DISGRACELAND - Sublime: Hoodlums, Police Helicopters, and Getting Dirty at Denny’s

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

With their newfangled ska-punk, Sublime preached the gospel of Long Beach’s seedy shores unlike any band before them. They also incited a riot at the first show, vandalized their record label’s headquarters, and did unspeakable deeds to a Dennys kitchen with their mobile home’s septic tank. The group’s musical legacy is inseparable from their reputation as hoodlums and hedonists, in part because those are precisely the people Sublime wrote about. Sublime was born in California, raised in California, but before they could get much farther, Sublime died in California, too. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring the 14th season of Family Secrets.

He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things,

Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Sublime are insane. At their first show,

they incited a riot so massive that 40 cops and a police helicopter were needed to break it up. They vandalized their record label's headquarters and managed to land the six-album deal regardless. They once did unspeakable deeds to a Denny's kitchen using their mobile home septic tank. Their lead singer Bradley Knoll racked up a rehab tab of nearly half a million dollars

thanks to his gripping heroin habit. Sublime's musical legacy is inseparable from their reputation. as hoodlums and hedoness, in part because those are precisely the people Sublime wrote songs about. With their newfangled ska punk, they preached the gospel of Long Beach's seedy shores, unlike any band before them. Sublime was born in California, raised in California, and before they could get much farther, sublime died in California too. But before their untimely end, Sublime made, great music. That loop I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Panny Raid Parade, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't

afford the rights to The Crossroads by Bone Thugs in Harmony. And why would I play you that specific slice of translucent ghost cheese could I afford it? Because that would, with you, with the was the number one song in America on May 25, 1996. And that was the day that Sublime singer Bradley Noel unknowingly performed for the final time. In this episode, massive riots, police helicopters, unspeakable deeds, rehab, and the preachers of Long Beach, Sublime.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland. If Bradley Noole's face had hit the sand at a harder. It would have left a mark. A sprinting body slammed into him from behind. He flew face first into the beach, gobbling a mouthful of sand. His vision went black for a moment, but his well-trained ears told him the rest. Screams, shrieking teenage girl, shrieking frat boys, fleeing Fourth of July picnics. College kids sprinting while spilling their precious beer. Looters trying not to spill their bounty. Bodies colliding, broken bottles, slicing. facing open bare feet, firecrackers lit before the chaos snapped in the background.

Those pissed the cops off the most. One fell to the ground next to Brad and popped directly in his ear. Focked! He couldn't see Long Beach's finest, but he could hear, though. Beachgoers knocking into helmets and chest protectors, clinking handcuffs for the unlucky ones who couldn't run fast enough. The cops were trying to herd or riot to wear Brad had no clue. The cops didn't seem to know either.

They were on the Long Beach Peninsula, for Christ's sake. There weren't many places to put 400 people. So they suited up and started making arrests instead. Half of these people hadn't done anything wrong. Half of these people had just been on the peninsula to see Brad's new band Sublime perform to throw back a few beers on a paid holiday. Didn't matter.

To the cops, anyone present could have been one of the rabble-rous looters who had torn apart the center of town. Something about the rugged reggae rock sublime had dished out that evening gave onlookers an itch to act out. An itch they scratched by smashing the windows of nearby stores in between smashing empty beer bottles on the street. First, there were ten cops, staying cool, trying to keep everyone cool. And then that one fucker lighting off fireworks ruined it for everybody. Around 9 p.m., 40 more officers arrived, and they were itching to bring some new faces downtown. Anyone who didn't vacate the peninsula in the next ten minutes was leaving in the back of a cruiser.

As people scrambled across the beach, the remaining troublemakers retaliated with a slew of carefully aimed roaming candles. And Brad's band, Sublime, had been the soundtrack to the chaos, up until a few minutes ago at least. The melee swarmed around him. It hummed like an agitated, drunken beehive. Now wait, that was the police chopper descending from overhead. Time to get the hell out of here. Brad dragged himself to his knees, squinting through the sudden sandstorm. Grains of sand stung his eyes, chapped his lips. Then from behind another body, a hand gripped his shoulder.

