BAD RELIGION’S EXTENSIVE CATALOG CONTAINS a wide range of styles and reflects continuous growth and experimentation. It is helpful to think of their work as an extended family. Just as siblings share traits that are characteristic of their gene pool, melodic hardcore is wired into Bad Religion’s DNA. It can be heard in everything they do, and it makes their music instantly recognizable. If Suffer, No Control, and Against the Grain are the rowdy triplets, then Into the Unknown is the moody black sheep of the family. Using this analogy, True North is the upstart, angry kid who wants to be like her older siblings.
The band started recording their sixteenth studio album in July 2012. The record was co-produced by Brett Gurewitz and Joe Barresi at Joe’s House of Compression. A photo of the band in the recording studio was posted to the Bad Religion Facebook page in late July with the caption “Here we go again.” All of the members of the band were featured—except Greg Hetson—and his absence would prove to be prescient.
To Brett’s way of thinking, True North was a reset. “I wasn’t happy with the way The Dissent of Man came out. Our mission [with True North] was to go back to basics and write a bunch of short, straightforward songs.” According to Jay, part of the inspiration for this approach came from Brett’s relationship with singer-songwriter Tom Waits, who had recently put out an album of brilliantly concise songs. “We were playing these two-minute punk rock songs and having the greatest time,” Jay said.
Of the sixteen songs on the record, ten were written by Greg, including both of the singles, “Fuck You” and “True North.” This was something of an anomaly as Brett’s songs were usually selected for the singles. “On True North,” Brett said, “I feel like Greg was the stronger writer, and my stuff was just okay.”
One reason why Greg did most of the heavy lifting on True North had to do with how personal the project was for him. “I didn’t talk about it much at the time,” Greg admitted, “because I was going through it, but it was based on a letter that my son wrote to me when he ran away from home. He basically said, ‘I’m going to follow my true north.’ A lot of those songs have to do with my son and I.”
That includes the first single, “Fuck You,” which was directly inspired by Greg’s eldest son, though “inspired” doesn’t really capture the emotion. “You never think your son is going to say, ‘Fuck you’ to you,” Greg said, “but it was shocking when I first heard it! After he said it, it took a while to sink in, but I had a ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ realization. When you teach your kids to have a healthy punk attitude, you really can’t be that angry at them for putting it to good use and spitting it back at you now and again.”
These rites of passage—the son’s rejection of the father’s authority and the forging of his own identity—struck a chord with a lot of fans. In recent years, Bad Religion’s records had been driven by the band’s anger at the government’s imperialist adventures in the Middle East, but for many punk rockers, protest begins at home. What’s more punk rock than saying, “Fuck you!” to your parents?
“That’s why I wrote the song,” Greg said. “I think it resonated with a lot of young kids because it’s a classic expression of disharmony.”
While Brett may not have written as many songs for True North, he contributed in other, unexpected ways, like singing on the song “Dharma and the Bomb.” “I sang all the verses and Greg sang the chorus,” Brett said, “and I don’t think anyone even noticed. I’m like the Dee Dee Ramone of Bad Religion. Sometimes I come in and sing a line, but not a whole song. Greg is one of the great punk singers of all time so it doesn’t make sense for me to sing.”
While True North was a rebirth of sorts for the band, on a personal level, Brian was struggling. He was staying at Brett’s house in Pasadena, and trying to manage his drinking. During the making of True North, Brian would record from noon to six every day and then leave the studio. He’d get a bottle of scotch and hole up in his room at Brett’s house while his bandmates continued without him.
“I had the guitar part of being in Bad Religion dialed in,” Brian said, “but I was a mess. I was at the end of my ride, and the sadness of it all was profound. I was no longer able to interact with the people I cared about most.” That fall, a few months after Bad Religion finished recording True North, Brian went to rehab at Kolmac Outpatient Recovery Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Two singles from True North were released in advance of the album at the end of 2012. With a song like “Fuck You,” they weren’t expecting major airplay. Nevertheless, when the album came out in January 2013, True North had the highest placement on Billboard of any previous Bad Religion record.
Despite its provocative title, or perhaps because of it, “Fuck You” proved to be extremely popular and remains so. On any given day it’s typically one of Bad Religion’s top five songs on streaming services like Spotify.
Bad Religion began 2013 with a club show at the Echo in L.A. Brett, who frequently played local gigs, joined the band onstage for a rousing set. The band began its North American tour at Musink Tattoo & Music Festival at the Orange County Fair and Event Center on March 8. The tour lasted six weeks and featured another performance by Brett, who played the tour’s penultimate show at the Palladium on April 18. The band had one more show to play on April 20 in Mesa, Arizona, but Hetson didn’t make the trip. What happened?
