GREEN DAY WON’T PLAY SACTO

“In the Green Day Slappy 7-inch EP liner notes, it says, ‘GREEN DAY WON’T PLAY SACTO,’” Corbett Redford informs me. He sits in his home office in Pinole, California, part of the East Bay Area adjacent to San Francisco, surrounded by records, graphic novels, collectible toys, books, and punk rock posters and flyers.

Just weeks earlier his documentary Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk had its world premiere. The film features a key scene where legendary Berkeley, California, punk venue 924 Gilman receives an unwanted visit from a gang of Nazi skinheads. The true story comes to a thrilling conclusion when the Gilman regulars band together and attack the Nazis, with fists, baseball bats, skateboards, maybe a chair or two, and drive them off for good.

Corbett welcomed me into his home to share another story with me—one that, due to time constraints, ended up having to be cut from his final film. But first we chat about our respective scenes and the racist boneheads that plagued them. While Sacramento had a bad reputation, the East Bay’s punk shows had their share of problems with white supremacists.

I receive a thorough and enthusiastic lesson in the history of racist assholes of the greater East San Francisco Bay Area. I learn about white-pride gangs like the West Santa Rita Boys and their “War Wagon,” a badass girl gang called the Durant Mob Rules that sprang up to fight back against skinheads, and Corbett sums it all up beautifully: “I know that members of Isocracy, Green Day, Possessed, Primus, Metallica, Corrupted Morals, all these people over the course of two and a half, three decades, systematically got their asses kicked in El Sobrante.”

I’m eager to get to the cut footage, but I had to ask Corbett about a scar on his arm that he described to me as his “skinhead wound.”

He rubs his forearm and recollects how it came to be so marked. “Well, it was 1998. There was a party in El Sobrante and it was at the old Digital Underground house.”

Corbett had gone with a group of women including his girlfriend to see The Fleshies, an Alternative Tentacles–signed band that was a sister band to his own group, Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits.

A skinhead showed up as The Fleshies were doing their thing. Their thing involved John, their lead singer at the time, being completely naked as he performed. The skinhead took a commanding position at the front of the crowd, a tattoo across his shirtless back letting everyone standing behind him know that he takes pride in being white. While his first response was to be amused by the naked man on the microphone, it quickly got to be too much for him. “He picks up a basketball that happens to be in the house, and he just starts pegging the naked singer like he just can’t stand the weirdness. He just can’t deal with it.”

From there this charming man with the shaved head started smacking other audience members with the ball, mostly women. Including smacking Corbett’s friend V in the back of the head, and telling her she looks like a man.

A group of guys led the thug out into the backyard, to give him a firm talking to, but Corbett thought he deserved a bit more than a verbal scolding. “I got a couple stouts in me, and I’m a little short guy, maybe I have this Napoleon thing or something, I was so mad, I was just so, so mad that he had hit my best friend of thirty-five years and you know he’d hit two girls and there’s nobody really doing anything.”

Corbett headed for the backyard and confronted the skinhead, telling him he needed to “fucking knock it off.” Corbett was asked just what he thought he could do about it, and, despite being at a huge size disadvantage, he took a swing at the skinhead. “I pushed ‘Select’ like little Joe on Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out and I hit him with everything I had.”

What Corbett didn’t know was that his bandmate Dan had seen this coming and gotten down on all fours behind the bald giant, while another friend, Nema, stood by gripping a corkscrew.

The proud white man fell backward over Dan, landing in a recycling bin, and that’s when things stopped going Corbett’s way.

“He came up with a bottle, cracked it over my head, slashed my arm, and he went to stab my stomach. Dan stood up and blocked the bottle from gutting his friend, but things were still getting worse. Nema pulled out his corkscrew, and the skinhead snatched it from him and stabbed him in the neck. Then he upped the makeshift weapon ante, pulling out a BBQ shear. I was like, “What did I do? Why did I do this?”

Corbett was pushed quickly out of the house, being told that he’d fucked with the wrong guy, a bully who locals had long lived in fear of. “You don’t even understand! That’s the guy in our town who, ya know, like he’s a white supremacist who took all of our lunch money and he always carries a gun. You don’t understand what you’ve done!”

Meanwhile, a bunch of kids had surrounded the skinhead in the backyard and were beating the shit out of him with their skateboards, definitely one of my favorite weapons.

After driving himself to the hospital, Corbett sat bleeding for several hours in a crowded waiting room before giving up on the American approach to medicine and heading home to apply some butterfly bandages himself.

“The trigger in the waiting room was that everyone was watching Mad TV and there was some gag of some dude getting kicked in the balls and everybody was completely silent in that waiting room until that happened and everyone started laughing. I don’t know what that was but when everyone started laughing at some dude getting kicked in the balls on TV I’m like, I’m out of here.”

With this harrowing tale told, and my adrenaline flowing, I was ready to see the footage I’d come for. Corbett pulled up clips for me, and a series of interviews told the story of an infamous night when the East Bay Punks met the Sacramento Nazi Skins.

A promoter in Sacramento had booked the top acts from the East Bay punk scene, including legendary bands Econochrist, Green Day, Crummy Musicians, Filth, and Sam I Am.

