Despite being perhaps the greatest DIY success story in punk music,
NOFX remains under the radar for a lot of music fans who are unaware of the wild,
untold history of this legendary band. We're here to let you in on the untold truth of NOFX.
NOFX formed in 1983. Five years later, they had an incredible opportunity when Brett Gurewitz , lead
songwriter and guitarist for legendary punk band Bad Religion, offered to produce an album for
them. The band wrangled up the $675 to record the album, and Gurewitz offered to release it
on his own label, Epitaph Records. But they wanted to launch their own label.
Plus, NOFX themselves admit the album is awful.
Lead singer Fat Mike considers their second album, 1989's S&M Airlines,
to be their real first album. In fact, he says that the band had to rebuild their reputation
from scratch with their second album because they had such a reputation for being terrible.
After trying to sell the album on their own and failing miserably,
NOFX sold the album to Epitaph after all. To this day, it remains an album for dedicated fans only.
"Straight edge" is a punk subculture whose members reject drugs, alcohol,
and cigarettes. The movement took its name from the 1981 Minor Threat song. Straight edge
has gone through several evolutions since its origins, but remains a part of the punk scene.
You might think a band like NOFX, which has had a long history of addiction and
substance abuse issues, would be as far from straight-edge as possible.
"There's so many of us, there's so many of us."
After all, drug abuse has been a frequent subject of their lyrics. They even wrote a song called
"Six Years on Dope" that detailed everything substance abuse has cost them over the course
of their careers. But that hasn't always been the case. Three of the four original members
of the band were straight edge at the time, with the exception being lead singer Fat Mike.
Even Mike admits his serious drug abuse didn't begin until he was much older.
The band is adamant that they were never an officially straight-edge band,
but at the very beginning they were very close to being one.
Band names often have a bit of mystery to them, and fans often obsess over their veiled meanings.
There have been plenty of theories over the years about NOFX. For instance, some people think
it's a statement about synthesizers and other artificial elements in music, an assurance that
the band won't use any "effects" to augment their music. That's partially true. The band stated:
"There seemed to be a lot of gimmicky bands around [...] we
like to think that our name meant we were against that."
But the truth is a lot simpler: they stole it. As it turns out, the name was inspired by Negative
FX, a Boston-based band that was part of the straight-edge scene. Negative FX didn't last long,
breaking up after only playing a few shows and releasing one album. Since Negative FX was so
short-lived, NOFX thought the riff on their band name would be a statement about their own
longevity — which worked out great, since the band has been going strong for nearly four decades.
Punk bands have a long history of creating their own music labels,
due mostly to the fact that major labels initially didn't have much interest.
As lead singer Fat Mike told Clevescene , a punk band that could sell 10,000 records in the 1980s
was a massive success — but that translated into very little money. As he succinctly puts it:
"In the '80s, nobody could make a living."
In addition to releasing numerous albums via independent label Epitaph Records - and
famously rejecting an offer from major label Hollywood Records - Fat Mike and his
then-girlfriend Erin Burkett launched their own music label, Fat Wreck Chords in 1990.
It was initially a hobby of sorts, and neither Burkett or Mike thought it would last two years.
Thirty years later, Fat Wreck Chords is a legendary label and a successful business,
known for bands like Lagwagon, Against Me!, No Use for a Name — and, of course, NOFX.
NOFX has been a fixture in the punk scene for more than 40 years. Over that time their sound
has been refined, but the core identity of the band has remained remarkably steady.
Their songs combine snarky humor and earworm melodies with tight,
speedy punk guitar riffs, and they never take themselves too seriously.
So if you're a fan of breakout pop-punk acts like Green Day or Blink-182, you can thank NOFX for
blazing a trail. In fact, the similarities between NOFX's style and Blink-182's music
has been noted by NOFX — as Exclaim notes, guitarist Eric Melvin says of Blink-182:
"We were always the joking band. We cornered the market on low brow humor."
But the influence of NOFX goes beyond stealing their humorous approach to punk rock.
While the band dislikes the term "pop punk" and prefers to be categorized as "melodic
hardcore," there's little doubt that NOFX heavily influenced an entire generation of punk bands
that have combined a pop sensibility with punk guitar crunch. NOFX is so influential, in fact,
their music has been analyzed in respected scholarly journals like Musicology Australia.
One of NOFX's most famous songs is "Bob," from their 1992 album White Trash, Two Heebs,
and a Bean. The song describes an alcoholic named Bob and begins with the classic lines:
"He spent fifteen years getting loaded / Fifteen years 'till
his liver exploded / Now what's Bob gonna do now that he can't drink?"
