I first became aware of Raymond Pettibon in the early '80s, when I was visiting my parents in Los Angeles. Thurston and I came across his zines in a store somewhere, and we became keenly interested in them. One Sunday afternoon, we went to a house party in Hermosa Beach, a languid, slightly funky enclave that never became a resort town but rather a suburban neighborhood by the beach. Black Flag were playing at the party, and Henry Rollins was singing in the kitchen. He came right up to me and sang in my face. That was maybe one of the best gigs I'd ever seen because it was so surreal and intimate and confusing–refrigerator, counter, Henry Rollins twerking before twerking existed in his little black shorts, fusing hardcore punk with suburban banality.
This was all new to us. Coming from the New York music scene, people didn't have houses or garages, so no house parties viewed through the almost-too-bright L.A. sunshine. We went out to the backyard and there was Raymond. Someone introduced us. He was already sort of mythical in our minds. He was shy and dressed normally–casually disheveled. No one from that area dressed in a stylized punk way. That was one of the things that made it so cool–South Beach as opposed to Hollywood. We got to visit with Raymond a few times. There was always a pile of his drawings spilling over on a tabletop.
Raymond's drawings were way beyond illustrative. At that time, he had no relationship to the art world. I decided to write an article for Artforum on his work, as well as Tony Oursler's and Mike Kelley's, whose work also used high and low culture, eschewing the conceptual mantle of '70s formalism. It was a way to get Raymond into Artforum–this was the mid-'80s. We also participated in one of Raymond's films, The Whole World Is Watching: Weatherman '69 as Told by Raymond Pettibon (1989). It was very informal, and the brilliant script carried the whole thing. It almost didn't matter what the actors did. Whoever showed up to Raymond's house became crew and cameraperson. The task happened to fall on Dave Markey, the musician and filmmaker (The Slog Movie, 1982; 1991: The Year Punk Broke, 1992), but it could have been anyone. Reading off cue cards made it immediately a natural deconstruction, a Nouvelle Vague film à la Hermosa Beach. Shortly after that, Raymond began showing at Ace Gallery in L.A. He was like a flower opening up with a little attention.
This interview took place over lunch in SoHo in New York, just before the opening of Pettibon's latest show of drawings at David Zwirner gallery. This winter also brings the release of two Pettibon art books, a definitive collection of his work from Rizzoli and Raymond Pettibon: Here's Your Irony Back: Political Works, 1975-2013 (Hatje Cantz).