The Joneses had so much fun

PHOTO by RENA KOSNETT

Joneses guitarist/singer Jeff Drake is a smart man; he’s waiting for the train in Bakersfield the day before Thanksgiving—sounds like the beginning of a Buck Owens song—instead of dealing with the sock inspectors at the airports and he’s working toward a doctorate in history, too, but he still isn’t exact on what it is about the Joneses (whose last recordings came out on indie labels before Reagan went home) that still keeps people after them. He asked a high school friend and got a long answer—about spirit and energy and songs that still stick in people’s heads—because like a lot of bands that people still chase a generation later, they were so pure and good at what they did that no words come simple enough to really fit.

“Pillbox” has become their signature (a fast, loose and pushy glam track with Drake as j.v. Jagger snotbox on top) and when it staggered out on hardercorer punk comp Someone Got Their Head Kicked In in 1982, it got more hate mail than every other band got fan mail combined. Now with all Joneses recordings back in print (thanks to Full Breach Kicks, reporting their best sales ever) Drake has reassembled another version of the band (pianist Greg Kuehn, punkly noted for TSOL work, plus his son Elvis of the Diffs on guitar, Edan Knieval on bass and longtime Jones Mike Sessa on drums) that kept L.A. rock & roll alive just far enough into the ’80s for the hair-metal bands—often spotted pre-breakout paying severe attention at Joneses shows—to run off with all the fame and money.

Do you have your Ph.D. yet?

No, I’m getting my B.A. in May. I’m a history major.

Is it true that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it?

That’s absolutely right.

How did you hear the New York Dolls when you were 12 years old and living in Merced?

Me and a buddy of mine and my older brother were all into the Rolling Stones, and one day my brother came home and had the first New York Dolls album in his hand, and he threw it on and said, ‘Here, man, this band sounds like a bunch of faggots! You guys’ll love it!’ And we loved it! It was very isolated there—very agricultural. I grew up in Anaheim and my parents moved up there, and it was a big culture shock. Luckily in those days they had cable radio and I got a station in San Francisco—KSAN—and they’d play the Dolls and the Ramones and the Pistols. And I was an avid reader of Creem.

Did they ever make fun of you in their letters section?

No, I’ve never written a letter to any publication. But Creem was my bible when I was a teenager. I read it cover to cover. I’d read Lester Bangs and if he recommended it, I’d go get it. That’s how I got exposed to that stuff. I was really into glam, like Marc Bolan and Mott the Hoople and Suzi Quatro. I loved it.

And you wrote ‘Pillbox’ when you were 16.

The second song I ever wrote. The first was ‘Criminals in My Car.’ And it was all downhill from there. I wrote those songs before I could play guitar—I had lyrics and stuff, and I threw a couple chords together. Those are probably the two songs—especially ‘Pillbox’—that people seem to like. When it was released, it wasn’t the song we were known for—we were known for the cover of ‘Crocodile Rock’—but for the last several years, people have been ascribing greatness to that one.

When was the first time you found out people still liked the band?

I was in Alex’s Bar and the guy from Junk records told me a band in San Francisco was covering ‘Pillbox.’ And that was a big moment. And the other thing that made me think was I did an interview for the Vice Principals for Hitlist, and in the preface, the writer was using words like ‘legendary.’ Legandary? Don’t you have to be dead first? Well, I don’t feel like a legend—but people are paying attention, so I better take note.

Did you really get more hate mail from ‘Pillbox’ than the rest of the bands got fan mail?

That’s true. We knew we weren’t necessarily liked by the punks because they thought we were too rock ‘n’ roll or whatever, and the heavy metal crowd thought we were too punk rock—but we never intended to be punk rock, and I love punk rock. But as far as I was concerned, once the Pistols broke up, it was over. So we were doing music we liked. We did a show at the T-Bird Roller Rink in Pico Rivera with the Circle Jerks and the Agents of Aggression or the Beastmasters or whatever, and I was just covered in saliva. People were spitting on me because they hated us.

Did you ever see like the guys from Guns N’ Roses taking notes at your shows?

As we started getting more popular, there were a lot of guys in the audience that looked like us and dressed like us. LA Weekly called them ‘Joneses clones.’ Like Guns N’ Roses, Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns—but they came from a heavy metal mindset and we didn’t. And all those bands got signed to majors and we didn’t—ahead of our time or behind our time, I don’t know. I don’t think I could play heavy metal if I tried, and I wouldn’t exert a lot of effort in the first place. For a while Guns N’ Roses was the biggest band in the world, and of all the bands I’ve ever seen—I knew ’em before they were in Guns N’ Roses; I never thought they’d make it in a million years. I thought Axl sounded like Janis Joplin. They were too heavy—I didn’t get it.

Why do you think the Joneses songs still work?

The Joneses in my opinion sort of stand on the shoulders of giants. Everything we do is influenced by old country or old rock ‘n’ roll or glam rock—so I don’t know! It’s not like I write these masterpiece songs—the lyrics are simple, the music is simple, and more than anthing maybe it’s the attitude or the spirit or the rock ‘n’ roll celebration kind of thing.

Did you ever visit Eddie Cochran’s grave?

Funny you ask. It’s in Cypress. We used to go there and smoke pot and talk to the headstones—tell Eddie how much we were into him. It was sort of a little pilgrimage thing we used to do.

THE JONESES WITH SUPPORT TBA | THE BLUE CAFÉ | 210 THE PROMENADE | LONG BEACH 90802 | FRI, 9 PM | $10 | 21+ | THEBLUECAFE.COM.

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