NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories (2016)
In the first line of NOFX’s memoir, Fat Mike (the band’s bass player and vocalist) talks about the first time he drank his girlfriend’s urine. By the end of the second paragraph she has also tasted his, and by the end of the third, he has sampled his own. By the end of this paragraph, you should be able to tell whether or not The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories is for you.
The California-based punk band NOFX was formed in 1983 by vocalist/bassist Fat Mike and guitarist Eric Melvin, and were quickly joined by Erik “Smelly” Sandin on drums. Eventually, after a series of other guitarists, Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta joined the band on lead guitar in 1991. For NOFX, punk is more than a style of music; it is their ethos. The band proudly boasts they have never signed to a major label, leaving the quartet to march to the drum of their own vices.
And let’s be absolutely clear — there are a lot of vices.
Throughout the book’s 350+ pages, the four members of NOFX (Mike, Melvin, Smelly, and El Hefe) along with a couple of former members (Dave and Steve) take turns sharing stories that most normal people would prefer to take with them to their grave. A third of the way into the book, you’ll wish the worst thing you had learned was that Fat Mike likes to drink pee. Most of the guys were alcoholics or using drugs before they were old enough to drive. The surprise isn’t that several of the guys went on to develop full-blown drug addictions; it’s that any (much less all) of them lived to see the age of 30.
Story by story, the guys take turns piecing together the history of NOFX in mostly chronological order. If ever a book was able to share the details of sex, drugs and rock and roll without making it look glamorous, this is the one. In the early days, NOFX consisted of four out-of-control kids (fueled by alcohol and drugs) who played backyard shows to tens of people earning tens of dollars. A decade later, the still out-of-control quartet was now playing shows to hundreds of people for (maybe) hundreds of dollars. There was a time in my life when riding in a van for weeks on end while surviving on beer and one meal a day might have sounded like an exciting challenge, but those days have long passed. And never has having someone poop in my shower or urinate in my utensil drawer sounded like fun.
You probably wouldn’t have wanted to have been a NOFX fan in the early 80s, as according to the band’s memories at least one person the band knew got beat up, stabbed, or shot at every show. Those were the shows that didn’t end in a riot. Some rock stars brag about the number of cars or gold records they own; Fat Mike boasts that he “still has his own teeth,” which in this scene is an accomplishment. Most of the band’s stories about their close friends end with “and then he died” or “and then he went to prison.”
A lot of the band’s abhorrent and destructive behavior would be tolerable (or at least easier to ignore) if it were limited to people within their own circle, but they achieve an even higher level of unlikable when take advantage of their own fans’ hospitality. Shortly after recording their first demo, the band drove eight hours east to perform a show in Reno, Nevada. After the show, the guys crashed at a guy’s house whose only rule was “don’t bring any girls back here.” They brought girls back there. Years later while on tour, they crashed at a random girl’s house who said they could help themselves to anything in her house except her senior project which was inside her refrigerator, and she needed to graduate from college the following day. They destroyed it. Everyone who was generous enough to let the band crash at their house ended up with crabs on their toilet, spray paint on their walls, or (as the book’s title references) a bathtub full of hepatitis.
Unlike similar tell-all books by Motley Crue and the Beastie Boys, at no point do the members of NOFX ever apologize for their past sins. In those (and most) memoirs, the storyteller’s voice and viewpoint is one of an older and wiser individual, able to look back on past sins through additional life experiences. The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories adds no such wisdom while reminiscing; it’s mostly just a collection of stories about people getting stabbed, arrested, screwed, beaten, drunk, and stoned, with little if any repentance. Other than the time Smelly spent in rehab for heroin, the closest any of the guys come to growing up is when Fat Mike cut down his pre-show ritual of “20 milligrams of Vicodin, four or five martinis, and snorting lines of coke during the show” to “just 10 milligrams of Vicodin” (plus the martinis). This compromise took place around his 40th birthday.
Toward the end of the book, the guys talk about their business ventures outside the band. El Hefe opened his own club, and seemed genuinely dumbfounded when all his “friends” stole from him. Melvin opened a coffee shop, admitted he didn’t know anything about owning or running a coffee shop, and lost a couple hundred thousand dollars in the process. Stinky formed a motocross team and had a lot of fun for fifteen years and didn’t make a dime. Only Fat Mike, who founded the record label the band is on, seems to have made any money doing anything other than getting wasted and playing three chords over and over.
Like a lot of people, I discovered the music of NOFX in the mid-90s when other punk bands like Green Day, Rancid, and Bad Religion broke through to the mainstream. And while I enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) the music of NOFX, I wouldn’t let anybody in (or associated with) that band within 1,000 yards of anybody I loved or anything I owned. Maybe 2,000 yards. The antics of NOFX are as entertaining to read as they are appalling, but it’ll be tough to listen to the band’s music without thinking of heroin withdrawals, violence, and butt plugs.