Hace algunos días les compartí una entrevista hecha a Youth Of Today. Ahora les dejo esta entrevista que le hicieron a Ray Cappo. Idolatrado por muchos, odiado por otros, no podemos negar que es una de las personas mas influyentes en el hardcore y el straight edge. Esta entrevista la hizo Tension Building, la verdad no se en que año, pero me pareció bastante interesante. SHOUT IT!
Tension Building Interview with Ray Cappo
First off, why did you decide to start Youth of Today?
It happened on a car trip to New Hampshire. Me and a guy from Violent Children, Warren, were driving up to New Hampshire to visit a friend of ours in college. I was graduating high school at the time, and my whole dream in a hardcore band was to preach Straight Edge, for the benefit of the world. It was the most righteous thing I could think of, it made the most sense. I just wanted to do something good with my life. I thought that life was stupid. Basically, I thought that the world was a lousy place with so many illusions and problems. So I wanted to preach Straight Edge, it seemed right, it seemed like a good cause. The scene was really lousy at the time. It was February 1985, and everyone, the whole hardcore scene, everything that I loved was turning metal. There was no such thing as Straight Edge anymore, I was Straight Edge and I was completely made fun of for being Straight Edge. The other gus in Violent Children, they were Staight Edge but they were really into metal and that whole scene. The whole scene was crossing over, Agnostic Front went metal and it broke about a million kids hearts. There was one band left that I saw, 7 Seconds, and they were getting a little softer but I still liked them.
So my dream was to establish the perfect hardcore band, one that was as hard as Negative Approach but had the message of 7 Seconds. So that was my dream in the band. I told this guy Warren how I desired to go on tour, and he said no, I don't want to, I don't want to go on tour. Basically, Violent Children never played outside of Connecticut, New York... the tri state area. I said why not, we're graduating high school let's go on tour, that would be my dream come true. He said, "No, I really just don't want to". So I said, "Alright then I quit the band, this is what I want to do". When I got back I was really fired up and I was thinking, I know Porcell will want to because I know Porcell's not into metal. He wants to start a Straight Edge band, he can't stand just living in the same stupid town his whole life. So what happened was as soon as I got back I called up Porcell and said, I got some good news and some bad news. The good news was Violent Children broke up, we're not in the band anymore.
The week before we had wrote that song "We Just Might" and the other singer of Violent Chlidren wouldn't sing it, he's like, I'm not going to sing that song, I think that it's violent, I think it's crazy, I said come on just sing it. Even the song "Youth of Today", that was a Violent Children song, he wouldn't sing "physically strong, morally straight", he thought it was corny. I said come on... Okay then I'll sing it.
So I told Porcell, "We're going to break up and we're going to start the new Straight Edge hardcore band, our dream band, I'm going to sing, your going to play guitar, and we're going to call it "Youth of Today". Its's going to be a completely generic band, and it's going to be a slap in the face to all these metal bands.
So Porcell says, Yeah that's a great idea, forget those guys... We're going to do "We Just Might" and "Youth of Today", so we just started. Porcell had this other band, a hardcore band called Younge Republicans, they were a pretty good band. The two other original members of YOT, Pesch and Graham, were from Younge Republicans. So I said, "We'll get Graham to play bass", he was straight, he hung out with us, so to make a long story short we got these other guys in the band and we started practicing.
I had this Honda scooter, I'd ride over to Porcell's house. It was like 40 minutes away and we'd practice everyday. We had these far out super Straight Edge songs, like that song "Straight Edge Revenge". Actually almost every song that we ever had we recorded except this one song "Polluted Mind". I can even remember the lyrics to it. The lyrics were... "Polluted Mind, Polluted Mind, Polluted Mind, Polluted mind of greed and hate, Polluted mind it's not too late, Polluted mind to be heading straight". It's probably on a couple very early live shows.
