Exclusive Interview
San Francisco - 13th December, 2001
Portal do Rock is proud to present this exclusive interview with Jello Biafra, eternal leader and singer of Dead Kennedys, one of the most active and politically engaged punk rock bands of all times. Jello Biafra is no longer with the band, due to some problems with the other members East Bay Ray (guitar), DH Peligro (drums) and Klaus Flouride (bass). But he is still considered by fans worldwide as the soul of DK.

The Dead Kennedys, without Biafra, has just finished their first South America tour, with six gigs in Brazil, proving that the name DK is alive and still very strong on the minds of punk rock lovers!
  Portal: We are a rock website from Brazil and we have interviewed the other members of Dead Kennedys when they were here last week and also we went to one of their gigs in Sao Paulo and it was very sad because you were not there with them.
Biafra: I don't wanna be with them because they've been trying to mess my life for the past four years.

Portal: How do you feel knowing that on the first time Dead Kennedys plays in Brazil you are not part of it?
Biafra: I just think these guys are very greedy dishonest people which are just trying to rip-off as many people as they can. They don't care about the music and certainly they don't care about the fans. I don't know how many times I heard East Bay Ray saying "DK fans would buy anything, who cares?" Now they are testing out their theory. I received many many e-mails from South America, from people who thought I was in the band. They contributed to nothing, it's nothing to do with the underground but with themselves.
 
 
 

Since the band broke-up in 1986, they never worked with anything, they never worked with Alternative Tentacles, they just cashed cheques. Now all of a sudden they think they would be able to steal the name because I was sued for denying to put our song in a Levi's commercial. Also, they are ripping me off on album sales now. They will not pay me anything now.

Portal: Talking about Brandon Cruz, the new singer recruited by the band, he was very well received by the audience here. Do you know him?
Biafra: I don't know him at all. I remember seeing him on TV when he was a Hollywood child TV star. I just met him once in 1984 and I never saw him again. For me he was just a typical Hollywood rich kid.

Portal: Do you think it is possible one day you come back with the guys and DK would be like in the beginning?
Biafra: I think it is a very insulting question. I can't play music with people who sued me and tried to destroy Alternative Tentacles after 22 years of hard work. I always paid them their money, I always paid them on time. My own money is not available with the label. They don't care who they hurt, They don't care if they are gonna hurt dozen of other artistes and people who are trying to work. They are trying to throw me on the streets. Nothing is enough for them, they are so greedy. I have to pay them millions of dollars for them to stop suing me.

  
 
 
 
 
 
 

Portal: Last week we interviewed the band while they were here in Brazil and we have asked if they had any message for you. Ray said: "When a friend makes a mistake the right think to do is to say I'm sorry and get together again". How does it sound for you?
Biafra: It just shows for the greedy liar Ray really is. The reason they say they sued me was because I was taking money from them. It's a lie and they know it. There was a mix up in the accounts and we were trying to all sit down together and figure out what was the problem and Ray kept yelling and making violent accusations and one day he called me while I was in the studio recording with other people and he claimed I had ruined his life by not signing with a major label.
 
 
 
 
Nevertheless I said "Ok Ray, we can figure out, you can figure out, you come to the office, we show you the books (accounts), let's go through it together and try to figure out if there was a mistake". But instead, as soon I denied to Levi's, they went to a lawyer and sued me. The Levi's was the real reason for the losses. Ray had no interest in finding out what the mistake was. He was just interested in suing me. But then we found there was a mistake in the accounts and I paid them all the money before they sued me.
Portal: But before all these problems with accounts and Levi's you were friends, weren't you? Was there any problem since you broke up in the mid 80's?
Biafra: When I look back I am not sure Ray and I were ever friends. All I was to him he thought I was his puppet. He thought he could make money out of my talent, my work and my song writings forever. He kept saying I should quit touring in order to sit down and have meetings with him to decide how to make more money out of Dead Kennedys. I have been told by some people he said he deserved a percentage out of sales of my "Spoken Words" album because he said he inspired me. He was always playing all kinds of nasty head games. All the money was not enough for him. He wanted to be a rockstar. He even said later on "We could have done and last like other artistes like REM and U2". It never occurred to him all those bands play pop music. It's not a kind of heavy, sometimes psychedelic punk music with radical lyrics that we do.		  
 
 
 
 
 
If they did want a band all a long, why they just kicked me out of the band? Of course because nobody would leave him right any songs. And also he had 15 years to get his "pop" band together and he never did. None of those guys wanted to do any work. They just wanted to live of the past.
  Portal: Any message for your Brazilian fans?
Biafra: The best way to keep the spirit of Dead Kennedys alive is get your ass out of the sofa and fight to stop all this logging in the Amazon, stop the introduction of genetically modified food, and channel the messages of our songs into action. The easiest way to get started is stopping to give money to the global corporations, don't shop at the big chain stores, don't go to the big chain restaurants, and don't buy products from the biggest corporations as possible as you can.
 
 
 
 
And also I would ask the fans to avoid any Dead Kennedys CDs sold by other label than Alternative Tentacles. Not only the fans are getting ripped-off but I am also getting ripped-off. Another saying for the fans is that to me punk is about change. That means no two bands should sound the same and no band should live in the past for ever and ever and ever. Even if I do come back to Brazil it might not sound like my old stuff. None of my albums sound the same and I proud of that. It might be too experimental for some people but it might be what some people wanted to see. I am still waiting for some band in Brazil to do a hardcore punk music mixed with "trio elétrico". That would be really cool! Other thing I would like to say is that it hurts to me to know Dead Kennedys is now reduced to a making money group. These guys of the band not only ignore the messages of DK's songs but they hate it! They really sued me because I stuck with the principles of the band and they wanted to be something worst than The Exploited and Sex Pistols, maybe like Blink-182.

Jello Biafra talked also about the bad quality of the live album Mutinity on The Bay. He said that even on the first track, "Police Truck", Ray is doing clear mistakes. He would like to remove his name of this album. Biafra said also he heard that in a recent DK gig in San Francisco, Brandon Cruz did not remember the lyrics and Klaus Flouride was saying they had practice only 2 times in 15 years. He said he got an e-mail from Porto Alegre (a city in the south of Brazil) saying the ticket prices were a rip-off, and he thinks that's insane! We at Portal do Rock would like to clarify that tickets for DK gigs were ranging from R$ 14 (Rio) to R$ 30 (Sao Paulo), or US$ 5 to US$ 12, which is in accordance with the prices charged for gigs of local bands and which is even less than prices charged for gigs of other international atractions.

For Biafra, this band is the Real Great Rock and Roll Swindle!!!

Talking about other points, Biafra commented it is not easy opposing US president George Bush now that US is in the war against terrorism but someone has to do it. He also expressed his worry about the fact that the big corporations are taking plant's DNA out of the Amazon and they are packing it as they actually own these plants. He mentioned that in India they did the same with rice. The Indian farmers have to pay royalties to the corporations now for cultivating their own rice! He said all of it is horrible as life has been to him because of the other guys in the band. "I am proud of Dead Kennedys songs and they say they wrote the songs and I did not write any song, hahaha, those three guys are the worst people I ever met in my life", completed Jello Biafra.

Marcio Faveri - (from Sao Paulo)
Artwork - Paulo Vinicius