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Behind The Seen: Fat Mike

Alternative Press - John Millin on 7/13/09 @ 5:23 PM - altpress.com

After 25 years of unapologetic punk mayhem, you would've thought we'd already seen it all from NOFX. Then last year they released an eight-part reality series on Fuse, Backstage Passport, documenting a "sketchy" tour that took the band all over Latin America and Asia. Upon witnessing the hard-partying gang immersed in activities ranging from frequenting Japanese S&M bars, to using unknown and potentially lethal recreational substances, to fleeing near riots caused by irate fans, it seems we'd actually seen nothing yet. With the DVD release of the series-including two hours of deleted footage-vocalist/bassist Fat Mike takes us deeper into the NOFX mythos than we may even desire to go

Backstage Passport is about as candid as it gets. Is there anything you couldn't show?
Fat Mike: I was juggling golf ball-sized balls of cocaine in Brazil, 'cause it's just everywhere. We didn't show that because Fuse was like, "You can't show this." We're showing more on the DVD; Fuse had their name taken off of it.

Speaking of which: What exactly is the "Green Dragon" that you and the gang are shown "enjoying" in Singapore?
We thought we were buying ecstasy, and it was ecstasy, but it was cut with a lot of other stuff. That wasn't acting there-we were fucked up. What the footage doesn't show is that we went out to a club, and then about two hours later, we did the rest of it. Once we realized you can survive it, and you actually do come down from it eventually, we did more.

The Lima, Peru, episode is classic, like when the band and crew had to pile in that truck and escape from the venue after the show was canceled.
That was a week into the tour, and that's when the cameramen were like, "This is good shit, you guys. This is not normal." Big bands-No Doubt, Guns N' Roses, Foo Figthers-they can play these countries and nothing goes wrong; it all goes like clockwork.

One of the musical highlights is the same episode, when you go outside the hotel and play for that mob of kids.
I was really stoked on that because it was such a fucking bum-out that 2,000 tickets got sold-and some of these kids drove 18 hours to come see the show-and it was nothing, and it was just because the promoter couldn't get her shit straight and got greedy. We got nothing, so at least those kids got something. But we are going to go back to Peru.

What surprised you about making the series?
One of the amazing things was how bad the people at Fuse's sense of humor was. It was a nightmare; it was the worst three months of my life, absolutely. I had to keep flying out to New York City because they'd show me a cut of the show, and I'd be like, "Are you serious?" They'd be like, "Well, I know it didn't happen, but this makes better TV drama." I'm like, "Are you people fucking crazy?" They'd cut out the setup to a joke, and be like, "Oh, well the punchline's still there." But there's no setup, so it's not funny; do you understand that? I had to go to the president of Fuse and say, "I'm done with this." Eventually they listened, and I was actually pretty happy with the show.

Why would you need to create any more drama than El Hefe disappearing before shows?
Some of it is so unbelievable, we couldn't even put it in the show. When Hefe was late in Singapore, he was 15 or 20 minutes late in stage time, which is really late. In Korea, the night before, he got lost coming to the show, and they had to send out people on mopeds to search the city to find him. He took a wrong turn out of the hotel, and was a mile-and-a-half from the club, walking, in Korea. The producer was like, "We can't show this, because no one's going to believe this guy missed two shows in a row." -Brendan Manley

NOFX: Backstage Passport is available on DVD now. For more info, visit fatwreck.com.

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