Social Distortion: The First 12 Years, 1978-1990
Eric N. Danielson
07-06-25
[This article was based on the rough draft of a roughly 20-page essay I wrote in mid-March 2025, which has since grown to 49 pages of text alone, as well as interviews I conducted with key participants in events starting in April 2025, and years of research, all that were done before the “Orange Curtain” book came out. My research was originally meant to be the basis for a larger book on Social Distortion, but once the OC book came out the popular misperception was that that was the Social Distortion book, when actually it’s not. So, this is not based on the OC book but rather an antidote to it. Since first posting a rough draft of my notes on 07-06-25, I’ve continued updating, revising, expanding, and polishing this piece almost daily by further mining the resources that I had already collected. So, this is a work in progress that continues to be Under Construction. Check back periodically for more updates. - E.D. (07-14-25.)]
Preface
The musical transition made by Social Distortion in between their 1983 debut LP “Mommy’s Little Monster,” and their self-titled major label debut LP released by Epic in 1990 may seem somewhat jarring for those fans not aware of the somewhat shrouded events that happened in the 7 years in between. During this time the band didn’t do any national tours outside of California, in fact there was never even a national tour in support of the “Mommy’s Little Monster” LP after it came out, so fans of the band outside of L.A. didn’t really have a clue as to what was going on until the 1988 “Prison Bound” LP sort of pointed the way towards the 1990 self-titled LP. For example, after they first visited my hometown of Seattle with Youth Brigade in 1982, they didn’t come back again until 1988, six years later. When Slats and I went to see them play their next show in Seattle in 1990 they didn’t play any songs that weren’t on their new self-titled album and we were both shocked at how much the band had changed
The real question is what was going on during the five years in between the release of “Mommy’s Little Monster” in 1983 and “Prison Bound” in 1988? Here’s a chronology of key events that document the band’s evolution from 1978 to 1990.
1) Early Lineups: 1978-1980
Social Distortion started out in Fullerton, CA in the Summer of 1978, when they were all still teenagers attending Troy High School. Initially with Mike Ness was only the lead guitar player but not the band’s singer, and not the sole songwriter either. He was first joined by Casey Royer on drums, Mark Garrett on bass, and a lead singer named Tommy Corbin, or Tom Corvin. Shortly thereafter, Mark Garrett was replaced by Rikk Agnew on bass. There don’t seem to be any band photos of these early lineups that existed prior to 1980. There were no known Social Distortion shows in 1978 and only two in 1979, one on May 5, 1979, and another on October 18, 1979, but it’s not clear which lineup played those. For the most part, during these early years the band played informal house parties rather than formal venues, such as clubs or theaters.
The original lineup of Social Distortion broke up about a year after its founding, sometime in the Summer of 1979, when Mike Ness insisted that his high school friend Dennis Danell be allowed to join the band, even though he didn’t know how to play any musical instrument yet, but the other band members didn’t want to wait for him to learn how. As a result, Ness decided to quit the band, taking Danell with him, and formed a new short-lived band called the O.C. Dustbin.
In an October 1980 interview with Flipside magazine, Danell said he first got into punk in 1978 when he was 16 years old and still had long hair after he went to see the Avengers from San Francisco play at the Masque, a club located behind the Pussycat Theater.
Meanwhile, drummer Casey Royer and bass player Rikk Agnew were joined by Frank Agnew on guitar and continued to use the Social Distortion name. So, there was an actually a Social Distortion without Mike Ness in it. One urban legend has it that Royer had actually named the band “Social Distortion,” and so when the first lineup broke up he initially kept the rights to use that name. Eventually by 1980 Casey, Rikk and Frank had formed a new band called the Adolescents, with Steve Soto on bass and Tony on vocals. Since they weren’t using the Social Distortion band name any more, Ness started using it again after he recruited drummer John “Carrot” Stevenson to join him and Danell in 1980. It’s not clear if there were ever any sort of formal settlement with Casey regarding Ness’ use of the band name.
Frank Agnew has said in a September 2017 with Barry Hutchinson that what happened was that Social Distortion formed in Fullerton in 1978 with Mike Ness on guitar, Casey Royer on drums, Mark Garrett on bass, and Tom Corvin on vocals. Garrett was replaced by Rikk Agnew. That lasted to around mid-1979 when Ness tried to bring Dennis Danell into the band, but the other members refused to accept him because he didn’t know how to play anything yet. Ness then quit the band while Casey and Rikk Agnew continued using the Social Distortion name without him and were joined by Frank Agnew on Guitar. Rikk and Casey joined the reformed Detours, then in mid-1980 The Adolescents. After the Adolescents formed in mid-1980, then Ness and Danell started using the Social Distortion name again and were joined by John Stevenson on drums.
According to Metallipromo, Social Distortion’s first show that was at a real club instead of just a house party took place on May 5, 1979 at Merilark opening for the Mechanics, followed by a second club gig on October 18, 1979 at the Renaissance Café opening for Agent Orange. Given Frank Agnew’s recollection of events, these two shows may have been the Royer-Agnews version of the band without Ness or Danell. Nonetheless, contrary to what the “Orange Curtain” book says, Social Distortions first show that was not at a house party was not at the Cuckoo’s Nest.
May 5, 1979. Social Distortion’s first ever non-house party club show.
Thursday, October 18, 1979. 1979. Social Distortion’s second ever non-house party club show.
There were other ephemeral lineup changes during that time, such as a drummer known only as “Fritz,” and another lead singer known only as “De De,” who was possibly De De Troit, later the lead singer for UXA. After their last lead singer quit Ness had to take over singing lead vocals as well as playing lead guitar.
People have different recollections about when the first Social Distortion show was where Mike Ness had to sing lead vocals himself, as well as play lead guitar. According to an October 1980 interview with Flipside, Ness said it was on September 6, 1980 at La Vida Hot Springs, where they opened for the Middle Class. However, “Carrot” insisted to me that “De De” had been their singer at the La Vida Hot Springs show, and that the first show that Ness sang vocals was on November 17, 1980 at the Marina Del Rey Skate Park in Santa Moncia, where coincidentally the De De Troit Band was their opening act. This was the same place where Ed Colver took the group photo of all the punks in the audience at an Adolescents show that was then stylized into a graphic image used on the cover of the Circle Jerks 1981 debut album “Group Sex.”
Saturday, September 6, 1980.
November 17, 1980.
In Social Distortion’s first major interview with Flipside magazine in October 1980, Ness described this first lineup by saying, “The original Social Distortion started about two years ago. You know the Adolescents, well two of the members of their band were with me about two years ago…two years ago we had a singer, I wrote the guitar riffs, and our singer [Tom Corbin] and drummer [Casey Royer] would write the songs…” So, in the beginning Ness was not only not singing he also wasn’t writing the lyrics.
Some of the song’s on the Adolescents debut album released in 1981 appear to have originally been early Social Distortion songs, or were about that time period when Royer and the Agnews were in Social Distortion.
In the same interview he went on complain that “They wrote a song about an Amoeba…they still have that song plus [others] they’ve ripped off.” So, the song “Amoeba” was originally a Social Distortion song before later it became a huge hit for the Adolescents after it appeared on their debut 1981 album, and there’s now a famous record store in L.A. named after it.
The Adolescents also had another song on their 1981 debut album called “Kids of the Blackhole,” which was about how all the punk kids in Fullerton used to hang out at Mike Ness’ apartment. Mike Ness himself wrote his own song, “Playpen,” which was about the exact same topic and first came out on a 7” single in 1981. In the 1980 Flipside interview Ness refers to this by saying, “I used to have my own apartment, called the Black Hole, where all these punks used to lurk. It was a one bedroom and sometimes we’d have 50 punks packed in there, cops never came then, we have a song about that called ‘Playpen.’ All the punks from O.C. would come there…” According to a 2011 article in the Orange Coast Magazine, Ness was reportedly kicked out of his parents house when he was only 15 years, which led to this situation of him having his own place where all his teenage friends could hang out.
Since Ness wouldn’t be old enough to drink in an over-21 bar until 1984, over the years there typically was one central hangout spot, the location of which changed over time, from Mike Ness’ apartment in 1978-79 to Eddie Joseph’s house in 1980-81, Sheryl Lamoureux’s house in 1982, to Monk Rock’s house in 1981-1983, and Chris Reece’s apartment in Hollywood in mid-1984. Sometimes the rehearsal space served double duty as a hangout spot, as with Dennis Danell’s house in 1981-1982, where they could practice in the garage and hangout in the apartment upstairs. Eventually the band leased or bought the Casbah Studio from Chaz Ramirez and that became their permanent rehearsal space.
Although, the band’s lineup was in disarray for the first several years until it finally stabilized in the Summer of 1981, the songwriting may still have begun several years earlier. In an October 1980 interview with Flipside, Ness mentioned that he already had the five original songs “Playpen,” “1945,” “Moral Threat,” “Anti-Fashion,” and a theme song called “Social Distortion,” which the band never recorded in the studio, was soon dropped from their setlist, and can only be heard in some live bootlegs of their early shows.
In this interview Ness said, “We have a song about 1945 Hiroshima, a theme song ‘Social Distortion,’ ‘Moral Threats,’…we have a song ‘Anti-Fashion’ written two years ago. A lot of our songs are old [and] we’re just revising them…revising them and making them better…” The song “Anti-Fashion” wasn’t recorded in the studio and released on a record until the 1983 MLM album, but it was apparently one of the first songs they wrote five years earlier way back in 1978.
October 1980 Flipside interview, part I.
To this list we could add the 6th song “Mainliner,” which Carrot told me the band had already written before he joined them in 1980. In fact, Carrot said that five of the six songs they later recorded for Posh Boy in 1981 had been written before he joined the band in 1980, with the sole exception of “Playpen,” which was the only song that was written while he was in the band. If Carrot’s recollections were correct, that would mean that the band had also already written the songs “And Justice for All,” and “All The Answers” by 1980, for a total of eight songs written by that time.
October 1980 Flipside interview, part II.
However, in 1980 they didn’t have any money to record in the studio and there were no prospects yet of a record deal with a label. In the October 1980 interview with Flipside, Ness mentioned that he had even hocked his guitar at a pawnshop and had to borrow $60.00 to get it back.
2) The 1980-1981 “Carrot” Lineup
The first lineup of Social Distortion to record anything in the studio, thus marking the real birth of the band, was the one in 1980-1981 when they were a three-piece with Dennis Danell on bass and John Stevenson, aka “Carrot,” on drums, and Mike Ness now not only playing lead guitar but being the band’s lead singer, which he wasn’t in the beginning.
All three members of the band were still teenagers. Dennis Danell was the oldest at 19, but “Carrot” was only 16 years old, and Ness was 18. They had to ask people who were 21 to buy beer for them at the liquor store and secretly drink in the back alleys behind clubs or out in the parking lots, before going inside to see shows.
Dennis Danell gave John Stevenson the nickname “Carrot,” and it stuck. Unfortunately, since this nickname “Carrot” was used in all the credits for the Social D recordings that he played, in later years it made it difficult for him to collect any royalties, because he had to prove that John Stevenson and “Carrot” were the same person.
At this time Eddie Joseph, the lead singer for the local band Eddie and the Subtitles, was Social Distortion’s manager. Eddie and the Subtitles released two albums in 1981 and 1983 respectively, the debut being “Skeletons in the Closet” (1981) followed by “Dead Drunks Don’t Dance” (1983), which ironically was released by Social Distortion’s second manager Monk Rock on his 13th Floor Records label. Monk Rock did not start managing Social Distortion until sometime after John “Carrot” Stevenson quit in July 1981.
As John “Carrot” Stevenson recalls, during this time the band mainly played house parties and the backyards of people’s houses, rather than formal clubs, although they played the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa several times, and the highlight for him was when they opened for the Middle Class and Black Flag at the Starwood on January 6, 1981.
January 6, 1981. Social Distortion’s first ever show with Black Flag.
The Cuckoo’s Nest was infamous for being a punk rock club that was located right next door to a Country and Western bar, with which it shared the same parking lot, causing the patrons of the two venues to often come into contact with each other. Carrot recalled that, “We always fought with the urban cowboys,” while even Ness himself disdainfully used the similar phrase of “suburban cowboys” in his October 1980 interview with Flipside. So, it seems that in 1980-1981 Ness still was not outwardly displaying any of the Country Western musical influences that he did later, starting in 1985.
