Hardcore heavyweights Greg Hetson and Zander Schloss still supercharge slam-dancers with just an SG, a P bass, modded tube heads, and lots of downstrokes.
Any band that hammers along for 43 years should be praised. But for a hardcore outfit that first seethed “I don’t wanna live / To be thirty-four / I don’t wanna die / In a nuclear war” 42 years ago on their 1980 debut Group Sex, pushing on for over four decades is a bit of a miracle. The Circle Jerks should be honored with a skanking statue in their hometown of Hermosa Beach, California.
“If you would’ve told me in my 20s that I’d be in a seminal hardcore-punk band in my 60s, I would’ve said ‘you’re fucking crazy, dude! I’m going to be dead by that time,’” jokes longtime Circle Jerks bassist Zander Schloss. “Now I say, live slow, die old!”
The Circle Jerks were formed in 1979 by former Black Flag vocalist Keith Morris and ex-Redd Kross guitarist Greg Hetson. (Hetson has also been a member of another seminal SoCal punk rock band, Bad Religion, from 1984-2013.) They were joined by bassist Roger Rogerson and drummer Lucky Lehrer. Group Sex is one of the most important albums in the first swell of hardcore. It’s worth noting that the 14-song collection was crammed into less than 16 minutes of tape. Tasmanian devil Morris raged his commentary on sex, drugs, politics, the rich, and even self-reflection. His bandmates redlined to keep up. Hetson’s swift, stabbing guitar parts pierced and slit through the slamming, double-time rhythmic pistons that were Lehrer and Rogerson.
Their 1982 follow-up, Wild in the Streets, contained five songs over two minutes long and three covers (“Wild in the Streets,” “Just Like Me,” and “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”), but all 15 tunes were still laced together with the same frenetic guitar bursts and rambunctious rhythms of Group Sex. The last of their most-influential works was 1983’s Golden Shower of Hits, which alternated between short, melodic mayhem and slower-but-still-acerbic stompers. The next year saw the arrival of Schloss, who contributed heavily to the band’s final three studio releases: Wonderful (1985), VI (1987), and Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities (1995). While out in support of the latter, their major-label debut, the Circle Jerks imploded.
In subsequent years, Hetson focused on Bad Religion, started Punk Rock Karaoke, formed Black President, and built out his Hetson Sound studio. Schloss played guitar for Joe Strummer, drove the bass for the Weirdos, and even entertained on the silver screen, starting with the role of Kevin in Repo Man. While Morris battled health issues (he fell into diabetic comas in 2008 and 2013), he was able to get several projects off the ground and revisit old ones including Midget Handjob, Off!, and FLAG. The latter’s a Black Flag byproduct featuring former members bassist Chuck Dukowski, guitarist/vocalist Dez Cadena, and Bill Stevenson—who produced most of their 1980s catalog—on drums, plus Stevenson’s Descendents bandmate Stephen Egerton on guitar.
Before the current celebratory run marking the band’s first live shows in 11 years (and first full U.S. tour in 15), they announced drummer Joey Castillo (Queens of the Stone Age, Danzig, Eagles of Death Metal) would be propelling the Circle Jerks’ runaway train. And since the band’s core members are now all in their 60s, and the resolution of the ripping “Live Fast, Die Young” is yelled out at each show (“I don’t wanna live / To be fifty-seven / I’m living in hell / Is there a heaven?”), they’re well aware that according to their own canon they shouldn’t be here and certainly not having this much fun.
“I never thought the Circle Jerks would tour again, but you know what? Dreams do come true, and in some weird way, we’re doing better than ever and this world tour proves it,” remarks Schloss.
But is the grind too much?
“As a younger man, I used to resent breaking my arm off to play this music because it’s so fast, so hard, and so intense, but as a 60-year-old I’m finding it really exhilarating,” he admits.
Well, sir, then let’s have a bash!
Hours before the Circle Jerks’ July 21 headlining show at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl (a Covid-delayed celebration of 40 years since Group Sex), PG’s Perry Bean took to the stage and talked gear (a conversation longer than most Circle Jerks’ albums) with Schloss and Hetson.
Brought to you by D’Addario String Finder.