This time, Bud Gow, his drummer. Vans loaded, let's go. He shouted over the din of the chopper. He pulled Brad to his feet. They sprinted across the sand, forced a path through the throng of bodies. Then Brad spotted it. Their van pulled over on the side of the road a few blocks ahead. Their new North Star,

he and Bud scampered past broken store windows, skipped over 40s broken in the street, over coolers and solo cups. It was a game of Fourth of July Frogger. Some dumbass who hadn't learned their lesson was still rocketing fireworks from a nearby rooftop. As Brad and Bud approached, Eric Wilson, their bassist and today's getaway driver,

threw open the backseat door with expert timing. Brad and Bud stuck the landing, crashed into the back seat, slammed the door immediately. And for a moment, it was silent. Bud and Brad panted. Fuck you waiting for, drive, Bud said between breaths. Eric was unfazed. He twisted around from the driver's seat to face his bandmates. Pretty good for her first show, right?

Not every sublime show erupted into chaos like the first one. That one earned its own nickname. The infamous Peninsula Riot of 1988, seven arrests in the books, multiple articles in the local papers, none of which mentioned the band's involvement, if you could call it that. Most of their early shows were like today, in a neighborhood far from the Long Beach Peninsula. The house has changed, but the environment was always the same. Moldy basements with no breathing room, sweaty bodies packed to firehazard levels, condensation on the walls thick enough to make you queasy.

It would be no rock club club club today. Sublime was in the seedyer section of town, nestled far away from the watchful eyes of the police. Brad liked it better around here anyways, where everyone was on equal footing. Streetpunks, surfers, skaters, gangsters, all pressed shoulder to shoulder in basements and backyards, inhaling the same secondhand smoke, pissing in the same clogged toilets. drinking from the same keg of cheap beer, in some cases shooting up with the same needles. Brad watched it all unfold with solemn awe. Smoking a couple of joints, that was one thing. You could smoke two joints before you smoked another two joints and what? It made you giggle.

You munched on a few too many potato chips before passing out on the sofa. Heroin, though. Heroin was a straight-up life-ruiner. Brad respected that kind of power. More accurately, he feared it. Hell, even the riddle in he had taken as a kid changed the way he saw drugs. He was popping those every day at only 10 years old for ADD,

and he knew how dependencies worked. So, when the needles came out, sometimes Brad averted his gaze. But more often, he watched, took mental notes. He was bad at hiding his fascination. The partygoers studied, him back, and they noted the way his left hand was cocked at an awkward angle when he played guitar.

A careless fall from a tree as a teenager had damaged his wrist, which never healed properly. It had literally altered his bone structure. He could have had it corrected by a doctor if you wanted, break it again, and set it properly this time, but he didn't want to. When an audience listened to Sublime, they heard themselves. They heard gnarly stories sweetened by Brad's smooth-like honey voice. Sublime didn't peddle that sun-kiss candy-coated bullshit about California the way the television did. Sublime dressed down Tinsletown with trash tales, wrapped it all up in a style that was too fast to be true reggae, but too tropical to be true punk.

People heard pages torn from their own diaries, taken right from the streets, because Sublime paid attention. Brad paid attention. One of the band's earliest tunes, Date Rape, got their crowds all-cuited. times have worked up. It was vulgar, skanky, a cautionary tale for the creeps. Its stomping baseline obliterated the unpleasant subject matter and jolted awake even the most stoned and stupefied crowds. It inevitably got the neighbors banging on the front door, bitching about the noise, too. Either way, people were talking about Sublime. People told their friends who told their classmates who told their friends. A new party would be booked before Sublime could even encore at the current one.

After a year or two, it was official. It wasn't a party in Long Beach if Sublime wasn't playing. And if the cops didn't break the party up, and they often did, Sublime would usually leave with $200 in cash in their pockets and three bellies full of beer. But Brad got something more out of it. He got stories, real stories. The hookers, the dealers, the depressed, the drugged, he cataloged it all. He saw the same things as the kids he performed for saw.

