The Offspring’s fourth album 1997’s Ixnay on the Hombre would be the group’s highly anticipated
follow up to 1994’s Smash. Smash would be the biggest independent selling record in history
and put the Offspring on a lot of people’s radars thanks to hits like self esteem, & come out
and play. Along with Green Day, The Offspring would help bring punk rock to the mainstream,
displacing grunge which had dominated the earlier part of the decade. The Offspring’s
fourth record would contain a song called Gone Away - an anomaly in their catalog, a slower
track that would give the band their first number one hit on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks Charts.
But for nearly two decades the story behind the song was widely misunderstood
and that’s what we’re going to explore in today’s video.
During the press tour for the group’s fourth album
frontman Dexter Holland would be vague when the topic of Gone Away came up.
The LA Times would write in a 1997 on a profile on the band and i quote
“On the other end of the emotional scale is “Gone Away,” an epic expression of grief that Holland
won’t discuss. “It’s based on some personal experience, but I don’t want to go into it
more than that,” he said.” The band would be interviewed by the LA Times later on in the
year where Holland was a little more forthcoming saying “We liked the idea of writing something
that was . . . what’s the word?” I hate to say heartfelt, because that sounds a little
cheesy. . . . The idea with this was to actually try to make it feel real without being wimpy.
We tried to get across the idea that ending a relationship can be painful,
but in a real way and not just a testosterone-packed [way]" he'd say.
It circulated online for many years that the song was written about a girlfriend
of Holland’s who tragically died in a car crash. You can’t blame fans for thinking
that. Holland admitted in interviews that the song was about a relationship and the song’s
lyrics are littered with references to someone who has passed and the grief that follows.
Holland would reveal on one of the band’s DVD releases saying a d j quote ‘gone away was
a really different song for us. We hadn’t really done a song that was almost slow for us really..it
was just an idea we had and we wanted to see what we could do with it. I think a lot of
what we really wanted to do at that time on ixnay was kind of not just repeat the last
album…so it was important to us to try and make a great album…and that was part of the
attraction of doing that song like gone away.That it was different and you know it was a different
song mood wise too. . i mean it’s a real serious song, it’s probably the most serious song we do.
You can read into it how you want, but it’s about loss and losing someone. Holland would reveal to
Kerrang that the band received countless letters from fans revealing and I quote
"I get some letters from people saying how much 'Gone Away' - which is about losing
someone - means to them, from parents who have written to me to say that it
helped them get over the loss of their son who died from leukemia. It rips your heart out."
Then as recently as 2021 Holland finally revealed what the song was actually about
and how the long rumored story of his girlfriend dying in a car accident was not true. Here's what
he told interviewer Bob Lefsetz right ok but the song was based on a real situation correct. I mean
yes, and no don't really talk about that too much .yes and no documentation would say that you had
a girlfriend who passed away in a car accident. Is that factually true. No, no it's not. Well
what the hell I'll tell the story I guess. I was with my wife on a Sunday and we had gone to dinner
and we were going to baskin robbins for our after dinner whatever ice cream and drive home and this
is in Huntington Beach where we live and so were waiting in line and there's 10 people in the store
a couple runs into the store call the police someone's chasing us with a gun
we're like what the hell is going on and all of a sudden shots ran out.
These people in this car, they had been chased by gang members in another car who were mad at them
for some reason.. They ran into the store these guys had decided to shoot up the store so I mean
it looks like they shot high I don't think they intended to kill anybody,
but anyway all of a sudden here we are and its one of those strip malls that's
a complete glass front to the store shooting it all of a sudden like f*** we're gonna die.
You know in hiding trying to get behind a trash can or something without knowing where the
bullets are coming and it turns out I was right in front of the gunman or whatever and then crawling
over to my wife and putting my bodies over here's just knowing any second I'm going to get shot.And
there were several shots that rang out the whole front was shot out and luckily no one
was hurt. So I think they just wanted to have fun and scare everybody right I don't think they were
trying to kill anybody. But I think just the idea that we had just come so close to death was a real
life changing moment and it was right when we were recording ixnay and I was coming up with
the idea. I knew I wanted the song to be heavy but I didn't know what it was going to be about yet
but it was kind of like the feeling of in a weird way I know it's not a direct connection
ybut it made you think about you know dying, about grief and what that feeling would be like and what
if my wife had been the one. Ok so the incident happens how long after that do you write the song
and does it come to you in a flash or is it something that takes a long time to workout.
Oh I wrote it in the next week it was quick it was done in a few days and the lyrics how
long did it take you to write the lyrics. A few days, quick for me. Quick for you.
In more recent years Holland would end up playing a piano
version of the song during live shows and the band included a piano version
of the song on their latest album 2021’s 'let the band times roll.'
The group Five Finger Death Punch have covered the song on their 2017 compilation album,
A Decade of Destruction, and on their 2018 studio album, And Justice for None.
Their cover would peak at Number 2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart in April 2018.