Bad Religion had a long-standing practice of not commenting on changes to their lineup, especially when members left the band, because the band felt it was up to the individual to tell his own story. But to fans paying attention, Hetson’s absence felt different, and they were right.
Within the band, concern had been growing for some time over Hetson’s erratic play. In rock and roll, a good soundman can hide a bad show from the crowd, but there’s no hiding it from your bandmates. It’s fairly easy to disguise an off night with music that’s loud and fast and generates a great deal of energy, but it puts more pressure on the rest of the band when one member isn’t locked in.
The band believed that Hetson’s off nights were occurring with greater frequency. While Hetson was able to compensate for his lapses, to some degree, with his energetic stage presence, the band had to make adjustments for the quality of his performance. For the soundman, Ronnie, this meant turning down Hetson’s levels and featuring other band members. But things came to a head at the Hollywood Palladium. “He was just having one of those nights,” Brooks said.
While most of the band members had, to varying degrees, become accustomed to dealing with Hetson’s up-and-down level of play, it came as a shock to Brett, who was understandably upset.
After the show at the Palladium, the band held an emergency meeting and discussed Hetson’s immediate future with the band. They weighed the pros and cons of leaving Hetson at home for the True North Tour. They took into consideration Hetson’s contribution to Bad Religion over the years, which was significant. Though he wasn’t one of the founding members he’d been there virtually from the beginning, playing in “Part III” on How Could Hell Be Any Worse? He helped keep Bad Religion going after the failure of Into the Unknown, bolstered the band with his celebrity status during their comeback on the Suffer Tour, and brought energy and excitement to their shows with his stage presence.
This wasn’t the first time the band had met to discuss Hetson’s performance, and they felt the situation was getting worse. With several festivals in the spring, including Coachella, and a long European tour in the summer already on the books, the band believed that bringing Hetson along constituted a liability, and they told Hetson to take some time off.
Hetson’s departure bothered Greg a great deal. The two had formed a strong bond during the years between Into the Unknown and Suffer that no one else in the band shared. Even though he ultimately voted to dismiss Hetson from the True North Tour, Greg did it for the harmony of the band. “I didn’t want the unit to be dysfunctional,” Greg said, “but he was always one of my best friends.”
“There was obviously a lot of pain involved,” Brooks said. “When you think of Bad Religion you think of Greg Hetson. He was a staple of the band. For that to be taken away from him had to be heartbreaking. Not only for him, but for the fans.”
Hetson’s departure created a vacancy that Bad Religion needed to fill in a hurry. While they were reluctant to take a quick-fix approach that would disrupt the continuity of the band, they had to consider the possibility that whomever they brought in would be a temporary hire. “There was a sense,” Brian said, “that we needed to go outside our circle of friends who would have loved a shot at the gig.”
Brian had someone in mind: an old bandmate from his early days in L.A. named Mike Dimkich. Mike had a punk rock pedigree, knew how to tour, and was a talented guitar player. He’d spent the last six years playing rhythm guitar with the Cult. “He plays like Steve Jones, and dresses like Mick Jones,” Brian said of Mike. “A very old-school punk rock guitar player whose talent was being wasted in the Cult.”
Mike was born in St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. He lived in Memphis and Houston, but after his parents split up, he moved back to L.A. with his mother and they lived in a series of apartments on the Westside.
Mike loved the Sex Pistols and obsessed over the Professionals, which featured ex-members of the Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook. “I got into Rodney on the ROQ,” Mike said. “Saturday and Sunday from eight until midnight, I’d have my yellow Panasonic recorder and just stay by the radio.” When the Professionals came to town, they appeared on Rodney’s show. Mike called in and peppered Steve Jones with questions about his gear. “It was fucking Steve Jones! I was fucking beside myself!”
Mike joined a number of bands that never went far enough to have a name, but he played in a few talent shows and at high school parties. He was more interested in watching bands play than getting wasted at parties. One of those bands was Chequered Past, Steve Jones and Michael Des Barres’s band with Nigel Harrison and Clem Burke of Blondie.
“I would see Chequered Past any chance I got,” Mike said. “So amazing. Super loud. Seeing Steve Jones play live blew my fucking mind. It was unbelievable how good he was. He’d see me all the time and I’d bug him and talk to him and get his autograph. I was a punisher because I’d already have his autograph and then I’d go get it again.”