December 19, 1980. Social Distortion’s first documented show at the Cuckoo’s Nest.
January 18, 1981. Social Distortion’s second documented show at the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The best known band photo of this lineup one that was taken by Gary Leonard of the band playing live at the Starwood, which originally appeared in the Fall 1980 Flipside article, and was later used on the cover of their 1981 “Posh Boy’s Little Monsters” recordings that was finally released as a standalone vinyl 12” record by Posh Boy in 2019. However, there were a few others, including some taken of them playing live at the Cuckoo’s Nest. There was never what you would call a formal band promo photo taken during this time.
According to Carrot, Social D’s setlist during this 1980-1981 time period consisted of the same six original songs they recorded for Posh Boy; “Mainliner,” “Playpen,” “1945,” “Moral Threat,” “All The Answers,” and “And Justice for All.” In Carrot’s recollection all of those songs had been written before he joined the band, except for “Playpen,” which was the only one they wrote while he was in the band. They also played a cover of “Pipeline,” which was also covered and recorded by Agent Orange, then another local band from Orange County. However, this leaves out several other songs that Ness mentioned the band already had in an October 1980 interview with Flipside, “Anti-Fashion,” and the theme song “Social Distortion.” Also, since they recorded the songs “Lude Boy” and “Telling Them” in the Summer of 1981, very shortly after Carrot left, it seems possible that these were also written when he was in the band, otherwise they were written and recorded very quickly.
It was this 1980-1981 three-piece lineup that in April 1981 made all six of the 1981 studio recordings for Posh Boy that ended up being released that year as one 7” single, “Mainliner” b/w “Playpen," plus a bunch of isolated tracks spread out over three compilation albums such as the 1981 single’s B-side track “Playpen” appearing again on “The Future Looks Bright” (1981),“1945” appearing exclusively on “Rodney on the ROQ Vol. 2” (1981), and “Moral Threat” appearing exclusively on “Posh Hits, Vol. 1” (1983).
The tracks “Playpen” and “Justice for All” were released on August 1, 1981 as part of the Posh Boy compilation album, “The Future Looks Bright Ahead,” which initially was only available to retail consumers on cassette tape. There was a promotional vinyl release sent to radio stations, which confusingly was retitled “The Future Looks Bright,” with the word “Ahead” missing for some reason. Later, the “Future Looks Bright” compilation was repeatedly re-packaged, slightly re-titled, and re-released by Posh Boy in many different formats with different track listings throughout the 1980s. For the 1987 vinyl version “The Future Looks Brighter,” Posh Boy added three more Social Distortion songs, “All The Answers,” “Mainliner,” and “Moral Threat,” to the original two that had been on the 1981 release, “Playpen” and “And Justice For All,” leaving “1945” as the only song Social Distortion recorded for Posh Bo in 1981 that wasn’t included. On the 1987 CD version, all five Social Distortion tracks were grouped together at the beginning, but on the 1987 vinyl version they were separated into two parts, the original two songs appearing first and then the three added songs coming separately later.
The two songs included on the 1981 Posh Boy single, “Mainliner” and “Playpen,” recorded in April 1981 and released in July 1981, were originally scheduled to be on a 12” four-song E.P. tentatively titled, “Posh Boy’s Little Monsters,” with two other tracks, “All The Answers,” and “Justice for All.” The E.P. got to the test-pressing stage but was never publicly released due to some dispute between Ness and Posh Boy, so instead the label only put out two of the songs as a 7” single. Some have said, probably as a joke, that the dispute was over the album cover art, while according to Carrot, the dispute was over the recordings’ final mix. Ness felt that it sounded too clean. According to Carrot, “Mike didn’t like the mix, said it was too polished.” Not wanting to argue over it, Robbie Fields simply canceled the E.P.’s release. However, Posh Boy went ahead and released two of the four songs, “Mainliner” and “Playpen,” as a two-song 7” vinyl single, “ which was reportedly done without the band’s permission.
The packaging for the 1981 Posh Boy single version included the lyrics for both songs being printed on the back cover, alone with a photo of the band playing live.
As noted earlier, the song “Playpen” was the only one Carrot recalls being written while he was in the band, and deals with the same subject matter as the Adolesecents song “Kids of the Black Hole,” namely Mike Ness’ former one-bedroom apartment where all the punk rock kids in Fullerton used to hang out in the late 1970s.
The song “Mainliner” is obviously about using intravenous drugs, aka shooting up, which I had always assumed was an autobiographical tale about Ness himself, but according to Carrot, “Mike wasn’t a junkie when I was in the band we just drank beer, [took] Quaalude‘s, acid and black beauties.” Carrot also pointed that several lines of the lyrics refer to “she,” implying that possibly it was written about someone else Ness knew or maybe it was even fictional. In his on-stage banter before they played the song “Mainliner” at the Ritz in NYC in 1986, Ness told the audience it used to be a pro-drugs song, then it was an anti-drugs song, and now he wasn’t sure anymore whether it was pro or anti-drugs.
There has also been disagreement over the band even signed a contract with Posh Boy. Carrot said he never signed one, but since he was only 16 years old at the time it might not have been legal for him to do so, since you have to be 18 years old. According to another source, they have a copy of the contract Posh Boy gave the band, but there is no signature on it, meaning the band possibly refused to sign it. The terms included giving Posh Boy all the actual publishing rights to the songs they recorded for the label, something which Jack Grisham has alluded to have also happened to T.S.O.L. when they recorded their first E.P. for the same label.
A 6th Social Distortion song recorded by Posh Boy in 1981, “Moral Threat,” appeared on a compilation album called “Posh Hits, Vol. I,” in 1983, two years after all the other previous Posh Boy releases of Social Distortion material, and the same year that a re-recorded version of the same song by a different lineup of the band appeared on the MLM album. This was Posh Boy’s last release of a new previously unreleased Social Distortion recording until 1991, although there would continue to be many more re-releases and re-packaging of the same material that had already been released.
So, this means that in 1981 Social Distortion recorded a total of 6 songs for Posh Boy, almost enough for an album, but two of these weren’t released at the time, and the four others were divided up among four other releases, three of which were compilation albums, and only one of which was a two-song single released in their own name.
It seems that the band missed a big opportunity to put out a 12” vinyl record in their own name as early as 1981. As it was, other Southern California punk rock bands of the time such as the Adolescents, Black Flag, & Agent Orange beat them to the punch, and they had to wait another two years before putting out a full-scale album of their own, which contained a lot of the same songs they had already had two years earlier, or even longer. Interestingly, “Justice For All” was later re-recorded by the band’s sixth lineup, re-titled as “It’s The Law,” and finally released 7 years later on the 1988 “Prison Bound” album.
Six of the Social Distortion songs recorded for Posh Boy in 1981 were released ten years later in 1991 as a 12” vinyl record as part of a limited edition box set of only 700 copies called “The Posh E.P.s, Vol. I.” This included the previously unreleased two tracks “All The Answers,” and “Justice for All.” All six appeared on the anthology CD “Mainliner: Wreckage From the Past” put out by Jim Guerinot’s Time Bomb Records, and all six were released once again by Posh Boy in 2019, but for the first time ever as a stand-alone vinyl E.P. called “Posh Boy’s Little Monsters.”
3) The Liles-O’Brien Lineup, 1981-1983
Sometime in late July 1981 Carrot decided to quit the band. It seems like an odd decision now, but at the time the only Social D recordings that had actually been released were the “Mainliner” b/w “Playpen” single and the “Future Looks Bright” compilation, which just contained the same version of “Playpen” as on the single. Carrot said that at the time the band was not rehearsing or playing shows very often and seemed dormant. Meanwhile, he had the opportunity to join Rikk Agnew, who had just quit the Adolescents, in a newly reformed version of a band called the Detours, so that seemed like a better chance at the time. Technically, the Detours weren’t a new band but had first formed in 1977, then morphed into the Adolescents, then morphed again into a reformed Detours and a new band called D.I. after the Adolescents broke up. Oddly, Rikk Agnew had also once been in Social Distortion in 1978-79, which shows how incestuous the Orange County music scene was then. By September 1981, Carrot was in another Adolescents spin off band called the Abandoned, which featured Tony Cadena/Reflex as the singer. He played on two songs they recorded at the Casbah studio in Fullerton, CA run by Chaz Ramirez in September 1981 that weren’t released until a 1996 anthology album.
With the departure of Carrot the rhythm section of Derek O’Brien and Brent Liles joined. Derek O’Brien joined first on drums and there was a month-long period when Dennis Danell was still playing bass until Brent Liles joined in approximately August 1981 and Dennis switched from bass to rhythm guitar. In the opinion of his predecessor Carrot, Although a volatile mix of personalities and egos that threatened to break up many times, this four-piece lineup survived for almost two-and-a-half years and became what many people (including me) consider to be the classic lineup of Social D., although it was actually the fourth major lineup of the band. This 1981-1983 classic lineup of the band went into the studio at least three separate times and recorded songs that were released on four different records.
L-R: Mike Ness, Brent Liles (playing a Rickenbacker), Dennis Danell, Derek O’Brien.
L-R: Mike Ness, Derek O’Brien, Brent Liles, Dennis Danell.
Photographer: Ed Colver.
L-R: Mike Ness, Derek O’Brien, Brent Liles, Dennis Danell.
Photographer: Ed Colver
L-R: Mike Ness, Brent Liles, Derek O’Brien, Dennis Danell.
Photographer: Ed Colver
4) Hell Comes to Your House
The very first recordings made by the four-piece lineup with Derek O’Brien and Brent Liles seem to have been the two songs “Lude Boy” and “Telling Them,” which appeared on the “Hell Comes to Your House” compilation record (1981) released by the Bemisbrain record label founded by Jimmy Bemis. This was actually the first of two compilation records with the same name, so it is not to be confused with the later “Hell Comes to Your House II.” Hell Comes to Your House I was a compilation assembled by Ron Goudie (aka Gowdy) and Steve Sinclair for Bemisbrain Records in 1981, prior to Gowdy’s later formation of Enigma Records in 1984.
According to the credits on the album, all the songs were recorded during the three month period of July-September 1981. Other than that we don’t know the specific recording dates of the two Social D tracks on the album. The album also didn’t credit the individual musicians who played on each track, so we can only assume it was the O’Brien/Liles lineup based on other contextual evidence, but there’s a slight chance it could have been the ephemeral O’Brien/Danell lineup.
We do know that the two Social D. tracks on the “Hell Comes to Your House” compilation were definitely recorded after Carrot had already quit the band, as he told me in April 2025 that he had never played the song “Lude Boy.”
Shortly thereafter, the “Hell Comes to Your House” compilation record was released in November 1981, which was a pretty short lead time for putting out a record on an independent label in those days. Randy Burns was the engineer on both the two Social D tracks at the start of Side 1: “Lude Boy” and “Telling Them,” while Ron Gowdy/Goudie was the producer.
The vinyl edition included a lyric sheet with the words for both of the two Social Distortion songs on it, “Lude Boy” and “Telling Them.”
Except for a cassette tape version that combined both of the two Hell to Comes to Your House compilation albums into one release that Bemisbrain put out in 1984, for some reason, “Lude Boy,” and this version of “Telling Them” have never been re-released, and for mysterious unknown reasons were not included on the 1995 “Mainliner” anthology album that included all the other known Social D recordings from 1981.
The original Bemisbrain label seems to have sort of been folded into Enigma records by 1984 and became inactive after 1985. These two songs did not appear on the later Social D anthology “Mainliner: Wreckage From the Past,” although all their previous tracks recorded for Posh Boy in 1981 did.
Also, the song “Lude Boy” was co-written by Jeff Beans (aka Jeffrey Beahns) who had been in a band called The Detours, which oddly enough at one point included Social D.’s former drummer Carrot, and sang backing vocals on the Adolescents debut LP in 1981. This is one of the rare occasions where someone else besides Mike Ness was given songwriting credits for an original Social D song, other than obvious covers by people such as Johnny Cash, even though Casey Royer may have co-written some of their earliest material.
