Arthur Paul Alexakis was born on April 12, 1962, in West Los Angeles, California. He was the youngest of five children, with one brother, George (b. April 13, 1953, d. 1974), and three sisters. When he was five years old, his father ran out on his family and moved to Florida. This experience led to Art writing the hugely-successful song "Father of Mine."

"My dad never paid child support and was basically an asshole." (Art Alexakis)

      He was raised lower-middle-class by his mother, Eleanor, in the predominantly hispanic and black Mar Vista Gardens project of Culver City, and other projects in West Los Angeles and Santa Monica. He shared a double bed with his brother, when he was not in jail. Since Art had no father, he looked up to his brother who was nine years older than him. When Art was six, his brother started hanging with the stoner crowd. Since his brother was such an influence on him, Art started drinking at age eight and smoking marijuana and popping pills at nine. His brother also played baseball, and Art would play at his games. All the other kids were better than him because they played catch with their dads. George got too wrapped up in drugs to play catch with his little brother.
      On a Saturday afternoon, when Art was 12, he went to the local batting cages. Soon after, his next-door neighbor, Dianne, and her boyfriend pulled up to the field. They insisted that he was needed at home right away. Reluctantly, he let them drive him home, without answering any of his questions. As they pulled up to his house, his sisters ran out of the house crying, "George is dead!" Art just stood there is shock. George was found in a flophouse. He had overdosed on cocaine and heroin, after being clean for six months and having a real job in an electronics factory.

"A policeman, when my mom was going down to actually identify the body of my brother, who overdosed when I was 12, at the age of 21. You know, just kinda frivolously saying, 'It's just another overdose.' And my mom's like 'No, it's my son. It's not just another overdose.' I’m sure the man was pretty stricken, you know, by his insensitivity and I guess in a job like that it'd be kind of hard not to, especially in, I'm sure a lot of you out there remember the mid and late 70's. People were dropping off like flies." (Art Alexakis)

      Shortly after his brother's death, Art tried to kill himself by jumping off the Santa Monica pier. He said he heard the voice of his brother telling him to live, so he swam and barely survived. He woke up in a hospital. His mother became overprotective of him, but this made him want to rebel. He started doing hard drugs like cocaine, speed, and heroin. He hung out with some "surfer hoods," who were too poor to surf. Instead, they stole rich kid's bikes, ditched school, rode around, broke into houses, stole money, and used it to buy drugs. Once, Art found $700 in a house, which they used to play pinball four days straight. He spent some time in Juvenile Hall and later jail for burglary, possession, dealing, and even assault. Art's girlfriend died from an overdose, too, when he was 15. At around this time, he also started playing the guitar. His mom got religious, and tried to make her son attend the Assembly of God with her. Instead, he told her that he wanted to go to the church down the street, so she gave him money for the collection plate. He used it to buy beer and cigarettes and hung out at his girlfriend's house. However, she did make him go to the church's Youth Brigade. The participants were allowed to go to a local liquor store after meetings. The owner of the store was a member of the church and gave the kids candy. Art would walk down the aisles, sticking bottles of beer into his pants, and he and his friends would skip school the next day to drink it.
      George named Art as a beneficiary of his life insurance. But since it was a drug overdose, he only got $10,000, which he received on his eighteenth birthday. His mother spent some of it, but the rest he used to buy a black Toyota Corolla Hatchback. Four years later, the car was stolen. He collected the insurance money, and bought an ounce of cocaine.

