On Tuesday, June 17, the Bay Area got a little less interesting when Eugene S. Robinson moved to Spain.
Robinson is the founder of the experimental rock outfit Oxbow and lead singer of punk supergroup Buñuel. He’s also a journalist, a competitive jiu jitsu fighter, a memoirist, a Substacker, and probably the only person alive who’s had professional and personal relationships with Jello Biafra, Charles Manson, Anton LaVey, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Karl Rove.
Robinson first arrived in the Bay Area as a Stanford undergrad. While there, he quickly established himself a chronicler of underground culture with his print zine The Birth of Tragedy and a creator in bands like Whipping Boy. The decades flew by — Robinson raised three kids to adulthood and has another entering kindergarten — and now his California chapter is coming to an end.
I grabbed lunch with Robinson in the Mission four days before he and his family moved abroad. I found him in an expansive mood despite the fact that he’d yet to finalize the sale of his Palo Alto house, find a good home for his beloved ’65 Chevy Chevelle, get a haircut, and do the million things one needs to do before leaving California after 45 years.
“I’m not a nostalgic kind of guy,” Robinson told me over a smashburger (hold the onions). “I’m not sentimental.” That may be true, but he had some pretty crazy stories to share before he bid his longtime home state adios.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What drew you here?
I want to come to California because it was a place I’d wanted to come to and I figured, Okay I’m going to choose a school here, but if I don’t like the school, at least maybe I’ll like the city. At that time, the only music I cared about from San Francisco was Dead Kennedys. There were bands that were sort of interesting, but Dead Kennedys were a major draw.
When was the first time you met Jello Biafra?
I met him after the first show that Whipping Boy played at the Farm. We weren’t on the bill. It was the Effigies and the Circle Jerks. And we were there and I said, Man, we should play the show! Our whole band is here! We asked if we could play just three songs. And I didn’t realize the visual impact of having a guitar player who’s like 6’7”, 275 pounds and me at the time, who’d just come off of a competitive bodybuilding thing. I think they looked at us and they were like, “You know what? It’s just easier to let him do it.” After the show, Klaus [Flurid] came up to me, and Darren Peligro — rest in peace — and I think Biafra was with them and they were like, Who are you guys?
Biafra and I have had a weird relationship.
I think everyone who knows Jello has a weird relationship with Jello.
I remember we played at Bottom of the Hill with Sahara Hotnights and he really wanted Oxbow’s An Evil Heat, but he didn’t want to buy it because it was out on Neurosis’ record label. And he felt that they had knifed him, done him wrong. And I said, “No, man, I can give it to you wholesale, but I can’t.” And I turned around and talked to some people, I come back and it’s gone. On the one hand, I’m glad he liked it enough to steal it, but on the other hand, you know, come on, bro.
Jello, if you’re reading this, you owe Eugene $7.99 for that record. How long have you been in the Bay Area?
Since September of 1980.
And you’re leaving now, you’re moving to Spain. Tell me what the feeling is?
I’m not a nostalgic kind of guy. I’m not sentimental in that way. I don’t leave with a sensation that I’ve left anything undone.
You’re probably the only person in San Francisco with a personal relationship with Anton LaVey, Steve Jobs, Carlos Watson. How do you find yourself in so many random situations?
Well, this is what I try to get my kids to see: “You don’t have to be a journalist, but you should create some kind of mechanism by which you can talk to people who interest you.”
You were in so many weird scenes and situations.
I’ll give you an example. Right after I’d become friendly with Vale from RE/Search books I was like, “Hey, buddy, at one point you should do an interview with me.” He’s like, “Well, maybe you should try doing something first.” I was like, “All right, buddy.”
And then last time I was at his house, Lydia [Lunch] was interviewing me for her podcast and I’m talking about hanging out with Bill Clinton. I’m talking about Karl Rove and Kevin Weeks, a Boston Irish Mafia guy. And the whole time I’m talking to Lydia, I’m looking at Vale. And I’m just going through these lists and it’s like, Yeah, maybe you should do something.
What are you going to miss about the Bay Area?
Actually, I’m going to tell you something that I wouldn’t have thought possible. I just played a show in Marseille and at the club, there was a Mexican restaurant next door. I said, “I want a burrito.” The burrito that they gave, it’s mindblowing how badly they massacred this thing. The burrito was dry, it was hard, it was you wouldn’t even recognize it as a burrito.
If you wanted a piece of shit burrito you could’ve gone to New York.
Seriously, so that’s I think, at some point, I will miss that and Fig Newtons.
45 years in the Bay Area, and you’re going to miss burritos and Fig Newtons.
Yeah.
Best person you met in the Bay Area?
Lydia [Lunch, singer and poet]. I knew of her from New York but distantly. I just drove by the Oasis, the first place I met her, which is not the Oasis anymore.
Nothing’s what it ever was.
That was a special time for me.
I thought you weren’t nostalgic, Mr. Robinson.
Well, for people. Not places.
Worst person you met?
Um, that’s pretty hard because I’m friends with a lot of terrible people. I’m always telling people they were nice to me. Like Charles Manson, probably a pretty bad guy, but was always nice to me.
Can we just pause? “Probably a pretty bad guy”? I I think history has proven he’s a bad guy. No need for the “probably” for Manson.
Okay, I don’t need it. He’s commonly held to be a pretty bad guy.
Are you still qualifying it?
Well, a friend of mine who’s the Under Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush was probably a worse guy than Manson, but yeah, he said it best. He goes — I think he meant it as a compliment — Eugene is like a dog.You know, if you’re nice to him, that’s it, forever.
You’re not going to name your former boss who went to jail?
You’re talking about the convicted felon Carlos Watson? I think that’s who we’re talking about.
Yes, the commuted by Donald Trump convicted felon Carlos Watson—
While he was on the plane to prison. On the plane! And they waved the $96 million of restitution.
This proves that a Black man can get justice in America. Racism’s over.
Trump is in with the Blacks now.
You ever meet Trump?
No, I haven’t met Trump. It’s strange I haven’t met him given that he’s at the UFC. But you know what? When I met Karl Rove, we hung out for a night actually. He was at Minton’s, the jazz club up in Harlem. He sees me and I recognize him and I start walking toward him, and he’s walking toward me. And I go, This is getting a little weird. And I was like, “Hello, sir.” And he’s like, “Eugene Robinson!”
Maybe he thought you were the other Eugene Robinson.
No, you know what it was. I could tell by the way people talk to me that they were fans of the sex column I used to write, “Sex with Eugene.”
Are you guys close enough that you can call him Turd Blossom?
No, but you know what scared me fundamentally? His take, without saying it, he was saying we’re aristocrats. You know, there are two types of people who live in this country: those who know what the fuck is going on, and people who don’t. And he clearly thought that we were aligned on the side of knowing what’s going on.
Could you have ever imagined when you were a little street fighting punk in Brooklyn that you’d be an aristocrat with Karl Rove?
Well, the thing is, most of the punk rockers I knew had some idea that they were different and stood apart. So that was a very punk rock thing.
What are you going to do to enjoy Northern California one last time?
I gotta record eight songs. Six for the new Buñuel record for which we have surprise guests — shockingly great guest artists. Then I have two side project things that I need to do vocals for. I gotta get a haircut. I gotta get my stuff packed for the tour. I got tons of shit to do. I’m pretty busy.
Do you plan to ever come back?
I am coming back! Buñuel is playing the West Coast in November. We play the shows up and down the West Coast and then I fly back to have Thanksgiving in Spain. Everybody’s descending on the house. I got fourteen people showing up.
When you come back, Fig Newtons on me.
Deal.
