It’s White Flag’s World, We Just Live In It: An Interview With Pat Fear

Pat Fear: This was probably our fourth or fifth gig and it was a giant event, with maybe a thousand people at it. And I couldn’t make it. We said, “Who cares?” (laughs) They were going to hate it anyway because they were expecting this W.A.S.P. demo, with Blackie Lawless on vocals.

Al Bum wasn’t singing for some reason, so we had El Fee and Doug and Jeff English, who was this other insane person from high school, and some other kid, who was a fan of White Flag, played a second bass. He named himself after an HP Lovecraft character, Yog-Sothoth. Tony Coppinger was just another friend from the neighborhood. He was in a local band that had nothing to do with punk rock, but he had a similar sense of humor.

Jeff English was absolutely, beyond out of control, and he looked just like John Oates from Hall & Oates. Again, another person who had nothing to do with punk rock; he just wanted to cause trouble.

Blackie Lawless

The album was out because Jeff had the S Is For Space album, was throwing it out in the audience, and people were throwing it BACK.

Popshifter: Hahahaha!

Pat Fear: They played one White Flag song, “Mirror Mirror.” The ultraviolence. . . you can’t even imagine how angry the audience was. They were thrown off stage by the Battle Of The Bands people, because they were expecting a heavy metal band. Of course, everyone in White Flag dressed the part, and out came this craziness, which was basically just antagonistic performance art.

And the best thing about it, was that White Flag got third place out of ten bands.

Popshifter: Hahaha!

Pat Fear: But as far as other band members, as people lost interest, they left. I mean, Pick Z. Stix quit after four gigs because he had blisters on his hands. He never intended to be a drummer so he had no stamina. It wasn’t like it was animosity, he was like, “I can’t do this; it hurts too much!” (laughs) So that was the end of him as a drummer.

He left the band for five years and when he came back, he was a guitar player and singer. The other people have rotated in and out; we’ve never broken up. But things have changed.

We had half the Muffs in the band at one point; Greg Hetson and Steve McDonald have played in the band. Ken Stringfellow [from The Posies and Big Star] joined in 1994 and never left.

There was one gig we played in Seattle when we opened for Big Star, when White Flag was Trace Element, me, Ken Stringfellow on bass, and Jon Auer [also from The Posies and Big Star] on guitar. So it was half the Posies but also half of Big Star!

We’ve got people who live in Europe who were fans of the band, who flew us over to play some festivals with them, like this band from Sweden called Sator. They’re not really known here, but they were headlining 50,000 seat arenas and they flew us over to play with them because they liked us. They were fans and they covered one of our songs. A record that went gold in Sweden. That was pretty much a big deal for us: a song that I co-wrote. My name is on a gold record.

Popshifter: That is pretty cool, yes.

Pat Fear: So they ended up being in the band because we would go to Europe, and other people couldn’t go, so we’d pick up one of them on bass or guitar. And they were fans; they considered it a lucky break to be in one of the bands they were fans of!

Everyone’s still in the band; nobody ever leaves. It’s not a full time thing. We’ve been persistent, we just haven’t been consistent. Because we just don’t take it seriously as a career. It’s something to do for fun, an artistic outlet. None of us are ever doing it full time; maybe if we had taken it seriously it would’ve worked out that way, who knows?

But the effort we’ve put into it has been returned exponentially. Like we’ve played Greenland and there aren’t many bands who can say that.

Click to read more from Pat Fear on. . .

Dr. Demento & The Ramones
Causing trouble
The Malcolm McLaren Handbook
Battle of the Bands
White Flag Goes to Greenland
Those missing 22 copies. . .
Os Mutantes
The Shaggs
Motel Spaghetti
Gasatanka

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