"I overdosed really bad. I tried to put a quarter of a gram of coke in one shot in my arm. I woke up with the paramedics. About six months later, I started having anxiety and panic attacks real bad and had to get treatment for that. That's basically when I just cleaned my life up. Quit smoking, quit drinking. It was either that or put a gun to my head." (Art Alexakis, Addicted to Noise)

"I haven't shot up or smoked weed or done any kind of drug since June 1984. I stopped drinking in '84, then started drinking again because my psychiatrist said I should, to relax . . . while I was on anti-depressants, which is about the worst thing you can do. But he was kind of a quack." (Art Alexakis, London Free Press)

      For the next few years, he tried to put his life back together by working in a lot of different jobs, including car messenger, road manager for small bands, and many more. He also studied film at Santa Monica College and U.C.L.A. In 1987, he moved to San Francisco with his first wife, Anita. He started a band, Shakin' Brave, that did not last very long. The night it broke up, he and Anita went to a country-punk show. That influenced him to buy a Telecaster and trade in his old Marshall for a reverb amp the next day. Within a month, he was playing in a cowpunk band called The Easy Hoes. One night, a coworker from Art's day job as a production coordinator for a graphic arts company, came to see him play. He was so impressed that he set him up with an indie label, Shindig Records, specializing in alternative country styles. Soon after, Art released the compilation LP, Lazy, Loud, & Liquor'd Up, which documented the San Francisco alternative country scene. It even included two songs by The Easy Hoes and one by his last band before Everclear, Colorfinger, playing songs that sounded a little like Everclear with a more country tinge. Some of the songs Art wrote for Colorfinger were even later released on Everclear albums. None of these bands were signed to a major label, though Art tried. He sent a Colorfinger album to Capitol Records President Gary Gersh, who liked Art's voice and his lyrics but thought that the sound was kind of dated. He asked him to send him new material in the future. However, Shindig's distributer, Rough Trade went out of business a few years later, and Shindig was forced to shut down.

"I couldn't even get the record [Colorfinger's Deep in the Heart of the Beast in the Sun] back because they'd sold them all. My marriage broke up. My band broke up. My life was ruined. But in retrospect, if the label had been successful, I'd probably be sitting in an office right now. I probably wouldn't have bothered to start a band." (Art Alexakis, Spin)

      At a Colorfinger concert in 1991, in Portland, Art met Jennifer Dodson, a pale, delicately beautiful record-store clerk. They moved to San Francisco together. Eight months later, she got pregnant, so they headed up to settle in Portland, where she had her roots. Knowing that he would now have to provide for a child, Art put an ad in the weekly Seattle music paper The Rocket. "Looking for bass player and drummer to form a band. Influences Pixies, Sonic Youth, X, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin."
      Annabella Rose Alexakis was born on June 25, 1992. She was four days old when Everclear had their first practice. She is now an eight-year-old soccer player.

"She really is a unique individual and she's growing up strong and loving and compassionate and intelligent, with a little bit of sass and a sense of humor." (Art Alexakis, Getsigned.com)

"In December 1993, Alexakis and Dodson quarreled (he'd been on the road; they'd both been fooling around on each other) and she threatened to take their daugher away. He socked her on the arm. She called the cops. He spent the night in jail, and went through 24 weeks of anger-management counseling. She was impressed enough by his improvement to go through counseling herself. They were married 16 months later. 'That counseling may have been the best thing that ever happened to me,' says Alexakis. 'I wish the experience that led to it hadn't happened, but...my dad hit my mom, my brother hit my sisters. It's in my family. I had to break the circle, that cycle of power and control, and I think that I have. Hitting a woman always seemed like the ultimate cowardly act, and I'm still ashamed.'" (Spin)

      The rest of his life from then till now has pretty much been spent writing music and touring. However, in the summer of 1999, he and Jenny got a divorce. Art got remarried to 21-year-old ex-model Stephanie Greig on August 13, 2000.

"It is my third and last marriage...[Stephanie] is from Alaska originally. I met her in New York, where she was modeling. She hated doing it, and wanted to move out west and be closer to her family. Since I lived in Portland we decided to meet up in Oregon. I had been separated from my last wife for almost a year at that point, who has since remarried and just had a baby with her new husband. My daughter, [Annabella] is pretty excited about the whole thing. At first it was hard on her. That's where I got a lot of grist for the mill for "Songs From An American Movie Part One." But she loves Stephanie and Stephanie loves her. She also loves her stepfather Andrew, who I get along well with. We go out to dinner and talk about Anna, so life is good. We're acting like adults, which I wish a lot more parents did." (Art Alexakis, Dr. Drew)