Out of this fandom, an unlikely friendship developed after Chequered Past broke up. Jones put another band together that played blues rock at the Central, which would later become the Viper Room.
“Steve would borrow my Fender Blackface Twin amp and my Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, and I would drive him around and roadie for him because he was my hero. I’d buy him burritos because he had nothing. He didn’t use me, but he didn’t turn down rides or free burritos or the use of my guitars. It was Steve Jones! Perfectly fair trade. I was on the winning end as far as I was concerned.”
What Mike didn’t know was that Jones’s struggles to stay afloat were due to his drug use, but Mike would find out soon enough. Steve was doing session work on a project produced by the infamous Kim Fowley—“who was just as creepy as you could imagine,” Mike said. Mike had lent Jones his gear and was giving him a ride back to Jones’s apartment, but they kept making stops along the way. “Finally,” Mike recalled, “we went someplace in East Hollywood and he came running out and I realized, He just scored dope. I was driving around with narcotics. If we get pulled over, I thought, my mom will kill me!”
Mike was seventeen years old and still in high school. Watching Jones disappear into the bathroom to shoot up was both sad and scary. When Izzy Stradlin came by, Mike knew it was time to go. Although Izzy would go on to be a part of the biggest rock and roll band of the eighties, Guns N’ Roses, he was just a junkie then. “It was all so real,” Mike said. “It was like a Scared Straight! thing or an after-school special.” Mike left without his gear only to find out a week later that Jones had hocked his guitar. Mike was able to recover his Les Paul from the pawnshop, but he learned a valuable lesson about drugs and rock and roll.
After high school, Mike went to college at California State University, Northridge, where he continued to get good grades. During his first semester of school, he auditioned to play bass with Channel 3 and went on a short tour of the Midwest, where the band played a lot of gigs in and around Chicago and Detroit. The last show was at the Metro, where they opened for Naked Raygun. Back in Southern California, they played a steakhouse in Pasadena where Jane’s Addiction opened for them, but the band fizzled out.
After he left Channel 3, Mike got a spot playing with his on-again, off-again idol in the Steve Jones Band. They opened up for the Hunter Ronson Band with Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson and then did some shows with the Cult, where he got to know Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy. After the Steve Jones Band broke up, Mike went back to school and started a band with his friend Tim Mosher called High City Miles. Tim was from Washington, D.C., and had introduced Mike to Brian Baker. In fact, when Brian left Junkyard, Tim was his replacement. Tim subsequently recruited Brian to join High City Miles. “We did two gigs with Brian,” Mike recalled. “I remember the first one Brian took mushrooms and did the gig.”
Mike felt disenchanted with the music industry, and part of the reason was the pressure at home. He’d moved into his mother’s house to go back to college, but she became seriously ill and died within a matter of months. Mike was heartbroken, the bills were stacking up, and he had no idea what he was going to do with his life.
High City Miles rehearsed at Cole Studios, where Brian worked and, as luck would have it, the Cult was also rehearsing. Billy Duffy invited Mike to go on the road with them as a second guitar player while they opened for Metallica in Europe. Mike didn’t want to leave his friends in the lurch, but the creditors were calling, so he accepted the offer to go on tour with the Cult. It was exactly what he needed.
“I was twenty-four,” Mike said. “My mom had just died. I was getting paid. In retrospect, it wasn’t much money, but at the time it seemed like a lot. I was touring and playing soccer stadiums. The Cult was still quite big in Europe.”
Mike came home and the Cult didn’t ask him back for its next tour, which was just as well as they broke up in the middle of it. Mike went through a period where he alternated between joining bands and giving up on music, an experience he compared to what people go through when they quit drugs or alcohol. “I’ve had some great times, but you’ve done nothing good for me, and I’m sick of you. Fuck you, I’m done!” At one point, he didn’t play his guitar for two years and put all his energy into running marathons and training for endurance events. “Whatever side of my mind that dug music,” Mike said, “I put into my running.”
The Cult re-formed in 2006 and invited Mike back into the fold. He was playing with another band called Jacked, and for a while he played in both bands, until Jacked faded away. The Cult had gotten another big record deal and the label provided extensive tour support. Over the years, the album sales dropped off, the venues got smaller, and three tour buses were downsized to one. Mike could see the writing on the wall, and that’s when he received a call from his old friend Brian Baker.