They had a mutual understanding. But Brad needed more from sublime. He didn't want to be a star in California. He wanted to be a star from California, out preaching the gospel of the fiends, friends, and fuck-ups he surrounded himself with. When he looked inside himself, he envisioned a prophet. He'd be their underdog, their champion,

the most qualified man in the LBC. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever.

My first thing is always, Can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me.

Like making karate noises. And the entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been sleepwalking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Urban.

Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, monsieur. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver,

and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place

and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing

about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause. Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, Great, I got two.

Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured

out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies. We can't stop obsessing. over from hidden gems to big screen favorites new episodes drop every week on the exactly right network listen to dear movies i love you on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts brad's bed frame rattled as he kicked the sheets off sweat coated every part of his body his forehead his chest pooled on his stomach beads formed around his brows and then dripped into his eyes with a salty sting if he wasn't crying already he was now

The sheets were still sticking to him. He thrashed around more, which spurred on a muscle spasm in his left leg. Fuck! He gripped the edge of the bed while he rode it out, knuckles, white, teeth, gnashing. The spasm hurt like a motherfucker. It hurt almost as bad as the heroin withdrawals. Somewhere along the line, his morbid fascination with the drug had gotten the best of him. When Brad shot up for the first time, he hadn't pictured this.

He hadn't pictured much of anything, really. He just wanted more, more from himself, more from his band. He knew better music was in there, buried inside of him. He just needed to draw it out. So he drew it out by injecting himself with dope. Brad's concerns about not reaching his full potential as a musician had tipped the scales. He no longer feared heroin. He feared what his career would be without heroin.

It was 1993. Time to make real moves. Those first recordings, they were good, but they didn't dig deep enough. Jah Won't Pay the Bills was admirably scrappy, but the album wasn't about to pay any of his bills either. 40 ounces to Freedom had been his most recent project, but even that record hadn't left the West Coast. They nailed the style, ska punk, or whatever their fans were calling it these days,

but the storytelling needed a lift. Sublime had real skin in the game now. John Phillips, an ANR intern from Gasoline Alley, in no relation to anyone in the Mamas and the Pappas, had taken serious interest in the band, such an interest that he casually invited the band to his house in Los Angeles to perform. Sublime had graduated from Long Beach basements

to Hollywood Hills living rooms. They were so close. The knowledge made Brad lean into his lopsided relationship with heroin even harder. He leaned to be in. in so hard that he couldn't tell where the benefits ended and where the drawbacks began. Heroin makes you more creative or so with the attic logic, so of course you take more heroin, but the heroin also makes you nod off, drowsy, dumb, so you lay off it for a while.

But the withdrawals make you itch, make you sweat, make you puke, make you crazy, so you score more, shoot up, you write some of the best songs of your life, and then you can't even stay awake long enough to record them. Whether or not it made sense to quit heroin, depended on the day, depended on the hour, depended on what Brad ate for breakfast. A few hours ago,

kicking seemed like a good idea. And now, lying in a veritable swamp of sweat, skull throbbing, muscles twitching, not so much. Stepping outside to score on the streets of Long Beach would be so easy. Brad tried to relax his muscles for a moment, unclenched his jaw,

exhaled, no use. The needles kept drilling into his skull. His body felt locked in a tremor. Why was he doing this to himself? It wasn't going to change anything. Rehab hadn't even changed anything. He knew that from experience. He had already gone once in 1992 and left after a few days unsuccessful and relapsed too many times to count. Why couldn't he get his shit together? Bud had. He had stepped away from the band for a while, did his time in rehab. Sure, it was taken a couple tries, but he was in the best shape of his life. An Eric, he never even touched her when to begin with. Smart kid, they still got into trouble.

