You’d be hard-pressed to find a band more unique than the glammy-punk SoCal pop-rock outfit known as Redd Kross.
Since 1978, brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald have left indelible marks on every genre they have approached, inspiring bands like Black Flag, Melvins, Red Hot Chili Peppers and others. Their mix of bubbly and badass led to hits like “Linda Blair” and “Annette’s Got the Hits.”
This is shaping up to be a huge year for Redd Kross. Documentary Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story is on the film-festival circuit, while the book Now You’re One of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross is being prepared for an Oct. 24 release. The band was slayed to drop a self-titled-double LP in late June and head on tour—while making a special stop at Pappy & Harriet’s on Wednesday, July 3.
During a recent Zoom interview with Jeff McDonald, he said 2024’s happenings are welcome, but “not overwhelming.”
“It’s kind of a surprise that all this stuff all came to fruition at the same time,” said McDonald. “The movie Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story was started eight years ago. Andrew Reich, the director, just periodically dropped in and did interviews with us and collected footage. We didn’t make the movie; it’s his vision of who we are, so that was just kind of always in the background. The book, Now You’re One of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross, was brewing as well. We weren’t even planning on making an album until we were commissioned to do a song for the film, and we had such a great time working with our producer, Josh Klinghoffer. … Steve had some time off from touring, so we just kind of went in there and started recording an album. It ended up turning into a double album, and then all of a sudden everything is coming out at once.”
The Redd Kross book is a companion piece, of sorts, to the film, and includes some stories that didn’t make it into the film—and things that weren’t allowed to be shown on camera.
“Andrew created the film to be for fans of Redd Kross, but it’s also a story that’s interesting to people who’ve never heard of us,” McDonald said. “It’s really an interesting tale, but it’s a 90-minute movie … (and) hardcore fans who have followed us for decades, they’re like, ‘What? You didn’t cover this; you didn’t cover that.’ Fortunately, the book is a companion piece so we can really get into the weeds about all that insane stuff.”
McDonald said he’s enjoyed reliving moments from the past.
“When we started playing music live, it was the bitter end of the ’70s, early ’80s, and there was no video,” he said. “People didn’t film shows; people didn’t have cameras … so the only ones who ever photographed shows were people who drug their whole photo studio with them to a gig. It’s almost like it was the 1930s or something, and we’re Robert Johnson. I thought there wasn’t a lot of source material, but actually there was much more than I thought. … With social media, it’s amazing how people pop up with these photos that I didn’t know existed. It’s really neat to have them in a film, the photos and then the rare television or cable television appearances.”
One of the most exciting moments of the documentary is footage from one of Redd Kross’ first television appearances on a Los Angeles TV show.
“There was a show called New Wave Theatre that ran on cable in Los Angeles just for a couple of years in the really early ’80s,” McDonald said. “It was hosted by Peter Ivers, who was famous for his role in David Lynch’s Eraserhead. This show actually had some of the only known TV footage of groups like 45 Grave, Circle Jerks and all these L.A. bands that had never been on television. We had done a couple of tapings, and I had never seen them, and one of the tapings, which I thought was forever lost, showed up in the film. I was completely, insanely stoked. Steven is, like, 14, and it is television broadcast quality.”
Redd Kross began when Jeff and Steve were 15 and 11, respectively. Jeff explained how his brotherly bond has allowed Redd Kross to remain a constant force.
“Steven and I are brothers, so anytime we felt like working or making a record and doing tours, we would just make plans and do it, because we already have this relationship,” he said.
A big shift in their lives came when Redd Kross took a near-decade hiatus in 1999.
“We had a nine-year hiatus from performing live, and that was really interesting, but at the same time, we were still creative,” McDonald said. “Steven was doing a lot of bass for hire. … I had a child, and I was just kind of having fun, making weird films and doing experimental recording. … It was really cool to have that kind of almost-decade to just do what we wanted, and maybe that’s another reason why we’re still doing it today.”
The making of Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story reminded the brothers how—even though they hit just as hard as many of the other punk, metal and rock bands—their glam, bubblegum and pop tendencies have always stuck out.
“For some of our tours, we would end up in Seattle, and it was in the time before the grunge explosion, but all those bands were just kind of starting, so they were all Redd Kross fans from the time we made our Neurotica album,” McDonald said. “Seeing interviews with the guys from Soundgarden or the Melvins talking about Nirvana, everyone always considered us extremely happy, and playing on a bill with us would be strange, because they didn’t have any happy songs. I never even saw it that way. I mean, we were always very happy to be performing and playing rock ’n’ roll music, but we didn’t know that we carried such a sunny disposition. We were probably just as miserable as those guys, but it wasn’t really part of our image.”
Some of Redd Kross’ first shows were with hardcore punk pioneers Black Flag.
“Those shows were great,” McDonald said. “That was before there were a bunch of suburban hardcore bands. All the bands in Los Angeles were all art-school students or people leftover from the glitter scene. Black Flag was one of the first kinds of heavy bands to come from the L.A. punk scene, so if you were to go to those shows at the time, it would be extreme pop, extreme art rock, heavy Black Flag, and then pop, like we were. … L.A. was like that for maybe a year and a half to two years before it kind of switched over to full hardcore.”
The McDonald brothers are fully aware that a double-record in 2024 is odd, but they are excited to have a creative surplus at this stage in their career.
“Most people don’t have a surplus of good material in their 45th year, and we just happen to have a lot of really good songs that kind of span our entire catalog,” McDonald said. “We didn’t intentionally make a record that sounds like all of our records combined, but it kind of sounds like that. It has the total double-record journey, which is cliche and stupid, but it really plays well as a record. I know it’s a novelty to play a record all the way through in this day and age, but that experience is really great, and anyone who wants to experience what it’s like to put a record on and listen to it from beginning to end, they’re going to know what it’s like with our new record.”
Redd Kross will perform at 8 p.m., Wednesday, July 3, at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, 53688 Pioneertown Road, in Pioneertown. Tickets are $25. For tickets and more information, call 760-228-2222 visit pappyandharriets.com.