So anyway we started this band and right from the beginning this band was very successful. We were really bold and we challenge the crowd all the time and we'd make fun of the crowd and put down the crowd and we'd do this all over. A lot of people hated us right from the beginning which makes for a good start. We were really into the tough Straight Edge thing but at the same time we knew that was sort of stupid and we were into the let's be cool 7 Seconds type of Straight Edge too. We were sort of caught betwwen two worlds.
There was definitely a look, but this was actually the clothes we always wore anyway and we just had shaven heads, and hooded sweatshirts and high tops and rolled up jeans. That was just how we dressed but it turned out just because Porcell and I always wore that, that now that became the look...
So when you played were kids just like "Oh my God, this is it, this is my life...?"
Well what happened was we just started playing in certain towns... And with Violent Children we always wanted to get a brother band, a band to play around with... So anyway this one show at the Anthrax, these people in Connecticut would always give us a hard time for being Straight Edge. The Anthrax was like our home base club and people from the old scene would come, and we'd come and we'd always mix it up and have arguements with all these old school punks. We use to be such a minority but now we were getting some kids into it. Steve Ready (NY Wolfpack, song for YOT at the Oak Harbor show in '88) who's a devotee now, was one of the first Straight Edge kids in the whole rebirth of Straight Edge which started in Connecticut there. Dave Stein (Combined Effort Records) too, they would come down. They started a band called Albany Style. Then this band Crippled Youth played, they were basically like a punk rock band, they were all about 13 years old but we were really excited to hear them. Our drummers little sister said there were little punk kids who are into Jerry's Kids and SSD who were her age at school, about the seventh grade, we didn't believe her. Then they finally played at the Anthrax one day. They were all wearing Johnny Rotten shirts, Exploited shirts. Everyone at the Anthrax loved them, the old crowd and the new crowd.
Well they lived right near Porcell, so we became friends with these kids, we'd all go skating. We just started
hanging around with these guys, they would come to Connecticut and skate the ramp in my yard. We'd give them all these records to listen to, they were young kids who just wanted music to listen to. We'd give them all the good records and say, "You know Matt, you're getting so much because it took us years of buying the stupidest records, I wish someone had done this for me, so here is a stack of the greatest records". So to say the least like any younger kid admires an older kid these guys admired us and became like our younger brothers. Sure enough they dressed like us and shaved their heads. Well anyway this was the beginning of the Youth Crew, there were these guys from Crippled Youth, Albany Style and Youth Of Today and we'd play these shows, these Youth Crew shows, only Youth Crew bands. The whole club would be booing... Anywhere we would play we'd make sure that Crippled Youth would play with us. It was really exciting then, it was all really new and all this stuff was going down. We'd play mainly in Albany, Connecticut and Rhode Island. We had this new young scene. It was really prime because a lot of people wanted to be into hardcore but there was no hardcore left.
So..I was friends with 7 Seconds from "The Crew" tour, they came and played with Violent Children, So this time I wrote them and said we'd set up the shows with them. This is what happened, this is great! The guys from the Anthrax club knew that 7 Seconds were our favorite band, we said, "Look you have to put us on the 7 Seconds bill". At the last minute they told us we couldn't play. We were so mad because 7 Seconds had let us play with them, in Rhode Island and in Albany. We were so upset, this was our hometown and this was the Youth Crew band. We said, "You have to let us play", and they said, "Sorry, this other lousy band... they put some crazy band on the bill..." I was so upset. So anyway the first show was in Albany, it was out dream show, hanging out with Kevin. The next show was in Rochester, we didn't play, we drove to Connecticut and recorded the single, then we drove to Rhode Island and we played with them and Verbal Assault. The next show was in Connecticut, I was helping 7 Seconds move in and Steve Youth comes up and says, "You know, if you want, we could put out your record for you", he says, "They just started this record label 'Positive Force' and they're looking for some bands". I ran outside and I saw Pete from Verbal Assault and I said "Pete we're going to be on Positive Force..." Pete says, "Oh man, we want to be on Positive Force, this stinks, you guys get to be on Positive Force why can't we?". Something like that but not in a bad way, so Pete asks if they can be on Positive Force and they're like, "Sure you both can be". So we were so psyched but the only lousy thing was... I go up to Kevin and I say "we're so psyched that we're going to be on Positive Force but we just found out that the club isn't going to let us play tonight. They hate us here, they hate the Youth Crew. He's like here's what we'll do and he makes this plan, it was so exciting you know. 7 Seconds is about to go on, everyone is there, it's packed. We're standing right at the side of the stage... So this is Kevin's plan, he comes out and says we're 7 Seconds from Reno and this is a new song called Youth Crew. Then I come running out and say, "Hey, you can't play "Youth Crew", that's our song, and Kevin says, "Well, if you think you can play, then play it". Then he says, "I'm just kidding everybody this is Youth Of Today, the club wouldn't let them play but they're going to play a couple songs". All the Youth Crew kids are like, "Yeah!!" It was great, we had this great picture of Porcell playing and Kevin in the back screaming along. It was so exciting for us, we played "Youth Crew", "I Have Faith" and something else then Graham broke a bass string on Steve Youth's bass, it was all pretty cool, everyone singing along.