That was their brand, after all. That was their band, but not the kind of trouble Bradley was dabbling in. There were little patterns the band began to notice. Their gear had started to grow legs before shows and show up in local pawn shops. Miguel, Sublime's manager, would have to track down amps and instruments before a curtain call and buy them back on his own dime. Bradley's father had noticed, too, trinkets disappearing from his house when Brad visited, antiques that no one would even notice were missing until long after they were gone.

The guilt nod at Brad's stomach while he pawed at the air. Remorse smacked him harder when he was this delirious, when he was, quote-unquote, doing time, as he called it. Lou Dog, his beloved Dalmatian, hopped onto the bed next to him and watched with concern. There was another thing. Brad had started getting virgins high, people who had never tried heroin before. It was an unspoken rule in sublime circle that he didn't shoot up newbies. Then there was even a term for people who did what Brad was doing, bad fish.

But Brad couldn't contain himself. He wanted to share the forbidden ritual that made him so giddy, that dizzy assent to euphoria. Brutal. But there was no euphoria now. He felt his body was crashing, like being dropped on. cement over and over again. Like being bowled over on the beach that day of their first show, Christ, that felt like a lifetime ago. And for every ounce of certainty he had about becoming a star, he had two ounces of doubt that he'd never be able to get truly clean, and that he was destined

to be a junkie forever. Speaking of ounces, he could really go for one right about now. Stepping outside would be so easy. He sat up in bed and waited until the room stopped spinning to speak. Come on, Louis. Let's go for a walk. October, 1993. John Phillips stood outside of the door of his uncle's office at Gasoline Alley. For the third time that day, he raised a trembling fist and knocked on his uncle's door. Randy Phillips' store.

The president of Gasoline Alley's store. As John let himself in, a gaggle of suits turned back to look at him, wordlessly. We have to make time for sublime. They're restless, John said. He tried to find a way to put it nicely. Randy shook his head without even looking out from the paperwork in front of him. The R&B group, Shai, was currently in the building, and at that very moment in pop culture, shy was the cash cow.

Young women were flocking to the vocal group with fistfuls of cash in the early 1990s, and as such, Shy was the priority. Besides, Randy Phillips didn't rearrange his day for filthy skate punks. John Phillips' uncle didn't get it. None of the suits staring at him got it either. John bet the farm on this band. He handpicks Sublime to be the first band he himself ever signed. He had heard the potential, seen the potential.

40 ounces to freedom was unreal. The next nirvana, John thought. That or a scuzzy kind of beach boys. They packaged California in an honest way that made locals proud and outsiders jealous. These white-collar bastards just didn't get it, which was the bad news for them missing out on a chance to sign a band like this. But it was also bad news, considering that a few floors below them, at that very moment, sublime was, shall we say, redecorating John's office. Again, louder this time, Bradley said, flicking the cap off another beer, gesturing for Eric to hit play on Robin the Hood for the upteenth time that day.

They had come prepared with their newest effort and promptly popped it into John's CD player. What they hadn't considered is that they had showed up unannounced. suits don't do spontaneous. They don't do same-day deals either. But that had been the expectation when Sublime, Lou Dog and a handful of other confidants strolled into gasoline alley headquarters that day, ready to ink some contracts and cashed some hefty checks. Brad in particular wanted that hefty check. He already knew what he'd spend it on. In the hour since they arrived, the band made themselves a little too comfortable in John Phillips' office. furniture had been rearranged.

Bottles cluttered every open surface. Popcorn, crumbs, cigarette butts, and ashes littered the carpet. Serve them right for not having a proper ashtray. But as their stash of liquor and weed ran low, so did Sublime's patience. Where's the bathroom in this place? I got a piss, Eric said, setting down and empty. Looks like Ludoog does too, he said, gesturing to the Dalmatian, who had started to shift around uncomfortably doing the, I gotta go, squirm. He'll be fine, Brad said, with a twinkle in his eye that insinuated that he would not be fine.

