i

"But your new album is gonna be pretty completely personal, I guess, based on --

Yeah, this one is. But it's a bizarre thing. I don't understand it really. Shit, young people who never even saw the Minutemen have told me that they've had dreams of D. Boon telling them to pick up a guitar and play.

Really!? Wow! Would you say he was the single biggest influence in your life?

Oh yeah. Big time. I'm not a born entertainer. But he was so intent on trying his best and hardest. And at the same time, he didn't have any of the image of what was acceptable back then. A lot of concerts are like Nuremberg rallies, where everyone on stage are good-looking guys, and everyone in the crowd looks like the same guy, but he totally turned it upside down. He was an artist too -- he could paint. A lot of people saw him and thought, "Oh he's just this big guy," but he was a very sensitive man. He got me into reading non-fiction, history and all kinds of things.

And how old was he?

When he died?

Yeah.

27.

Wow.

I had just turned 28. He was 27.

What is it with that age?

Yeah, I don't know about that age. That's how old Kurt was too. And a bunch of others.

All the old '60s ones.

Yeah, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison. D. Boon died on December 22, 1985. And then 17 years later, Joe Strummer died on same day."