Don't Wanna Be Like Other Adults

Milo Aukerman has just returned home from a college basketball game and is now settled with a beer, his cat and his dog in the Delaware home he shares with his wife and kids. His team, University of Delaware, lost the game, though Aukerman isn't too concerned.

“I like watching sports,” he says, like a classic American everyman.

But looking at Aukerman's life on paper, he seems as far from a 'regular guy' as you could imagine. Since 1980 he has been the frontman of one of the most influential punk rock bands in the history of the world, Descendents. Well, kinda…

From 1983-1984, 1988-1995, 1997-2002 and 2004-2010 Aukerman wasn't available for Descendents commitments as he pursued a career in science – he now works a day job as a researcher for the massive DuPont chemical company and holds a doctorate in biochemistry – seemingly a lifestyle far from being a world famous punk rock musician. But, while Aukerman acknowledges the differences, he also explains the many similarities between his two lives.

“Yeah, it obviously has a lot of differences,” he acknowledges. “I can be on stage and have this massive release of pent up energy and this kind of euphoric, in the moment, at one with the music kind of thing which obviously I can't get in my other gig.

“But there are lots of things that are in common because of the creative process. In songwriting you have these moments of whatever you want to call it – epiphany or breakthrough in a particular song that allows you to finish it or whatever – and the same thing happens in science, I have these moments of epiphany or breakthrough in science. I live for those moments as a songwriter and a scientist, that's the shared characteristic that I have in my two existences.”

Now Aukerman is able to continue living both sides of his life as he finds a balance between his professional and family life and the life he leads with Descendents.

“That is the most unusual and gratifying thing that has come out of this,” he says. “I struggled for many years to find a balance, it's really hard to do because both of these things require so much of your time, basically [in the past] I'd have to clone myself and have two of me – one on tour and one in the lab – and that obviously was not going to happen. But now, we can kind of make a go of it as a band and only play 15 shows a year. I feel very, very fortunate to be able to have this balance.

“Music is fabulous, but it can really take a toll on your normalcy. I'm not saying that everyone has to be normal, but I have a certain desire to have a family and I have a certain desire to keep my scientific career going. That's always been a struggle in the past with music kind of encroaching upon it but now we don't have to worry about that, so it's kinda nice.”

It is at this pace that he hopes Descendents will continue for the foreseeable future.

“This is the kind of pace that really I don't see being an issue for me,” he offers. “I'm sure people would like to say we need to tour more, but it's not going to happen because I have another career. Which is to say, I have a career and I have music as a hobby, basically. That's how I view it. I'm at a position where I can keep my career and have music as a hobby. Obviously the hobby has been quite an extensive one, it's been something that's really satisfied me very much in a creative sense.”

It took Descendents 30 years to make it to Australia, but audiences at the final show of their 2010 tour at Brisbane's RNA Showgrounds were given a very different show. Aukerman lost his voice prior to the performance and a kind of punk rock karaoke ensued, with members of other bands on the No Sleep Til festival helping out.

“The most memorable [show] was Brisbane where I lost my voice, but that was fun because all these other people came out on stage. I'm looking forward to coming back and making an improvement on my vocal performance, especially for the Brisbane crowds, I feel like they probably didn't get the full Descendents deal.”

Raw footage of Descendents at Brisbane's No Sleep Til festival in 2010

So what happened?

“We played the night before in Sydney and I just drank too much coffee. I drank a pot of coffee and a bunch of those little 5-Hour Energy guys, equivalent to a bunch of Red Bulls, so I really just couldn't go to sleep. I was having these weird heart palpitations, so I'm lying in bed thinking 'Oh great, I'm having a heart attack' and I didn't sleep a wink. My voice just didn't get a chance to rest.

“I'm not gonna quit coffee, that's not gonna happen, but this time maybe I can just drink a cup of coffee instead of a gallon. I'm trying to show some moderation.”

Much of the brilliance of Descendents lies in their simple, naïve and often, frankly, stupid lyrics. Even though he's now 50 years old, Aukerman doesn't have any issues singing the lyrics he or his band mates penned 30 years ago.

“These songs are all about our lives at that point, so that makes it a little easier to get in the spirit of it because it's actual stuff that happened so you feel kinda close to it, even 30 years down the line. When you grow up, your teenage years are indelibly marked on your memory.”

There's a certain honestly and authenticity in the lyrics that the band have penned over the years and both Aukerman and drummer (and prolific songwriter) Bill Stevenson have admitted that they have only ever written from direct personal experiences.

“People come up and say, 'That song that you wrote describes me to a tee' and I go, 'Well that's because it really happened to me',” Aukerman tells. “We're not writing about fictional situations or fictional characters, it's all real. That just makes it that much easier for people to relate to.

“Bill's the same way, he only writes songs about real girls, real people, that's the only way we know how to write. In some senses it's a disadvantage because we kind of painted ourselves into a corner, we can only write about our immediate lives and our immediate relationships and surrounding so it's kind of limiting, but at the same time I think it does make the music come across that much more powerful.”

There will be a new Descendents record at some stage, plenty of songs are written but there's no plan as to how and when they will get them onto tape.

“Yeah we've all written new songs; those guys they never stop writing, they always have new songs. Bill got sick a few years back and at that point I hadn't really written songs in several years, we were all so worried about him and once he got better I wrote a song about it – that was the first song I'd written in a while but it lead to others.

“So the songwriting happens, that's one piece of the puzzle, but the other piece is recording them and that's one thing we're trying to take one step at a time. We can't just hole up in a studio for three months and record, we've kinda gotta do it piecemeal. So that's what we're trying to do now, trade digital files back and forth and get to the point where we've worked up some songs amongst us. Maybe that's gonna take a year, maybe it'll take two years, we don't really have a set time frame.”

Writing new music isn't something Aukerman has necessarily been able to easily incorporate into his life as a family man, but he makes it work.

“I kinda have to squeeze in my musical creations on the fly, because we've got kids now. It's got to be me driving in the car and humming a tune and making a lyric up on the spot – you get creative and you try and make it work given your current situation and it seems like it's worked pretty well.”