5) The 13th Floor 1945 Single
The second recording made by the four-piece Derek O’Brien and Brent Liles lineup was a 7” vinyl single featuring the two original songs“1945” b/w “Playpen," that was recorded in October 1981 and released by the 13th Floor Records label in February 1982. These two tracks were both re-recorded versions of the same two songs that had previously been recorded for Posh Boy in 1981 and were not the same versions as those released by Posh Boy the same year. On the B-side, there was also a newly recorded version of a cover of the Rolling Stones’ song “Under My Thumb.”
The “1945” b/w “Playpen” single released in February 1982 by Monk Rock’s 13th Floor Records label went through five pressings with different cover art in 1982 alone; was re-released as a 12” vinyl disc by 13th Floor again three years later in 1985; and was re-released on CD, cassette, and vinyl again by XXX in 1989. This was a different version than that recorded for Posh Boy in 1981, which only appeared on the Rodney on the Roq compilation, until the Posh Boy 1991 box set. Oddly, when MLM was released in 1983, these two songs were not included, even though the album only had nine tracks, leaving plenty of room, and so these two tracks continued to only be available as a separate vinyl single for years throughout the rest of the 1980s decade.
This 1982 7” single was later reissued by the 13th Story record label as a 12” vinyl record in 1985 with the same three tracks. According to the credits on this 1985 release, the three songs on this 1982 single were all recorded on October 15, 1981 at the Casbah studio in Fullerton, CA run by Chaz Ramirez, the same place where the ”Mommy’s Little Monster” (1983) and “Prison Bound” (1988) albums would later be recorded.
6) Mass Hysteria
Their third release was the one track “Mass Hysteria” on the 1982 compilation album “Someone Got Their Head Kicked In” released by BYO. This track was the only one on the album recorded at the Casbah studio in Fullerton, CA in October 1981 with Chaz Ramirez acting as the engineer and Gary Hirstius as the producer. Hirstius also produced the Circle Jerks “Wild in the Streets” LP (1982). Based on the recording date listed in the credits on the album, this track may have been recorded during the same session as the “1945” single. In 2020 Hirstius recalled getting the band one day of free studio time at A&M Records former Charlie Chaplin Studios, but he couldn’t recall which songs they recorded.
The back cover of this album featured a large photo of all the band members who went on the “Another State of Mind” August-September 1982 U.S. tour sitting on the yellow school bus, including a shot of Mike Ness leaning out one of the windows. Including this LP, Ness was actually pictured on the cover of two albums released that year, since he can only be seen in the large group photo taken by Ed Colver on the cover of the Circle Jerks’ “Wild In The Streets” LP (1982). So, even though Social D didn’t release their first album until 1983, Ness was pictured on two album covers in 1982.
Oddly enough, in the official credits on the LP, Ness is credited as the sole songwriter for “Mass Hysteria.” However, other sources have claimed that bass player Brent Liles actually wrote this.
Their fourth and final release was the band’s debut full-scale album “Mommy’s Little Monster,” consisting of nine tracks, released by 13th Floor Records in 1983. We’ll delve into this in more detail later.
7) Monk Rock
Since the “1945” b/w “Playpen" single was released by Monk’s 13th Floor Records label in February 1982, but was recorded in October 1981, and the band would not have had enough money to finance the recording themselves, we can presume that by the Fall of 1981 they were being managed by Monk Rock, who’s real name was Mark Wilson (1953-2020). Monk met Dennis Danell first before any other members of the band, they started going to punk rock shows together, and Dennis later introduced him to Ness. Monk was about 10 years older than the band members were, had his own house, and ran a business repairing old vintage cars.
Monk then started managing the band, founded the 13th Story/Floor record label and financed Social D’s record releases for about four years in 1981-1985. The other band members looked up to him as sort of a father figure. He is a very prominent presence in all film footage of the band from 1982-1983, including the ASOM film footage, the Flipside video, and the live at Peer Records footage. In the 1982 Flipside video he introduces them as “my band.” He can be seen up front or on the side of the stage in all film footage of the band during these years, and you can hear his voice talking to the crowd on live bootleg recordings of shows. He continued to manage the band through at least 1984, and ran the 13th Floor/Story record label set up for them through 1985. Unfortunately, Monk passed away at the age of 66 on April 26, 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic, but is survived by his wife Marla L. Craig Wilson.
8) The Look:
Looking at the few surviving photos of the three-piece “Carrot” lineup you can see that they were just wearing jeans and T-shirts, but after mid-1981 Ness made great effort to prepare his physical appearance for every show. Although their drummers were often content with wearing plain jeans and T-shirts, from 1981 onwards the photographic evidence indicates that at each show Ness and Danell would coordinate a certain look they wanted to display, with this look going through certain phases, the fedora hats, the heavy makeup and eyeliner they both wore in 1982, Japanese kamikaze headbands, mummy wraps, Red Brigades revolutionaries wearing French berets, ex-cops, the 1930s gangsters look that first appeared at one point in 1982 and later became the band’s trademark look by 1988, and the 1950s greaser look with the slicked back hair. The most embarrassing look was probably the knee-length half-trousers they were all wearing for a while in the late 1980s. This focus on appearance is most obvious in the ASOM film where Ness can be seen putting on his makeup, but it didn’t only happen during that tour, and Danell was also seen wearing similar makeup at shows.
Interestingly, the photographic evidence also shows that in 1981 Mike still did not have any tattoos on his arms at all. He got his first one in 1982. At that time he only had one. Gradually over time the number of tattoos on his arms grew, and he even got them going up his neck. By looking at all the historic photos it might be possible do estimate their growth.
The photographic evidence also indicates that in 1981-1982 at least, Brent Liles would usually stand stage front and center, in between Ness on stage left and Danell on stage right. They put him there in the middle because of his vibrant appearance with his shocking pink frizzy hair.
9) The 1982 U.S. National Tour With Youth Brigade
In the Summer of 1982 they also did their first U.S. national tour with Youth Brigade, which was filmed and became the basis for the documentary, “Another State of Mind,” which wasn’t actually released until 1984, after that particular lineup had already broken up.
At the time it actually happened, this tour was officially called the “Someone Got Their Head Kicked In, North American Tour ‘82.” This official tour name was printed on the tour posters, gig flyers, and spray painted on the side of the yellow school bus they traveled in. It was named after the BYO compilation album of the same name. However, after the “Another State of Mind” documentary was released in 1984, people started referring to this tour by that name. Most recently, the authors of the “Orange Curtain” book used the name of the documentary for this tour rather its original real actual official name.
The same Ed Colver photo later used on the back cover of the 1983 MLM LP.
The same Ed Colver photo later used on the back cover of the 1983 MLM LP.
Originally scheduled for to last for about six weeks from August 18th – September 27th, 1982, the tour headed north from L.A. up to S.F, Portland, Seattle, and Victoria, B.C., then headed east through THE Canadian provinces of Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg, dropped back down across the U.S. border to Minneapolis, Detroit, and Chicago, then crossed back north into Canada to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, before dropping back down south into the NE U.S. for a string of shows in Boston, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.. The second half of the tour that was going to be a return trip through the American southern states of Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, & Oklahoma, much like the Sex Pistols infamous 1978 tour, but had to be cancelled after their school bus broke down in Washington, D.C. in mid-September 1982. Ness somehow cold afford to buy a one-way plane ticket to fly back to L.A. but everyone else had to ride in the back of the equipment van.
Originally the tour was called the “Somebody Got Their Head Kicked In Tour,” named after the BYO compilation album released in July 1982, and Youth Brigade were the headliners at the first show in S.F., but somewhere along the way Social D became more popular and started getting top billing, with gig posters reading Social D at the top followed by “and Youth Brigade” at the bottom, while the documentary about the tour became named after one of their songs, “Another State of Mind.”
Oddly, in the film there’s a scene filmed in Washington, D.C. where the other members are complaining and criticizing Mike Ness for his overly under the influence behavior, while Ness is seen saying on camera that he plans to replace everyone else with new band members. That scene was filmed in the summer of 1982, but somewhat predicted what eventually did happen in early January 1984.
10) The “Mommy’s Little Monster Album”
According to the official credits printed on the album, on Christmas Eve December 24, 1982 the 'Mommy's Little Monster' album was recorded at The Casbah, a studio owned by Chaz Ramirez located in Fullerton, CA, USA. Later official releases repeated this claim that it was all recorded “in one marathon session,” although this seems impossible. The 2025 “Orange Curtain” book says the album was recorded in “two days,” but it doesn’t state any exact dates and doesn’t cite any sources for its information.
During the time the MLM album was recorded circa December 1982, the house where Sheryl Lamoureux then lived was a central gathering place for the band and their entourage, as corroborated by my 2025 interview with Art Morales, who said he first met Mike Ness there along with Chaz Ramirez and Eddy Joseph. Along with other members of the entourage, she received a special thanks credit on the 1983 “Another State of Mind” b/w “Mommy’s Little Monster” single, that was oddly released on 13th Story rather than 13th Floor.
In mid-April 2025 she confided in me that she had kept a daily written diary at that time, supposedly containing entries with exact dates stating things like, “the band came over today to hang out after spending the day recording in the studio.” This diary still exists and would be an invaluable primary source for documenting the history of the band, but the very nature of such a diary is that of course it also contains some personal information she doesn’t want revealed, so I was never able to gain access to it. The most I got was this quote from her stating, “MLM was not recorded in one day, I declined to be at the recording but they came to my house after each day of recording. It was just a few day that's all.”
Chaz Ramirez played organ on several of the slower, longer tracks on side two, including “Hour of Darkness” and “Moral Threat,” giving them a moodier Gothlike almost rock opera feel, sort of like 45 Grave. Although he wasn’t in the band at the time, based on his later experiences recording at the Casbah, Chris Reece told me in early April 2025 that “Chaz helped arrange songs ,write guitar parts & played on a track if needed.” So, his full contribution to the MLM album may never be known.
Mike Ness has said he remembers nothing about recording this album and that it’s a total “blackout” for him. So, that leaves Derek O’Brien as the only living person who as at those recording sessions who could possibly remember anything about them, since Danell, Liles, Ramirez, & Monk are all dead now.
About six months later, sometime in June 1983 the 'Mommy's Little Monster' album was released. For some reason the band had decided to recycle the phrase “Little Monster” previously intended for the aborted 1981 Posh Boy E.P. two years earlier and only slightly alter it, while writing a title track with the same name.
The album only contained nine tracks. Oddly, the two hit songs previously released as a single in 1982, “1945” and “Playpen,” were not included, even though there was plenty of room for more material. Those two songs continued to only be available by purchasing a separate vinyl single for the rest of the 1980s decade.
Of the nine tracks that were on the album, three of them (33%) had been previously recorded 1981 by an earlier lineup of the band and released by Posh Boy, but were re-recorded by this current lineup of the band for this album. Those three songs that were not new and dated from at least two years earlier in 1981 included “Telling Them,” “All The Answers,” and “Moral Threat.”
Only six tracks were new songs that had never before been recorded nor released. Those six new songs included “The Creeps,” “Another State of Mind,” “It Wasn’t A Pretty Picture,” “Hour of Darkness,” the title track “Mommy’s Little Monster,” and “Anti-Fashion.” Two of these six new songs, “Another State of Mind” and the album’s title track, “Mommy’s Little Monster,” were released as a separate 7” single, the same year as the album, but oddly on the 13th Story label rather than 13th Floor, leaving only four new songs on the album that would motivate someone to buy it if they already had all the band’s other singles and tracks on compilation albums. The only four new songs that you couldn’t get anywhere else were “The Creeps,” “It Wasn’t a Pretty Picture,” “Hour of Darkness,” and “Anti-Fashion.”
All nine songs on the album were credited to the songwriting team of Mike Ness and Dennis Danell, although the amount of Danell’s input seems questionable and was undoubtedly less than that of Ness himself.
Art Morales designed the front cover art for the MLM album, which was originally meant to be for a T.SO.L. album cover until after Monk Rock discovered the painting hanging on the wall at a party hosted by Kevin Hellion, and Morales then met the Social Distortion band members at a house party hosted by Sherly Lamoureux, where he also met Chaz Ramirez and Eddie Joseph. According to Morales, it “depicts a Mother and Son the Son wearing a Voodoo mask both watching the end of the world on rerun T.V.” Morales’ original artwork for the MLM album cover was lost when Monk accidentally left it at the printer, making one wonder how it’s been reproduced so many times since then. He’s also implied that he never got paid anything for it. Later, Morales also designed the artwork for the self-titled 1990 Epic debut, along with several singles from that album.