After that the whole band went off to college. Still though my whole dream was off being in this band and preaching Straight Edge. So we set up a tour for winter when we had our break. 7 Seconds invited us to fly out to the West Coast to go on tour with them. But, the whole time our drummer, Pesch, wasn't into it, he wasn't into Stright Edge, he just didn't like the whole thing. So at the last minute Pesch said he wasn't going ot play drums, we had a show in Albany, a show in New York and then we flew to California for New Years. So we're like, "What do you mean Pesch you're not going to do this, we have two days notice..." So I had to leave Connecticut to go and find Drew from Crippled Youth. I just trained him how to play the songs on drums, then Drew and I went up to Albany and Drew played for us in Albany and then we drove straight to New York and played there with Agnostic Front. It was Agnostic Front's return home show from their Cause For Alarm tour, and the thing was that they hadn't played out in so long and they had completely gone metal. It was so distinct this is not hardcore this is metal, and it blew everyones mind. We got up there and it was just straight preaching, you know about straight edge and and total hardcore. People were into it but they were a little taken back. Then we flew to Reno and did the same thing there, we played with Uniform Choice who were starting Straight Edge thing out there, and 7 Seconds. We played in San Franscisco and up in Sacramento. We met all these kids in Los Angles who were just primed, because they were getting into Uniform Choice.
Well the band went back, my girlfriend was the girl who ran Positive Force at the time, so I stayed out in Reno and lived with Kevin Seconds for a few months... Oh, we didn't have a drummer so you might wonder who played drums for us out there.
Who?
Kevin Seconds and Troy Mowatt split up the set. Isn't that weird, Kevin Seconds Played drums for us for a whole tour.
So when you got back to New York what was going on?
I got this letter from Tommy Carrol when I was in Reno, he was just starting this band called "Straight Ahead". Well he said "I'm really into you guys and I want to play drums for you". I told him I would meet him in New York. So I met him and I heard him play drums and I liked him, so he joined and then Craig Setari (Craig was also in Straight Ahead, he joined YOT on bass) joined and that was the new Youth Of Today.
So when I got to New York the scene was big! There were all these Straight Edge bands. Well actually, it was just that Underdog started, who were sort of in the Straight Edge vein, actually they were just a new hardcore band. So it was Underdog, Straight Ahead, and a band called "Geek Attack", and Crippled Youth were still around. So Todd Youth from Warzone, he was actually an old friend of mine from the old days of hardcore back when we were real young, but I hadn't seen him for years. So Porcell and I were living in New York then and we're hanging out down on the Lower East Side around the Pyramid Club and Todd Youth comes out, I hadn't seen him for about three years. He says "Ray what's up, when I was in reform school I got your single, I think it's great, It's awesome. You know I'm in Warzone now and we're all Straight Edge, Ray Beez is Straight Edge, we're all Straight Edge". Porcell and I are looking at each other rolling our eyes. These guys were, like Ray Beez, I knew him from the old days and he was really into Angel Dust and everything, so I'm like no way. Sure enough man, we got into the Pyramid Club and Ray Beez is in there with an X on his hand. He says, "I love you guys, your great. Warzone is Straight Edge now, we're going to play Straight Edge songs, we're going to play with you guys". So Porcell and I are really psyched now because there's another Straight Edge band and Warzone used to preach really heavy, they were really into Straight Edge, Todd Youth was like our Straight Edge buddy now.