And most of the East Bay bands that weren’t playing had at least a member or two who made the trip up to enjoy the show and support their friends.

Ben Sizemore of Econochrist described feeling some trepidation ahead of the show. “Sacramento had a reputation, for having, well, it was kind of thought of as a redneck town, and it had Nazi skinheads.”

Sizemore and the other Bay Area punks had heard about an incident that took place on August 21, 1990, when racist skinhead Michael G. “Iron Mike” Ortiz stabbed Paul Carrallo and Aragorn Moser outside the Cattle Club. Carrallo, twenty years old, died in the hospital the following day.

Econochrist and their friends made the trip despite these concerns. “Back then, you know, you feel invincible. You don’t think anyone can hurt you. We were the East Bay Punks! We’ll go up to Sacramento.” Sizemore had a reputation of his own as a firebrand antiracist skinhead who didn’t back down from a fight.

Piling a dozen or more people in a battered Ford Econoline van with expired tags, no insurance, and questionable breaks, they drove the ninety minutes or so to Sacramento.

The members of Green Day recall it being a really fun show, where they had transported the heart of their scene into a neighboring town. The bands shared equipment and, rather than do a standard format show, they just took turns playing a few songs each and then swapping out.

The fun came to an end when a group of skinheads showed up and started pushing their way through the crowd.

Green Day were on stage when pushing turned to punching and a fight broke out. A confusing scene, where multiple group fights were taking place throughout the room, got more confusing, as Green Day’s bass player Mike Dirnt disappeared from the stage, jumping into the melee.

Sizemore remembers coming up against a seemingly invulnerable brute. “I remember getting a running start and throwing a chair at this guy, one of these Nazis. He was Sieg Heiling at the time and it just hits him in the face and knocks him down. He was such a badass he just stood up, broke the chair, and threw it back at me. ‘Oh Shit!’”

In the middle of the chaotic violence, Billy Joe Armstrong and drummer John Kiffmeyer stood on stage, trying to figure out how to respond, when a group of young girls, seemingly oblivious to the rumble, approached the stage and asked the band if they’d be selling merch.

The crowd managed to push the Nazis out of the main hall but in the lobby things stalled. There, in a smaller, more controlled, space, their odds seemed a bit better and they planted their Doc Martens boots, refusing to take the remaining steps through the exit.

Green Day pal and unofficial roadie James Washburn lost his patience at this point. He described pushing his way to the front of the crowd, where he locked eyes with one skinhead, as another charged him from the side. Maintaining eye contact with the guy in front of him, he swung sideways and knocked the other guy out cold. Then, swinging a second time, he put a second skinhead on the ground.

Washburn’s exploits that night are East Bay legend. Some of the musicians recall wanting to help but feeling like they were mostly just getting in his way.

James didn’t come out of the melee completely unscathed. He broke a bone in his hand from punching someone.

Ben Sizemore recalls the excitement at sending the thugs running, and the ominous still that followed as he realized they weren’t out of danger yet. “It was just awesome. It was like, Fuck these assholes, we kicked their ass. We are the punks! Fuck the Nazis … Shit, this is their town and they’re probably gonna be back.”

The members of Econochrist and their friends loaded up as fast as they could and got on the road. They still feel bad for not checking to make sure that everyone got on the road and out of harm’s way.

Green Day were the last to leave. As they rushed to get their equipment into their vehicles, a couple of local cops arrived and yelled at them for being parked on the lawn. They told the two officers why they were there, and that there’d been a fight, and that a bunch of skinheads were on their way back. The cops listened to their story, told them to move their cars, and left. One punk who was there said, “That was the day I learned the difference between a Nazi skinhead and a cop. It’s a mustache.”

After their friends and the local police had left, they heard a terrifying sound, like an army coming down the street at full speed, running. Green Day and the other stragglers heard the thunder of Doc Martens hitting the ground, turned around, and saw a mob coming at them. There was no question who it was, or what they wanted. The punks scattered in every direction.

Billy Joe Armstrong narrowly escaped, a knife-wielding skinhead ripping his shirt off of him, as he ran.

The other band members had knives swung at them but managed to stay ahead of the bald attackers, taking off into the park.

Once the coast was clear, the scattered punks made their way back to find an ugly mess. One girl had her leg broken, the cars had smashed-in windows and slashed tires. They were ready to be back in the East Bay.

I missed the whole thing because I’d chosen to go see Social Distortion at the Cattle Club that night. Nazi skins fucked that show up too, as Mike Ness spent a lot of his time onstage mocking them as they Sieg Heiled him.

“That’s adorable,” he said to one of them. “You know, I used to fuck little boys like you in prison.” I thought that claiming to fuck little boys was an odd way to insult someone, but Ness kind of pulled it off. Before Social Distortion had finished their set, the skinheads all took off. I didn’t find out why until years later.

Many if not most of the East Bay Punks chose not to play Sacramento for quite some time. Green Day didn’t return for several years, even printing “Green Day Won’t Play Sacto” on the sleeve of one of their singles. They did eventually play the Cattle Club at the beginning of the Dookie Tour, just as they were blowing up into internationally famous rock stars. The show was without incident.