The Industry Standard
“I’ve always thought the Fender P bass was the industry workhorse,” allows Schloss. His beastly battle axe is an American Professional II Precision bass that has a ’63 P neck profile, the company’s new V-Mod II Precision Bass split-coil pickup, and a Hi-Mass Vintage bridge. Schloss used to play roundwound strings, but he would constantly break them and do some serious damage to his hands. He made the switch to flatwounds in the ’90s. The string snaps significantly reduced and he found their sound sits better in the mix, making it more distinct and outside the guitar’s lane.
During the Rundown, he offers up two vintage tidbits: After the band’s last show in 2011, he sold his 1964 P bass to the Hard Rock International, and the second is that he loaned a black 1964 Fender Stratocaster to producer Guy Seyffert, who’s on the road with Roger Waters and has been using it onstage. Schloss says it was a gift from Joe Strummer and once belonged to Sid Vicious, and then Steve Jones.
Slice ’n’ Dice
Schloss swears by Fender Classic Celluloid triangle picks (355 shape). As he shreds off a tip, he rotates the pick around for another angle. As he says, “It has a lot more click for the buck.”
Close Enough for Jazz
For backup purposes, he totes along this American Professional II Jazz bass that also has flatwounds. Schloss acknowledges that the thinner neck isn’t his favorite and wishes he’d brought out a pair of Ps.
No Take Backs!
Probably as collateral on that ’64 Strat, Guy Seyffert loaned Schloss an early ’70s blue-line Ampeg SVT that hits a slant-back Ampeg SVT-810E that belongs to one of the tour’s openers. It’s up for debate who has the better end of the deal.
Solid Greg, Solid Guitar
If you’ve seen Greg Hetson thrashing onstage with any of his numerous bands, you’ve seen him rocking a Gibson SG. For the Circle Jerks’ world tour, he brought out this recent SG Standard ’61 Maestro Vibrola reissue with a mahogany body, a SlimTaper mahogany neck paired with a rosewood fretboard, and an ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge. It originally came with a set of BurstBucker 61s, but Hetson removed the T pickup (bridge) and dropped in an uncovered Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro humbucker.
Moshing With Marshall
Hetson loaded up a pair of 1980s Marshall JCM800s for this run. On the left is an early-’80s 2203 model, while the other is a late-’80s 2555. Both run into their own Mesa/Boogie Rectifier Traditional slant 4x12 loaded with rear-mounted Celestion Vintage 30s. On the floor, you’ll notice Hetson’s lone “effect”: a TC Electronic PolyTune.
We’ve Seen This Before
The 2203 was overhauled with the venerable “crunch” mod by L.A. Sound Design’s late Martin Golub. If that tone tweak sounds familiar, then this will surely ring a bell, as the “crunch” mod is also referred to as the “Dookie” mod—widely known for residing in Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s “Pete” Marshall 100-watt 1959 SLP reissue head. (The much-revered Golub passed away in 2021.)
We know Horsegirl as a band of musicians, but their friendships will always come before the music. From left to right: Nora Cheng, drummer Gigi Reece, and Penelope Lowenstein.
“It was kind of life-changing, honestly. It changed how I thought about womanhood,” Lowenstein says over the call, laughing a bit at the gravitas of the statement.
But the moment of levity illuminates the fact that big things are happening in their lives. When they released their debut album, 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance, the three members of Horsegirl were still teenagers in high school. Their new, sophomore record, Phonetics On and On, arrives right in the middle of numerous first experiences—their first time living away from home, first loves, first years of their 20s, in university. Horsegirl is going through changes. Lowenstein notes how, through moving to a new city, their friendship has grown, too, into something more familial. They rely on each other more.
“If the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band, without any doubt.”–Penelope Lowenstein
“Everyone's cooking together, you take each other to the doctor,” Lowenstein says. “You rely on each other for weird things. I think transitioning from being teenage friends to suddenly working together, touring together, writing together in this really intimate creative relationship, going through sort of an unusual experience together at a young age, and then also starting school together—I just feel like it brings this insane intimacy that we work really hard to maintain. And if the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band without any doubt.”
Horsegirl recorded their sophomore LP, Phonetics On and On, at Wilco’s The Loft studio in their hometown, Chicago.
