Rikk Agnew

With a crushing, grungy and distinct guitar playing style all his own, Rikk Agnew has carved his name into a living legend status. During the punk movement of the late 1970's, Rikk became involved with acts like D.I., and the Adolescents, and in the early 80's he brought his unique style of guitar playing to groups like Christian Death. After falling in and out of many different acts, Rikk went to work on his solo career which has produced three albums. Not too long ago I had the opportunity to talk with Rikk and find out what it was like to be in so many different bands, and the trials and tribulations of running his new solo act, Yardsale.

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AC- Please tell us about your past, the bands you have been involved with over the years, and some of the projects you have worked on leading up to your solo career.
RA- I've been listening to music since I was bom. My older sister weaned me on The Four Seasons, Mercy Beat, surf music, and Motown. Music has always been an integral part part of my life, happiness, and sanity. I've been involved with a slough of bands/projects since my first cover band "RMS" in 1974. We did Led Zepplin, Deep Purple, and Bowie covers. I played bass with Social Distortion for a few months along with Casey Royer on drums, Mike Ness on guitar, and a six foot nine psychotic singer. In 1978, The Detours was the first band I was in that did original material. We dressed like those Mormons you see riding through neighborhoods on ten speed bicycles. As soon as we started to play it was like, blam! We'd start thrashing our guts out and our singer Gordon took running leaps into the crowd parting them like the fucking Red Sea. I did a three week stint with the Flesheaters. Fielding on drums for T.S.O.L. on the last leg of their first U.S. tour in 1981 when Todd broke his hand. I've always involved myself with the production, as well as producing and co-producing my own bands and projects. I've also produced other bands. I've always wanted to eventually do solo work because I like to have control over every aspect of the music- having the songs written, played, and recorded as I hear them in my head. After I left the Adolescents (due to business and artistic conflicts I guess you could say), I was asked by many bands to join them. Some of those bands were; Suicidal Tendencies, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and 45 Grave. I didn't really want to join with any of them because like I said, I like having control over the material. That's probably why I get kicked out of some of these bands. I end up liking to have control over how the music sounds, and basically how things go with the group. I have my own ideas and I don't like to play into anybody else's ideas.

AC- Are there any other bands or projects you have worked on?
RA- God, there's about a billion of them. Have you got a couple of days? (laughs) I've been in all kinds of bands. I was in a band called Naughty Women a long time ago. They were probably the very first glam transvestite radical noisy New York Dolls influenced band, playing since '78 or so doing this, and getting their asses kicked alot. That band has probably had more than fifty or sixty members in it all together. It had a revolving door and has included everybody from myself to Izzy from Guns 'N Roses who played drums for a while before going on to his found fame and fortune. God, you name it. There's been all kinds of freaks in that band. I've done a lot of other little bands. I shouldn't say little, but you know. They didn't last very long. The omelets, The Farm. Small projects. One or two take kinda things. Sometime during my cover band career before I discovered punk rock, I played in a mariachi band. We did mariachi, 50's covers, we played a lot of 16th birthday parties for Mexican families, Mexican weddings, and in really pretty fucked up parts of town. The people were always great though, and I ended up getting along with and meeting with a bunch of the gang members out in that area- in Santa Ana and all. They were really nice guys. I can't understand why they gotta be so violent.

AC- When did you first pick up and play a guitar?
RA- When I was five I started pluckin' out one note tunes on my dad's acoustic guitar. He did the same and that's about as far as his musical talent went. I lost interest in music until I was in high school, and a friend of mine, Mark, was starting a band and he needed a bass player. He showed me my first real song, chords and stuff on guitar. It was "Lay Lady Lay" by Bob Dylan. From there I just listened to my record collection and learned all the riffs I could by figuring it out.

