Even when being recorded, he displays an uncanny ability to turn any question back at his interviewer-not because he’s overtly elusive or uncooperative, but because he’s actually sincere in his attempt to learn about other people. Armstrong is easily the most curious and inquisitive member of Rancid. Intimidated and somewhat starstruck, the kids answer Armstrong’s questions in broken sentences and with somewhat puzzled looks on their faces that seem to ask, “Shouldn’t we be the ones asking the questions?” “Can we get your autograph?” Read more: ‘Stranger Things’ releases new teaser trailer and confirms release dateĪrmstrong complies, but instead of just signing his name and sending the fans on their way, he goes on to ask for their names and tries to spark up some friendly conversation. You’re that dude in Rancid, right?” Tim nods his head. After some prodding, the oldest-looking one says, “Hey. Meanwhile, three young kids in baggy jeans and Green Day T-shirts are lingering around the area, preparing to approach him. His pockets come out of the holes in his pants.

He puts down the camcorder and sticks his hands in his pockets. Armstrong wears only a pair of torn-knee jeans, a Minor Threat T-shirt and a bomber jacket with the logo for the defunct New York punk band Born Against scrawled on the back in white paint marker. Once we’re outside, it dawns on all of us that the weather at Snoqualmie Pass is freezing. Armstrong runs outside to get a shot of us walking through the hotel doors. Matt Freeman, who’s waiting for us at the bottom, recognizes my look of discomfort. I wave into the camera while he runs past me to get a shot of my descent on the stairs. Later that night, I walk out of my hotel room to find Armstrong with his finger on the trigger of a mini-camcorder. “Tim basically saved my life, for Christ’s sake.” He actually loaned me $100 to get my first place to live up there.” He pauses and then exhales. “When I first moved here from Campbell, Tim gave me a place to stay and let me sleep on his floor. Read more: Here are 16 producers who shaped some of the best recent pop-punk tracks By year’s end, Frederiksen would be stable, sober and playing guitar for a punk-rock band that had just sold nearly 200,000 copies of an album they recorded in six days. Punk was breaking, and Rancid were riding the crest of a wave they didn’t even know they had caught. “Salvation,” the album single and video, was gaining MTV and commercial-radio airplay. By all accounts, Let’s Go -Frederiksen’s first record with the band-was a major turning point in Rancid’s evolution: The now-trademark guitar/vocal interplay between him and Armstrong was introduced to more fanfare than criticism. “But I was like, ‘Fuck yeah! Where do I sign up?’” I’ve fallen in love, and I’m moving to Sacramento.’ Tim called me like 10 minutes later and pretty much said, ‘What’s happening? Do you want to play in our band or what?’ Coincidence? I don’t know,” he postulates. Ten minutes before we were supposed to leave, our bass player calls me up and says, ‘Hey, I’m quitting the band.

“Sometime after that night, Slip was supposed to go down to L.A. Frederiksen recalls striking up a conversation with Tim Armstrong that obviously left a positive impression on both of them. He eventually managed to put together a band called Slip, which, in 1992, scored a local gig with Rancid at the oft-fabled Gilman Street Project-the Bay Area punk club that played host to early shows by bands such as Green Day, Samiam and Rancid’s precursor, Operation Ivy.

I’d show up drunk with like three strings on my guitar.” Read more: Gang Of Four on their political roots, new box set '‘77-’81’ and more “They kicked me out because I was a waste case with no place to live. “I was totally out of it, just trying to score whatever I could get my hands on, as long as I could get high.” Shortly after coming home from London, Frederiksen joined a local punk band called Cajones, but they, too, found his incompetence impossible to deal with. “I was pretty much still using a lot of drugs at the time,” he recalls. What the Subs didn’t know by the time young Lars arrived in Britain was that he was already three years deep into an alcohol and narcotics problem that-along with the obvious generation gap-he cites as the main reason behind the brevity of his stay. When Rancid formed as a trio in 1991, Frederiksen was already the only 20-year-old kid in America who could boast a six-month guitar stint with the legendary U.K.

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