Channeling Social D
Before there was Mike Ness, there was Tom Corvin ?? yeah, the Channel
9 guy.
BY ANDREW MILLER
Andrew.Miller@p...
Kansas City TV reporter Tom Corvin used to play with a different kind
of Social
Distortion.
Social Distortion, one of the most prolific and influential groups in
American underground-rock history, established the pop-punk template
that
more polished outfits such as Green Day and Offspring would eventually
convert into multiplatinum success. It later settled into a grizzled
country-punk hybrid, best exemplified by its 1990 hit cover of Johnny
Cash's
"Ring of Fire." The group celebrates its 25th birthday this year,
with a new
studio album and a tour on the way.
But even its most hardcore fans seldom remember that before Mike Ness,
another frontman briefly handled singing duties for the band.
And even fewer seem aware that today, Social D's original vocalist,
Tom
Corvin, is a mild-mannered TV reporter for the local ABC affiliate,
KMBC
Channel 9.
Corvin is one of the station's "live on the scene" correspondents,
covering
breaking news several nights a week. At 6-foot-7, the well-groomed
guy in
the impeccable suit who introduces his sound bites in a commanding
tone
brings to mind imposing ex-jock sportscasters, not death rockers.
Corvin has mentioned his punk past to a few broadcast buddies over the
years, but he's done so less and less as the group has become more
popular.
"Primarily because I don't think people believed me," he tells the
Pitch.
Some of his Channel 9 coworkers found out about a month ago -- Corvin
says
he's not sure how -- and a brief buzz resulted.
"For a couple of days, people were like, 'Dang, you were in a punk
band,'"
Corvin says. "Some of them actually know who Social Distortion is. It
does
give me a false sense of temporary pride, but I quickly remember that
I had
very little if anything to do with Mike's success."
Corvin's brief association with the band began with a strange
audition in a
baby-blue Ford Pinto station wagon parked in front of a Fullerton,
California, record store.
In the driver's seat was Casey Royer, who popped a Cheap Trick
cassette into
the Pinto's player and asked Corvin to sing along. He
tackled "Surrender,"
hitting the high notes with a versatile voice he'd developed in church
choir. Royer said nothing after the song ended. He just started the
car and
drove to his parents' house. An hour later, the band's other members -
- a
bassist known only as Mark and a sixteen-year-old guitarist named Mike
Ness -- gathered in Royer's bedroom. He had the job.
Luckily, he had plenty of time on his hands. A bench-riding scrub on
the Cal
State Fullerton basketball team that made a surprise run in the 1978
NCAA
tournament, Corvin was cut to make room for the incoming hot-shot
recruits
who suddenly became interested in the squad. He had agreed to try out
for
the band after Royer, a cafeteria worker at the athlete-heavy
apartment
complex where Corvin lived, asked him.
This embryonic incarnation of Social Distortion played covers,
mimicking Van
Halen, David Bowie and the Cars. But after a few months, Social
Distortion
composed its first original songs, with Ness crafting the guitar
riffs and
Royer penning most of the lyrics. Social Distortion practiced in an
industrial-park storage facility with a pull-down metal door. It
shared the
space with a group called the Strand, which was already playing club
concerts and recording its material. In an effort to impress both the
Strand
and his Social Distortion bandmates, Corvin took his first stab at
solo
songwriting, bringing a tune called "Sid Is Dead" to practice soon
after the
death of the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious. Corvin says he can't remember
any of
the lyrics, but he recalls the song's reception.
"Frederick, the singer of the Strand, took the paper from me and read
it out
loud," Corvin says. "I remember the polite silence afterward and how
someone
set a beer can on my crumpled lyric sheet before our practice ended."
Though he had become a popular sports columnist for Fullerton's
student
paper on his way to obtaining an undergraduate degree in journalism,
the
ex-athlete's writing didn't impress his punk peers. From then on, he
was
content to contribute a few scattered lines to Royer's creations.
Many of
the tunes from that lineup didn't last beyond the band's early gigs;
the
crowds for those house parties sometimes numbered in the single
digits and
topped out at an all-time high of 300. However, Corvin's Social
Distortion
did produce one instantly catchy number, on which he helped write the
lyrics.
This amoeba's got a mind of its own/But don't turn your back, you
stupid
science world, Corvin howled on "Amoeba," which became a regional
radio hit
for the Adolescents, Royer's next band. After Corvin left the group
in the
fall of 1979, Social Distortion kept the musical foundation but
changed the
lyrics. Released as "1945," the Ness-revised version replaced
Ahhh-meee-bahhh with Atom bomb/T.N.T./New disease/Poor city.
