Sublime: The Traic history of the Band
0:00 - Bradley Nowell's early years
1:11 - Early Sublime Years
3:46 - Sublime's Personal Problems
6:00- Sublime's First Hit/KROQ
7:55 - Sublime's Final Album
11:10 - Nowell's Death/Aftermath
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Sublime was a ska-punk and reggae band that never got to properly experience their success. By the time their third album came out the band ceased to exist and most of their new fans had no clue the group was done. Today let’s take a look at the history of the band Sublime.
Growing up in the long beach neighbourhood of belmont shore, Frontman and guitarist Bradley Nowell came from a musical family. His father worked as a homebuilder who played guitar in his spare time.. His father became known for playing covers of Jim Croce (crow-che()) songs at parties while his mother was a piano teacher. His parents would give him his first guitar lessons. But by the time he turned 10, his parents would divorce with his mother taking custody of her son. She would tell VH1’s behind the music that nowell was a needy child and struggled in school becoming disruptive and suffered from attention deficit disorder. Feeling overwhelmed by Bradley’s behavior, he started living with his father at the age of 11 who took his son on a sailing trip around the US virgin islands. It was here where he got his first exposure to Bob Marley and reggae music which would be a huge influence on Nowell’s career in music.
Upon returning home from the sailing trip, Nowell was now a teeanger who would play in punk rock bands in the early 80’with bassist Eric Wilson. Wilson would recall how early jam sessions weren’t very successful telling the LA Times
“He was making me play (reggae). I didn’t want to play it,” with Nowell adding
“I was trying to get them to do ‘Cherry Oh Baby,’ (a song popularized by British reggae band UB40), and it didn’t work. They tried, but it just sounded like such garbage,“We were horrible.”
Nowell and Wilson’s band would be put on the backburner while Nowell went off to college. He would attend UC Santa Cruz for two years before he decided to study finance and transfer to Cal state. He only had one semester left before he dropped out recalling to the lA Times
“I have all the hard classes left. . . . I doubt I’ll ever go back.”
By this time NOwell returned to Long Beach and it was 1988, Hed reconnec with Wilson who called an old neighbour he grew up with across the alley named of his Bud Gough (Gawww). Gaww was taught drums by Wilson’s father who was a jazz drummer. Sublime’s lineup was now born. They would jam in Gaww’s garage and one of the first songs they wrote would be, well since this is youtube i’m not going to say the song’s title because last time i said this word i got in trouble so let’s just called it Date Expletive. If you know Sublime then you’ll know which song im referring to.THe band soon established a big following playing backyard parties and dive bars in southern california in front of hundreds of kids, earning upwards of $250 a night .
Gaww would tell Spin Magazine “we were like the band that everybody in the scene would show up for. If you were having a party that night and you had us play there would be two other parties that night in the same neighbourhood, everybody was going to be at the sublime party.
Wilson would recall to the LA Times We played some pretty rough neighborhoods,” “You’d have to be afraid of your own safety. Gangster kids would show up at the parties, and there would be trouble. Somebody got stabbed one time.” The gigs were so rough that Spin Magazine reported that samoan guards would provide security at the gigs and the police would be a frequent presence hovering over the gigs in their helicopters if they played past the noise curfew.
In 1990 Nowell rescued a dalmatian named Louie sometimes referred to as Lou Dog which was named after his grandfather and became the group’s defacto mascot. He was also referred to as Nowell’s alter-ego He would join the band on the road and onstage. During the spring of 1990 Michael “Miguel” Happold (happol) a music student offered to manage the band enticing them with an offer of free studio time at the school he attended. He became the de-facto fourth member of the band, helping prodoce their music, helping run their affairs and record label. The band by this point had al