AC- What were some of your guitar playing influences?
RA- My main influences on guitar have been Tony from Black Sabbath to Rick Nelson from Cheap Trick to the two king Jimis- Page and Hendrix. As far as writing, I would have to say The Buzzcocks and The Mechanics. The Mechanics were a local band from the late 70's who were way ahead of their time. They were too punk for rock and too rock for punk. They were doing this stuff, say, 77 to 79. If they'd been out now they would be real heavy. Back then nobody could identify with them. Their leader and main songwriter Tim is probably the biggest influence upon my writing. I'm also inspired on another level by what I call "textural" players like The Edge from U2, Tim from Flipper, Keith Levene from P.I.L., Dave from Jane's Addiction, and most of the guitar work from Siouxsie And The Banshees. It comes from everywhere basically.

AC- How did you become involved with Christian Death?
RA- Hmmmm, (laughs). The Devil made me do it! No, they opened for an Adolescents show in their home town of Pomona, Ca. I'd never seen anything like them before. It was like being at a funeral in a scary movie or something. These people come walking out in tuxedos and women with black veils over their faces quietly lining up roses in front of the whole stage. They played this weird, slow, scary music- this was when everybody had short hair and were trying to play music faster than they are now. Christian Death was doing slow eerie stuff with longer hair and dressed like ghoulish morticians. Soon afterward I was fired from the Adolescents, and with a need for change I thought it would be great to join with Christian Death and do a whole new thing. I was able to be real open and creative with my playing and writing instead of sticking to the bar-chord banality that I was quickly tiring of. It was interesting, frightening.

AC- What was it like being a member of Christian Death?
RA- I'd rather not go into details to be honest with you about what went on.

AC- Why did you finally leave Christian Death?
RA- I left the band because of the intensity and decadence that surrounded it.

AC- You were in D.I. for a short time. As with Christian Death, you left the band when it was still very young. Why did you leave D.I.?
RA- Well, see, I'm Mr. Temporary and I can only stay in a band for no more than three months, because if I stay in a band for more than three months I'm going to melt! No, really I left D.I. in '86. It was time to move on and do something else. Here I was doing something different with Christian Death, then I joined with D.I. and it was fun. I love that music and the energy, but I just had to do something else. Again, I felt limited as to what I could write and record. People expected a certain sound out of D.I. and I don't like to be limited. I like to be free. The band was going in a direction that I didn't really care to follow, either.

AC- What was your involvement with the Adolescents?
RA- My involvement with the Adolescents was the breaking ground of my career. The band was a volatile combination of five headstrong frontmen leader types vying for control, yet jelled for an intense power pack combo. The Adolescents could not stay together as a band for any long length of time because of the intensity of the personalities involved.

AC- Will you ever go back to working with the Adolescents, D.I., or Christian Death anytime in the future?
RA- I like to keep my hand in many cookie jars. We had just recently done a couple reunion shows with Christian Death. In fact, we did a reunion tour of the U.S. and Canada the winter of '89. That was very interesting to say the least. There is a big market for those death rock kids. We had a great time. It seemed we were the most popular in the South actually. D.I., never. I will never go back to playing with D.I. simply because they have their stuff totally together. They are a very strong continuing band. There's no reason for me to go back because they've gone the direction they wanted to go, and they're doing great.

AC- What is it like to be a solo artist compared to being a guitarist in a group?
RA- Well, I'm a guitarist and solo artist. There's not much difference. As I mentioned earlier I do very much enjoy having more control because I like to have what it sounds like in my head.... I like to have it come out this way. The advantage and disadvantage is having all the responsibility on your shoulders. Advantages are that you pretty much have the control, you pretty much direct how things go. The disadvantage is that everybody comes to you when it's time to bitch! (laughs)

AC- What have been some of your favorite moments being a solo musician?
RA- The European tour was excellent, I had a really good time there. I like working one on one with the engineer but sometimes it can be really chaotic with a whole band in the studio, especially when you're mixing or laying down tracks. Everybody's got their own opinion and it all gets mixed up, then you know, the engineer is ready to tear his hair out and stuff it down everyone's throats.

