Dexter (then known as Bryan) Holland and Greg Kriesel, along with two others were Cross Country teammates at Pacifica High in Garden Grove, CA.
Sports had always been the big thing to this group. Holland was also the class valedictorian.
Dexter had always been a casual listener, but during his senior year, his brother gave him a Rodney on the ROQ compilation album. Shortly thereafter, Dexter started getting into punk.
Greg K found punk as well. His investment banker father saw law school in his son's future. He had been a self-proclaimed sports jock all his life, but he just got used to the music Dexter was suddenly playing around him all the time.
One night in 1983, just out of the blue, they, along with the two other Cross Country teammates, got together to form the band Manic Subsidal. They, who didn't even know how to play instruments, started meeting every night at Greg K's house. By that summer, they were actually playing songs.
The next fall, Dexter began premed studies at USC. Greg K was taking classes in finance at a junior college, so it got to a point where they could only meet on weekends.
After Dexter wrote a handful of songs, the band headed for a cheap studio. After that, the lead guitarist quit the band. This is when the oddball of the band, Kevin (Noodles) Wasserman joined the band. Noodles had been the janitor (also a grad) at Pacifica, and remembered Dexter as a "math geek". Noodles was the only band member over 21, so you know what he was most useful for.
In 1986, Ron Welty was sixteen years old, and had just moved to Garden Grove. Welty's sister knew Dexter and introduced Ron to him. Ron later found out that the band's drummer had started medical school and was missing a lot of gigs. Ron begged Dexter to make him the band's backup, and shortly thereafter, the original drummer quit the band.
In 1987, they released a 7-inch single. The band made 1,000 copies, and it took them two and a half years to sell them.
In 1989, after many rejections, the band finally got a contract with Nemesis. At this time, the producer asked them the band's name. The band had realized it couldn't go by Manic Subsidal, but had never thought about what it's new name would be. At that moment, one of the members just said "The Offspring" and the band decided to keep that name. With Nemesis, The Offspring released a 7-inch single Baghdad, and their self-titled album.
These records were overpriced and of poor sound quality.
In 1991, Brett Gurewitz, the owner of Epitaph Records, began to reconsider his earlier decision not to sign the band. He began to recognize the band's music as being "the Epitaph sound", and started to believe the Offspring could make it big with Epitaph.
In 1992, The Offspring recorded Ignition released by Epitaph. Still, at this point, the band had not gained much recognition.
In 1994, however, the band, who stuck with Epitaph after disputes, released Smash, where songs like Come Out and Play and Self-Esteem helped push the album to being the best-selling independant record of all time, (over 9 million). Even the band itself was surprised at all the sudden fame that the new record brought to them. It was comprised of high-energy punk rock tunes. Even though, Smash (the song), and Bad Habit were not released as singles, they also became instant favorites to many. Gotta Get Away was the other song released as a single, and even though it brought much less success than the other two, it did pretty well.
Not long after the release of Smash, The Offspring was all of a sudden appearing on talk shows, as well as magazine articles. Smash was an international hit, and still to this day, the band is huge in countries such as Australia and Sweden, as well as many other European countries.
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Later in 1995, Ignition reappeared in stores. Later that year, the band re-released their self-titled album with the own label Nitro. The band left Epitaph, suspecting that the owner wanted to sell the company. (The Offspring accounted for a great majority of their sales).
The band decided that whether or not they wanted to,
they were going to end up on a major label, so they made up their minds that they would at least decide which one they would take.
In 1996, The Offspring signed with Columbia Records. Later that year the band came out with the video All I Want which featured kind of a surprise in where the members of the band had cut their hair short. Dexter had always been known for having the dreadlocks.
In early 1997, they released their first album with Columbia, named Ixnay on the Hombre. They made four singles of the album. The singles were: The Meaning of Life, Gone Away, I Choose, and All I Want. Gone Away, and I Choose did okay, but not nearly as well as their previous singles.
In 1998, however, the band released its biggest single yet. Pretty Fly (for a white guy) was an instant hit that hit the charts hard and the video got heavy MTV rotation.
Shortly after Pretty Fly was released, the band released the new album Americana. About fifty percent of Offspring fans vote Americana as their favorite, while over forty percent, (including myself), still like Smash the best.
Early in 1999, The Offspring released the single Why Don't You Get A Job?, a song which most find rather amusing. Also in this time span, The band made an appearance in the movie Idle Hands. Also, the band re-recorded Beheaded, (from their self-titled album), for the Idle Hands soundtrack.
In May, they released a single The Kid's Aren't Alright, from Americana.