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| The Players Who Made This Possible |
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In the summer of 1996 the music industry was abuzz over the release of a self-titled album from a punk rock trio from Long Beach, CA. The album was already a hit, even before it�s release, due to the heavy radio play given to the first single, �What I Got.� Heckler Magazine had called the release �a masterpiece�, and Time magazine named it the �Rock Release of the Year.� But what most people, even those inside the music industry, didn�t know was that the band was already over. The lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Bradley James Nowell had died a rather uneventful death during May of that year in a San Francisco hotel room. The death was not given national press, as were previous musician deaths, for Sublime�s fame wasn�t gained on a national scale until after the band�s demise. Only the Southern California culture, which had nurtured Sublime�s unique sound and style over the past ten years shed any tears over the tragedy, except perhaps for the record executives who were hoping for another string of hits to come along in a few years.
One month after Nowell�s premature death Sublime�s producer Michael Happoldt, who is known by the name Miguel, sat in his apartment in Long Beach, muttering aloud to himself. �Fuck�it�s all this shit that we were working towards�� �All this shit� turned out to be bookings for international tours, a string of hit singles, triple-platinum success, and the proclamation that the band that no longer existed was named the �Band of the Year� in 1997 by Rolling Stone.
This, of course, is only the tale end of the Sublime story, which began in the early 1970�s in Long Beach, California, where Bradley Nowell was being raised in an area that seemed to contradict the racial turmoil that the rest of the country was experiencing. The atmosphere in Long Beach was one of a culture that celebrated diversity, where musical styles, and people of all races, freely mixed and meshed, creating a whole new sound, totally comprised of all sounds.
Bradley
Bradley was born to parents James and Nancy Nowell on February 22, 1968, and seemed destined for musical greatness from day one. According to his father, Bradley was a happy child, who enjoyed surfing, skating, and skiing. While he was still a child, Bradley would attend family parties where most of his family would gather around a campfire and play acoustic guitars and sing folk songs. Bradley�s father was a folk guitarist, as were his grandfather and uncle. Bradley�s first guitar experience came about so that he could participate in these parties, and soon he would sit around the campfire with his parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and practice for hours on end. While Bradley would eventually grow as an artist, with styles encompassing punk rock, thrash, reggae, and everything in between, his early folk influence remained evident up until his final recordings. The sound could be heard in some of Sublime�s first recordings, like New Realization, all the way up until the radio hits What I Got and Santeria.
Jim Nowell wasn't Bradley's only family influence, however. What has been described as Bradley's greatest talent, a voice "full of male timbre" was inherited from his mother, who was described as having a singing voice with a "perfect pitch."
As Bradley grew up in Long Beach, he began to listen to many of the different styles of music that freely mixed during the endless summer in Long Beach. Bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat quickly found themselves in Bradley�s music collection. He began to listen to the fresh new punk sounds of bands like the Clash and X, and even sampled or covered their songs. During Bradley�s famous solo acoustic performance at the Firecracker Lounge, he covered two songs by fellow Southern California band X, whose albums Los Angeles and Wild Gift have been named among the best punk rock albums ever released. Sublime even used a sample from punk pioneers the Clash in their hidden track on 40 oz. to Freedom where Miguel gives thanks to �all the players who made this possible.�
Bradley's musical tastes didn't end at punk rock, however. A bit later he began to listen to the ska sounds of American and English bands like The Specials, UB40, and ska-originators The Skatilites. These influences would be added to Bradley's music over the years, and many sounds would be sampled. Even later in life he began to listen to the rap sounds of Southern California groups like N.W.A. and the always controversial Public Enemy, whose sound bites and references can be found littered throughout all of Sublime's releases, from 40 oz. to Freedom (Eazy-E in Let's Go Get Stoned) all the way up until their 1996 triple-platinum masterpiece, Sublime. Bradley's tastes in music were so varied that Sublime's influences encompassed artists as diverse as The Circle Jerks, Minor Threat, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles (Check out the similarities between their Lady Madonna and Sublime's hits What I Got). None of these influences, however, would be as powerful as reggae.