Rather, the carpet would not be fine. As Eric returned from the bathroom, he could smell the pot from down the hallway, and then he smelled the dog shit, and then he saw the dog shit. Time to bounce. All the way out of the parking lot, something caught Brad's eye, the glimmer of a classic BMW that just so happened to be parked in Randy Phillips' reserve spot. He slapped a homemade Sublime bumper sticker on his pristine rear rim, a second, subtle insult to pair with the dog shit reeking in the office. John faced the wrath of his uncle later that day. Finally, someone say incredibly, nine months later,

John miraculously secured a six-record deal for Sublime. The suits look past the incidents for the sake of shutting them up. John didn't care. Neither did Sublime. This was the big win they had been waiting for. for. John stopped by his uncle's desk one afternoon as he drew up the contracts. They're worth it, but I have to warn you, they do have some issues so they can be a bit of a handful. John's uncle Randy Phillips looked up from his desk this time. Yeah. We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last. target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that.

Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleepwalking. David O'Yellow-I. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or relationships or

religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?

Gayton Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. his father just grabs him and says she's gone.

She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. November 2, 1995, Portland, Oregon.

Sublime pulled into the parking lot of a deserted Denny's just a few miles from Roseland Hill, where they had just crushed their most recent show with Lords of Brooklyn and Wesley Willis. The green LCD clock on their dashboard read 202 a.m. It was time to indulge in a great amendment. American touring tradition, eating diner slop in the wee hours of the morning. But one particular Denny's was denying sublime that right of passage. This sad excuse of a Denny's had closed an hour prior. A waiter reluctantly let them inside anyways.

What kind of horseshit is this? Denny's closed? Wasn't that the whole point that they were never closed? No one chooses a Denny's. You were forced to go to a Denny's because nothing else is open. They had a twist of waitresses arm to even seat them. In hindsight, they should have high-tailed it then. The late-night breakfast they received was inedible,

even by touring band standards. Soggy pancakes, mealy hash browns, overcooked bacon that resembled well-worn leather. Wardo, one of Sublime's faithful roadies, ordered chicken-fried steak. It arrived, looking like it had just been retrieved from the trash. He swore there were already bites missing. And that was it.

Half the food returned to the kitchen untouched. The band started hatching their plan for a swift departure. But a new waiter interrupted the grumbling. Is that your motorhome out back? Or having it towed? Bud and Wardow rushed into the parking lot before the tow truck could arrive. As they ripped open the motorhome's door, Wardow got an idea. Wardow had caught a whiff of the motorhome septic tank.

The overflowing basin dribbled a mix of shit-piss, puke and gnarly blue disinfection. and every time they turned a corner too fast. You could smell it even if it hadn't spilled earlier that day, and that if it had, well, let's hope you had a military-grade air freshener. The fucker was full, but not for long. Put this thing in reverse. The pair backed the motorhome up to the back doors of the Denny's kitchen. The motorhome septic tank pump lined up perfectly with the air vents at the bottom of the restaurant's doors.

Wardow stepped outside and removed the septic tank's kitchen. cap, he tugged on the plunger, and a steady stream of sewage spewed from the tank and sloshed through the restaurant's kitchen doors. The remnants of a hundred parties and hangovers painted the tiles of that Denny's a nauseating shade of electric blue. When the tank was empty, an inch of experiment coated the floor of the back entrance. The band loaded into the mobile home and skidded out of the parking lot. Between the tire marks, they left a trail of bright blue. Nothing ever came of it. No no mugshots, no mobile home car chases. The police couldn't dust for fingerprints and raw sewage.

Bad behavior had always been sublime's hallmark, but a pattern had formed. Their stunts were getting dumber, and they were getting grosser, and the consequences were nearly non-existent. The more people liked them, the more they felt like they had a reputation to uphold, and the more they made good on that reputation,

the more people expected and ate it up. And the haters ate it up too, nearly choked on it, and that tickled the band the most. A bad reaction was better than no reaction. Sublime knew that much to be true. They had KROQ to thank for their newfound notoriety. Earlier that year, a Balsy intern of the Los Angeles radio giant had come forth with date rape. Despite being seven years old at that point, and despite the gruesome subject matter, the song took off. First at KROQ, and then across the country.

