Bryan Holland and Greg Kriesel attended Pacifica High in Garden Grove, California, together, where they were both on the cross-country team.
They formed their first band together (Manic Subsidal) with two other cross-country teammates one night in 1984 after failing to get into a Social Distortion show.
Once Holland had written a handful of songs with self-explanatory titles like Very Sarcastic and Sorority Bitch, the fledgeling band headed for a cheap local studio.
Momentarily waylaid when its guitarists jumped ship, the band recruited Kevin Wasserman, an older Pacifica grad who now worked as the school janitor. Ron Welty, meanwhile, was only 16 when he begged Holland to let him join Manic Subsidal.
Changing their name, in 1987 the Offspring paid to release their own 7″ single. Unable to afford the additional 25c per copy it cost to paste the front sleeves to the backs, the band bought a case of beer and glue sticks and held a party for their friends.
It took the band two and a half years to get rid of the 1,000 copies they printed.
Two years and a pile of rejections later, they signed a contract with Nemesis, a small punk label and recorded another 7″ (Baghdad) and an album debut, entitled The Offspring.
In 1992, Epitaph Records released Ignition, twelve brief but energetic Offspring songs that summed up the previous decade of Orange County punk.
Their first big hit came in 1994 with the catchy-as-hell single Come Out And Play (Keep ‘Em Separated), and their third album, Smash (1994), made the Californian quartet huge.
Rather than try to repeat the trick when recording a follow-up, they wanted to expand the styles in their sound – but the approach didn’t pay off. The resulting record, Ixnay On The Hombre (1997), stalled.
Americana (1998) – their fifth album – spawned the killer single, Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), and Why Don’t You Get A Job?, echoed the sing-songy charm of both The Beatles‘ Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Simon and Garfunkel‘s Cecilia.
Bryan ‘Dexter’ Holland Vocals, guitar Kevin ‘Noodles’ Wasserman
Guitar Greg K (Kriesel)
Bass Ron Welty
Drums James Lilja Drums
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