Interview with
Derf Scratch of Fear
(Page 2)

CONTINUED from ...

Have you talked to the other guys since then?
No. I saw Spit a while back, and me and Philo started a band after that called The Happy for a while, and then that didn't work out and I haven't talked to them in, God, fifteen or twenty years. And I was thinking, after reading Spit's [interview] that maybe we oughta start a band and redo the first album and call it "Fearlesslee."
Ooh! Ha ha!
And just rewrite all the lyrics and do parodies on all the songs.
It's too bad you guys weren't able to write more songs together.
Yeah, I know. If I'd been there, it would have been different, but --
Have you heard the other records?
I've heard parts of More Beer, and a couple of places I go, "Yeah, that's my bass playing on there." But of course, Lorenzo's getting the money for it, not me, so I don't care. People have always said to me, "Why don't you go sue him?" And it's like -- no. You know, if I were to sue him, it would be like trying to take money when there's no money there. The record didn't make that much money, and the lawyer fees would be too much to do, and it would just make me look like a real asshole too, I think. So I've just been waiting for this chance to tell somebody what was really going on.
Do you think Lee was faking being a nice guy the whole time? Or did it change him to get more popular?
Maybe faking it a little -- faking it somewhat. He had a good eye for horseflesh or whatever. You know, when you go to the races and there's a guy with a good eye for horsef -- err... He could tell who's a good player -- who had talent -- and he surrounded himself with three really talented guys. And he took the glory for it.
         And as you can tell, he got rid of us three and he isn't doing squat. He keeps hammering Fear -- I keep seeing, "Fear's playing some place." Now everybody's, when they go see it, it's a joke. He's beating a dead horse. And now it's not even cool to like Fear anymore out here. And I guess his acting career didn't pan out. He thought he was gonna be the next -- the guy who just died. What's his name?
Marlon Brando?
Yeah, he thought he was gonna be the next Marlon Brando. He really did. But really when you see him, like in Flashdance when he plays that club manager, he's actually being himself in that. Yeah, that's really what he was like. An asshole. You don't have to print that.
Why not? Ha! I mean, he alienated three really, really talented guys.
Yeah.
He had something special, and even by the second --
It happens in band after band. I've seen it happen. So I've got this band called Derf Scratch andFriends where I'm gonna share publishing with everybody, and screw all that. My wife's playing in it.
What does she play?
She sings and she plays keyboard.
Oh, okay. How long have you been married?
Mrs. Scratch and I have been together for almost 12 years now -- married for 8 of them.
Oh, okay! Very nice.
I played the field quite a bit, and I've -- enough's enough!
What happened when you were beaten up that time? Spit said they just pulled you off the stage?
No. No, no, no. What happened was we were playing a pretty big hall with Black Flag and Adolescents. We were headlining, and we'd just played and I was feeling pretty rich about myself, and I'm walking through the club -- I was going to see if my girlfriend ever showed up, because I hadn't seen her at the club.
         So I was crossing the dance floor, and as I'm walking across the dance floor, this skinhead about 6'3 -- pretty strong guy -- laid this body block into me, into my shoulder as I was walking by. He hits me really hard in the shoulder, and I turn around and look at him, and he flips me off. So I go up and we both hit each other at the same time, but he totally won. I turned around and started running from him, and he tore the jacket off my back and started punching me in the same side of my face over and over. I finally charged him, buried my head in his stomach and wrapped my arms around his back and started yelling for help. Finally these "vatos" from like 18th Street Gang pulled him off of me. Then he left the place, whoever did it. I vowed I was gonna get even with the guy, and later on I found out that somebody knew where he was, and I heard that he was eating out of dumpsters and stuff, and I decided my revenge was to leave him alone.
How did Spit remember that so wrong?
I don't know. Well, we did have this one thing that we'd do whenever we'd go on the road, and that was we'd always lie to the press. We'd always go, "Whatever you do, lie to the press. Because that way, the next time somebody interviews you, you can say, "You're gonna get the real story." And that's how we'd keep the press coming back.