The label in the center of both sides of the vinyl disc featured a drawing of a dancing skeleton holding a martini glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. According to Art Morales, “the Skeleton was designed by ‘Mac’ or Mackie Osborne.” Mackie Osborne is also known as Mackie McAleer. Presumably McAleer was her maiden name and “Mackie” was a nickname based on it, while Osborne may be a later married surname. Jim Guerinot later confirmed her role in designing the MLM artwork and explained that Mackie was actually the girlfriend of Tim Maag, who in 1983 was then the guitar player for the band D.I., whom Derek O’Brien was also playing drums with at the time. In fact, Mackie also designed the album cover for the debut D.I. album that was also released in 1983, and later was the art director for Social D’s “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell” LP released in 1992. This dancing skeleton has been Social Distortion’s official band logo ever since, somewhat supplanting the band’s previous logo of the “Lude Boy,” a drawing of a man wearing a fedora hat with two X’s over both eyes.
The main band photo on the back cover of the MLM album was taken by Ed Colver. It shows them playing live during the filming of an episode of the New Wave Theater T.V. show, though the exact date is unknown, and the film footage seems to have been lost. In this photo they look their most revolutionary, dressed in red berets, and oddly for the time Mike Ness is standing in the front center stage position, whereas Brent Liles used to be put in the middle in between Ness on the left and Danell on the right. The photo first surfaced when it was used on the gig poster for a show in Victoria, B.C. on Saturday, August 26, 1982. It was used again for other shows on that same 1982 tour with Youth Brigade, including one scheduled for Tuesday, September 14th in Richmond, VA, which was later canceled.
Some versions of MLM came with a full lyric sheet inside and a collage of additional band photos on one side of the lyrics insert inside taken by Alison Braun, Dina Douglass, and Rick Bain, aka Rick Hostage. The photos all seem to have been taken in 1982. Rick’s photos were taken in the summer of 1982 at the Whiskey.
“Monk,” aka Monk Rock aka Mark Wilson was credited on the LP as being the band’s manager. Chaz Ramirez was credited as the album’s producer.
The current entry for the MLM album on Discogs says, “The album was critically acclaimed but was, however, not commercially successful.” However, in 1988 the band’s then manager Jim Guerinot claimed that The MLM album “was a huge success…and sold an amazing 40,000 copies.”
In fact, the MLM album’s rankings in the national sales charts published in the monthly magazine Boston Rock weren’t bad. On November 1, 1983, MLM debuted at #14 in the “American Independent Top 20 Sales” chart published in Boston Rock No. 45. New Order’s “Blue Monday” 12” single was one notch above them at #13. In Boston Rock No. 46 published on December 1, 1983, MLM was still stuck at #14 in the “American Independent Top 20 Sales” for a 2nd month. They got beat out by Dead Kennedys, “Fresh Fruit…” #12, but they beat out Minor Threat’s “Out of Step,” one notch below them at #15, and the Birthday Party ‘s “Mutiny,” two notches below them at #16.
In Boston Rock No. 49 published on March 1, 1984, MLM was ranked at #29 in the “The Indy 100,” which was “based on national record sales ending 03/01/84. They beat out DRI #34, Agent Orange #37, Circle Jerks #39, 45 Grave #72, DOA #85, & Metallica #86. By the time of Boston Rock No. 50, MLM had fallen to #35 out of 53, but was still ranked above Agent Orange #40, 45 Grave #44, and GBH #53.
MLM has gone through 45 different versions. There were two vinyl pressings in 1983, the first featuring a gatefold sleeve, and a cassette tape only release in 1985 on the slightly renamed 13th Story Records. The 13th Story label also re-released the 1982 “1945” single as a 12” vinyl version in 1985. After 1985, Monk Rock’s 13th Floor/13th Story seems to have become inactive. There are reports that he sold the rights to the label and its recordings that year.
In 1989 there was a re-release on XXX with vinyl, cassette and CD versions, marking the first CD version of the album; followed by a full re-release of all the band’s pre 1990 material in all formats on Jim Guerinot’s Time Bomb Records label in 1995. Epitaph re-released MLM in Europe and the U.K. in 2010, but Time Bomb reissued it on CD only in the U.S. in 2013. In 2019 Craft Recordings began re-releasing vinyl versions of the album in the U.S. and Europe, followed by a 40th anniversary vinyl edition by the same label released in the U.S. and Canada in 2023. None of these re-issues have ever featured any bonus tracks, outtakes, or alternate mixes.
11) The ASOM Single
The two songs “Another State of Mind” and “Mommy’s Little Monster” were released as a separate single in 1983. The music is the same as can be found on the album released the same year, but the packaging is a lot different. For one it’s much more colorful, compared to the black and white artwork on the album. The front cover features a drawing or stylized color photo of a girl named Elizabeth Ellen. The back cover has a large image of the “Lude Boy” logo, a smiling man wearing a fedora hat with two Xs over both eyes, for which Mackie McAleer is given credit. This was the band’s logo before the “Skelly” character also drawn by Mackie was introduced in 1983 and became more dominant. There are also a lot more special thanks credits to their entourage, “the people who gave us fun.” Oddly, it was released on “13TH Story Records” rather than “13th Floor Records,” marking the beginning of both names being used. The purpose of the single seems to have been to tie into the release of the ASOM film, as the film is mentioned and it is also claimed that you can hear these songs on MTV. Apparently they were hoping to capitalize on the release of the ASOM film, but my understanding is that it didn’t come out until 1984.
12) Other Early Film Footage of the MLM Lineup
Besides the film footage found in the ASOM movie, the classic MLM lineup featuring Brent Liles and Derek O’Brien was filmed at least three other times.
a) Flipside Video
Flipside video filmed the Liles-O’Brien lineup playing live in their rehearsal space sometime in 1982 as part of their VHS series Flipside Video No. 1. The exact date of the filming is not known. This is one of the best since you can see them playing up close. During the first 1:50 minutes of the nine-and-a-half minute video, Monk makes himself prominently visible at the start by introducing them and saying, “This is my band.”
In this film footage, Ness takes center stage while Liles stands stage left. He plays a white Gibson SG, but not the same one as in the Peer Records video, and has the same long earring dangling from his left ear. There is no live audience watching them.
The setlist included the three songs “Under My Thumb” (a Rolling Stones cover they included on the “1945” single released in 1982), “1945,” and “Playpen.”
In 2015 a much longer 36 minute version of the same recording session appeared online with Monk’s part removed but the film quality enhanced to greater clarity. This version also claimed that it dated from 1983, whereas the others had all said 1982.
You can find it on YouTube in several versions.
b) New Wave Theater
At some point, probably in 1982, Social D were filmed playing live in front of a studio audience for a segment that was intended to be broadcast on the cable T.V. show known as “New Wave Theater.” The exact date of the filming is not known, but the T.V. show was produced in 1981 and 1982 before it was cancelled in 1983. The only surviving evidence is the photos taken of the event by Ed Colver, one of which graces the back cover of the MLM album, so we know it was the Liles-O’Brien lineup. This photo first appeared publicly on the gig poster for the August 21, 1982 Victoria, B.C. show on the tour with Youth Brigade, so we know it was taken before then. Colver remembers that the photo was taken at the filming of the New Wave Theater episode but he does not recall the exact date. Although there was a studio audience, the filming doesn’t seem to have been open to the public and wasn’t advertised, so there is no gig poster or newspaper club listing.
It’s unclear whether the Social D. episode was ever aired on T.V. or not. No copies of it seem to exist. VCRs were still a rarity then, due to a U.S. Supreme Court case that was not resolved until 1984, but a few people already had them and some of the episodes were videotaped by people watching at home, but no film footage of this episode has ever surfaced online or elsewhere.
In 1991 Rhino Records released a double VHS video tape “best of” collection, and 25 episodes of the T.V. show can now be streamed online from the Internet Archive website, but neither of these include the lost Social D. episode. They do include live sets by other punk rock bands such as the Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, 45 Grave, and even the Mentors, but not Social D. https://archive.org/details/new-wave-theatre-episodes-1-through-25
In 1983 the host of the T.V. show, Peter Ivers, was murdered in a case that has never officially been solved, although the show’s producer has long been suspected. Rick Hostage believes the lost Social D. film footage was tied up in all the litigation surrounding the murder case, but you’d think that would have been resolved by now, 43 years later.
c) Peer Records
On September 4, 1983 the band played a live set on an outdoor stage outside Peer Records in Anaheim on a sunny day. This was advertised as an in-store appearance and was probably related to the recent release of the MLM album. Once again, Monk is front and center doing crowd control and almost getting into fights with the audience. In one altercation he tells a guy “Fuck you, they won’t play then.” Ness calms him down and they start their set anyway. Monk continues to periodically put his face in the camera and walk back and froth across the stage throughout.
Due to the hot weather and playing outside on a sunny day, Liles and O’Brien are both wearing sunglasses, and everyone is dressed in sleeveless denim vests, tank tops or T-shirts. Ness and Danell seem to be wearing identical matching black shirts.
Ness puts on an intense, energetic performance, shouting into the microphone, moving rapidly around the stage, jumping up in the air several times, and pulling off some fancy fretwork. It only makes one wish the quality of the film footage itself were better.
The set was filmed by someone, but not very professionally. The footage is grainy with breaks in it. If only it could be cleaned up somehow. Nonetheless, it’s a useful document of a moment in time.
It shows that by this time Ness had taken center stage and Liles was standing stage left, where he used to be. Liles and Danell both smoke cigarettes while they’re playing. Ness is still playing a Gibson SG, but Danell seems to have switched to a Gibson Les Paul Jr. This is the only known time where, at the six-minute mark, Ness did this weird jig where he danced up and down while playing. He was also wearing some sort of sailor’s hat. A long earring dangles from his left ear, just like in the 1982 Flipside video, and he has red strings tied around both biceps. At 11:40 you see O’Brien had his own microphone and sang back up vocals.
The band’s performance is so good, it shows how powerful they could be, but as we’ll see, they didn’t play that way all the time.
Meanwhile a crowd of fairly normal looking middle class people stand around three sides of the stage stoically with their arms crossed, watching intently but not showing any outward signs of enthusiasm. There was no stage diving, no mosh pit, and not even any had clapping of applause. These don’t seem to have been fans of the band but just normal people who happened to be there and watched the free show out of curiosity. Based on Monk’s interaction with them a the start some may have even been hostile.
The seven-song setlist included the songs “1945,” “The Creeps,” “Another State of Mind,” “It Wasn’t A Pretty Picture,” “Telling Them,” “Hour of Darkness,” and “Mommy’s Little Monster.”
Some online sources refer to the venue as “Pier Records,” while others argue that it was located in Newport Beach and not Anaheim. According to the L.A. Times it was located at 2309 W. Balboa Blvd., Newport Beach. https://www.ocregister.com/2015/07/14/mr-anaheim-remembering-the-anaheim-places-where-music-was-found/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-06-29-li-598-story.html
You can see it on YouTube in two different versions, both of which are pretty grainy, but differ in length, one being 18 minutes and another 30 minutes long.
13) The Arrival of Jim Guerinot: October 1983
In the second half of 1983, things were not going well for Social D. Although their first album had been released in June 1983, that had album never had a national U.S. tour to support it, since Ness was unable to travel further away from home than S.F. or San Diego due to his drug habit and need to be close to a trusted pharmacist. Thus the band was largely dependent on income from playing shows in the greater L.A. area, but they were only getting a few hundred dollars per gig at most, and they’d been banned from some venues, including Ichabod’s, which was then the biggest club in their hometown of Fullerton.
So far that year they had mainly been playing shows at the Vex club in East L.A. (7x), the Cathay de Grande in North Hollywood (4x) [they would play there two more times later that year for a total of 6 shows there in 1983], and up in S.F. at the Mabuhay/On Broadway (4x) [they’d play up there once more later that year for a total of 5x], as well as one record store appearance at Peer Records. Oddly, they’d also done several gigs at the Troubadour on the Sunset Strip, but that was known as a “pay to play” showcase place that wouldn’t pay the bands. Their only good paying gig that whole year had been opening for T.S.O.L. at SIR Studios on January 8, 1983.