Did you do anything besides band stuff?
We used to, actually we would all chip in and buy food together and distribute it to the homeless, this is how the song "Make A Change" came together. All the Straight Edge kids would go do that in Tompkins Square park.
Were Youth Of Today playing a lot?
I remember one show in particular, Slapshot had just started in Boston and at that time they were friends of ours. Crippled Youth started playing a lot, it was great. Crippled Youth would come over and stay at our apartment, there'd be tons of people, we'd have these big Youth Crew days at our apartment in New York and then we'd all go to the show, that's the CBGB matinee's. So one time we invited Slapshot to play a show. No one had heard Slapshot at that time and at Some Records, which was the local record store, they had only sold three Slapshot records and they had sold tons of Crippled Youth singles. So Crippled Youth were really popular at the time especially in New York, and Slapshot's first record was out but they weren't popular in New York. So the club had put Slapshot playing over Crippled Youth. So I go to Slapshot and said, "You know not many people have heard of you guys here. Crippled Youth should be playing above you guys, even though Crippled Youth are like a local band, they actually are a lot bigger than you guys here". Well they got really bummed out that I'd said that. I said "I know that they are only 13 but they're really popular here". So Slapshot put up such a big stink that they wanted to go on second, so we're like alright, whatever. So we all played and then we were getting paid and I found out that Slapshot had more money than Crippled Youth. I said wait a minute, no one even knew these guys, I'm going over to Slapshot and demand that Crippled Youth get more money, and I did. That's how they came to hate us, after that show they hated our guts. Before that we were good friends but after that they wrote that stuff on their album... "Thanks to YOT for ripping us off". They gave us the money, how did we rip them off?
So this is all happening, Tommy Carrol and Craig are in the band, so how did you get Richie on guitar?
Richie and I were friends. We used to always go out to the (Krishna) temple together. Richie and I became vegetarians at that time. This is the summer of 1986, Porcell and I weren't at this time as tight as we always had been. I just remember that I became even better friends with Richie and I wanted him to join the band, so he did. He was really into the Youth Crew thing.
So what happened to Tommy?
Tommy was cool, we got along with him, but he had a short fuse. We didn't realize this until we went on tour. We had a hard time touring together and he didn't like touring. He was just more into doing his thing back home. So it was hard because we always wanted to tour and he always wanted to stay at home. So when we were on tour he didn't like it and he would want to leave, immediately. So we were on tour, we had gone down south and we were heading back up north and what happened was Tommy didn't want to do it and he went back to New York. So we begged Drew to play drums. Drew came on tour with us and he played the whole Northeast with 7 Seconds, that was in 1986 the summer tour, that´s the picture from the YOT "Break Down The Walls" cover.
When we got back from the tour we wanted to record an album. I think that we recorded it sometime in October. We had met Pat from Wishingwell Records out in California, when we played with Uniform Choice. At that time they had just put out the Unity single and Uniform Choice shirts. We were really psyched, but it took so long that we got pretty bummed at them. You’re really getting the whole history.
Well when something moves you, you want to find out about it.
Yeah, you couldn't imagine the feeling. Every town there were more new kids. It was like a whole new scene. We were the only band that had the records out. Now we would play CBGB's and it would be packed, and it would all be Straight Edge kids. You couldn't even imagine it. Porcell and I just watched the scene come out of nowhere. It seemed at the time that we single handedly created this scene, Porcell and I. From our little dream from that day, that first day. We would laugh to ourselves, "Oh man look at all these kids". At the same time we had an even deeper idea of what we wanted. We wanted people to take it more to heart. We didn't want people just to follow us or to copy us or dress like us. We wanted them to take our ideas and make something new... It seemed like all these other bands were just rehashing our stuff. Not that we were super original.