People couldn't believe their ears. This was a song about an incarcerated eight rapist who's then raped in prison on FM radio. Had they heard that right? They dialed in to hear it again. The airplay moved the needle for Sublime overnight. Promoters blew up their phones the way listeners were blowing up radio station phone lines,

eager to book Sublime for any show they'd agree to. In fact, the band was so grateful to KROQ that when they were offered an on-air interview with DJ Jed the Fish, they spent the segment passing around joints and cups of tequila. KROQ may have played songs about smoking joints and drinking tequila, but it was understood that you didn't do either of those things in the radio station. Furious at the disrespect, KROQ pulled the song from rotation, and DJ Jed the Fish was no longer a fan.

But it was too late. The acerbic irony of date rape had already swept the nation. Warped Tour had been the same way. Sublime genitigans quickly wore out their welcome, and they were temporarily removed from the lineup, all because Lou Dog had bitten a few people. Then the band of Moon in the audience, and they showed up to their sets and drunken stupers

and broke a table on the bus they shared with Orange 9mm. And they missed only four dates. One of their managers smooth-talked Warp Tour as primary investor who realized that fans were demanding that Sublime be re-added to the bill. The massive wave of popularity they were riding drowned out all those pesky, petty repercussions. And if anyone knew how to ride a wave while the tides were in their favor, it was sublime. Brad felt his own destiny propelling him forward. He didn't realize the undertow was yanking him backwards too.

Early 1996, Petunale's studio, Austin, Texas. Lyrics, man, lyrics are hard. Brad repeated it like a mantra. If it was supposed to be centering his mind, it wasn't working. Sublime was locked down trying to record a full-length album that barely existed. You can blame the lack of new material on one of two things. One, Brad was a family man now. Seemingly overnight, a bigger priority than music arrived.

His longtime sweetheart, Troy, gave birth to his son the previous year, a beautiful baby boy named Jacob. Brad finally had his ironclad reason to quit heroin, so he had. Or, you could blame it on number two. Bradley needed to be larger than life now more than ever. Bradley, the man, the musician, the scussy-so-cow singer, had become Brad, the caricature,

in hell if he wasn't going to deliver. Brad finally had his reason to continue with heroin, so he did that too. He made like Sublime's mobile home and had put his hard-earned progress in reverse. And like the mobile home, shit went everywhere. He dove right back into his old habits, hard. But when the needles came back out, Eric and Bud retreated.

Their contributions to the record became rope. They came in, performed their parts, and steered clear of Brad who was nearly too high to handle, or worse, too high to be remotely productive. They were well aware that the album was currently in shambles at best. More importantly, Gasoline Alley recognized it too. After five weeks at Peternale's studio, the label sent Brad home to clean up his act, clear his head and reclaim his writing chops.

When Brad touched down in California, Troy and Jacob weren't waiting there for. Troy had packed her things and split until Bradley could look her in the eyes and say he was clean again. His upteeth relapse was her proverbial final straw. It was Brad's too. For the final time, Brad kicked. For one moment in time, the entire time. entire band was clean. And they finished the album, Clean, played at sold-out shows, Clean. Months past, Brad's resolve didn't break. The label took notice of that, too. Tours of the East

Coast in Europe were arranged, and their slice of California was going global. Brad bought travel books to pour over in preparation. He bought something else, too. A shiny new ring for Troy. On May 18, 1996, they wed in Las Vegas. He had been clean for three months. Brad did not have to say it. It was written on his face, practically bursting out of him. This was the happiest he'd ever been in his life. It was sticking. It was really sticking.