Around the start of October 1983 Dennis Danell met Jim Guerinot, who had seen Social D. play at the Vex club, where they had played a half dozen shows between March and August 1983. Guerinot was already making a name for himself as a concert promoter, handling shows for several colleges, including Fullerton College and the University of California at Irvine, booking clubs such as Ichabod’s, and working with some of the area’s largest concert promotion companies, including first Golden Voice in 1983-84 and later in 1985 Avalon, after which he went on to a career in in the record industry with major labels MCA/Universal and the A&M.
He told Danell he could get Social D. $1,000 per gig, which was the most they’d ever been paid, and booked for them two shows, one at U.C. Irvine on October 21, 1983 opening for True West, and another one at Ichabod’s on October 30, 1983. Overall, the known gigography of Social D. shows does show a a noticeable uptick in the quality of gigs in October 1983. Although Guerinot doesn’t remember it, about this same time Social D. played a show for the first time ever at the pretty luxurious and high profile venue known as Club Lingerie on October 17, 1983, which I don’t I think they could have gotten without his help. He undoubtedly also got them the gig opening for Discharge at the Olympic Auditorium on December 9, 1983.
After the 2nd show he booked for them in October 1983, Danell introduced Guerinot to Monk, who was still officially the band’s manager, and Guerinot became the band’s official booking agent in charge of booking their shows. Due to his wide network of contacts and his ability to write a proper contract, he could get the band a fixed guarantee for each show, as well as a percentage of the door, ensuring them greater revenue.
14) The Break Up of the MLM Lineup
The MLM lineup basically broke up at the end of 1983 with the departure of Derek O’Brien and Brent Liles, leaving only Mike Ness and Dennis Danell. According to urban legends, there was a New Year’s Eve show on December 31, 1983, at The Cathay De Grande, with The Mentors opening, at which O’Brien and Liles abruptly walked off the stage never to come back. Details of this show and the cause of their departure aren’t currently known to me. According to some accounts, an actual fist fight broke out between the band members on stage while they were in the middle of playing their set. Playing a show on New Year’s Eve can usually be a big payday for any band, but it can only be a stressful experience. For example, the classic “Hardcore ‘81” lineup of “D.O.A. similarly broke up after playing a show at the Smilin’ Buddha on New Year’s Eve 1981/1982, after which Joe S. abruptly fired Randy Rampage. O’Brien and Liles continue on as a sort of rhythm section team that played together in the bands Harlot and Agent Orange. Monk Rock seems to have sided with O’Brien and Liles and released their Harlot E.P. on his label in 1984.
15) 1983 Live Show Summary
In 1983 the band played a total of 47 shows, more than they ever would again until 1990 when they played 64 shows, more than in 1988 when they played 43 shows total, and more than the 44 in 1989. After this there was a gradual decline in the total number of annual shows from 1984 onward. 7 of the shows happened up in the Berkeley/S.F. area, and a pair of two shows were in Arizona. 7 shows were at the Vex club in East L.A., 6 of were at Cathay de Grande in Hollywood, and 2 were at the Ichabod’s club in their hometown of Fullerton. Weirdly there were also 2 shows at the Troubadour and 1 at the Club Lingerie, two Sunset Strip clubs more known for hair metal. The biggest shows they played that year were probably S.I.R. Studios with T.S.O.L. on January 8th; Devonshire Downs with Fear & the Vandals on February 4th: U.C. Irvine on October 21st; and the Olympic Auditorium opening for Discharge on December 9th. Otherwise they played a lot of no name clubs and rented halls that nobody has ever heard of ever since. The quality of their gigs definitely improved once Jim Guerinot took over booking them in October 1983.
BTW, I’m pretty sure that the September 17, 1983 show at Munro’s Dance Palace in Seattle never happened. There are no other tour dates for anywhere in between L.A. and Seattle at that time and they wouldn’t have driven all the way up there just for that. Plus, I’m from there and I never heard of it. Some people in the Seattle punk scene at the time did have a habit of making joke posters saying that Black Flag or the Clash were coming to town, when they weren’t. Also, many L.A. bands such as the Circle Jerks, T.S.O.L. or M.I.A. would tell us they were coming to town but then just wouldn’t show up.
16) The Horrible Truth About Burma
After being worshipped for the quality of their early studio recordings made from 1980 to 1982, in 1985 Mission of Burma put out a live album called, “The Horrible Truth About Burma,” which documented how their live shows actually sucked. Although I love all Social D. studio recordings from 1981 through 1983, the evidence suggests that their live shows were often a disaster, especially from 1981 through 1984, although the September 4, 1983 live at Peer Records video certainly proves that sometimes they did pull off a phenomenal performance. At some point in the early days of the Internet I acquired a large digital collection of bootleg audio recordings of theirs that had once been board tapes for shows from '81 onward via a file sharing service that no longer exists. There was a definite pattern of what would typically happen at their shows:
a) At the start of their set, when they were supposed to start playing their show, they spent a lot of time tuning up their guitars on stage, as if they had missed sound check earlier. This didn’t just happen once, but was part of a repeated pattern. For an audience who paid to see a show this could be a pretty aggravating experience to listen guitars being tuned instead of songs.
b) Before they even start to play Mike tells some hilarious rant about how somebody messed with them while they were out in the parking lot drinking some beers getting ready for the show. Since Mike wasn’t 21 years old until about 1984 they couldn’t legally drink inside a club even if they were the band playing there that night, and instead had to get ready for the show in the parking lot outside.
c) They finally start to play a couple of songs in rough and ragged fashion.
d) At least some people in the audience turn hostile and start booing and heckling the band.
e) Their manager Monk Rock comes out on stage to do crowd control and tries to calm down the audience by saying stuff like "These are your home town boys. You should support them." If they were playing somewhere outside OC then people in the audience would shout back, "They're not from our hometown they're from Orange County!" Which just shows how localized and Balkanized the greater L.A. area scene was then. You can see Monk confronting a hostile audience in video footage of Social D. playing live at Pier Records in '82 or '83 where he threatens to cancel the show and says, "F... You, they wont play then!"
f) They decide to cut their set short. Mike says, "We're gonna play one more number and then we're going home." They play a one song encore and finish the set after having played about 20 minutes of music.
g) Again, I love Social D.'s early material. I think Mike is a genius of a songwriter, especially his lyrics, and his whole life story is nothing but a definition of what it means to be punk, but for some reason in the '80s they did have a pattern of somewhat disastrous live shows where they were often confronted by a hostile audience of hecklers.
Newer younger fans probably don’t want to believe this “horrible truth,” but eyewitnesses can confirm it. Murrey Gellman said of this 1981-1983 time period, “They were awful live. All pose and tuning up for 20 of their minute set.” Rick Hostage said, “The guitar that Mike tuned after each song: play a song, tune, play a song, tune….oh lordy.”
17) The Bob Stubbs Lineup, January – June 1984
A new Social D. lineup quickly formed with a new rhythm section in early 1984. John Mauer joined on bass, and initially a guy named Bob Stubbs filled in on drums for a couple of months, just long enough to get his picture taken in a band promo photo, and record a ten-song album that has never been released, after which he was replaced by Chris Reece. The Reece-Maurer rhythm section became the longest surviving one, lasting on into the mid-1990s.
18) The Emergence of the new Country Rock Sound
Based on unreleased bootleg recordings of early shows by this new lineup, Social D’s new country rock sound was already present in their early 1984 live shows.
19) The Aborted 1984 Album.
Even more so than that, there is a still unreleased second Social Distortion studio LP that was being advertised by Monk Rock’s 13 the Floor record label in approximately March 1984. I have a copy of the ad, which seems to have been both a flyer and reportedly appeared in Flipside magazine.
So little is known about this mysteriously aborted release that for years nobody was even sure who played on it, since its release was scheduled almost immediately after the band’s rhythm section lineup had changed from O’Brien/Liles to Reece/Mauer. It had previously seemed plausible, even to Jim Guerinot, that the recording could have been made by the O’Brien/Liles lineup right before it broke up at the end of December 1983, and that could be the reason why Ness possibly did not want it released after those two had left the band.
And there were doubts as to whether the recording even existed. Chris Reece, who joined the band in June 1984, told me in early April 2025 that he thought the ad was fake and that the recording never existed.
In contrast with all other Social Distortion demos and live recordings, absolutely no audio of this recording has ever surfaced anywhere, not on a bootleg release, not on YouTube, nothing, nowhere.
When I interviewed him in mid-April 2025, Jim Guerinot confirmed that this aborted 1984 recording did in fact happen. According to him, it was recorded at Sound City, located in Studio City, with a friend of monk’s named Tori Swenson, engineering. He confirmed that “Eddie Egan did finance this recording” but that he and being the “agreed to not release it.” He thinks it was aborted because “Mike felt the performances were poor and he was probably still using. That’s my take on it anyway.”
However, even Guerinot was still confused about which lineup of the band had played on it. “I don’t recall exactly what the lineup was that recorded this but I believe it was probably still with Derek and Brent but I’m not 100% sure. There’s no way that there would be any recording with an uncertain lineup.”
Barry Hutchinson solved this mystery in April 2025 when he interviewed Bob Stubbs, who confirmed that his lineup of the band, with John Mauer on bass, had recorded 10 songs at Sherpa Studios in Fullerton, 5 of which were never otherwise released, plus the 5 listed in the ad. He used to have a board cassette tape of it but lost it, which means Mauer might have one. The Stubbs lineup broke up because Ness went to jail on burglary charges, having been stealing to finance his drug habit. By the time Ness got out of Jail, Stubbs was already playing in several other bands. He says he recommended Reece for the job.
As a result, the full track listing of this aborted 1984 album is not known, but the partial track listing contained in the one print advertisement for it listed five songs: 1) “Indulgence,”, 2) “On My Nerves,” 3) “Lawless,” 4) “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” 5) and “Painfully (So).” These first three songs were Social D originals that did eventually appear on the “Prison Bound” LP released four years later in 1988, presumably in re-recorded versions by the then current lineup.
Track #4 was a cover song written by Brill Building songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King around 1960 and originally made famous by Black girl vocal groups the Shirelles and the Chiffons in the early 1960s. It first appeared as the A-side to a Shirelle’s single released in 1960, then on the Shirelle’s debut LP, “Tonight’s the Night,” in 1961, both times with the song title missing the word “Still,” after which the Chiffons released their version of the song on their second LP in 1963, this time including the word “Still” in the song’s title for the first time. In looking for clues as to the roots of Social D’s later roots rock sound, this cover of a song by early 1960s Black girl groups doesn’t really help. In fact, it’s a mystery why Ness would have chosen this song, which Discogs classifies as “Funk/Soul/Pop.” Clearly by this time he was looking backwards for past influences, besides the Rolling Stones, but maybe he still hadn’t discovered Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard yet.
The identity of Track #5, “Painfully (So),” is even more mysterious. An online search of Discogs database turns up no cover song with this title, so it appears to have been an original, but no Social D song of this name appears in any live recording, live video, bootleg, etc. Much like Greg Sage, Mike Ness was long known for playing songs live for years before they were ever recorded or released, so searching the band’s old setlists tends to provide more insight as to when a song was first written than the actual studio releases do, but in this case there’s simply no other evidence of the song’s existence at all. Unless, the song title were later changed, and it was later released under a different name, but without any publicly available recording we can’t prove this. According to Bob Stubbs this was a Dennis Danell song.
Eddie Egan still had the master tapes for this aborted 1984 LP in his personal vault at the time of his death. It is known that he later financed the recording of the 1988 “Prison Bound” LP, so he may have also been involved in making this aborted 1984 LP. Stubbs said in April 2025 that Eddie might have financed part of it, but that most was financed by Monk, who was still the band’s manager then.
20) During the first half of 1984 there apparently were some other short-lived attempts to bring other people into the band.
a) Both Jim Guerinot and Chris Reece told me that at one point Danny Furious of the Avengers was considered for the drummer spot. Apparently Ness wanted him in, but it didn’t work out for some reason. It’s not known if ever actually played a show with them or not. According to Guerinot, “Danny furious actually played with the band at one point.”
b) Another aborted plan mentioned by Guerinot was to get Mike Conley of M.I.A. to be Social D’s new lead singer, while Ness would still play lead guitar, similar to the way they had had two separate lead singers in 1978-79 and 1980, first Tom Corvin and then Dee Dee.
