This interview with DYS guitarist Andy Strachan was conducted in June 2015 for my third book, Straight Edge: A Clear-Headed Hardcore Punk History.
Where did you grow up around Boston?
We grew up in a little town called Marblehead, which is twenty miles north of Boston. We were all skateboarders who smoked weed and listened to the Rolling Stones, and that was basically it. That was the whole of the ’70s for me.
One of my friend’s fathers was a Boston artist and he had known about New Wave and Punk Rock. He had a Ramones album and told us “You guys love this stuff!” and we were like, “Eh, whatever”. We just figured it was some artsy band. Through skateboarding, we found out more about punk rock. Then, the Ramones came and played live and it was so awesome.
How did you find out about Hardcore?
Black Flag played in July of ’81 in Boston. There were fifty or sixty people there and there was instant thrashing. My friends and I couldn’t believe it. We had just cut off all our hair with scissors.
Al Barile was there and he was handing out flyers for an SSD show going on in a couple of weeks. We all went to that show and met the rest of the Boston crew and they were blown away we came from Marblehead. There were maybe twelve of us, so they thought we were some big punk rock gang. Little did they know we were these little kids who didn’t know anything.
How did the Straight Edge thing come to define the Boston Hardcore scene?
Al from SSD was in contact with the guys from D.C. and told us there were these guys down there who didn’t drink and we thought that was so cool. I grew up in the ’70s where everyone was stoned; even people’s parents. It just seemed like such a new, fresh idea in the context of how kids were growing up. Anything to get out of that lame hippy shit!
But I just want it to be known that not every band out of Boston was completely Straight Edge. That was just impossible!
We could count the numbers of people who were Straight Edge in the Boston scene on our hands. There were drinkers and partiers that we knew all through growing up that were part of our crew and it wasn’t like we were going to stop hanging out with them.
All that stuff you hear about the Boston crew shining flashlights in peoples’ eyes and kicking beers out of peoples’ hands might have happened once but got blown out of proportion. For me, it was just about breaking out of what we grew up around.
We started smoking weed when we were thirteen, so Straight Edge was new and fresh compared to the context of where we were coming from. So many people were blown away that we didn’t smoke or drink. It was so radical to them. We would go to parties and people would tell us we were bumming them out because we were not high. We would roll into these parties with shaved heads and hi-top Nikes and our jeans rolled up with sweatshirts. It came along at a perfect time for me and I was so ready for it. I was so tired of partying.
Did you continue on being Straight Edge?
I wish I had a commitment to keep it up as the other Boston guys like Jamie, Al, and Choke. I was a bike messenger in Boston and got caught up in partying more and more. It took me years to get out to it. Some friends and I became Sikhs through practicing Yoga. I currently live in Espanola, New Mexico where there is a large Yoga community. There is no meat, no alcohol, and no smoking. I started that about fifteen years ago. That got me back to the tenants of Straight Edge and I was like “Thank God!” So, I guess I’m Straight Edge again. It’s a much more preferable and easy way of life compared to others.
How important was Al Barile in forming the Hardcore scene in Boston?
Al was a big leader for our scene. He drove us around in his black van and put so much work into building that Boston scene. Seeing Al play in SSD definitely was an inspiration to learn to play guitar. I was like, “Look at that guy! Look at the way he holds the guitar like a gorilla!” If he could do it, so can I. Four months later, I got a guitar and I joined DYS only after playing guitar for eight months. SSD were the leaders of the Boston scene to us.
How was the Hardcore scene accepted on the rest of the Boston music scene?
There was already a New Wave scene in Boston that had been going on for a number of years, but they looked at us these funny little kids who played this super unlistenable music. Some of them were really intrigued by us though. Mission of Burma were big fans of what we were doing and had Negative FX open their last show where there was that classic riot. We would drive around in the black van with the Boston crew. Al wanted a lot of people. He wanted a Hardcore Punk gang.
How did you come to join DYS?
DYS was playing for a little while before I joined. They had a guitarist before me, but he was getting drunk, so they had to get rid of him. Our first show was in a church in Cambridge opening up for The Misfits.
I remember DYS did a little tour that was super fun during Christmas of ’84. We played Richmond and New Year’s Eve in Philly at the Love Hall. It was freezing in that place with ice on the walls.
Looking back, what’s your impression of DYS going Heavy Metal?
When we wanted to start playing Heavy Metal, it seems so lame now. We saw Metallica and were like “Oh my gosh!” and suddenly decided we wanted to go in that direction. We took a real beating for it. I recently listened to that last SSD record Break It Up and I was like, “Wow!” They really took it as far as any band at that time who were going for the Heavy Metal thing. That took some guts. You gotta hand it to them.
They flew out to L.A. for their last show and played this music to a group of kids expecting Hardcore Punk. Springa had all these bandanas and everything. He was such a nightmare under any circumstances. SSD and DYs, we all jumped too far too quickly. Bands get really into growing, but the people in the scene moves slower. People weren’t ready for it. Brotherhood came out in ’83 and the second one came out in ’85. It seemed like a long time to us, but not to others.
I remember looking out into the crowd when we played that ballad off the second record “Closer Still” and seeing my friends with their jaws on the ground. It started out as a joke at practice. We really into solo Ozzy at the time, so we thought it sounded like something off one of his recent records. When we did the second record, we had these producers come in telling us to practice every night. We started doing “Last in Line” by Dio and “Everybody Wants Some” by Van Halen. We were growing our hair out. It sounds so lame now. We really wanted to be a rock band. The back of the second record was so lame. Jon had the make-up on and Dave had that salamander on his shoulder. Me and Ross, the other guitar player, didn’t know what was wrong with them!
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