These changes also include subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in their sophisticated and artful guitar-pop. Versions of Modern Performance created a notion of the band as ’90s college-rock torchbearers, with reverb-and-distortion-drenched numbers that recalled Yo La Tengo and the Breeders. Phonetics On and On doesn’t extinguish the flame, but it’s markedly more contemporary, sacrificing none of the catchiness but opting for more space, hypnotic guitar lines, and meditative, repeated phrases. Cheng and Lowenstein credit Welsh art-pop wiz Cate Le Bon’s presence as producer in the studio as essential to the sonic direction.
“On the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giants—super minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little.”–Nora Cheng
“We had never really let a fourth person into our writing process,” Cheng says. “I feel like Cate really changed the way we think about how you can compose a song, and built off ideas we were already thinking about, and just created this very comfortable space for experimentation and pushed us. There are so many weird instruments and things that aren't even instruments at [Wilco’s Chicago studio] The Loft. I feel like, definitely on our first record, we were super hesitant to go into territory that wasn't just distorted guitar, bass, and drums.”
Nora Cheng's Gear
Nora Cheng says that letting a fourth person—Welsh artist Cate Le Bon—into the trio’s songwriting changed how they thought about composition.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Devices Plumes
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- TC Electronic Polytune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex .73 mm
Phonetics On and On introduces warm synths (“Julie”), raw-sounding violin (“In Twos”), and gamelan tiles—common in traditional Indonesian music—to Horsegirl’s repertoire, and expands on their already deep quiver of guitar sounds as Cheng and Lowenstein branch into frenetic squonks, warped jangles, and jagged, bare-bones riffs. The result is a collection of songs simultaneously densely textured and spacious.
“I listen to these songs and I feel like it captures the raw, creative energy of being in the studio and being like, ‘Fuck! We just exploded the song. What is about to happen?’” Lowenstein says. “That feeling is something we didn’t have on the first record because we knew exactly what we wanted to capture and it was the songs we had written in my parents’ basement.”
Cheng was first introduced to classical guitar as a kid by her dad, who tried to teach her, and then she was subsequently drawn back to rock by bands like Cage The Elephant and Arcade Fire. Lowenstein started playing at age 6, which covers most of her life memories and comprises a large part of her identity. “It made me feel really powerful as a young girl to know that I was a very proficient guitarist,” she says. The shreddy playing of Television, Pink Floyd’s spacey guitar solos, and Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan were all integral to her as Horsegirl began.
Penelope Lowenstein's Gear
Penelope Lowenstein likes looking back at the versions of herself that made older records.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Westwood
- EarthQuaker Bellows
- TC Electronic PolyTune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex 1.0 mm
Recently, the two of them have found themselves influenced by guitarists both related and unrelated to the type of tunes they’re trading in on their new album. Lowenstein got into Brazilian guitar during the pandemic and has recently been “in a Jim O’Rourke, John Fahey zone.”
“There’s something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument,” Lowenstein says. “And hearing what the bass in those guitar parts is doing—as in, the E string—is kind of mind blowing.”
“On the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giants—super minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little,” Cheng adds. “And also Lizzy Mercier [Descloux], mostly on the Rosa Yemen records. That guitar playing I feel was very inspiring for the anti-solo,[a technique] which appears on [Phonetics On and On].”This flurry of focused discovery gives the impression that Cheng and Lowenstein’s sensibilities are shifting day-to-day, buoyed by the incredible expansion of creative possibilities that setting one’s life to revolve around music can afford. And, of course, the energy and exponential growth of youth. Horsegirl has already clocked major stylistic shifts in their brief lifespan, and it’s exciting to have such a clear glimpse of evolution in artists who are, likely and hopefully, just beginning a long journey together.
“There’s something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument.”–Penelope Lowenstein
“In your 20s, life moves so fast,” Lowenstein says. “So much changes from the time of recording something to releasing something that even that process is so strange. You recognize yourself, and you also kind of sympathize with yourself. It's a really rewarding way of life, I think, for musicians, and it's cool that we have our teenage years captured like that, too—on and on until we're old women.”
YouTube It
Last summer, Horsegirl gathered at a Chicago studio space to record a sun-soaked set of new and old tunes.
