Do What You Want: The Story of Bad Religion

by Jim Ruland

Greg and Brett were establishing themselves as the Beatles of punk rock. If Greg was Paul McCartney, the crooner who crafted memorable melodies, then Brett was John Lennon, the poet yearning to make sense of the world. As an atheist, Greg saw things as they were. Brett, however, was more of an agnostic who hung his hopes on the ineffable.

Then, when the industry took notice of what Epitaph had achieved, it came gunning for him. Record labels sent representatives to sign the Offspring and Rancid away from Epitaph. Rumors circulated that the pop star Madonna tried to seduce Armstrong with nude photographs to lure Rancid to her label. One night in New York Greg watched Madonna buttonhole Armstrong for twenty minutes backstage.

The gray race is the human species because we are the only species on the planet that can see things in terms other than black-and-white, e.g., fight or flight, kill or be killed, et cetera. Humans can perceive a middle ground that encompasses a wide range of emotions like love, empathy, kindness, and other altruistic impulses, i.e., the feelings that give life meaning. Despite this ability, our species continually creates systems that encourage (if not enforce) a black-and-white duality to existence that is responsible for war, sickness, starvation, and a host of other maladies that could be prevented if we worked together as a species. The album’s message is simple: either we have to create new ways of coexisting in the world or we are doomed to destroy one another.