My Back Pages

All bands dissolve eventually, for reasons ranging from commercial failure, personnel dynamics, and death to just running out of steam. The band X, beloved by its niche fanbase and highly influential in punk, hard rock, and even alt-country, decided to control the time and place of its end. Earlier this year, they announced "the final album," Smoke & Fiction. "The End Is Near" tour listed shows through October 2024 (footnote 1).

Singer Exene Cervenka and drummer D. J. Bonebrake, now in their late 60s, told me that touring is a mixed bag these days. "The shows are fun, but physically it does get hard. The travel is long and hard. Not a lot of comfort," Cervenka wrote in an e-mail exchange. Here's Bonebrake: "When everything comes together; when the sound is good and the band feels good and the audience is excited, there's a reciprocal exchange between the audience and band and the world suddenly comes alive. A transcendent moment! That's what I live for!"

YouTube videos from the tour's early dates show X still summoning the energy and fast-paced power that propelled them to notoriety in the late 1970s and early '80s. They caught a break when Ray Manzarek, Doors' co-founder, keyboardist, and songwriter, saw them live at Hollywood's legendary Whiskey a Go Go, a venue his band once ruled. "We played 'Soul Kitchen' in our set, and Ray didn't recognize it as the Doors song, but his wife, Dorothy, did," Cervenka said. "They came backstage to meet us, and the rest is history." Manzarek later said he recognized that Cervenka's lyrics were poetry, as Jim Morrison's had been.

Manzarek produced the band's first four albums, including Los Angeles (1980) and Wild Gift (1981). Both are foundational examples of the new sounds of southern California, the seeds of West Coast punk, hardcore, thrash-metal, and MTV hair metal (footnote 2). The band's third album, Under the Big Black Sun (1982), showed evolution and new depth; several songs dealt with the death of Cervenka's sister, Mirielle.

When Manzarek died, in 2013, X posted a heartfelt online tribute (footnote 3). Bassist/singer John Doe wrote at the time, "Ray was a mentor to X in our early days and something of a father figure to Exene & me. He was brilliant & soulful." (footnote 4) Cervenka summarized her feelings: "[Manzarek] was a gift to humanity."

Even as it aptly serves as their last musical statement, Smoke & Fiction harkens back to X's roots. It dispenses new wave polish and goes hard and fast. (The album clocks in under 30 minutes.) Four decades after Los Angeles, Cervenka and Doe maintain their compelling, off-kilter vocal harmonies. Bonebrake's beat is relentless yet tight, and guitarist Billy Zoom glues it together into a rockabilly-influenced punk stew. Some lyrics are nostalgic, old friends remembering lively times, complete with X's dark and psychedelic word twists.

The thing about X: Their times have been lively. There's not room to detail the wildness; use the Google or watch the documentary The Unheard Music (footnote 5). "When we started touring, seeing the country was a new experience. We wanted to visit every historical site, drink every beer, go to every party, while somehow managing to play a good show. It's easier when you're young," Bonebrake said. Added Cervenka: "We don't plan anything out, we just go with what feels right at the time." The song "Big Black X" from the new album provides some stream-of-consciousness dream-history of the band and its times. The chorus: "Stay awake and don't get taken / We knew the gutter / Also the future."

Why call it quits now? Cervenka: "X just doesn't want the grueling van/motel/small club tours to continue." She and Bonebrake said their touring style has matured since the days of every beer and every party. Recent ventures on the road, Cervenka said, have been "more predictable as far as food and planning. We are frugal and simple in our way of touring. Smart." Bonebrake: "Now we're more disciplined and focused on playing the shows and not on extraneous things. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! Second breakfast is good too! Playing is all about feeling and groove and relating to the audience. That hasn't changed over the years." Eyes forward, keep moving, A-game through the last show.

X has always been something of a cult band, adored by some critics and admired by most who have witnessed them live. They never achieved major stardom. Their best records are small-label, low-budget affairs (except the final two albums produced by Manzarek for Elektra), made quickly and cheaply. These days, X's label is Oxford, Mississippi–based Fat Possum, which was founded to promote some of the last real-deal Delta bluesmen (footnote 6). It has reissued the band's Manzarek-produced albums and released the final two.

The end days are as good a time as any to learn the music of X. I recommend Los Angeles (their great debut), Under the Big Black Sun (1982), Alphabetland (2020), and Smoke & Fiction. Released in 1988, Live at the Whisky a Go Go gives a good idea of the band's stage performances, though Zoom wasn't in the band at the time. (Tony Gilkyson played guitar.) It's also worth checking out The Knitters, an alt-country side hustle of X-minus-Zoom plus guitarist Dave Alvin (of the Blasters), with Johnny Ray Bartel (of the Red Devils) on standup bass. Listen to the album Poor Little Critter on the Road.

With their final track on their last album, "Baby & All," X goes out with typical jaded sweetness, sitting in a tree together as the world ends: "From our perch above /We send all our love/As we start to fall/ Baby and all." May the landing be soft

Footnote 2: Early-years X was captured in the documentary The Decline of Western Civilization: youtu.be/Uov0PAetRZY.

Footnote 3: See tinyurl.com/4x8676nt.

Footnote 4: Doe discussed X and his solo career last year with Stereophile's Mike Mettler here

Footnote 5: See youtu.be/c5D4rUH6mFQ.

Footnote 6: Although later the label branched out, issuing records by the Black Keys and Iggy and the Stooges—and X.