Perhaps Bradley had such varied tastes in music because he had trouble concentrating on one thing too long. While being an extremely intelligent and gifted child, Bradley had been diagnosed with what is now referred to as ADD. He was given Ritalin to help his condition, but he was soon to be in a constant state of flux. Bradley�s parents had gotten divorced when Bradley was not yet 10 years old, and they both maintained joint custody. While with his mother, Bradley was given Ritalin. While with his father he was not.
After Bradley's parents had gotten divorced, when Bradley wasn't even 10 years old, and after a few years of joint-custody, Bradley was sent to Long Beach to live with his father, permanently. It was when he was 11 years old that Bradley had gone along with James on a vacation to Jamacia, when he first heard the sounds that he would later describe as "sweet reggae music" (Had a DAT). Bradley, who had already learned to play the guitar very well, especially for an 11 year old boy, "fell in love" with the native reggae music the first time he heard it. After making inquiries to several Jamaican musicians that he had met, a local guitarist eventually taught Bradley how to play a reggae rhythm on the acoustic guitar. This would set off a love affair with reggae music that would influence Sublime's music from the beginning to the end.
Sublime's music was so influenced by reggae, that covers of reggae great reggae songs appear on 4 of Sublime's studio albums. The list of reggae covers includes relative classics like The Toots and the Maytals' 5446 (That's My Number) and Peter Tosh's Steppin' Razor, and several masterpieces by Bob Marley, including Judge Not, This Train (Is Bound For Glory), Trenchtown Rock, and Zimbabwe. Bradley even does a rare cover of Marley's masterpiece Redemption Song, which cannot be found on any current Sublime release, bootleg or not.
Eric
Sublime bassist Eric Wilson grew up on the other side of Long Beach, listening to the punk rock sounds of the Circle Jerks and Black Flag. During his childhood Eric was taught to play several instruments by his father, Bill Wilson, who, according to Eric had �made a living playing the snare drum, and had a pretty good life doing it.� Eric was first taught to play the drums, and then the trumpet, and finally the guitar.
Eric continued to play all of the instruments that he was taught to play as a child, and had been called the best musician in Sublime by Field Marshall Goodman, who had filled in as Sublime�s drummer during the recording of 40 oz. to Freedom and a subsequent tour. Eric even plays the xylophone in the 40 oz. to Freedom hidden cover of the Melodians� Rivers of Babylon. The main instrument that Eric stuck with however was the bass, and he has taken part in at least three bands as the bassist. Eric and his friend Bug Gaugh, who has been the drummer in each band, started all three bands.
Bud
It started as an assignment. Bud was brought into a classroom for observation when he was only 2 years old, and after hitting tables, desks, his mother was told that her son would be a great drummer someday. Bud grew up across the street from Eric and, after meeting each other while riding their Big Wheels, Bud began taking drum lessons from Eric�s father, about the same time Bradley was learning about the hypnotic power of reggae music.
After learning to play the drums, and with Eric having learned the bass guitar, Eric and Bud started their own garage punk band when both were in their early teens. Since then they have played in at least three bands together, including the Juice Bros., Sublime, and the Long Beach Dub Allstars.
The Band
When the three Sublime players met years later, the chemistry was instant, and everybody seemed to know that the band which would form out of this union only two years later would become the type of group that they were on their 3rd studio effort, the MCA Records-released Sublime, and would have eventually become one of the greatest bands to come along if those dreams hadn't so suddenly been dashed two months before Sublime's release.
It was under these conditions that Sublime became possible, and all of the influences that Bradley, Bud, and Eric gained as children stuck with them, and became an inseparable part of their music, and they continued to mature as both musicians and as people. Bradley's music was always heavily influenced by rock, reggae, blues, ska, punk, rap, and even psychedelia, and Sublime's sound meshed these styles together into something completely original that nobody had heard before. After all, Bradley himself had said that "Sublime is a hodgepodge of all types of bands I have been into since I was a kid."
> False Starts