On the ninth, maybe tenth day, God created The American Teenage Rock’N’Roll Machine and he named it Redd Kross. Founded by two underage brothers just before the 80s arrived, the band quickly evolved from their hardcore punk roots to a pastel-coloured explosion of 60s-inspired psych and 70s powerpop, infused with a near-obsessive affection for pop culture also-rans. They made a few films, they rocked a few arenas, but mostly they followed their own wobbly, starry-eyed path, amassing a devoted fan base along the way.
Forty-something years later, Jeff and Steve McDonald are set to release their self-titled eighth album. They will also be the subjects for both a major documentary and a sprawling biography. Not bad for a couple of wastrels who once formed a Yoko Ono tribute band. In a world gone truly mad, we are blessed to have these affable psychedelic brothers still running amok.
“We’re like what Shirley Temple was to people during the Depression era,” Steve says with a laugh. The new album, a double, is titled Redd Kross, it’s on In The Red Records, and it has a red cover.
“I’m excited about this cover,” says Steve. “I shot the picture myself. It’s terry cloth.”
Historically, Redd Kross’s albums have been conceptual. How about this one?
“Sorta,” says Jeff. “We deal with a lot of, like, cults in this.”
“Jeff and our producer, Josh Klinghoffer, spent a lot of time on the couch watching documentaries about cults when we were recording,” says Steve. “Coming from Los Angeles, I mean, our family, we’re not flaky. But still, it’s in the air here. There’s always been mysticism and culty behaviour going down. Things like the Source Family.”
“We were there when Sky Saxon of [garage-rock legends] The Seeds first returned to Los Angeles after spending a decade in Hawaii with the Source Family,” Steve continues. “Later we jammed with him and made a live record, when he was still sort of being debriefed from that period in his life. So we’ve experienced a lot of that.
"I mean, we covered a Manson song in 1981 and we had to hide the track. We didn’t list the song on the record, because we were afraid that the Mansonites that were still hanging out would come for us. And that wasn’t just being paranoid, necessarily, it was a real possibility.”
Redd Kross riff on stories like this endlessly. If there’s any band that needs a definitive biography, it’s them. They made a movie with the guy from the Partridge Family, for Chrissakes. Thankfully an oral history of every twist and turn will soon hit the shelves. Written by Steve and Jeff with Dan Epstein, You’re One Of Us should scratch every Redd Kross itch you’ve ever had.
“What’s interesting about the format of this book is it’s just an oral history,” says Jeff. “It’s like Dan’s taken some of the ‘like’s and the ‘you know’s out of our speech, but otherwise these are all the memories we had about the band.”
“It was really fun not being interviewed at the same time,” says Steve. “Because sometimes we contradict each other. But I think somewhere in between our two stories is the truth about what actually happened.”
Given their predilection for being in the right place at the wrong time, one would assume there are plenty of celebrity cameos in the book.
“Oh yeah,” says Steve. “And there’s stories that aren’t even on there. For instance, when I was sixteen I asked [actress] Molly Ringwald to the prom. It was backstage at a Bangles concert. This was prime Molly Ringwald time, it was during Sixteen Candles. But yeah, it’s not because we were Hollywood brats, we weren’t. We’re from a suburban town fifteen miles away, just working-class kids. But by the time I was a prom-asking age, I had been playing in bands for six or seven years. So we were accepted into all these weird little worlds.”
If all that wasn’t enough, there’s also the matter of Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story, a career-spanning documentary by Andrew Reich currently making the festival rounds. It will most likely be available worldwide by the time you read this. Of course, rock docs usually follow a fairly simple story arc: the way up, the tragedy, the redemption. But so far it’s been mostly good times for Redd Kross.
“I mean, our singer never killed our drummer in a drunken haze,” Jeff says, laughing, “so we don’t necessarily have the ‘next up… tragedy!’ arc, right? We do have some sad moments, but Andrew was able to carve out a story that keeps people engaged. We had forty-odd years to work with.”
“It’s not a film for completists,” adds Steve. “It’s more like for someone who’s never heard a single note of Redd Kross. We’re not a mainstream band. Most people don’t know who we are. So this film is more about the universal themes of sticking to it and rolling with the punches and being brothers in a band.”
If 2024 is anybody’s year, it’s Redd Kross’s. Or it should be. A double album, a documentary, a memoir. If you didn’t know them before, you’ll know them plenty by the end of the year. Oh, and if you’re wondering about Steve’s prom, sadly, Molly Ringwald did not go with him.
“She said: ‘Oh, I think I’m busy, but thanks for asking’”, he remembers. “But I was a little intoxicated, and I was pretty sure that her sister, Beth, was interested in me. I wasn’t really getting the message, but she gave me her phone number. The next morning I woke up kinda humiliated at my behaviour. I wanted to call her just to apologise and say: ‘Sorry about the prom thing’ [laughs]. And she’d given me the number for the post office. You win some, you lose some.”
Redd Kross is out now via In The Red. The band tour Europe in October and November. For tickets, check the Redd Kross website.