Ohhhhhh. So that's what you're doing to ME! Awwwwww jesus.
No, no no no. No no no. This is once and for all. I don't wanna have to repeat all this stuff again. People ask me about it and I'm blue in the face trying to explain it.
What do you think about the album now?
Oh, I think it's great. I think it's great. Back then, it was funny, first when we'd put it on, if you ever wanted a party -- If you ever wanted to clear a room, you could put that record on and it would clear the room quicker than shit. It scared people!
Let me turn the tape over. I'm not done!
And you know that part of Spit's interview where he said he beat me up once? I wish I'd been there when that happened, because I don't remember that at all.
Oh, Spit claiming he -- oh, he did -- I think he --
Was he joking when he said that?
Did he say he beat you up or just hit you? Because it sounded serious when he said it.
In the interview it says, "I beat him up once."
Oh, he did say that. Maybe I heard him wrong and he actually said, "I almost beat him up once." You know, I sent him the interview when I was finished --
He's 130 pounds soaking wet.
Ha!
He's a real nice guy. He's got a warped sense of humor. So when I read the part about how they left because Lee was trying to use them as sidemen, that's the main reason it looks like I wasn't pulling my weight. They were really -- Philo and Spit were loading their equipment, and I was having guys carry my stuff out. But I was where the money was because of Lee -- making sure that they were gonna get their fair share. That's what happened there.
What did you think about the movie The Decline of Western Civilization
What do you mean what I thought about it? I thought it was cool.
I think it's great. It's just that I've interviewed a bunch of people who were in it. That guy who called you to set up this interview [Thom White] has set me up with a lot of people, and everyone always complains, "Oh, that's not what the scene was really like," "Oh, they should have had the Weirdos in there," you know, this and that. And it's a movie that I watched about 20 times when I was a kid!
Well, here's what happened. Lee and I were going through Laurel Canyon putting fliers on telephone poles on Laurel Canyon. There's a parallel street -- you ever been in L.A.?
Not in a long time, but yeah.
There's a parallel little street that runs parallel to Laurel Canyon, and if you get caught by the police putting up fliers, back then it was like a $350 fine and a weekend in jail. So we were doing our guerrilla tactics and like walking along the street down below and then running up to a telephone pole, stapling the flier up and running back down.
         Well, Penelope Spheeris lived up in Laurel Canyon, and she was driving down in her Mustang and she saw us do this. So she pulled over and asked us if we wanted to be in the movie. And, "Okay!" You should see my scrapbook; I've got pictures of the meetings for "The Decline" with everybody that was gonna be in it. The Plugz were gonna be in it, but they decided that they didn't wanna be in it. Too bad. I thought Penelope did a good job.
I really like it.
Yeah! I've got a copy of it. I used to watch it all the time.
Yeah. I mean, I always used to fast-forward past the Slash part just because it went on so long.
Yeah, Catholic Discipline. THAT was bogus -- the Catholic Discipline band. That was put together because of Claude Bessy and Craig Lee, the guy who was the guitar player -- he wrote for the L.A. Weekly -- and he was in it. There was a little political thing going on there.
I didn't like the Alice Bag Band much either.
Yeah. She had a band before that called The Bags.
They were really good, I heard.
They were good. And this was them trying to recreate The Bags, but it didn't work. And they just wanted to, I guess, round it out with some female singers.
But otherwise I think it's a great movie. I just wish, I mean, I always wished that they had interviewed you guys and the Circle Jerks like they did X and Black Flag.
Yeah, I wish they did too. There's a short movie that the guy who ran the Cuckoo's Nest just put out, where me and Spit are interviewed. It's short, but it's pretty funny. And uh, what else have we shot.... Some other stuff -- I can't think of them offhand. You gotta check out American Pop though.
Okay. Is the movie itself good? Or should I just check it out --
Yeah! Yeah, rent it. I think you can rent it.