After a while fanzines would form an opinion of us... Actually Bill Rubin from Half Off, at first he was the biggest Straight Edge clone of all of them. He had a Straight Edge fanzine, it was probably the first Straight Edge fanzine, called, "Think" fanzine. It was a super Straight Edge fanzine, it had drawings of guys in hooded sweatshirts. He really got that whole image going. Then he got out of it and said, "All these people are jerks". The whole time he was pumping us up and he created that whole image of us, he'd draw these pictures of us with these YOT sweatshirts singing and screaming with shaven heads. Then he just turned and said, "Yeah this is all you guys are into and you're jerks". He was so into it and then he just turned against us. The whole Half Off thing was just a rebellion against YOT.
So what happened with Wishingwell, didn't you have some sort of falling out?
Not really, nothing major. They just never paid us for our records. They made sweat pants, they made a whole Easter bunny outfit. It was ridiculous, stuff that YOT would never wear. White sweat pants, white sweatshirts, well, Porcell would wear them. Stuff that I would never wear, I didn't like any of that at all.
What about the Together summer?
That was when all the bands were there. That's when the New York scene was just cooking.
Did everything just lead up to 1987 and then go down hill?
YOT came to the brink and just became really huge at one point in time, this happens with all bands actually. They get really big until everyone starts liking them and then when everyone likes them all the original people who liked them start hating them. That’s what happened. As soon as the YOT "Break Down The Walls" album came out we got fans all over the country, but we also lost all these original fans. So all these original people left Straight Edge, started drinking and saying, "Straight Edge is stupid", that's what happened, People would talk so much crap, people who had been our friends and it just got to the point where we were sick of it. We went on tour, "Break Down The Walls", then we went on another tour, we just flew out to California and played a couple times. That's when Mike Judge played drums for us and Craig was still playing bass. Craig was really into it and then he got out of it and now he just hates it. He was what you would call fanatical, actually Craig deep down knows that Straight Edge is better.
Why did Youth Of Today break up for a while?
This is December of 1987, we broke up. I can't really remember why we broke up. Just because we were really sick of it, I had written these new songs that they didn't like. The music was never used but the lyrics were used, that song "Live Free" is one of them. I was pretty bummed out. At the time I was pretty disillusioned by Straight Edge. There were all these copy bands. Originally I wanted to do something good, I just thought that it would be a good thing to do for the world. I thought that if everyone was Straight Edge it would be such a better place to live. I had this really sincere feeling, but then I realized that I had tried to do this and there were just millions of people who hated my guts. I was sort of distraught. That's what the song "Put It Aside" is about. So many people would come up and say, "You’re fake, you’re insincere". The big question became "Is Ray insincere?" Everyone just wanted to peg me for the loser. Deep down I knew what I wanted, but you know it's hard to do something that you know is right when everyone is telling you that you’re wrong. It hurts so much when you think that you’re trying to do the best thing and everyone hates you for it. I was just so miserable. So now I'm thinking, maybe I am insincere. Sincerity is a hard thing to say. So then I started saying, why am I doing this for the welfare of the world or do I just want to be a big star. Then I started to question myself, am I really against greed? Because now we're making all this money, we're making this money and I don't seem to be turning it away. Then I started questioning the other songs like "Honesty", am I really truthful with myself? "Free At Last", am I free? That's when everything started coming. I started questioning my whole philosophy. Basically just because people were coming down on me so hard. So then I decided that I just can't do this anymore. I just quit the band, I just walked out of practice one day. I just said "I can't do this", so I left.
So how long were Youth Of Today broken up for?