He had struck down one half of his destiny and resuscitated the other. In this moment, he had more reasons to celebrate than he ever had in his life. Sublime had one tour left before it was wheels up for the East Coast and then overseas. A small slew of shows up to the California coast, Child's Play. He kissed Troy on their wedding day and again a few days later before the band embarked on the tour. It was the last time they'd ever see each other. On May 24, 1996, Bradley Knowles smoked crack for breakfast. He was in a stranger's home in Chico, California.

A strange promoter offered him drugs. He accepted and he wouldn't stop again for the rest of his life. The band watched with trepidation. What was he doing? He had a new son, a new wife, and a new lease on life that he had fought so hard for. Brad offered a flimsy counterpoint. Exactly. It was so much to celebrate. He needed to diffuse his excitement with that dizzy ascent again. And besides, Sublime owed it to themselves to quote-unquote party one last time. They had earned this. Bud and Eric vehemently disagreed. The Clean Sublime had earned this. The Clean Sublime was the reason the album was done.

reason that they had two major tours on the horizon. But Brad had already buckled over breakfast. He scored again that afternoon before their show in Petaluma at the Phoenix Theater. Within a few hours, everything had changed. Brad wasn't on side before the show skating with fans. He wasn't letting them come inside the motor home to hang out like usual either. The performance that night was tepid. The fans could feel a shift in the energy. Hours passed, Brad kept going, kept scoring. Eric and Bud wanted no part of it. They wrangled Bradley into the motorhome after the show and prayed that he'd cool off by the time they reached their next destination. When they parked at the Oceanfront Motel in San Francisco, Eric and Sublime's manager Miguel

parked themselves in bed. No parties, no dope. Bud passed out in the adjacent room he was sharing with Bradley, a room that he currently had to himself since Brad had been quick to vanish into at the night when he saw that his bandmates were too lame to join him in some after-show antics. The band didn't see him again until 10 a.m. the next morning when he came rapping on their door. There were 10-foot waves today, he claimed with a childlike exuberance, to go down to the shore or take Ludog for a walk. Eric rolled over and flipped him off. Miguel ignored the invitation too. Next door, Bud was passed out even harder. If he had been invited along for the walk, he hadn't heard it.

He sawed logs for a few more hours, pleasantly undisturbed. It was afternoon now. The California sun peeked through the windows and nudged but awake. He opened his blurry eyes and chuckled at what he saw. Brad, half undressed, bent over the bed, feet firmly planted on the ground, ass out, face smushed into the mattress. The poor bastard was too fucked up to even make it under the covers. He stopped laughing when his eyes wandered to the yellow foam coating his lips.

A crust had already formed at the corners of his mouth. Ludog wine curled up in a ball at the corner of the bed. Bud frantically dialed 911, but he knew it was too late. At 28, Bradley Noel was dead. Sublime's success, on the other hand, had suddenly never been more alive. The press coverage poured in. Every major news outlet ran a story on Brad's near 27 Club fate. While Bud, Eric, and Troy mourned their best friend,

sublime fans grieved by lighting up phone lines. Just two weeks after Brad's passing, the band's second single, What I Got, became the most requested song on KROQ. The sudden surge and popularity fueled gasoline alley's next move. Eric and Bud had decided to disband, but the label demanded a return on their massive investment. They had sunk nearly half a million dollars into Brad's recovery alone,

never mind the studio time. budging on the release schedule for the new Sublime album meant torpedoing their budget altogether. Sublime released their self-titled album as planned on July 30, 1996, and for almost three and a half years, no one could forget about it. It was impossible. The album spent 179 weeks on the Billboard 100. The new hits, now known as The Sublime Hits, made sure of that. The incessant airplay of Santa Rang way and due in time were still moving. 40,000 albums a week in the fall of 1997. People across the country, in New England, in the

deep south, in nowhere Nebraska, all fell in love with new songs they'd never be able to hear Brad sing live. But his gospel had spread. Tragedy had that effect. Tragedy spreads the word around just a hair too late. California had known about Brad since 1988. But the world learned Brad Bradley Knowles' name from his obituary. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com.

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When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends, trust me, babe, on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was.

Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th,

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello.

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