(Paris) “It’s crazy to still be here, making records and touring”: 30 years after the release of Smashan internationally successful album, the Americans from The Offspring are still making their guitars roar around the world.
Guitarist Noodles – Kevin Wasserman for his real name – still sports at 61 his two-tone haircut of a member of the Addams Family who put his fingers in the jack.
And he is always surprised to notice a kid in the audience with his haircut. “I got grey hair quite early, I got these colours from the age of 30,” smiles the musician, met by AFP in Paris the day before the band’s appearance at Rock en Seine, a festival on the outskirts of the French capital.
He is the depositary of the riffs successes of Smash as Self-esteem Or Come out and play. It is with this last title that the current tour begins.
The band still plays its classics on stage, but doesn’t look in the rearview mirror.
A new album, Supercharged is announced for October 11, with two singles went out as scouts Make it all right And Light it upclimbed high in the alternative rock charts in the United States.
“Parents at the back”
And which have been well received elsewhere. “At the Hellfest festival in France this summer, the kids loved it Make it all right “, Noodles says.
Because yes, the audience of The Offspring, who released their first eponymous album in 1989, 35 years ago, is renewing itself: “the kids in front, the parents in the back.”
“They are one of the truly iconic groups of a period, the 1990s, but which manage to transcend eras. The Offspring, these are hits that all generations make their own. It is the mark of the greatest,” says Matthieu Ducos, director of Rock en Seine, to AFP.
Proof of the vitality of their music, their previous album Let the bad times rollreleased during the COVID-19 era in 2021, was well received.
The songs are always played flat out, an ideal tempo for festivals, but Noodles and singer Dexter Holland, long-standing members, do not fall into youthfulness.
Noodles admits that he didn’t go out the night before this Parisian interview, but quickly went up to his room to see “a film and go to bed early.”
Likewise, these punk-rock gunners don’t act jaded when asked if they see an artist like Yungblud as an heir. “We often hear old bands say ‘ah, that, this young artist took it from us’, not us, we are flattered that people make the comparison”, sweeps the guitarist.
Ed Sheeran Tattoo
The Offspring are now praised by all musical circles. Recently Ed Sheeran joined them on stage to play a song and Noodles couldn’t get over it. “He told us that the first CD he bought with his money was our album Conspiracy of one (2000) and he has a tattoo of “The Offspring” on one side, he lifted his T-shirt to show us, I didn’t want to believe it,” he says delightedly.
Queen guitarist Brian May also played with them at a festival. When asked if he felt like he was joining the big rock family at that moment, Noodles says: “No! Brian is a legend, when we rehearsed with him before, he was fucking amazing, and so nice about it.”
Does he still see himself with a guitar in his hands on stages in Japan or Mexico in 20 years? “I would like to be a fortune teller and know, as long as I can do it, I will,” he begins. “But will people want to see an 80-year-old Noodles? I’m not Mick Jagger or Keith Richards,” he laughs.