Punk Paradox: A Memoir

by Greg Graffin

Overview

From the legendary singer-songwriter of Bad Religion comes a historical memoir and cultural criticism of punk rock’s evolution.

Greg Graffin is the lead vocalist and songwriter of Bad Religion, recently described as “America's most significant punk band.” Since its inception in Los Angeles in 1980, Bad Religion has produced 18 studio albums, become a long-running global touring powerhouse, and has established a durable legacy as one of the most influential punk rock bands of all time.
 
Punk Paradox is Graffin's life narrative before and during L.A. punk's early years, detailing his observations on the genre's explosive growth and his band's steady rise in importance. The book begins by exploring Graffin’s Midwestern roots and his life-changing move to Southern California in the mid-’70s. Swept up into the burgeoning punk scene in the exhilarating and often-violent streets of Los Angeles, Graffin and his friends formed Bad Religion, built a fanbase, and became a touring institution. All these activities took place in parallel with Graffin's never ceasing quest for intellectual enlightenment. Despite the demands of global tours, recording sessions, and dedication to songwriting, the author also balanced a budding academic career. In so doing, he managed to reconcile an improbable double-life as an iconic punk rock front man and University Lecturer in evolution.
 
Graffin’s unique experiences mirror the paradoxical elements that define the punk genre—the pop influence, the quest for society’s betterment, music’s unifying power—all of which are prime ingredients in its surprising endurance. Fittingly, this book argues against the traditional narrative of the popular perception of punk. As Bad Religion changed from year to year, the spirit of punk—and its sonic significance—lived on while Graffin was ever willing to challenge convention, debunk mythology, and liberate listeners from the chains of indoctrination.
   
As insightful as it is exciting, this thought-provoking memoir provides both a fly on the wall history of the punk scene and astute commentary on its endurance and evolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306924583
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	11/08/2022
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	663,324
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

GREG GRAFFIN is the lead singer and a songwriter in the punk band Bad Religion. He obtained a masters and Ph.D. in Zoology at Cornell University and a masters in Geology from UCLA. He has lectured at UCLA and Cornell where currently he teaches evolution. He is also the author of Evolution (with Steve Olson) and Population Wars. When he’s not on tour, he's with his family at places he considers home: upstate New York, Southern California, or Wisconsin.

Table of Contents

Section 1

1 Introduction 3

2 Professors' Kids 13

3 Divorce 23

4 Musician Ignition 31

5 The Deep Origins of Bad Religion 41

6 Prog Religion and Politics 45

7 Transcontinental Journey 53

8 La Proved Too Much for the Man 63

8a A Woman's Place 69

Section 2

9 The Morning After … 77

10 Juvenile Debauchery '80-'82 83

11 Looking for Bad Religion 95

12 Genesis 105

13 Not Boyfriend Material 117

14 Poetry of Punk and Making the Scene 125

15 Into the Unknown 143

16 Academics and Punk 153

17 The Manufacture of Dissent 161

18 Intellectual Transitioning 169

19 The Path to Suffer 185

20 Moving 197

Section 3

21 Upping the Game 205

22 Europe 211

23 From DIY to Collaborative Enterprise 233

24 The Big Sellout 241

24a Withdrawal 246

24b The Two Cultures 247

24c Selling Out 250

25 Music Business Formal Legitimacy 257

26 Adjustments and Strains 269

27 The Crumbling 279

27a Stranger than Fiction 279

27b Domestic Life, Artistic Strife 286

27c The Phone Call 290

27d Brian the Solution 295

27e Divorce Aversion 298

27f That New York Thing-The Gray Race 307

27g Ithaca-No Substance 313

28 Rebuilding 321

28a The New America 321

28b Blink 338

28c Enlightenment 341

29 Paradox and Legacy 347

Epilogue 357

Acknowledgments 362

Editorial Reviews

10/03/2022

Graffin (Population Wars), singer of the punk group Bad Religion, explores the underside of punk rock’s chaotic surface in this scattershot memoir. He recounts a wholesome Wisconsin boyhood followed by an anxious California adolescence spent in the L.A. punk scene of the early 1980s; the band’s success as a venerable touring group; and the development of his side gig teaching evolutionary biology, first at UCLA and then Cornell. Graffin’s narrative is not the typical punk confessional. He laments the “nihilistic, ugly and artless” culture of brawling and drug abuse, celebrates Bad Religion’s maturation into a well-oiled business, and wonders where he fits in with his contemporaries. But Graffin’s long-winded ruminations on punk humanism can be stilted: “The humanity in our lyrics found resonance with the embodiment of the enlightenment quest that seems to be in the DNA of all Europeans, but particularly those who call themselves punks,” for instance. And his prose comes alive only when describing the very excesses he deplores. (“Nearly every slam pit had devolved into a disjointed jumble of drunk or speeded-out former jocks randomly bumping into or tackling one another.”) This account of punk’s evolution mutes the sound and fury of the scene. Agent: Matthew Elblonk, DeFiore & Co. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

LOUDER, "Best Music Books from 2022"

“Greg Graffin’s new memoir documents the endless trials and tribulations, as well as the colorful characters who come along with it, all taking place on the allegorical campus of Graffin U. Rather than focusing on elements like the now-iconic crossbuster logo or major moments in the band’s rich musical canon, PUNK PARADOX tells a compelling — and sometimes turbulent — tale of an artist and academic’s pursuit for understanding and (dare I say?) enlightenment.”
 —SPIN

