December 2000
Music
Feature Presentation
El Paso's At the Drive-In has the talent and the will to be the next big thing in rock. The hair too.
At the Drive-In is from El Paso, so playing a gig in 100-degree temperatures is nothing new. But this is the Reading Festival, an internationally renowned three-day concert in the English countryside, where the thermometer reads just 60 degrees. On this breezy day the band is supplying the additional heat. The Carling Premier Stage—actually a tent meant to accommodate no more than 700 of Reading's 55,000 fans—is a sweatbox of blokes, beer, and body temperature. The fans who can't get in stand twenty rows deep outside, adding another 700 to the throng. Mindful of the cramped conditions, At the Drive-In's lead singer, Cedric Bixler, lays down the law. "You can do that slam-dancing and crowd-diving stuff some other time," he says in a gentle, high-pitched voice. "Let's do something different and respect each other. Save that kind of stuff for different music, because we are a different breed of band! Thank you for hanging out with us."
Then—thwack! pow! screech!—the five boys from El Paso make it impossible for anyone to stand still as they depth-charge the room with thirty unrelenting minutes of savage, angry, heartfelt rock and roll animated by an acrobatic blur of jumps, scissor kicks, and Afros in perpetual motion. A legend is born. The U.K.'s most influential rock magazine, New Musical Express, described the group as "This year's impossible to see band in a tent barely big enough for their hair." If that description seems like a mouthful, this one is more direct: The magazine's cover anointed At the Drive-In "the best new rock band on earth."
Despite that success, At the Drive-In is not so far removed from the nights when the musicians outnumbered the audience (including the bartender and the sound guy). A year ago Bixler, guitarists Jim Ward and Omar Rodriguez, bassist Paul Hinojos, and drummer Tony Hajjar, all of whom are in their mid-twenties, lay hidden in the grass roots, well known in underground punk circles but nearly invisible otherwise. They were on the verge of being on the verge. Then, in November 1999, Rage Against the Machine, the highly politicized metal-hip-hop band, brought them out on tour. Grand Royal, the label owned by the Beastie Boys, offered them a record deal with an affiliated company run by two music business veterans who played a role in the marketing of Nirvana. With the September release of Relationship of Command, the band's fifth CD, America caught up with its British brethren in the hype department. Spin calls At the Drive-In "this year's most buzzed-about rock group," and Rolling Stone says they're "rock's latest saviors." Conan O'Brien had them on for Halloween. Letterman will follow suit this month.
It's the kind of attention that can kill a band just as easily as it can make one. As Jeff Ward, Jim's father, puts it, "The press has been amazing. I sure hope the band doesn't read that stuff." Still, Jeff knows that At the Drive-In is well equipped to fend off any nonsense. Levelheaded, self-sufficient, ambitious, and idealistic, At the Drive-In may or may not be the next big thing, but the band is in it for the long haul. As with any overnight success, the group has been at it for years.
What sets At the Drive-In apart is not just its talent but its commitment, not just its vision but the tenacity with which its vision is executed. In an age in which bands expect a record deal two weeks after forming and teenagers can be dot-com millionaires, you rarely hear the expression "paying your dues" anymore. The members of At the Drive-In have paid theirs. "We've toured our asses off," Jim Ward says. "Five, six, seven hundred shows—nobody has any idea how many." Ward, Rodriguez, and Bixler have been together in one band or another since high school. Bixler and Rodriguez had already chosen lives of disposable day jobs punctuated by constant touring, and in 1995 Ward matched their fervor, swapping his college fund for a 1981 Ford Econoline and the manufacturing costs of a debut seven-inch single, "Hell Paso." "It was a tough decision," Ward says. "I did really well in high school, so I had opportunities."
The current rhythm section came together in 1997. Hinojos and Hajjar had already played together in several local punk bands and joined At the Drive-In a month apart. Hajjar had to make a choice even more difficult than Ward's: He was a semester away from his chemistry and math degree at the University of Texas at El Paso. "When I joined the band, something clicked," he says. "Like, 'This is it. Give up everything now.'" Hajjar dropped out of school, gave up his job, and moved out of his apartment because he couldn't pay the rent. "I remember writing in my journal, 'My life is completely going to change.' A month later we went out on a four-month tour, playing to two or three people a night, making two dollars a day."