AC- How many solo releases of material do you presently have?
RA- Let's see.... I have the All By Myself which is on Frontier Records released in 1983, and on that one I played everything. I did that one in about thirty hours- no, actually forty hours in three sessions. I was working a full time job then. It was insane. I lived an hour away from the studio. I was living in Huntington Beach at the time, and the studio was in Sun Valley. So it was like go to work 8 to 4:30, drive in the traffic, get there about 6:30 and record until 5 in the morning, then head back to work. Back and forth. I did that for three days straight. By the time I was done I was exhausted. I even did this au-natural. No white drugs, no nothing. It was insane. Literally insane. I mean I didn't even drink because I never would have been able to hack. I didn't do any more solo material until this recent Triple X stuff. I released two 45's. One is "Read Between the Lines b/w Horse Bites Dog Cries." That was released last year some time, and I followed that up about three months later with another single called "Think of the Children b/w Feel for Me," which is a cut off the album. Then the album Emotional Vomit came out. I'm currently working on another album where I'm going to feature a lot of different lead vocalists from other bands. I'm not going to disclose who right now, but that should be done by this summer and should be released most likely by fall. Right now I do not have any real title for it. Actually, I do. I hate giving shit away. I don't know. They're always just expressions. It's like what my album is called. It's just spitting out how I feel.

AC- How has your music grown since your first album, All By Myself?
RA- I wouldn't say it's really grown. I'm the same old me! There's no real growing, just more music. I guess the only way I could feel that it's grown is that I've had a lot more time inbetween, a lot more aging to be influenced.

AC- How has your style of guitar playing changed over the years? What do you consider to be "gothic" or "punk" today versus the past?
RA- My guitar playing hasn't changed. I'm creating new stuff all the time. I don't really identify with labels or categorizations like gothic or punk. I know it's an easier way for people to grasp and know what your talking about when trying to describe a sound without playing a record, but to me it's all just music. So it's hard for me to make a comparison of gothic and punk present versus past. I'd say it's just like any form of music. It starts out kind of elementary and grows or matures. It starts out pure and people eventually put their own two cents in and it mutates from there.

AC- How did your new album, Emotional Vomit develop? What has the album meant to you personally?
RA- Through my esophagus and out my mouth! Blah! (laughs) No, it emerged very slowly. A lot of it came from girls. Girls playing that game..... that good old game of love. Twisting and wrenching you- just fucking with your head. Ruthlessly I must say. Putting you through an emotional Hell. So, Emotional Vomit is the throes and heartbreaks of love in life that I've gone through put to song. Rather than go strangle the bitch, rather than kill myself, rather than drown my sorrows in drug and drink (which I did for a little while) I took it out on music and expressed it that way. It's better to construct with your hurt than it is to destruct because then you're just hurting more. You know, you take the poison and turn it into medicine.

AC- What do you think some of the high and low points of Emotional Vomit are for you?
RA- Most of it has been high points. I love the way the art direction came out. The material I used I liked. Probably the low points were that I could have done better on a few of the songs. I wanted them produced a certain way..... well, not produced a certain way. I produced the record, but I wanted them to end up sounding a certain way. At times my engineer wouldn't jive with me. I didn't have enough time and enough room to really make the songs sound the way I wanted them to because of things like the budget, engineer, etc.

AC- You did a cover of a Depeche Mode song on your new LP. Do you really like Depeche Mode or was this meant as sort of a joke?
RA- I love Depeche Mode. I really do. I love all kinds of stuff. I mean I love all music. The fact that anybody makes any kind of sounds and records it or goes up on a stage and performs it..... I don't care if it's Johnny Cash to G.G. Allin, they all have a place in the musical world. They all have the right to do so. It's art. Getting back to the question, yes, I do like Depeche Mode. I don't like all of their stuff, but I do like most of it. That "Never Let Me Down Again" song..... I don't know. The first time I heard it was when I watched MTV and the video for that song came on. I thought it was the most intense, beautiful song. I thought "I have to record this." It was done in a serious spirit.