21) The Arrival of Chris Reece
The Lewd and Social Distortion had played shows together up in S.F. a total of six times in 1981-1982. Pretty much every time Social D. would go up there they would play with the Lewd and then stay overnight with them, even if it meant sleeping on the floor or a couch. The Lewd took care of them by giving them a place to stay so they wouldn’t have to rent hotel rooms. It was during these trips up North that Chris Reece first met Mike Ness and in particular became close friends with Monk Rock and Dennis Danell.
After the Lewd broke up at the end of 1982, Reece moved to Hollywood, got a job, and rented an apartment there. He was geographically well positioned when he heard in the Summer of 1984 that Social Distortion were looking for a new drummer.
The band invited him to an audition in the basement of the Cathay de Grande, where he was first asked to play the song “The Creeps,” off of their “Mommy’s Little Monster” LP, which had been released in June 1983 but was recorded in December 1982, a year-and-a-half earlier. This was an interesting choice of audition material since the band had already begun shifting in more of a Country Western folk rock sound with the aborted 1984 album that had already been recorded but not released.
Reece got the job and the other three members of the band soon moved in with him in Hollywood, which was convenient since it was close to the Cathay de Grande, which at the time was still their main club in L.A., a venue they had played 6 times in 1983 alone. It was also convenient for the other members because they didn’t have jobs or cars, but Reece did. By his own description and that of Jim Guerinot, Reece was comparatively the most responsible and straight edge member of the band at that point, having a job, a car, and an apartment, and to some extent supported the others. He would come home from work at the end of the day and find the other three already under the influences. Meanwhile, Monk, who was still officially the band’s manager, stayed behind in Fullerton, and this may have begun a certain separation between him and the band.
This second half of 1984 was probably the peak of Ness’ addiction issues. His daily schedule would revolve around the need to get high every day. Since this habit cost an estimated $100 a day at the time, the first step would be trying to pony up the dough from whatever source there was, be it borrowing from rich girlfriends or fans, or committing some petty theft junky crimes. I don’t think he ever actually mugged anyone or robbed a bank, but these were crimes of opportunity. If you left your wallet on the bar, or left your purse in a bedroom during a party, you might just find it got emptied out, or if left your bass amp set up in the living room it could end up at the pawn shop.
The next step would be meeting the dealer. Since Ness didn’t have a vehicle, and maybe had lost his driver’s license, he had to have someone else drive him to meet the dealer in Santa Ana or downtown L.A. once every day. Reece volunteered to drive him until they had a gun pointed at them, after which he wouldn’t go anymore.
So, you can see how this kind of addiction could itself become a sort of full-time job that would occupy all your time and energy.
22) 1984 Live Shows Summary:
The Metallipromo gigography is the best resource we have to easily document Social D’s live shows, but despite being very detailed it is not always right and does contain some mistakes. For example, there is absolutely no way in Hell that the band drove all the way up to Montreal, Canada to play one show on April 30, 1984, a Monday night, but Metallipromo claims they did. They do have a newspaper club ad saying so, but I don’t believe it. So, you have to read between the lines and carefully examine it with some healthy skepticism. Generally speaking, if they’ve also provided the evidence of a gig flyer, which sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t, this proves the gig was at least booked, although some of those shows are also known to have been cancelled later.
Social D played a total of approximately 34 shows in 1984. There were about 19 shows in the first half of the year before Chris Reece recalls joining the band in July 1984. In the gigography of known shows, there is a visible break for nearly six weeks between June 30 and August 11, 1984. This break would support the recollections of Bob Biggs that Ness went to jail around this time, and Chris Reece’s recollection of joining the band that Summer, which would have necessitated some rehearsals before they could play a show. However, there was also a slightly shorter nearly five-week break between May 11 and June 16th, which is when Metallipromo thinks that Bob Stubbs had quit.
Surprisingly, if this gigography is right, the band had already started playing live shows again on January 13, 1984, a little less than two weeks after Liles and O’Brien had quit on New Year’s Eve. However, what is noticeable is that their first nine shows of the year through mid-April 1984 were all held outside of the city of L.A. proper, and outside of their home territory of Orange County, not as part of a continuous contiguous tour, but as isolated individual day trips to Berkeley; Sacramento; Las Vegas, NV; Phoenix, AZ; Pasadena (technically in L.A. county but 11 miles outside of DTLA); and Tucson, AZ; Pomona (technically in L.A. County but 31 miles away from DTLA); San Francisco; and San Diego. This may have been an intentional strategy to have new or ephemeral lineups of the band play away from the view of friends and fans who might notice the difference and let these new lineups get their kinks out somewhat hidden from view.
The new lineups of the band didn’t play their own hometown of Fullerton until an April 15, 1984 show at Ichabod’s, and didn’t play a show in the city of L.A. proper until an April 19, 1984 show at the Cathay de Grande, followed by an April 20, 1984 show at the Stardust, which was also in Hollywood.
After that they were back in S.F. at the Mabuhay on April 21, 1984, then back at the Cathay de Grande on April 24, 1984 opening for T.S.O.L., then the Concert Factory in Costa Mesa on April 28, and the Music Machine in L.A. on May 11, 1984. Two more shows up in the S.F. area followed, interspersed by another show at the Cathay de Grande on June 23rd.
So during this first six months, out of a total of 19 shows, the band played 12 shows outside of the city of L.A. and their hometown of Fullerton, 5 shows in the city of L.A. proper, and 2 shows in Fullerton. This may help explain why few people remember seeing the Bob Stubbs lineup and some people think they only played a couple of shows, as well as really nobody clearly remembering seeing the Danny Furious lineup, if indeed they played a show. Also notable is that 3 out 5 of the L.A. city shows were at the Cathay de Grande, making it still their main L.A. hangout. Remember they had previously played that venue six times in 1983.
Based on the available gigography, the newly stabilized Mauer-Reece lineup seems to have begun playing shows in August 1984 with a show at their Hollywood hangout the Cathay de Grande on August 11, 1984. During this second half of the year there were a total of 15 shows, actually slightly less than in the first half. 10 of these, about two-thirds, were outside of L.A., depending on your definition of L.A., including 5 up in the S.F./Berkeley area; 1 in Santa Cruz; 1 in Sacramento; 1 in Tempe, AZ; 1 in San Diego; and 1 in Azusa (over 24 miles outside of DTLA). Within the greater L.A. area, they still had to share a bill with the Mentors at the Music Machine on August 17th; but their two biggest shows were probably their first ever show at Fenders Ballroom in Long Beach on October 13, 1984; and opening for John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd. (PIL) at the Olympic Auditorium on November 16, 1984. That was only the second time they had played the Olympic, having previously opened for Discharge there on December 9, 1983. Oddly, they did not play a New Year’s Eve show this year.
If you do a search on YouTube, several videos pop up that claim to be Social D playing live in 1984. However, these are all dubious provenance and poor quality. None of the uploaders have provided any detailed information in the descriptions. Some only say it was the year “1984,” with no specific date. Some state a venue, but it’s a venue that Social D. is not known to have played that year. Others state a specific date and venue, but Social D is not known to have played that venue on that date. None of them provide a setlist. None of them allow any comments be posted, meaning that nobody else who may know something about the videos is allowed to share any of their information. Sometimes the exact same video has been posted by two different uploaders with two different venues stated.
So, all the Social D. live videos uploaded to YouTube for the year 1984 are a fucking mess and are to be used with extreme caution. You know, if you’re going to upload something to YouTube, you have a responsibility to provide a detailed description with the correct date and venue at least, and a setlist would be nice. Otherwise, don’t bother spreading more incorrect false information and confusing people, please. If you upload a video to YouTube and have no fucking idea what is you’re uploading, at the very least allow other people to post comments so that they may share some useful information about it that they may have.
23) At some point, Monk sold the rights to the 13th Floor/Story record label, moved to Las Vegas, and Jim Guerinot took over Monk’s role as Social D’s manager, although when I interviewed him in mid-April 2025 even he couldn’t remember exactly when this had happened. His later role in the 1990s with Rebel Waltz management and the Time Bomb records label is well known, but what I think people don’t know is that Jim was involved with booking and maybe managing Social D much earlier, in the second half of the 1980s. There was a period in 1983-1985 when Monk and Jim were working together as a team. Jim was the booking agent who was able to get the band higher profile and better paying gigs, but Monk was still officially the band’s manager and owned their record label. When Chris Reece joined the band in June 1984, he first met Jim Guerinot over at Monk Rock’s house, indicating that the two were still working together then.
Sometime in 1985 Monk re-released the MLM album on cassette tape and the “1945” single as a 12” vinyl disc, both for the first time in those formats, so the 13th Floor/13th Story record label seems to have still been operating that year. In early April 2025 Chris Reece recalled that Monk had sold the rights to MLM and presumably the other 13th Floor recordings to a guy named Mike Houlihan in 1985, but there’s no other corroboration for this and nothing else is known about exactly who Mike Houlihan was. Jim Guerinot later confirmed this.
At some point Brent Liles and Derek O’Brien both sold their rights to a 25% share each of the MLM album back to Monk Rock, who paid them each $500, as I recall. I once had a copy of the written agreement between them, but with all the laptop replacements, external hard drive failures, and multinational transcontinental moving back and forth over the years that got lost, along with my collection of old Social D bootlegs. If I still had that it would bear a date that would indicate Monk still owned the MLM master tapes at that time. By the time XXX reissued the MLM album in 1989, Jim Guerinot says the legal rights were a mess because so many people had sold and bought shares in it by then. According to Guerinot, it was Mike Houlihan who sold the MLM master tapes to XXX for their re-release of the album in 1989.
Jim Guerinot seems to have finally taken over completely as the band’s manager in early 1986, based on the fact that he booked the band’s trip to NYC that March. There is a 1988 band promo photo that is the same as on the “Prison Bound” LP, which specifically lists Jim Guerinot and “Rebel Waltz Management,” so his takeover as band manager was official by 1988 at the latest.
L-R: Monk Rock aka Mark Wilson, and Dennis Danell.
L-R: Dennis Danell and Monk Rock at Binion’s Horseshoe in Downtown Las Vegas.
24) In a 2019 interview, Mike Ness said that the first Social Distortion show that he played clean and sober was when they opened for 999 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on February 11, 1985. However, despite this, my gigography shows there was a one year gap with no more Social Distortion shows after that until an entire year later in February 1986. This could be because he was playing in the band Easter or other reasons. It’s also been said the he was in and out of jail and rehab in 1985. I recall while the Gorilla Gardens was open in 1985, Tony DSML told be that Ness was in and out of rehab and that’s why he couldn’t book Social D to play in Seattle. Friends like Jim Guerinot Sheryl Lamoureux encouraged him to get clean and helped him get into rehab, but Ness himself had to make the decision to clean up after multiple arrests and multiple overdoses made him hit bottom. After he got clean Ness moved in with Guerinot and lived with him.
25) In February-March 1985 there was a U.S. tour booked that would have taken Social Distortion through the southern states along the Gulf Coast, and then up the East Coast. I have a list of the dates and venues. However, I believe this tour was cancelled and never actually happened. According to Jim Guerinot, “Mike wasn’t clean and sober yet and wouldn’t be until the November 2, 1985 999 show, so I can only guess that the cancellation must have been related to his substance abuse issues, possibly he was in rehab or jail.”
26) 1985 Live Shows Summary:
In 1985 Social D. only played a total of 27 shows at most, 7 fewer compared to the 34 shows they had played the year before in 1984, and even some of those may have been cancelled. Their 4 biggest shows that year were probably the Olympic Auditorium with Redd Kross on March 30, 1985; the Stardust Ballroom with the Dickies on July 4, 1985; Fenders Ballroom with T.S.O.L. on July 21, 1985; and opening for 999 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on November 2, 1985. As previously mentioned, the 999 show was the first one that Ness played clean and sober. Ironically, there weren’t any more Social D. shows for the rest of that year.