There have been many theories about the song, ranging from speculation that "Bob"
is actually one of the band members to Bob being a composite of several characters who attended
NOFX shows in the early years. However, he was actually a real person named Bob Lush,
a homeless Korean man who hung out with the band and attended their shows.
As detailed in their memoir, NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories,
Bob was a heavy drinker. After getting into a fight with his girlfriend,
she threw him into a weight bench — and his damaged liver literally burst.
He barely survived, and the incident served as inspiration for the song. The band never
got to find out what Bob thought of it, though, as he died of an overdose shortly afterwards.
NOFX thrives on controversy. Their songs openly discuss racism, BDSM, and drug use,
and they revel in describing the often hilariously gross aspects of their own lives.
"I have to pee… He looks really sexy in the middle of the night"
But for a band that courts controversy, their album covers are usually pretty tame - with the
exception of 1996's Heavy Petting Zoo, which depicts a man having relations with a sheep.
Fat Mike knew such a cover would be controversial, telling NME:
"It was our first record after punk broke in 1994,
so while everyone was commercializing, we put out something to hurt record sales."
According to Mike, a store was shut down in France when it put the poster in its window,
and the album was all-out banned in Germany.
It's no secret that the members of NOFX have long been fond of their illegal substances,
often writing songs celebrating their experiences -- including
the hilariously literal "Drugs are Good".
Drummer Erik Sandin's heroin addiction led to two contentious moments in his career.
The first came during the recording of their 1992 album White Trash,
Two Heebs and a Bean, when he was confronted by lead singer Fat Mike
and told he had to either enter rehab or quit the band. He ultimately did kick the habit.
The second moment came when a freelance photographer working for Rolling Stone
contacted him while he was still using the drug and offered to pay him $350 for
a photo of him injecting heroin. Sandin says he specifically requested they not show his face,
but they did anyway -- which is how his mother learned he was a drug addict.
NOFX's lead singer Fat Mike is a rare musician who increased his drug use and grew wilder as he
got older. Most rockers go wild in their youth, then sober up in middle age when their bodies
can't take it anymore, but Mike actually seemed to lean into his demons as he hit middle age.
The singer is sober today, but not before first getting ensnared in
the same drug epidemic sweeping the rest of the country — legal pharmaceuticals.
Mike didn't start doing drugs until he was in his 30s, starting with Vicodin and Percoset — along
with cocaine. He would use while on tour, but would try to sober up once he returned home so
he could focus on his business interests. He soon discovered that he couldn't stop taking Oxycontin.
Even though he was on a relatively low dose, he would feel sick if he stopped taking them.
His doctor recommended he undergo a three-month program using Suboxone,
a drug designed to help people kick their Oxy habits. Subsequently, he found himself
just as addicted to Suboxone. He had to enter a rehab in order to kick the habit for good.
NOFX has never had any illusions about mainstream success — in fact,
they've been defiantly disinterested in it. That attitude reached a peak
with the release of their 1992 song "Please Play This Song on the Radio".
The song is a fast-paced, catchy punk song that seems to be harmlessly mocking the
way some bands lust after radio airplay and mainstream success. The lyrics read:
"We wrote this song / It's not too short,
it's not too long / It's got back-up vocals in just the right places."
The song even includes some fun purposeful mistakes when
the band sings about their technical competence.
However, it's all a set-up. After a false ending, there's a sudden encore filled with
obscenities designed to ruin any unsuspecting radio programmer's day. Fat Mike delights in
imagining the fines the radio station will have to pay the Federal Communications Commission.
The song closes with the refrain, "You can't play this song on the radio."
When you're a punk band known for being controversial and irreverent,
it's easy to think you can get away with anything. But in the wake of the 2017 shooting
at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, they finally went too far.
As NME reports, a few months after this horrifying crime which left 58 people dead and more than 500
injured, NOFX thought it would be a good idea to crack jokes about it onstage,
including the sentiment:
"At least they were country fans and not punk rock fans."
The backlash was fast and furious. NOFX found all of their upcoming concerts in
the United States were canceled. They also lost their sponsor, Stone Brewing.
The band admits it made a terrible mistake.
In a rare move, NOFX issued an official apology, writing:
"There's no place here to backpedal. What NOFX said in Vegas was shameful.
We crossed the line of civility. All members of the band would like to sincerely apologize."
The apology must have worked,
because as of 2020 NOFX was back on tour and working on their 14th album.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP. That's 1-800-662-4357.