X

The X represented, more than anyone else, the fusion of punk-rock spirit with new wave spirit: from the former they adopted perversion and nihilism, from the latter they took depression and dehumanization. In a sense, they merged the despair of the Sex Pistols with the worldview of Suicide.

Avoiding the raw violence typical of hardcore, X built their urban litany on a “lived-in” and decadent atmosphere, ultimately much closer to the daily reality of the small- and middle-class American. The ingredients of their sound were, after all, country, blues, and rockabilly. Transformed by their “artistic” approach, the vocal harmonies still drew from country, the guitar from rockabilly, and the rhythms from blues. Finally, X acted as a bridge between the punk generation and the hippie generation, between Patti Smith’s era and the Doors’ era.

X—John Doe (vocals and bass), Christine “Exene” Cervenka (vocals), Billy Zoom (guitar), and Don Bonebrake (drums)—recorded their first single, We’re Desperate, in 1979. Their rise to the pantheon of beach punk was swift. A few months later came the 45 rpm Los Angeles, a martial hard-rock song that immediately became the anthem of the local punks, a stark vision of the grim and violent life in the California metropolis, and the album LA (Slash, 1980), on which tracks like the hammering Sex And Dying In High Society and the feverish, “Doorsian” The World’s A Mess articulated their program of outrage and social critique even more explicitly.

Their sound fused the fearless, desperate delirium of outcasts with the carefree folk harmonies of the Carter Family, borrowed psychedelic magic and chilling dreamlike rituals from the Doors, stole Chuck Berry’s famous bell-like attack, and painted a dark fresco of moral decay with the energy and ferocity of punk. On the tank-like cadence of heavy metal, the sloppy chant of Nausea, a manifesto and tribute to Patti Smith, pushed punk awareness forward, from anger to disgust. The record is haunted by an unsettling crowd of sexual maniacs (Johnny Hit And Run, a breathtaking boogie), hooligans (Your Phone’s Off The Hook, abrasive Stooges-style rock and roll), addicts (Sugarlight), racists, outcasts, and drifters. Vomit, blood, and syringes: it’s the lowest form of hyper-realism.

Their sound is anguished rather than criminal: the relentless drumming is predictable, but the stars are Cervenka’s hysterical, nauseated, trance-like vocals, capable of long epileptic bursts with final vowels stretched to spasms; Zoom’s maniacally rockabilly guitar work; and Doe’s raw, autobiographical urban lyrics. Ray Manzarek provided guidance on sound organization and occasionally contributed to the legendary keyboards. In addition, Doe and Exene’s vocal harmonies recall the most epic Jefferson Airplane, but with the novelty that Exene invented an anti-romantic way of singing romantic themes.

The punk era was already drawing to a close, and X began playing roots-rock (country, blues, and rock and roll) without the frenzy and anguish of their early years, but instead with a melancholic, fatalistic tone very close to the traditional existential ballad. With Wild Gift (Slash, 1981), the style emphasizes the vocal tendencies of San Francisco (Doe/Exene vocal duets, Zoom’s country-blues chords, even echoing the rural Jefferson Airplane of twelve years earlier in Universal Corner and In This House).
The group’s trademark remains the pairing of rock ’n’ roll with bored-sounding vocals, which here colors The Once Over Twice and When Our Love Passed Out, and sometimes (It’s Who You Know and especially White Girl) takes on the tone of a lived-life ballad.

Perhaps the best moments are in the parodies, which employ arrangements as playful as they are imaginative: Adult Books gallops along at cha-cha or flamenco pace with Presley-style crooning and Hawaiian-style guitar à la Ventures; Back To The Base mimics the satirical “rag” style of Country Joe; and even better is Beyond And Back, a dive into the swinging fifties. Nothing to do with hardcore, but flawless party music. The link to their origins is in the lyrics—dark and foreboding, dominated by the imminence of death, the inevitability of crime, and the need for sacrilege.

Continuing in this progression toward musical “roots,” Under The Big Black Sun (Elektra, 1982) marks their embrace of the “grass-roots” movement founded by their friends in the Blasters. The human landscape of Los Angeles is now depicted through mournful and vibrant ballads like Motel Room In My Bed and the title track, supported by the leader’s strong rock-and-roll guitar work. Once again, sinister atmospheres dominate, as in the tribal dance of Hungry Wolf, but the gothic is moderated by cowboy attitudes, as in the country-rock of The Have Nots. That X is above all a great rock-and-roll combo is proven by overwhelming tracks like Because I Do and Real Child Of Hell.

The first three X albums defined the true personality of the band, which had initially been lost in the chaos of beach-punk. Each record, while not a masterpiece, contains a handful of anthology-worthy tracks.

