Still, you had to come up with your distinctive sound, which is an important but difficult thing for a band to do. So how did you do that?

JOHN DOE: Just by the members of the band. By Exene’s Inexperience and singing. She hadn’t been in other bands, so she didn’t sing a traditional style harmony, she just sang what sounded good to her. And Billy played with a whole bunch of people, Etta James and Gene Vincent, so he really knew his stuff. Some of D. J.’s favorite favorite stuff is really jazz and Captain Beefheart, so he wasn’t going to play normal things. I was inspired by some of the bands from New York – the 1st wave of punk rock, but also the second, [and] no wave. We made a hybrid that fit into the punk rock world.

Now you’re regarded as one of the most influential bands to come out of the punk scene. What do you think of that?

JOHN DOE: I’m grateful as hell. I don’t know exactly why [that happened]. I think it’s determination, and a bit of ambition, and some talent. And just some good luck that nobody died. It’s only later, maybe ten or fifteen years ago, that we started to realize that that is true, because L.A. was always an also-ran. L.A., it was like, “Oh yeah, whatever. New York, London, that’s the real deal, that’s real punk rock.” So we had a chip on our shoulder for a little bit. That’s one of the reasons we called the first record Los Angeles, was to try to plant a flag and get some respect.

It worked!

JOHN DOE: Well, thank you. I don’t want to seem like, “Aw shucks, it’s no big deal,” because it is a big deal, and I’m really proud of it and happy that it’s turned out as well as it has. And that people do have some respect for the L.A. scene, or us. Like I said, we owed a lot to that soup that was being made back then. And then what do you do with it? Do you just have one good record, or do you have two? But we always seemed to come up with something that’s in the same ballpark, but just a different color, or different subjects.

I think fans who’ve followed X for years would prefer that you go on forever.

JOHN DOE: [laughs] Yeah, but you don’t want us to go on forever and then eventually suck! But like I say, you never know. Maybe this record will do so well, or people will respond to it in such a way that we feel like, “OK, well, maybe we’ll take our time and we’ll put out a song here and there.” Maybe we’ll do a song for a benefit record or whatever. But hearing you say that is a real gift, and I appreciate it a lot.

Anything else you’d like to tell people?

JOHN DOE: I hope all the youngsters get out and vote. But I’m not going to talk about politics. I’ll just leave it at that. You can read into that whatever you’d like. And make up your own mind, do your own thing. I mean, that’s been our motto pretty much from the beginning, and I’m glad that that still is.

X ~ “The End is Near – Smoke & Fiction Tour”:

8/19 – Menlo Park, CA – The Guild Theatre
8/20 – Menlo Park, CA – The Guild Theatre
8/22 – Boise, ID – Knitting Factory
8/23 – Spokane, WA – Knitting Factory
8/24 – Olympia, WA – South Sound Block Party
8/25 – Portland, OR – The Aladdin
8/28 – Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot
8/30 – Denver, CO – The Summit
9/01 – Albuquerque, NM – The El Rey
9/22 – Derry, NH – Tupelo Music Hall
9/23 – Boston, MA – The Wilbur
9/25 – Albany, NY – Empire Live
9/26 – Rochester, NY – Water Street Music Hall
9/28 – Falls Church, VA – The State Theatre
10/1 – Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theater
10/2 – Patchogue, NY – Patchogue Theatre
10/3 – New York, NY – Town Hall
10/18 – Austin, TX – The Paramount
10/19 – San Antonio, TX – Empire Live
10/21 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
10/22 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater
10/24 – Memphis, TN – Minglewood Hall
10/25 – Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl
10/26 – Birmingham, AL – Iron City
10/27 – Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
10/29 – Charlotte, NC – The Neighborhood Theatre
10/30 – Columbia, SC – The Senate

More dates TBA