Okay. Yeah, I've seen the commercial so many times. The Jimi Hendrix part, and --
Apparently that was gonna be a movie that was gonna have like the Stones doing music in it and stuff, because I had this agent for a while named Maggie Abbott who -- she was an English woman -- and so somehow the negotiations got all screwed up, and they ended up going with like, you know, Bob Seger and shit like that. So it became from an A-movie that it could have been, to a B-movie. What's funny is that that premiered the same night that "The Decline" premiered (December 1980), so we were able to go to two movie premieres that we were in the same night on Hollywood Boulevard. It was a trip. Except "The Decline" had this big crowd out in front of it. And I had a big black eye at that time because I'd just been beaten up a couple weeks before. It wasn't until like two weeks later that I realized my face had been fractured the way it had.
Wow. How long did it take to heal?
Well, after I went to the hospital and they set my bones, they put this cup on the side of my face so I wouldn't roll over on it. I told Rolling Stone that it was a drainage cup just because it sounds better. As soon as they put the bones all back together, it was just about a month and then I was back to normal. The night I got out of the hospital, I played at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go.
Damn. Do you know why the guy hated you?
Ah, no. It was just a real violent night there too. A lot of people were getting beat up. The punks were sowing their oats.
Were all your shows really violent? The crowd, I mean?
No. A lot of them were though. We closed the Starwood and that night a bouncer got stabbed. And Lee didn't mind provoking the violence schtick; I was more into trying to make people laugh. So was Philo. I heard after I left that the band wasn't the same. Lee was able to shut Philo up. 'Cuz me and Philo had fun kinda like making fun of Lee on-stage and stuff sometimes. And like I said, it kinda rubbed him the wrong way. I was the only guy that would stand up to Lee. It was a tragedy.
All three of you guys in that movie, you could just tell it would be -- even if you never got around to playing the songs -- it would just be a great show just watching you guys. You know, you telling jokes and you know, you know --
Philo would tell jokes and he'd go "Uh b-bl b-bl" You know, you'd hear him in the background, "Ah b-la bibib bleah," throwing his guitar around and stuff.
         The thing where Philo broke his guitar that Spit talks about in your interview -- what really happened is we were in Tempe, Arizona, and Philo was telling a joke, and it was so hot that Lee went up and pushed Philo -- and pushed him so hard that he fell over the monitor in front of the stage and off the stage and onto his guitar and broke the neck in half. I mean, Lee was out of control at times.
Did he just want to be a tough character?
Huh?
Did he just want to be a tough character?
Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I have a lot of anger towards that guy, as you can tell.
Spit sounded the same way when I talked to him.
Really?
Yeah. Spit said he just had this feeling like Lee was out for himself the whole time and didn't realize that Fear wasn't -- I mean, he thought Fear was great just because of him, and that wasn't the case.
Yeah, and I was glad to hear that Spit said that I was the bass player -- the right bass player for Fear, when you asked him that question. Because I think they realized after the fact that they shouldn't have let him get rid of me.
In addition to being a great bass player, you were a character too!
Yeah.
And that was a big part of the Fear show.
Yeah!
And I don't know who Lorenzo was, or --
I think he played with the Dickies for a while before that. Flea was the first bass player that replaced me.
Oh yeah?
Yeah, I've got a picture of me that looks exactly like that picture with Flea that you printed. I'll send you a copy of it. But I'm in the picture. It was shot at DAYMAX where we rehearsed. They have these white roller doors that go up for the garage, and we'd always shoot it in front of that with high-contrast black and white photo. So you wouldn't really see the lines in the door, but it just looks like a psych -- you know, like a movie set. So it was always white, high-contrast black-and-white pictures, so it was kinda timeless looking.
Yeah, send me that!
Yeah, I will.
Also -- what was I gonna ask you.... Oh! What were you going for with "Getting The Brush"? It's just so different from the rest of the album.
Well, actually I had a bunch of other -- originally we did about four songs of mine, and we did about six songs of Lee's, and we did about three songs of Philo's, when we'd go out and play.