27) In 1986-1987, Mike Ness played guitar and sang some vocals in a band called Easter, that was actually led by another guy named Danny Dean. Ness has said that after he got clean in 1985 it was an essential part of his drug rehabilitation to just be a regular member of another band, without the pressure of having to be its main leader/songwriter. Although he didn’t appear on any of their studio recording releases, Ness was filmed performing live with the band in several videos, and also appeared in some of their MTV-style videos, that can still be found on YouTube, particularly on Danny Dean’s YouTube channel, including “Lights Out,” and “Slipping Away.”
What’s most interesting about these Easter live videos is that it shows they had a very similar country punk musical sound as Social Distortion developed later, making it tempting to conclude that this may have been the roots of Social D’s later roots rock sound. In one Easter live video, Mike Ness can even be seen singing lead vocals on the Johnny Cash song “Folsom Prison Blues,” which Social D. later covered in the 1990s.
28) After four years of not having toured outside of California since the legendary 1982 U.S. tour with Youth Brigade documented in the “Another State of Mind” film, in 1986 Social D. flew from L.A. to N.Y.C. to play one show at the Ritz on March 22, 1986. In a mid-April 2025 interview I did with him, Jim Guerinot recalled that he booked this show, and that he was managing the Vandals at the time, who were also on the bill, but he could not confirm whether he was actually managing Social Distortion yet or not. Nonetheless, it seems that Monk Rock was out of the picture by this time.
The show was filmed and recorded. The video is on YouTube, where it was originally posted 17 years ago by Christy Mae Chen, the daughter of longtime old skool Social D. confidant Eddie Egan, who went along for the ride on this March 1986 trip to NYC, was the one who financed the recording of the 1988 “Prison Bound” LP, and who still had the master tapes for the aborted 1984 LP in his personal vault at the time of his death. In an FB message to me, Eddie once said that he had the whole video of the show, so I believe he was the original source for it. Since then Christy’s original upload has been copied by several other people. It’s available in both smaller segments and the whole show.
Meanwhile the audio alone was turned into a 20-track bootleg album, 1 song less than in the video. One fault of the album is that they cut out most of the on stage banter in between songs that was in some ways the most revealing part indicating the headspace where Ness was at at that time. https://www.discogs.com/release/5922342-Social-Distortion-Ritz-NYC-3-22-86
Based on the audio-visual evidence for this show, we can see clearly that Social D.’s new roots rock sound was already in full swing, and that some people in the audience found it so shocking that the band got heckled by at least a few hecklers, causing Mike Ness to quip from the stage, “You’re too kind. New York, colder than a pimp’s heart.” This line, “colder than a pimp’s heart” later appeared in the lyrics to the song “Prison Bound,” the title track to their second album released in 1988.
Notably, this March 22, 1986 setlist featured 7 of the 9 original songs that would appear on the “Prison Bound” LP, which wouldn’t be released until another two years later in 1988, including “Indulgence,” “No Pain No Gain,” “On My Nerves,” “I Want What I Want,” “Lawless,” “Lost Child,” “Like An Outlaw.” The only two original songs off their 1988 LP that they didn’t play at this March 22, 1986 show were “It’s the Law,” and the title track “Prison Bound.”
They also played, “A Place In My Heart,” which wouldn’t appear on a Social D. studio album until their self-titled Epic debut released four years later in 1990. This was maybe the first ever live appearance of a song off their 1990 self-titled album, indicating that Ness had started writing that material as early as March 1986.
Most notably, in terms of indicating the new direction of their musical influences, out of a 21-song setlist at this March 22, 1986 show Social D. performed five cover songs. The Rolling Stones’ song “Under My Thumb” was no big surprise since they’d covered that as a B-side to their “1945” single released in 1982.
However, the other four covers performed at this show were a bit more surprising to the audience, and indicated the band’s new roots rock/country western direction. It probably didn’t help the punk rock audience to consume these four roots rock/country western covers that three of them were all played back to back in a bunch near the end of the band’s set, followed by only two more original songs.
These four roots rock/country western covers included the song, “Wanted Man,” which had originally been written by Bob Dylan, but was made more famous by Johnny Cash, who performed it live at San Quentin Prison in a version released on a live album in 1969. In his between song stage banter, Ness mistakenly said Cash recorded it at “Folsom Prison,” which was actually part of one of Cash’s song titles.
They also performed a cover of the John Fogerty song “Bad Moon Rising,” originally released by Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1969.
The most obscure cover was one of the “Wanderer,” written by someone Ness’ stage banter only mentioned as “a pretty cool guy” from the 1950s. In reality his name was Ernie Maresca, not a household word these days, but his song “the Wanderer” was later covered on records by Dion in 1963, Leif Garret in 1978, and Dave Edmunds in 1987.
Most surprisingly, they played a cover of the Merle Haggard song “Bonnie & Clyde,” which was the title track of an album he released in 1968.
29) From at least 1986 onward the band seemed to have a somewhat contrived or at least coordinated public image with somewhat matching outfits and hairstyles. Members don’t seem to have been allowed to wear whatever they wanted, nobody had long hair. In 86 the image was short hair with sort of policeman’s uniforms kinda like the S.F. band Crime had in 1977. By 88 it was matching slicked back greaser hairstyles, baggy khaki pants, suspenders, black leather jacket, white T-shirt. Later it was the 1940s gangster look.
30) 1986 Live Shows Summary
In 1986 the band played a total of 32 shows. Up 5 from the 27 in 1985, but still 2 below the 34 in 1984. Except for the one trip to NYC, most of these shows occurred at greater L.A. area clubs such as Safari Sam’s in Huntington Beach (5x), Night Moves in Huntington Beach (1x), Club Lingerie (1x). They also played Fenders Ballroom in Long Beach with the Vandals on January 24th; and Bogart’s in Long Beach with T.S.O.L and M.I.A. on June 23rd. There were also two shows at the On Broadway up in S.F., including one opening for G.B.H. The four biggest shows they played in California that year were probably opening for the Damned two nights in a row in San Diego and at the Palladium in L.A. on March 24-25; opening for the Cramps at the Palladium on July 12th; opening for the Ramones at the Palladium on September 13th. All in all they played the Palladium three times in 1986.
31) 1987 Live Shows Summary
Looking at the known gigography of their shows, they only played 12 shows in 1987, when Ness was in Easter. The irony is that the band played more shows in 1984-1985, when Ness’ drug addiction was at its height, than they did in 1987, when he was clean and sober.
32) By 1988 Ness and Danell had switched their Gibson SG guitars for Gibson Les Paul goldtops or TV jrs. This change in musical instruments was pretty symbolic of the change in the band’s musical sound as well, since the SG was known as the typical punk rock guitar as it was played by Joe S of DOA, Greg Sage of the Wipers, Slats of the Silly Killers, Paul Solger of the Fartz/10MW, etc.
33) Prison Bound LP (1988)
At some point in early 1988, Social Distortion’s second studio album “Prison Bound” was released by Enigma/Restless. Metallipromo says the Prison Bound LP was released on February 12, 1988, but provides no proof or evidence. Saturday, May 28, 1988 gig poster for SD show at John Anson Ford Theater mentions at the top “New LP ‘Prison Bound,’ and “we waited three long years,” hmmm, actually it was over 4.5 years since the release of MLM. Was this the PB record release show?
34) Although it is known that it was recorded at the Casbah Studio in Fullerton, CA, and produced by its original owner Chaz Ramirez, there is no information available about exactly when the “Prison Bound” album was recorded.
Furthermore, there are continuing debates even among the band’s inner circle as to how it got made. In early April 2025, Chris Reece told me that Eddie Egan “bankrolled Prison Bound” and lent the band $5,000 to record it. Then they were able to take the recording to Enigma/Restless for manufacturing, distribution and marketing, while still owning the tapes themselves. However, Jim Guerinot has repeatedly insisted to me that, “The band themselves 100% financed prison bound. This I’m positive of because I manage the money at that point.”
35) The “Prison Bound” album came with inserts including a large photo of the band dressed in 1930s gangster costumes, and a lyric sheet.
36) For the most part, almost none of the songs on the 1988 “Prison Bound” LP were new material, although it may have seemed so to fans who hadn’t seen them play live outside of California since 1982 and hadn’t heard a new recording of the band since 1983. As noted earlier in this essay, 7 of the 9 original songs on the “Prison Bound” LP were already being played live as early as their March 22, 1986 show in NYC, and at least 3 of the 9 original tracks were recorded in early 1984 for the aborted 1984 album that never came out. The first track, "It's the Law," was even older, having originally been titled "Justice for All," and was first recorded for Posh Boy in 1981.
The album also contains a cover version of "Backstreet Girl" by the Rolling Stones. The tribute to the Stones theme continues with the record label officially being called “Sticky Fingers Records” in the band’s PR releases, even thought it was actually on Enigma/Restless. The album's title track contains a reference to Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line," although there were no Cash covers on this album. My own personal favorite song on the album is “On My Nerves,” which successfully combines Rolling Stones blues with hardcore punk into a hybrid sound, kind of like what Tommy Fart aka Tom Hansen’s band On The Rocks had been doing in 1983-1985.
37) Inside the “Prison Bound” LP was a full-page band bio written by Rebel Waltz management. The bio has some curious statements and questionable dates. This PR sheet deserves special attention of its own.
“They’ve been called a cross between ‘[Eddie] Cochran and the [Rolling] Stones, and ‘the Rolling Stones of Punk’…”
“Since 1979, Social Distortion has been serving up two-guitar blues-based punk rock oblivious to trends, fashion, and public opinion.” [ED: Actually, Frank Agnew has said they formed in 1978, and they didn’t have two guitar players until Danell switched from bass to guitar in the Summer of 1981.]
“In 1980 Social Distortion descended upon the L.A. music scene with two indie singles, the anthemic ‘Playpen,’ and ‘1945,’ and contributed two tracks to the now legendary first ‘Hell Comes to Your House’ compilation.” [E.D. Actually, Social Distortion didn’t release any recordings until 1981. Both “Playpen” and “1945” were recorded and released twice, in 1981 and 1982. The first 1981 release of “Playpen” was at the B-side to the “Mainliner” single on Posh Boy. “Hell Comes to Your House” Vol. 1 was recorded and released in 1981. See earlier in this essay for more details on the band’s precise discography.]
The MLM album “was a huge success…and sold an amazing 40,000 copies.” [E.D.: Guerinot’s favorable assessment here is contradictory to the current entry for the album on Discogs, which says, “The album was critically acclaimed but was, however, not commercially successful.” It’s also not known where Guerinot got this number of 40,000 copies of MLM sold by 1988, since that number has never publicly appeared anywhere else and he didn’t cite his source here.]
Describing the period after MLM but before PB, Guerinot wrote in 1988 that, “Social Distortion was flourishing, but singer/songwriter Mike Ness’ personal life was taking toll. Hard drugs and continued incarceration were the tragic result. The band was on the ropes…”
He then describes PB as “a dramatic account of personal anguish, alienation, and frustration….,” a “story of the trials and tribulations of growing up.”
38) July 8, 1988 gig poster for SD opening for Iggy Pop at the Whiskey says they will perform their “KROQ hit” “Prison Bound,” implying the record was out by then. Jim Guerinot confirmed that, “There was a point where Prison Bound, the song, was number one on KROQ.”
39) In July 1988 Social Distortion went on their first U.S. national tour since 1982 in support of their new “Prison Bound” LP. The tour was actually broken up into two legs, the first lasting from July 15th to July 29th, including a July 29th stop in Seattle for the first time in six years.
Although this Seattle show as held at the Seattle Center Arena, the band’s set was buried in the midst of a skateboard convention, and posters for the event emphasized the skateboard convention at the top, with Social Distortion’s name buried deep in the fine print down below, so many local fans may have been unaware they were even playing a show, including me. 1) This 1988 Seattle show is notable for being the first time that Jim Guerinot met both Tony Hawk and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden. Guerinot later worked closely with Soundgarden at A&M and managed Cornell’s solo career after he left Soundgarden.
The second half of the “Prison Bound” U.S. tour lasted from September 9th - October 18th, 1988. Noteworthy is that during both legs of this tour the band traveled in a small van that they drove themselves, not as passengers in some luxury tour bus paid for by a major record label.