AC- How would you describe your current music?
RA- There was a lot of kids in Europe as well as here in America that would always ask me 'Well, what do you consider yourself? Heavy Metal, Hardcore, rock and roll, what? Are you hardcore, grindcore, speedcore?' I'd tell them I'm "Mycore." They go 'mycore?' Or 'Meincore' like in Germany. Hey, It's my own core. I describe my current music as my current music. I'm not into labels. I'd say I play Baskin-Robbins rock, okay?

AC- What has been most satisfying to you about your work overall?
RA- What's been most satisfying to me about my work is the people that enjoy it, and come up to compliment me on it. They tell me how happy it makes them feel or anything from 'made me feel good' to 'got me laid' to 'changed my life.' So, what's most satisfying to me is the feedback I get from fans.

AC- Has singing been difficult as well as writing and playing music simultaneously?
RA- I think what was most difficult was trying to coordinate singing and playing at the same time. A lot of times the music that I write and then the singing pattern that I write counterpoint each other in a sense.....they don't flow with each other. It was kinda hard. It was kinda like when a drummer first learns to keep beats with his hands and with his foot on the bass peddle at the same time. Also, I've run around a lot. No matter what band I'm in I run around all over the place. So I had to learn to pace myself, because I'd be running around doing a lead solo and all of a sudden I come up to the microphone and I could barely breathe out the words. Working out helped a lot (laughs).

AC- Since your work up until recently, you've been known primarily as a guitarist. Has that created problems for your new work as a singer?
RA- No, I really don't consider that to be a problem. I've always done backing vocals with all the bands I've been in besides Christian Death.

AC- What kinds of reactions have you received out of listeners concerning your new material?
RA- Everything from praise and worship to verbal shit slingin'. You know, not everybody will like everything, and not everybody's going to dislike everything. To each his own. I personally don't give a fuck what anybody thinks about my material. I create it and I record it and I play it for my own enjoyment, my own enjoyment only. Anybody else that likes it, great! Anybody that doesn't like it don't listen to it. Simple as that, right?

AC- Have you been performing live recently?
RA- I've played a couple other local joints in addition to touring. One night I was supposed to play a show at Club Lingerie. Our drummer had to play in his other band first, then play with us. Right when he was done he didn't have time to pack up his drums or anything. He had to shoot right over to Club Lingerie to play the show that we were doing. So, when he got there, the band that was supposed to lend him a drum set had split with the drums. We couldn't use any other drums set and it was really terrible. David Bowie was there to see me and with the way things worked out I was just furious. I was like "Oh no, here's my luck again." I have had a lot of bad luck in this business. I really do. A lot of things go wrong with me. About 60 to 70 percent of the time I have technical difficulties on stage, even though during sound check everything goes alright. I don't know if it's a curse or if it's just Murphy's law. It follows me all around and gets me irritated. Sometimes I feel like blowing the world apart. In the long run when I talk about it, it's pretty humorous.

AC- What will be some of your near future plans?
RA- Well, I just returned about four or five months ago from a European tour with my Yardsale, and I want to go back again. It went over really well. I'd like to do a U.S. tour too. Right now I've got to stay home for a little while because my fiancee is expecting. We're going to have a baby in about six weeks now. I want to be around to help raise my child. Then I plan on hitting the road again. I love touring, I just can't get that out of my system. I love new faces and places, and as I mentioned, I'll be working on a new album. I've got all kinds of projects going on as well. I currently play drums for a band called Three Ring Binder which consists of myself, and three bass players. We do everything from George Gershwin to Motorhead, and our own originals. We're just now starting to play a lot of the LA and Orange County clubs and search for a label to put out our very, very unique material. I also play guitar in a band called Wheel of Law. It's an experimental type band, it comes up with that texturing guitar playing that I mentioned. I use various tunings and effects. All together the band itself has a wide range and intense variety of sounds. I will continue on with the Yardsale. We just did an Adolescents reunion show, and we're going to put out a new album with the original members. I'm keeping pretty damn busy. I've started producing a couple local bands and a band in Colorado called House of Cards, and I'm open to anybody else that wants me to produce them. I'll do the killer job and make you sound like a million. You may not make a million, but you'll sound like it.

