INTERVIEW: TAYLOR STEELE PART I

As an apprehensive participant in the first few years of American Hardcore during the 1990s, I will admit the era had its fair share of bands that did not stand the test of time either by their clunky use of socio-political lyrics, their spock hairdos, or sometimes a combination of both. For me, Richmond Virginia’s Four Walls Falling still holds some weight in the present day. Their combination of a politically-charged message wrapped around a NYHC-inspired sound was pretty unique for the time. Why it took me thirty years to finally figure that out is yet another testimony to my thick-headedness.

I recently jumped on a call with their vocalist Taylor Steele to discuss the bands’ history as well as the early days of the Richmond Hardcore scene and the bands he had prior to Four Walls Falling, P.Y.A, and Pledge Allegiance. Here is the first part of our conversation.

I suppose we’ll start from how you found out about Punk and how it led to Hardcore Punk. 
Taylor Steele: I’m 55, so I remember the hoopla on TV about the Sex Pistols touring America in 1978. Then around 1981, I was on spring break with my parents at our cousin's house in Columbia, South Carolina. We walked to the record store and my cousin bought Never Mind The Bollocks out of the used bin. We took it home and I just thought it was incredible. At that point in my life, I liked AC/DC, Cheap Trick, Judas Priest, and even stuff like A Flock of Seagulls. The Sex Pistols seemed like all the stuff thrown together, but crazier. After that, I got back into skateboarding and I saw Black Flag in Thrasher back when it looked like a newspaper. When Damaged came out, I bought it at this record store called Peaches in their import section. That record took me to a whole other level and I was hooked. 

How did you find out there was a local Hardcore Punk scene with bands like White Cross and Graven Image? 
It was at least a year from the time I bought Damaged. My buddies and I were skateboarding at this place called the Spillway near the University of Richmond. They were these big walls for when the dam overflowed and when it was not overflowing you could skate there. A couple of guys from Honor Role and Graven Image showed up there to skate and saw us in our homemade punk rock shirts. They told us they were playing a matinee show downtown with this band from Washington DC called Void. It worked out for me that it was going on at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. That way I didn’t have to tell my parents where I was going. Graven Image played and I think Death Piggy played and Judicial Fear might have played too; they were from Virginia Beach. Then the almighty Void came out. If you see Void as your first show, you’re pretty much hooked. My second show was Minor Threat and DOA. So I had a good start!

Were the early flagship bands like White Cross doing grassroots networking to bring national bands through Richmond? 
I think it was harder back then because everyone was thinking of D.C or New York or San Francisco or Chicago. It was harder to break through if you weren’t from a big city. C.O.C was able to do it but a lot of bands found it hard to do. White Cross toured but Graven Image may be played in Virginia Beach or Raleigh. Honor Role would eventually tour the U.S much later.

Did you go see shows outside of Richmond at all back then? 
My first year of going to shows was just in Richmond but I got to see a lot of good bands like Minor Threat, Void, The F.U’s, Crucifix, and Iron Cross. The biggest show in Richmond then was when the Dead Kennedys played with Scream and DRI at the Mosque Ballroom. I had to miss it to go on summer vacation with my parents. It was a seminal show for Richmond because it was in this really nice ballroom that got trashed. That was the first and last time a punk band played there. There are pictures from it of people swinging from the marble pillars. It was in 1984 I started going outside of Richmond for shows. I went to D.C. to see the Rock Against Reagan festival and I saw one of the weirdest bills when I was there consisting of Iron Cross, 9353, and Honor Role. Then the band I was in played in Virginia Beach with Graven Image. 

When did you decide to start a band? 
At the time, my brother Bo was playing guitar at home. He would end up being in every band I was ever in. We met these kids at a DYS show in December of ‘83 and decided to start a band with them. I bought a bass guitar the day before our first practice. At the end of our first practice, it was obvious my brother and the drummer were really good and that I and the other guitarist were terrible at our instruments. That band was called Dregs of Humanity. I continued to practice bass and a month later, the drummer and the other guitarist from Dregs of Humanity and the guitarist from this band Screaming In Opposition started another band. We were called P.Y.A. A month or two after we were practicing, we were skateboarding at a ramp in Richmond and talking to Dave Brockie from GWAR and then Death Piggy. We told him we had a band and he said, “Cool! We’re playing next month and you’re going to open!” We told him we only had two songs and he said, “So? Write some more!” At that show, we had four songs that we played twice. We played out of town in Virginia Beach and this place White Stone out in the Chesapeake Bay. 

Did Y.F.A morph into your next band Pledge Allegiance?
After a year, P.Y.A wasn’t working out because our singer got into the Grateful Dead. We wanted to keep the band going but we needed a new singer and our guitarist was going off to college in Greensboro. We decided my brother Bo was going to play guitar, so we had the three of us and no singer. Then, the guitarist dropped out of school after a month and came back home. Now we had a bass player, two guitarists, a drummer, and no singer. At our first practice, I wondered who was going to try singing first. Then someone said, “Taylor, you should try singing first since you’re the worst musician of us all”. After one song, it was decided I’d stay on vocals and the old guitar player would switch to bass. It was after that we changed our name to Pledge Allegiance. Our first show was with Verbal Abuse and the Circle Jerks in Charlottesville. When we played, there were only about twenty people in the room and among them were all the members of Verbal Abuse and the Circle Jerks. This is the first time we’ve ever played on stage and the first time I’ve ever sung in front of people and Nikki Sikki and Kieth Morris and all their band members were watching us. They came up to us afterward and said we sounded good. But I was just lucky. Bo, Mark, and George were all really good musicians, so there was very little room for me to screw up.