40) All totaled in 1988 they played 43 shows, still fewer than their previous peak in 1983 when the band played a total of 47 shows.
41) There was a second van tour of the U.S. in 1989. All totaled in 1989 they played 44 shows, one more than in 1988, but still 3 fewer than their peak in 1983 when they played 47 shows in one year.
42) On March 27, 1990 the self-titled “Social Distortion” album was released on the major label Epic. This was their major label debut, and despite it being their third album they seemed to want to make a fresh-start by not giving it another title besides the band name, which is something usually done on a band’s first album.
This first major label deal was definitely arranged by Jim Guerinot, but when I interviewed him in 2025 he didn’t remember much about exactly how it happened. Mainly he contributed it to the amount of airplay that the title track off “Prison Bound” had gotten from KROQ and college radio stations such as KXLU. The irony is that in 1989 when the deal with Epic would have been negotiated Guerinot was working at A&M, another major record label, but couldn’t get the band signed to them. He explained that, “I was in a much less significant role at A&M in 1988 or 89 when the signing would’ve taken place. No one at A&M expressed any interest.” So, much like A&M blew it with the Sex Pistols, they also passed on Social Distortion.
The lineup on this LP was the same as it had been on the 1988 “Prison Bound” LP, signifying what a stable era this was for the band’s personnel, in contrast to that prior to the Summer of 1984 when a rotating cast of characters had come and gone.
Unlike their previous 1988 “Prison Bound” LP, which was playing catch up with largely four-year-old material that hadn’t been released before, the 1990 self-titled LP was largely new material written within the previous two years. The one exception was “A Place In My Heart,” which first appeared in the band’s live set at the March 1986 NYC show.
Art Morales, the creator of the MLM cover art in 1983, received a surprise phone call from Mike Ness asking him to design the artwork for the front cover of the album and its related singles. He created the images of 1920s-1930s Prohibition Era G-Men armed with machine guns kicking down doors, hookers adjusting their garter belts, and empty booze bottles falling on the floor.
The inside of the album came with a large fold-out full-color poster featuring a large photo of the band. When I met them after the June 16, 1990 show in Seattle I asked Mike to sign my copy of the poster, and he did, but instead of his real name he wrote “Sick Boy.”
43) The 1990 U.S. Tour
Overall, the 1990 U.S. tour marked a triumphant return for the band, with a total of 64 shows in one year, for the first time ever surpassing their previous record of 47 shows in 1983.
However, initially, the 1990 tour did not go well, at least not up in the Pacific NW, where they played Seattle on June 16 at the Lake City Concert Hall, a former movie theater, and June 17 at the Pine Street Theater in Portland, OR. This was a difficult transitional time for the band, since they had made the conscious decision to ignore all their older punk rock material and only play the country rock folk songs on the new album, but they were playing medium-sized venues full of fans of their older punk rock catalogue, and they had not yet developed a new fan base of fans of their new material.
At the Seattle show, which was only about half full and wasn’t sold out, there were enough empty seats in the old movie theater that I was able to stand up on top of them and smoke a cigarette while watching the show. Ness took one cue from his past and wore his trademark eyeliner, but somebody in the crowd shouted “Take off the makeup!!” Ness and Danell jumped up in the air in unison once on stage, but that wasn’t enough to excite the audience. Slats, whose band the Silly Killers had opened for them in 1982, complained to me that, “They didn’t use to be so restrained.” One heckler kept baiting Danell, who motioned for the heckler to come up on stage.
After the show I was lucky enough to have a mutual friend introduce me to Ness for the first time, appropriately out in the parking lot behind the venue. We had a pretty insightful chat that helped me understand his personality. At one point my friend and I were mistaken by some other fans for being members of the band, when they looked at the three of us and said, “You guys put on a great show,” to which Ness responded, “These guys aren’t in the band, they’re just my friends.” So in one moment I was both mistaken for being a member of Social Distortion and then described as Ness’ friend. Ness agreed to sign my band poster, but he signed it “Sick Boy” instead of using his real name. Unfortunately, I then said something about Mike Palm of Agent Orange, which instantly set off his bad temper, made him shout “Noooo!” and almost caused him to punch me in the face. So, then I saw how quickly he could lose his temper and turn on you from friend to foe. Most indicatively, Ness complained that the tour hadn’t been going well because the audience’s hadn’t been responding well to the new folk rock material, which he said “Makes me feel like cryin’ or takin’ a life.” At the next show in Portland, they played one old punk rock song, but only because it was some girl’s birthday and the crowd demanded it.
Eventually the tide turned for them that year as Spin magazine kept featuring big spreads on them in every month’s issue, probably thanks their major record label’s clout. They acquired Bruce Springsteen’s fan base and all turned out well for them, at least financially.
Combining punk rock with the Blues and/or Country Western genres was a good idea, but it wasn’t a unique one. Since 1980 many American punk bands had already done this, including the Dils once they changed their name to Rank N’ File, the Cramps, the Gun Club, the Blasters, the Rockats, the Stray Cats, Tex & the Horseheads, and as we’ve seen even a band that Ness had previously been in called Easter. It’s just that Social Distortion were the most commercially successful at doing it.
By 1995 Ness seemed able to re-embrace his punk rock past again with the release of the anthology album “Mainliner: Wreckage From the Past,” and the band began inserting some of their old standards back into the set again, but initially on that 1990 tour they tried to hide from the past and leave it behind them.
44) The Fate of the Entourage
Over the years, Social D’s 1980s entourage has dropped like flies one by one, leaving Mike Ness almost the last man standing. Given his chequered past, no one would have ever bet that Ness would outlive everyone else, but he has, much like Iggy Pop being the last original Stooge. The one exception is that every drummer Social D. ever had during the band’s first 12 years is still alive, contrary to the Spinal Tap theme, including Casey Royer (1978-1979), John Stevenson (1980-1981), Derek O’Brien (1981-1983), Bob Stubbs (January to June 1984), and Chris Reece (June 1984 – 1994).
Charles “Chaz” Ramirez, the former owner of the Casbah Studio where the first two Social D. albums were recorded in 1982 and 1988, died on December 2, 1992 at the age of 39 after sustaining a broken neck and head injuries in a warehouse fall.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-12-05-ca-1198-story.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-12-10-ca-2573-story.html
Dennis Danell (1961-2000) died at the age of 38 on February 29, 2000 of a brain aneurysm. He’d been born in Seattle, WA on June 24, 1961. On May 8, 2000 a memorial concert for him was held at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater featuring Social Distortion, T.S.O.L., X, Pennywise and the Offspring.
Compared to Ness, Danell was kind of the more responsible of the two. Although as a fan of the band in the 1980s, I know we used to kind of laugh at him as the loyal sidekick who didn’t seem to contribute much to the actual music, in my research I came to respect him much more as having been the band’s sort of inside manager that Johnny Ramone was (who also didn’t contribute much to his band’s music). During the years that Ness was a mess, Danell worked hard behind the scenes to keep the band together. His mom let the band rehearse and hangout in a garage behind their family’s house that had an upstairs apartment. He was the one who first met their first manager Monk Rock and introduced him to Ness. He was the one who first met their second manager Jim Guerinot and introduced him to Monk and Ness. He maintained contacts with club owners and booking agents and handled getting their shows, at least until Guerinot took over as the band’s booking agent.
His own sister Nancy told me in 2025 that he never saved anything, but according to Chris Reece at some point he acquired a box of archives that Danell had kept over the years, supposedly including original contracts with record labels and handwritten lyrics. Unfortunately, I have had no direct access to these other than the selected individual items that Reece has chose to post online on Facebook.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-mar-01-me-4055-story.html
https://dailybruin.com/2000/05/08/punks-pay-tribute-at-farewell
Brent Liles (1963-2007) passed away at the age of 43 on January 18, 2007 after getting hit by a semi-truck while riding his bicycle. After leaving Social D. he and Derek were briefly Mike Palm’s new rhythm section in Agent Orange. Unfortunately they didn’t release any recordings except for a 1991 live album recorded at the Roxy on July 21, 1990. https://www.ocregister.com/2007/01/21/early-social-distortion-bassist-idd-in-wreck/?noamp=mobile&_gl=1*1wzpj99*_ga*UDFmQTFReHFvek9GYWtHQ25Vc3V2OWszVktWcnZZXzh5NWx4SkNtTFFXZElwQi1jRzV2cWdLc01MQUl2ZWFaNg..*_ga_J5T6K3391H*MTc1MjIxODg0Ny4yLjEuMTc1MjIxODg0Ny4wLjAuMA
Monk Rock aka Mark Wilson (1953-2020) passed away on April 28th 2020 due to flu-like symptoms that were similar to Covid-19. On May 6, 2020 OC Music News published a long obituary for him written by John Gilhooley. Gordon Cox, John O’Donovan, Roger Ramjet, Derek O-Brien, and Gary Hirstius were all quoted at length in this article. Those quotes were then copied and pasted into the “Orange Curtain” book without citing their source. https://ocmusicnews.com/monk/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJtH5xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHmO6bhuLErrXN3lL4OhDP22no7Gyx3MHzu3scgeBJqoaW-Ln1bbFFXspz5lu_aem_vsGYv9cQUYXzzs1SMiSYjg
The last time Monk and Ness spoke in person was at Dennis Danell’s funeral in the year 2000. They had not spoken for 20 years at the time of Monk’s death. In a recent interview Monk had complained that he and Mike no longer had any relationship at all.
Monk was survived by his wife Marla C. Wilson, who in 2025 told me that she still had the original paper hard copy archives for Monk’s 13th Floor/13th Story record label. These would be an invaluable primary source for documenting more specific details about the MLM album in particular but so far I have not had access to them.
Eddie Egan (Feb 10, 1957 - June 30, 2022) passed away roughly two years after Monk did. A memorial show for him was held at Alex’s Bar on September 18, 2022 with sets by the Crowd, Love Canal, and Greg Antista, among others. He was survived by his sister Caroline Egan Wilkins and his wife Arolf Egan who is still sitting on Eddie’s archives, including the master tapes for the unreleased 1984 album, but since she’s from the Philippines, wasn’t involved in the 1980s L.A. music scene and is more a fan of R.E.O. Speedwagon she doesn’t know the true value of what she has and as of 2025 hasn’t taken the time to sort through it all.
Sources
I. Primary Source Interviews & Correspondence:
1. Frank Agnew interview with Barry Hutchinson in September 2017.
https://barrysta9.wixsite.com/social-distortion/agnew
2. John “Carrot” Stevenson interviewed by me in April 2025.
3. Arolf Egan correspondence with me.
4. Jim Guerinot interviewed by me in April 2025, followed by continuing correspondence through July 2015.
5. Rick Hostage correspondence with me in July 2025.
6. Sheryl Lamoureux correspondence with me in April 2025.
7. Art Morales interviewed by me in April-May 2025.
8. Chris Reece interviewed by me in April 2025.
9. Bob Stubbs interview with Barry Hutchinson in April 2025, followed by more correspondence with me the same month.
https://barrysta9.wixsite.com/social-distortion/stubbs
10. Marla Wilson correspondence with me in April 2025.
II. Periodicals: Newspapers & Magazines:
1. Boston Rock, various issues, 1981-1984.
2. Flipside magazine, Issue #20, Halloween 1980
3. Flipside magazine, Issue #25, Autumn 1981, band photo on cover.
4. Thrasher magazine, Year 1, Issue 1, January 1981.
5. Randy Lewis, “A Rock Fan Who Made It Pay Off,” L.A. Times, February 5, 1989. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-02-05-ca-2600-story.html
6. Mike Boehm, “Looking Back on the Darkest days,” L.A. Times, April 8, 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-04-08-ca-1648-story.html
7. “Mike Ness, Story of His Life,” Orange Coast magazine, February 11, 2011.
8. Valerie Elwell, “Rebel Waltzes into the Future,” June 11, 2019. https://www.humanities.uci.edu/news/rebel-waltzes-future
9. Kelli Skye interview with Mike Ness in the OC Register, October 2019.
10. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-12-05-ca-1198-story.html
11. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-12-10-ca-2573-story.html
12. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-mar-01-me-4055-story.html
13. https://dailybruin.com/2000/05/08/punks-pay-tribute-at-farewell
III. Websites