         And then we played in this thing when Casablanca Records was interested in us, and the people who started the Hong Kong Cafe -- that was just to find bands for their label -- Casablanca. And we ended up playing for the president, Bogart, before he died there. And they decided what set that we were gonna play, and the first four songs were my songs. They thought they were the most commercial.
         And after we did that, Lee says, "Okay. Well, we're just gonna do my songs because we've gotta have 'a sound.' A distinct sound." And we all thought, "Well... Lee, you're probably right. I'll be a soldier; I'll go along with that." So we did that and some of the songs are gonna be coming out from back then that I did back then on some CDs that I'm gonna be releasing. And uh.... Does that answer your question? What was your question?
Ha! What you were going for on that particular song.
Oh, "Getting The Brush"! I was kinda miffed a little bit, I think, and that was just a song where I played what I call an "A-demolish chord." It's an A, E-flat and A-flat, where it's two of the biggest -- minor second and a tri-tone off a tonic note -- those are the two most dissonant intervals, and I just put them together and so it's just real cringey. And I would orchestrate the band by bringing the bass neck down, and it was just so sick that Lee liked it, so that was the one he allowed me to put on the record. And I wrote the music for "Fresh Flesh."
Oh yeah?
Yeah. I was the music end of that one and Lee wrote the lyrics.
Okay. Are there any other things that maybe Spit didn't mention about the way the songs were constructed, like you said --
Spit's input on the band in hindsight was so critical, and he really should have gotten some publishing and songwriting credit on all of them, because the way he made them sound was enough as to be part-songwriter, I think.
Did Lee get all the credit for all the songs?
Yeah! Except for the ones that he wrote with Philo. Philo wrote the music for "Camarillo," and "We Destroy The Family" was Philo. And Lee got half-credit on those. Yeah, he was really out for number one. Disgusting, huh?
Disappointing. Very disappointing. I don't know; you like to think the best about the kind of people that are in the bands you've been listening to your whole life. It's just disappointing when you hear things like that. But are there any other that, you know -- because you said something earlier that I thought was really interesting about one of the songs. I've already forgotten which one you were talking about, but -- Oh! No, no -- "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place." Are there any other things that people might not know just as listeners that you guys did that were really musically -- whether screwing with the rhythms or doing some kind of --
I can tell you this about the movie "The Decline." There was a song that Philo wrote that started off, "O'er the land of the free!" and Lee says "And the homos too!" Right?
Yeah.
Well, I talked him out of saying "homo Jews." Ha! That's what it originally said. Because we realized that the music business was run, or is run, by half-gay and half-Jewish people. We can't alienate 'em all! Otherwise nobody will try to make us go further!
HA! Oh, that's awesome!
And after Lee finished that, the rest of the song is in A and it goes, "We're waiting for the gas/We're waiting for the gas/We're standing in the showers/And we're waiting for the gas." And Philo would sing, "Where are a we-o? We are at home-o. Where are a you-o? You are a homo!" "We're waiting for the gas/We're waiting for the gas/We're standing in the showers/And we're waiting for the gas." And that was the whole song. So there's something that you might find interesting.
How many songs did you guys -- I mean, I wanna hear all these songs! Did you guys have a bunch of songs that didn't end up on those two records?
Well, no. That was about it for -- I mean, "Null Detector" was still in its beginning phases, and I haven't listened to the second record to remember what those were. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you.
Okay. How long were you in the band?
I was in it for about four years. I started it with Lee. I found Philo and Spit for it. I mean, it just happened that it was through my contacts and stuff. And it was through my contacts that we got on Saturday Night Live also. And it was my contacts that signed us to a deal so we finally did make a record. So I get tired of people dissing me about this kinda shit.
In retrospect, looking back all those years, were you at all doing anything to affect the band's progress? I mean, I know Lee said that you were a junkie, but were you showing up and not playing well?
No, no! Not at all. Not at all.
So they dropped you just because you were getting a roadie?