AC- Your brothers have worked with you in just about every band or project you've done. Have you tried to keep them involved in your work on an ongoing basis?
RA- Yes I have because they are in the same vein that I am when it comes to writing and playing. It's almost like we are somewhat inter-connected even though we have different ideas of what we like to do, what kinds of bands we like to be in, and the kinds of music that we like to play varies a bit. Although in the long run we're all the same. I like to have my brothers work with me because they're very easy to get along with, they're good workers and catch on super quick.We did a project on a Ramones compilation record, doing Ramones covers for Triple X. I got on there to do "Bonzo Goes to Pittsburgh" and I decided instead of doing it as Rikk Agnew, let's do it as The Agnews. The three of us had never played all together on one song before. I thought that would be a great thing to do. So we called it The Agnews and I made a tape of the song from the Ramones record and we practiced it in a bathroom in a bar (laughs). I'm not going into details but that's where we ended up rehearsing it. We listened to the tape once, and as we were listening to the tape, those guys were catching on. See, I played drums and sang on it, my brother Alfie played guitar, and my other brother Frank played bass 'cause at the time Frank had injured his finger climbing over the fence of a graveyard where him and his friends were drinking. You know those wrought-iron gates with the spikes on top? Ouch! It hurts my back just to talk about it. His finger was super damaged so he could only play bass. By the time we had played the song on the tape twice, we had it down. We went down an hour later, cut it, and it worked out really great. The last Yardsale show I did was in December '90, and that one..... well, one of my members, a guitar player Dan Coburn had to go into the hospital for a kidney operation and my drummer Chris had a lot of problems with our truck when we came back from the tour. So, it was just me and Brad Jackman the bass player. I needed a guitar player and I needed a drummer. So I thought, hey, my brothers they all play multi-instruments as I do. So I put the instruments in a little hat and they drew whatever they were going to play. Alfie ended up playing drums and Frank played guitar. That was the first time the three of us had ever played together in a band onstage at the same time. That was really neat. Even my mom was there cheering us on. She usually goes to a lot of our shows, but this one she was really proud 'cause all three of her sons were up there. She was going off headbanging- going crazy. She's a great mom, she's like 61 years old going on 18.

AC- Do you all come from a musically inclined family?
RA- No. Me and my brothers are the only ones in the family that play music. Other than that my Grandpa is probably the only person that's musical out of all my aunts, cousins, uncles, etc. He's my mom's dad- Alfonso Fernandez. He played with the Latinaires, he played on a lot of movie soundtracks during the '30s and '40s, and he also did some work with Xavier Cougat. He was supposed to go on a European tour with Xavier Cougat, but declined because he was a dedicated family man. He didn't want to leave them behind.

AC- Do you attempt to teach each other musical techniques?
RA- No, Not really. We all just pick up stuff on our own. It's almost like it just comes naturally.

AC- Have the three of you had any formal music schooling?
RA- None. None at all. We've never took a lesson in our lives. I don't even know that any of us can read music. I think we can a little bit the same way as learning to play the instruments.

AC- What do you see yourself doing 10 or 15 years from now?
RA- Dead! Either dead or being the father of a teenager pullin' my hair out. Maybe the father of a couple teenagers, I don't know. I see myself still writing and performing music. I will perform and write music until the day I die. I'll never be a manager of a band. Believe me, I've seen managers and by the time they're 30 they look like they're 80. I want to continue doing this. I'll always be putting out music. The Yardsale will go on and on and on. Maybe it will go on with my children.

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This interview originally appeared in Antocularis issue #1. August, 1992. For more information about Rikk Agnew's releases and current projects visit http://www.rikkagnew.com/