The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack Interview: Keith Morris, Part Four
In the fourth installment, Brother Keith recounts OFF!’s beginnings, and begins enumerating the reasons for FREE LSD’s new rhythm section until we hit the 1500 words mark.
Keith Morris attempts to show the rest of the original OFF! lineup (l-r: Steven McDonald, Mario Rubalcaba, Dimitri Coats) how to play “Hippy Hippy Shake.”
Yes, this one will take awhile, brethren. As Parts One, Two, and Three have surely proven, Keith Morris can talk. This was a two-hour conversation, and it’s all meat. Studies have proven, however, that online readers tune out after 1500 words. Hence chopping this one into bite-sized chunks, doling it out weekly. And interviews with Michael Monroe and Jesse Dayton are waiting in the wings. Suffice to say Monroe’s conversation begins running next week, alongside Brother Keith’s words of wisdom, continuing from Part Three with OFF!’s origin story.
KEITH: I remember when I ran into Steven (McDonald, former OFF! bassist/half of Redd Kross’ core brotherly duo/current Melvins bassist) at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts. A band called The Entrants was playing, who were really, really cool. Before they started playing, there was a break between bands and some DJ was playing music. I went up to Steven and I said, “Hey, I have some recorded riffs that I would like to give you, to see if you would be interested in playing in a band with me.” I gave him a little bit of the history of Dimitri (Coats, OFF! guitarist) and I. I gave him the CD with…I think there were six or seven songs. It was basically the same stuff I played for (Epitaph Records chief) Brett Gurewitz, just guitar riffs. And I said, “Give this a listen and get back to me in a few days, if you’re interested.” He called me the next day. He said, “Keith, let’s get in a room and let’s bash these songs out. Let’s see how they sound with drums and bass and vocals attached.” The same thing happened with Mario (Rubalcaba, Rocket From The Crypt/former OFF! drummer). I saw Mario somewhere, and gave him the CD. He got back in three or four days and said, “I wanna be a part of this.”