(Los Lobos)
True lifers, Los Lobos is close to entering their fiftieth year as a band. If you’ve never heard the album Kiko, I implore you to check it out while reading this chapter. Here, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Pérez talks navigating the East LA punk scene and a very uncomfortable David Letterman appearance.
As musicians, we all go through the wringer. The good gigs aren’t necessarily memorable, but musicians can always remember the most embarrassing or completely disastrous gigs. Los Lobos has been a band for over forty-four years, so we’ve seen everything. 1980 was the year that we crossed the LA river to start playing clubs in the punk, New Wave scene that was happening in Hollywood. I had just made friends with Tito Larriva from the Latino punk band the Plugz, who went on to be the music guy in a bunch of Robert Rodriguez movies.
Before we crossed the river, we had basically been playing traditional Mexican music in East Los Angeles. Los Lobos were all rock ’n’ roll kids growing up, and we became buddies in high school. We learned some traditional songs to play for our parents on one of our Mom’s birthdays. That’s where the seed was planted, and we were hooked on the greatness of traditional musicianship. We put away the Strats, amps, and Fenders to play traditional for the next ten years.
As my friendship with Tito grew, I became more interested in what was happening in the rock and punk scene on the other side of town. When we discovered the Blasters and what they were doing with rock, that was when we knew we had to change up the traditional thing. One day Tito called, saying that a band had dropped out from a gig he was doing. It was a slot opening for PIL, Johnny Rotten’s band, at the Olympic Auditorium in downtown LA, which was an old wrestling arena.
We jumped at the chance, as we knew who the Sex Pistols were, but it was also just a great opportunity to get seen. This was like the second coming of the punk messiah Johnny Rotten, so it was a big deal in LA. We were so excited, and as I’ve thought about it over the years, I don’t know if Tito set us up for failure. We were the first band playing, and the crowd was ready to sink their teeth into any band that wasn’t PIL.
Right when we walked on stage, they threw every fucking thing imaginable at us. They didn’t even give us a chance to plug in and see what we were about. They just wanted blood. I felt the rush of wind from all of the arms rising to give us middle fingers. It was a typical punk rock thing, but I was honestly surprised at some of the shit I saw fly on stage. They were spitting at us and throwing balled-up paper towels covered in God knows what.
We made it to the eight-minute mark, and that’s when the really serious projectiles started flying. There was one guy on the side of the stage that was getting change from the bartender to throw nickels and quarters at us. He was aiming to sink one into the hole of our guitarrón, which is a big, six-string, Mexican bass. When it got to a point that wasn’t exactly life-threatening, but close, we ran off the stage. We could have run back to East LA with our tail between our legs because we had invited all of our families to the show. They were hanging on the side of the stage, next to the spitters and the change-thrower.
When we ran off that stage, they were in tears. We all thought it was going to be our big break, so this was the worst thing that could have happened. But we just kept going. Instead of going back home and finding a day job, we had the resiliency of East LA chicanos that didn’t let us quit. We were used to seeing gang fights and struggle back home, so this was just a minor speed bump. We stayed in touch and finally met the Blasters, who invited us to do a big show at the Whiskey a Go-Go. We were in, and the rest is history.
I don’t think the response to us at the PIL show was racially-charged. That crowd was so amped because the Sex Pistols never made it to Los Angeles. They got as far as San Francisco and imploded. We went up there with acoustic instruments playing traditional Mexican music. We could have been a traditional Japanese Koto band, and it would have been just as strange to them. We never dwelt on how our race played into things. It turned out that one of the guys from the Blasters was at the show, and later he said that we were the bravest guys in the world to go up there in front of that crowd and play what we did.
That night is so important to me because it was our introduction to a new world. Circle Jerks and Black Flag was happening, and we all used to go to Madame Wong’s after gigs to hang out. Darby Crash would walk in and literally have to duck down because his mohawk was too high to fit through the door. It was a magical time, and we made friends with all those people. If we would have run home that night, nothing would have happened.
There was a dark side to punk, with drugs and that shit. I don’t think it was just endemic to punk though. It was rampant at that time in early ’80s Los Angeles. We’d play weekend gigs and party afterwards. But once we started seriously touring, we all had to put the brakes on. We made the decision to become rock stars as adults, so we were older than most of the people on the scene. Darby Crash was just a kid, and I was twenty-nine when our first record came out. I would say that we had more sense than everybody else, but I don’t think that’s possible in rock ’n’ roll.
One time we were performing on the David Letterman show, sometime in the mid-’90s. We did sound check, and David said hello before the show. We were in the green room, and the production assistant was explaining about our monitors and what was going to happen during the show. We were watching the show live, and Dave did his monologue and usual schtick. This was a “Stupid Human Tricks” night, where people would come out and show off some goofy, unusual trick.
One of the acts was this little kid, who was maybe eight years old. I can’t remember exactly what his trick was, but he walked on stage, and Dave started interviewing him. “Hi, how old are you? Where are you from?” It was light pleasantries. The kid lived on a farm down South somewhere. Let’s just call the kid Timmy for now. Dave said, “So Timmy, you live on a farm. What’s a typical day on the farm?” Timmy said, in this cute Southern accent, “Well, I get up in the morning and have my breakfast. Sometimes I go in the field and help the Mexicans pick peppers.”
There was an awkward silence, but Letterman was a pro and moved on. But it was very obvious to the audience and millions of viewers that it was a big, fucking oops. Dave was back at his desk after the bit, and before going to commercial, he said, “We’ll be right back. Paul, can you check if Los Lobos are still here?” It became a running joke for the rest of the show until we went on. Before each commercial break, he’d turn to Paul and say, “Can you check on Los Lobos again?”
Right after it happened, the PA and a producer rushed back to see us. They were apologizing profusely, but we were never offended to begin with. It was just a kid from the South! He didn’t mean it in some derogatory way. But man, Letterman’s staff acted like that kid had cursed our mothers and spit in our faces. They were definitely squirming, and we felt bad for them. We’re like, “Guys, we’re cool. It’s really no big deal.”
Before we played, Letterman dedicated the song to the little kid. His people didn’t stop apologizing to us until we left the building. It would have been funny if we had played it like we were extremely offended and locked the door to the green room.