With the album More Fun In The New World (1983), for example in the rhetorical and complex saga of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts or in the martial anthem New World, the same social panorama is extended to the entire Nation. The landscape becomes one of low-grade hotels, bars, train stations, and cafés. The protagonists are drifters, hooligans, losers, and alcoholics. The sound emancipates itself even further from punk jargon, in the illusion of being able to repeat the glories of Creedence Clearwater Revival, but serving hyper-kinetic vignettes (Devil Doll and Make The Music Go Bang) that are scarred by verbose heavy-metal-style guitar work.

This is a flaw that the fifth album, Ain’t Love Grand (Elektra, 1985), accentuates, despite a transparent attempt to reclaim rock ’n’ roll roots (Love Shack, Supercharged), country (the martial serenade of Around My Heart), and blues (Burning House Of Love, with Summertime Blues-style strikes and a sinister Hendrix-style chorus).

Doe and Cervenka also play in Dave Alvin’s folk and country project, the Knitters (Alvin is a former member of the Blasters). After the release of the dreadful Poor Little Critter On The Road (Slash, 1985), Zoom was replaced by Alvin himself.

Even without Zoom, on See How We Are (Elektra, 1987), X’s music continues to flow compellingly (I'm Lost and 4th Of July, both by Alvin) and melodically (When It Rains). Overall, the album overcomes the uncertainties of the two previous records.

X returned once more with Hey Zeus (Big Life, 1993), a mediocre album inspired by country (New Life, Everybody), but above all adopting a more commercial sound, meticulously arranged, and more “grunge” (also due to the new guitarist, Tony Gilkyson, formerly of Lone Justice). Doe and Cervenka weave their glorious vocal harmonies on Someone's Watching, and Cervenka still finds the breath to launch into one of her witchy, rural hoe-downs on Clean Like Tomorrow. Billy Zoom, for the record, opened a legal consulting office.

X achieved an important synthesis—both moral and musical—of old and new, of roots rock and punk rock. With them, the bohemian spirit of California punk found its definitive heroes, more human than the Germs and faithful to the populist tradition of rock and roll.

Exene Cervenka launched a prolific solo career.

John Doe, far busier as a television and cinema actor than a rock musician, released a mediocre Meet John Doe (DGC, 1990), produced with a heavy metal edge, and a humbler Kissingsohard (Rhino, 1995), that, at least in Willamette, found his true voice as a bard of the middle-class.

Doe took a while to release the next album, Freedom Is (SpinArt, 2000), a collection of refined, poetic, soulful pop (Catch Me, Ultimately Yrs, When No One Cares, Drift Away), although the standout is the grittier, X-ish Ever After. Dim Stars Bright Sky (Artist Direct, 2002), on the other hand, is a humble, subdued and melancholy collection of introspective journeys.

John Doe's Forever Hasn't Happened Yet (Yep Roc, 2005), featuring Neko Case, Grant-Lee Phillips, Dave Alvin and Kristin Hersh, inhabits the niche of classy but lo-fi roots-rock, music that harks back to the past with dignified elegance while embracing the non-commercial ethos. It gets s bit monotonous and weary when Doe indulges in bluesy ballads, but it is invigorating and inspiring when it finds the right partner or the right melody (The Losing Kind, Heartless, Hwy 5, Ready).

The material on John Doe's A Year in the Wilderness (Yep Roc, 2007) was, instead, quite bland.

John Doe continued his calm chronicle of the aging of his world on Keeper (2011), still torn between Tom Petty-ian country-rock (Don't Forget How Much I Love You), echoes of vintage cowpunk (Never Enough) and bluesy meditations (Moonbeam).

The original quartet (Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom, and DJ Bonebrake) reunited for their first album in 27 years, Alphabetland (2020), the rare reunion album that stands up to the classic era, a perfect evocation of the spirit and the energy of early punk-rock. The anthemic Alphabetland is a strange hybrid of Jefferson Airplane and the Ramones. Free is raw voodoo-blues number that turns into a hoedown with one of their catchiest refrains ever. Water & Wine unleashes an ebullient Chuck Berry-ian boogie. They sound positively juvenile in the manic hardcore run of Delta 88 Nightmare (an old song never released before), in the fired-up garage-rock I Gotta Fever (another old song, originally titled Heater) and in the swinging country-rock locomotive of Star Chambered. They tried too hard to go for mainstream power-pop with Cyrano de Berger's Back (that was originally included by the Flesh Eaters on their album A Minute to Pray a Second to Die) and Angel on the Road, but overall the album makes all punk bands of 2020 sound terribly inept.