"There's much to commend in Graffin's thoughtful, thorough autobiography."—LOUDER

“Fascinating… Written with the nuanced detail for research of an academic, but balanced out with a punk rocker’s experience, Punk Paradox is a rock memoir unlike most…Greg Graffin knows how to tell a compelling story.” 
 —New Noise

“A captivating character study of someone pursuing his passions in seemingly contradictory fields and staying true to himself and his own inner compass. Ultimately being able to experience that journey in detail as a reader may be Punk Paradox’s greatest gift.” —Flood

"A well-crafted memoir and manifesto...  An entertaining, memorable look at 'the most intractable paradox of all: punk as a positive force in society.'"—Kirkus

"The hard-driven Graffin compellingly and eloquently describes the rewards and pitfalls of a career as successful musician and academic that will fascinate general readers."—Library Journal

"[A] thoughtful, deeply personal memoir... [Greg Graffin’s] descriptions of the natural world in relation to his emotional growth is as compelling as it is astute, and Graffin is passionate in his reminiscences of a time when punk rock was not distorted with the often deserved stereotype of violence and anger. Readers will discover a trove of insights into the music industry and living creatively.”

—Booklist

“Greg Graffin has been in the guts of the Punk Rock machine for literally decades. I would dare say there's not a lot you can tell him he doesn't already know. Any observation Greg makes is from the front line and worthy of consumption. In Punk Paradox, Greg meticulously lays out the evolution of Bad Religion not only as a band working to stay relevant but also as an entity that's had to carefully navigate great success and the myriad challenges that come with it. Good stuff.”—Henry Rollins

"Fearlessly pulling back the veil to show us the unpretentious, self-aware, deeply sensitive pacifist with a love for humanity and going against the grain, Greg Graffin shatters all expectations and assumptions of what it means to be punk rock, inviting us all to evolve."—Aimee Allen, lead vocalist of The Interrupters

“Before Nirvana ever recorded a note, Greg Graffin’s band, Bad Religion, was brilliantly fusing punk rock intensity with philosophy. Who else but Graffin would cite both Black Flag’s ‘Nervous Breakdown’ and Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle as major influences? 

With wit and brutal honesty, Graffin brings to life his unique journey: his  parallel paths as an academic with a PhD in Zoology and that of an internationally influential punk rocker. He offers insights into band dynamics, the creative process, the way that art and career intersect with personal lives, the Southern California punk scene of the ’80s and ’90s and the currents of the music business that artists deal with along the way.”—Danny Goldberg, author of Serving The Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain

From the Publisher

09/01/2022

Graffin recalls his nearly singular double life as a singer/songwriter and an academic. The son of two university-level educators, he begins with his childhood and emphasizes the disturbing, confusing, and wrenching effects of his parents' divorce on him. The author moves to the early 1980s in Southern California, where he and his teenage friends formed the hardcore punk band, Bad Religion, which grafted Graffin's socially conscious lyrics onto the buzz-saw attack of L.A. punk. Eschewing the violent, drug-filled punk lifestyle, Graffin both persisted with Bad Religion amid changing personnel and an increasingly poppy, harmony-heavy sound and forged ahead with his academic pursuits. By the '90s, Graffin temporarily quit graduate school and went through a painful divorce, when he encountered the nonstop, crushing commitments of commercial success with Bad Religion, which signed to a major label and climbed the charts alongside such power-pop punkers as Green Day and Blink-182. He concludes with his continued role as a singer/lyricist in the long-lasting Bad Religion and his university-level teaching after earning a PhD in zoology. VERDICT The hard-driven Gaffin compellingly and eloquently describes the rewards and pitfalls of a career as successful musician and academic that will fascinate general readers.—Dr. Dave Szatmary

Library Journal

2022-09-22
The songwriter, lead singer, and sole constant member of the iconic punk band Bad Religion delivers a well-crafted memoir and manifesto.

“Formidable we were not,” writes Graffin. “But something was shared among all punk rockers outside of Hollywood: we were hated.” That hatred bonded those late-1970s–era kids in a torn-jeans, leather-jacketed united front against the yuppies, surf Nazis, and police officers who hunted for them. It also provided Graffin with both material and inspiration that informed Bad Religion, which he formed in 1980. The author was no ordinary punker, however: He took time off from the band to go to college and graduate school, though he did delay his doctorate in paleontology by going out on tour. Now a professor of evolution at Cornell as well as a working musician and author of Population Wars and Anarchy Evolution, Graffin takes a decidedly Darwinian view about business. “Never reveal to your competition what your true talent is,” he writes, “until that moment when you really need it to prove your superiority and leave the others dumbfounded and defeated, realizing that they had been victims of their own hubris, that you had been toying with them all along.” That ethos served him well when he took his young band out on the road, learning along the way that punk rockers created punk rock more than the other way around and that the genre was a wonderful expression of angst and discontentment channeled into something better than drugs or alcohol. Unusually, Graffin expresses solidarity with the hippies who preceded (and were reviled by) the punks, and he even has sympathetic words for the hair metal bands of Sunset Strip, who never got beaten up by the LAPD as much as the punks did.

An entertaining, memorable look at “the most intractable paradox of all: punk as a positive force in society.

Kirkus Reviews