Well, Spit's kind of a slight, small guy. And I think Lee was all of a sudden befriending Spit real heavy. If you ever talk to Philo, Philo'd have a whole different story too, I'm sure. And I always felt that making fun of ourselves was the best way to keep fresh and alive, so I'd make fun of Spit and Philo -- there was always badgering going on between us all -- and I must have rubbed him the wrong way for a while there. And I think Spit, probably in a state of denial, is saying that that's what was going on, or just wanted to believe Lee because of realizing in hindsight that they really fucked up when they let me go. It was the beginning of their demise.
It just seems like a strange decision for them to make. I mean, even in just the few songs they show in that movie, it's so clear that every member of that band is really, really integral and important to the sound.
It was really "a band."
Yeah, exactly. It seems like the kind of thing where they would at least warn you, or -- Did they give you warnings? Or say, "Hey --"
No! No, I called up Lee to see when the next rehearsal was gonna be after Get Crazy was over, and he went, "Hey man, I wanna get a new bass player." And that was it.
Why?
He said I wasn't playing good and all this shit. And that was bullshit. That was total bullshit. And like I told you, I just said, "Listen Lee, why don't you just face it? You just don't like me anymore." I think it was just because I was getting more press than him, I was getting more females.... You know. I don't know. I was out on the scene all the time, and I had a lot of girlfriends. And I -- I don't know. I wonder that too. I was pissed off at all of them because they didn't stand up for me against him.
Yeah. So how did you end up still playing with Philo? Did he end up calling you? Or --
I think I called him and we got together and played. Finally I had to fire him from my band because he was falling in love with this girl who was in love with me, and I didn't really want anything to do with her, and it just was not healthy. And I guess Spit's not with Susan anymore.
Oh, really?
Yeah. He had a kid with her. I've got his phone number so I should call him, but I thought I'd let this interview come out before I get back to him. See what they have to say then.
I'd love to get Lee's side of it, but I've tried to call him a couple of times -- so has the guy at the zine [CITIZINE] -- but he doesn't return our calls.
Oh yeah, you gotta give him twelve grand to get an interview with him. It's ridiculous.
Because he's the star of Clue: The Movie?
Yeah, really. A lot of people as time goes on are going, "You know? Lee really is an...."
It's just so disappointing because you guys -- I mean, at least there was one more album with Philo and Spit so there was still kinda that sound for one more album.
Who knows? Maybe after this, we'll get back together and do something.
"Fearlesslee." Ha!
Wouldn't that be cool?
That would be pretty good. Or touring as "The REAL Fear."
Yeah, that's a pretty good idea actually.
Well, he's got Lee Ving's Army and he's calling THEM "Fear." You know, to be honest, I actually like the last album they put out [American Beer]. It's not classic Fear -- it just sounds like Lee Ving songs. It doesn't have the --
It sounds like Lee with some sidemen.
Exactly. There's no real personality to the playing; it's just that the songs are really catchy. There's definitely nothing on there like "We Destroy The Family" or --
Do you think he's trying to go commercial now?
No. No, not really. It sounds like he's trying to recreate the sound of old Fear basically. Especially the third Fear record, which is a real piece of shit. That one was so embarrassing, when he came back -- it was called Have Another Beer With Fear. Not a good record. The follow-up I like though! Like I said, it's not as idiosyncratic as the first two, but it's --
Those are the songs that weren't good enough for the first two. Well, if you have any -- do you wanna end it right now? If you have any more questions you wanna ask, just call me back.
Okay. And I'll shoot this over to you when I finally get it all typed up.
I might go, "Oh, I wish I'd said that!" and I'll write anything else down that I can think of. One thing that I find ironic goes back to when we were auditioning drummers and Lee asked the question, "If we had a show to play one night, and you had an acting job the same night, which would you choose?" Well, I just wish I had asked Lee the same question!
Okay, great.
Alright?
Who should I e-mail this back to? Because I e-mailed you at that one address and I didn't hear back.
Yeah, I'll see it.
Okay.
Nice talking to you, Mark!
You too! Thanks so much.
We'll talk again, I hope.
Yeah, me too.
Alright buddy.
Alright. Bye.
See ya.

September 15, 2004.

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