“I was finishing a bike ride in Malibu when I got a voice mail message. ‘Hey, Mike, it’s Baker. I’m in between flights. Give me a call. I want to talk to you about something.’ Baker and I have been friends for thirty years, but we never talked on the phone. Ever. We would text or I would see him at a party with Tim Mosher and we’d catch up, but Baker doesn’t call me. My first thought was, Maybe Baker’s going to rehab.”
Eventually, Mike got Brian on the phone, and Brian explained the situation with Hetson. Bad Religion was going to Germany and Belgium that weekend to play a pair of festivals, and then the band had a week off before playing a radio show in Tucson, Arizona. Could Mike learn fifty minutes of material by then?
“I said, ‘I’ll give it my best shot.’ I had no idea what was in store. The Cult was easy because every rock club I went to I heard that shit night after night. With Bad Religion I knew the radio hits, like ‘Infected’ and ‘Sorrow.’ I knew the slow stuff, but I had no idea what was coming.”
With the band en route to Europe, Mike was on his own. He had less than two weeks to prepare and he didn’t have any of Bad Religion’s music, so Mike rushed out to a used record store to see what he could find. As soon as he started listening to the albums, he knew he was in trouble. The songs were shorter than the Cult’s, sometimes much shorter, but more complicated and a hell of a lot faster. “With the Cult,” Mike explained, “the songs were mid-tempo, really laid-back. I knew their patterns. I knew how things went. I could learn the new album while driving to the first rehearsal in the car.”
The learning curve with Bad Religion was much, much steeper. Mike went to Mates in North Hollywood and rehearsed with Jay and Brooks. They blasted through the songs a few times and that was it. “All right,” Jay said, and Mike hoped that it would be, but his first show in Tucson was much more challenging.
“I went up there and was just hacking,” Mike said. “They were like, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to get it.’ I wasn’t used to going onstage and not being dialed in. I was just barely hanging in there.”
Slowly but surely, Mike started to get the swing of things, but at the fifteenth annual Punk Rock Bowling tournament, the inevitable finally happened. Mike went onstage, and the song “You” was on the set list. A frantic conversation with Jay ensued.
MIKE: I don’t know that song.
JAY: What? You don’t remember it?
MIKE: No, I’ve never heard it before. Can we please not play it?
“It was like the nightmare when you show up for a final and realize you’ve never been to that class before,” Mike said.
Once Mike was able to rehearse with the band, he became much more comfortable with the catalog. Bad Religion set out on a six-week European Tour with their new guitar player, came back for a few shows, and then returned to Europe for another six weeks.
In Europe, a strange thing kept happening: people were sharing photos of Mike playing with Bad Religion and tagging him as either Greg Hetson or Brett Gurewitz. While a fan of the band would never mistake Mike for Brett or Hetson, to casual observers Mike blended right in. Bad Religion felt the same way.
Toward the end of the year, Bad Religion announced they would be releasing a new compilation of holiday classics called Christmas Songs. The announcement was met with skepticism and surprise. The punk band whose very existence was an affront to Christianity was celebrating the most important day on the Christian calendar?
Actually, the idea wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded. Singing Christmas songs was an integral part of Greg’s training and tradition, but Brett also had a deep appreciation for Christmas music. “The heartfelt yearning of religious music has always been very poignant for me,” Brett said. “Far more poignant than their literal interpretation. Christmas Songs might be our most subversive album because it sneaks a humanist message in through the side door. It says, ‘Hey, listener, Bad Religion loves these religious songs not because we believe in god or religion, but because we’re human and music is a universal of human nature.’ It’s our common evolutionary heritage.”
It also didn’t hurt that Bad Religion had a fund of punked-out Christmas songs to draw from. The band had been a frequent guest at KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas. In fact, it was because of Bad Religion that KROQ had to change the name of the event from “Acoustic” to “Almost Acoustic.”
“They invited us to play,” Brett explained. “We said, ‘Yeah, but we don’t wanna play acoustic, can we play electric?’ They said, ‘Sure,’ and that opened the door and they changed the name. It was fun. We got to be the big loud band that year and from then on everyone did it. I don’t think anybody plays acoustic anymore. Everyone’s up there playing with their regular gear.”
Each time the band was invited to KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas, it performed a Christmas tune like “Little Drummer Boy.” But the band didn’t stick to popular carols for their album. Christmas Songs opens with Greg, an outspoken atheist, belting out “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” a hymn that has been sung in churches and cathedrals since the early eighteenth century.
Christmas Songs was released at the end of October so that punk rockers could stuff their stockings with a jolly new Bad Religion record. They had good reason to be merry. The band had put out not one, but two albums in 2013. However, fans would have to wait a long time for the next one.