The month of December, 1987. Then I realized that what we were doing actually was good. It did make sense and we did have some good things to say. Actually, even though a lot of people hated us for it, a lot of people hate good people who say good things. So then we got in this whole mood again. I called up Porcell, "Porcell, we're going to start the band back up, we're going to put out a new album, we're going on tour". That's when “We're not in this Alone” came out.
How did you get hooked up with Caroline?
Caroline was distirbuting the stuff on Schism and they were distributing some of the stuff on Revelation also, so we were friends with them. They told us if we ever want to do another record that they'd like to put it out. It was pretty good because we had no money and we wanted to tour, so we just did it. Then we were getting to be known as a bigger band. Then Richie left and rejoined Underdog. Then Sammy started getting really good on the drums, so we took him from Side By Side. That’s when all these bands were starting. We watched all of them start. I remember this one show it was YOT, Warzone, Side By Side, and Gorilla Biscuits. It was GB's and Side By Side's first show. There was this other band that played called "Altercation", they were a great band from New York. The guys from Warzone were in that band. If you can ever find their demo get it. It's one of the best.
Why don't you tell me about the "Shutdown" show.
That was a great show, actually if you went to that show you would have realized that it was the best show of all time. It was like GB's second show. Actually if you want to know the truth Side By Side propagated all that stuff to get the club closed down. They got on stage and said "Everyone start stage diving". Jules had a real big mouth, so he was just telling everyone to start stage diving. This was because CBGB's, started saying "No stage diving". So of course Porcell and I, whenever we played CBGB's and they would say don't stage dive, so Porcell and I would always stage dive. They couldn't kick us out because we were the only headlining band. We would be the only ones who would stage dive. CBGB's was the perfect club for everything and I'd been going there since I was 16, I'd seen all these great bands there. So anyway, we started just mild stage diving for GB and Side By Side. The bouncers would get up and say "Look there's no stage diving". Finally they put these two big moose guys on stage. I just said "Look, these guys aren't with us. If you want them off the stage then just take them off. I just want you to know that they are not welcome here." Then we just started playing and the stage was mauled. I remember throwing the drums in the crowd. It was one of those hectic shows where there are so many people on the stage we couldn't even move. That was the problem with YOT, it just got to the point where people wouldn't just stage dive, they'd get on stage and there would be a million kids on stage. They caught onto Porcell and my tricks. You see, Porcell and I whenever we wanted to stage dive we would stay right on the stage to sing along and then jump off. So now everyone started to. They would just sit on the stage, come up and sing along and then go back to their seat on the stage. So basically what happened at that show was that kids just went crazy and they blamed it on me. So CBGB's had no more shows. Underdog was supposed to play CBGB's the next week and the guy from Underdog, Russ, who had always hated Straight Edge, wanted to fight me because I got CBGB's closed down. But I didn't, but he took it all out on me. Everyone took it all out on me. I was the scapegoat for everything. Either people really like me or they hate me and want me dead.
Is there anything else you want to talk about?
I'll tell you about one of the best shows we ever played. It was at Fender's in Los Angeles with Blast! and the Exploited. We heard that we could get on this bill. We were in Texas and we had called LA and asked if there were any shows we could get on. The guy says "Yeah, we're having a show the day after tomorrow, if you can make it you can play, but we can't pay you anything. We drove half way across the country to play this show. So we get up there and they had put this gigantic barrier up, well this place never had a barrier. They put all these bouncers in there between the barrier and the stage. People would try to get over the barrier and they would catch them and pound on them and then throw them back, it was just awful. So of course we had to start the set with "Break Down The Walls". I said "This is dedicated to this barrier, tear this thing down", then I do this running dive over the barrier out into the crowd. People are going crazy, ripping this thing down. That was great, Blast! were really into it. So then I get thrown back on stage and the bouncers grab me and start beating me up, they thought that I was just some kid stage diving, but I was the singer trying to get back on stage. Well fortunately our roadie (this guy RJ, from New Jersey, he's the kind of guy you need around for protection) grabs a microphone and slugged one of the bouncers. He ran up to the guy and smacked him over the head with the microphone.