In the October 1980 issue of Flipside, Ness explained the switch. "Our
singer [Tommy Corbin, as the 'zine incorrectly identifies him] and
drummer
would write the songs, but the songs didn't mean anything. They wrote
a song
about an amoeba, a little fuckin' stupid little cell."
Although Ness later disparaged Corvin's contributions, the two seldom
sparred as bandmates, mostly because Ness had not yet become the type
of
punk purist who would bristle at Corvin's swim-trunks-and-flip-flops
wardrobe.
"With the exception of the occasional dog collar, the punk look wasn't
uniformed yet in Southern California, not even for Mike," Corvin
says. "He
wore a leather jacket and dyed streaks in his hair once, but there
wasn't
really a look yet, so there was no shit-giving. We just wore what we
felt
like wearing."
After leaving the band, Corvin's carefree clothing choices ended
abruptly
when he decided to go to graduate school -- at Bob Jones University.
The
hard-line fundamentalist Baptist institution in Greenville, South
Carolina,
required him to wear slacks and a tie every day, providing a jarring
contrast to Fullerton's chaotic concerts and binge drinking with
bandmates.
"I was looking for discipline, and I thought it would be like a
military
school without the military aspect," Corvin says. "But it was a lot
more
strict than I imagined."
During his first semester, Corvin found himself on "spiritual
probation"
after his roommate reported him for having a bad attitude. He saw his
off-campus privileges revoked, and with them went his only chance to
listen
to rock -- on his car's cassette player driving to his part-time job
at The
Greenville News.
"All music had to be approved," he says. "If it had a beat to it and
it
wasn't overtly spiritual, you'd better ask."
Corvin considered returning to California to rejoin Social
Distortion, but
he decided against it. "How do you tell your dad you chose a punk
band over
grad school?" he asks.
Besides, while Corvin tiptoed through the rest of his two years at Bob
Jones, the California punk community changed substantially. Even as
the
movement thrived creatively, it struggled to absorb abrasive elements
such
as Suicidal Tendencies' thug following and a growing skinhead
presence. Gigs
often ended early because of bloody fights, not the mere noise
violations
that cut concerts short in Corvin's day.
"It had become so violent, and I really wasn't into that," Corvin
says.
Corvin returned to California during one break at Bob Jones and looked
forward to a reunion with the group, but Social Distortion was
temporarily
on hiatus at the time. Royer had left to form the Adolescents, taking
"Amoeba" with him. Ness and his friend Dennis Danell formed the short-
lived
outfit Orange County Dustbins. (Corvin says Royer mocked the
Dustbins.)
By 1982, Social Distortion had re-formed, with Ness firmly in control
of a
lineup that included Danell, bassist Brent Liles and drummer Derek
O'Brien.
The group released its first album, Mommy's Little Monster, and set
off on
its first coast-to-coast tour with Youth Brigade and Minor Threat,
the dark
details (bus breakdowns, shady promoters) of which appear in the
documentary
Another State of Mind.
Ness described that tour as "upsetting but adventuresome" in a letter
he
sent Corvin in November 1983. The address floats inside a speech
bubble from
the mouth of a doodled punk with x's for eyes.
"I hope you liked the album," Ness writes in neat cursive. "Quite a
surprise, I'm sure." He signs the letter "socially distorted yours,
Michael
Mess," crossing out "Mess" and replacing it with his proper surname.
Ness' attempts to stay in touch with Corvin made him think there was
still a
chance he could be welcomed back into the band, but his own
developing news
career made that move unlikely. After an inauspicious start as an
anchor at
a UHF outlet in Ohio, where he saw the station replace its
sportscaster with
a Pentecostal preacher who belted out the scores, he moved on to a
successful stint in Colorado Springs.
In 1985, Ness went to prison for drug possession. "When he came back,
he
sounded like Johnny Cash," Corvin says, noting the group's
increasingly
country-tinged compositions and the more introspective nature of the
singer's lyrics. "It was like two different bands."
In 1988, Corvin went to see Social Distortion play in Tampa, Florida.
When
he went backstage after the show, the first question Ness asked him
was,
"So, you still going to college?" Corvin, having been out of school
for
seven years, says he just laughed and said, "No, that was a long time
ago."
"It was like seeing a relative for the first time in a long time,"
Corvin
says now. "He wasn't that sixteen-year-old anymore. He was a man, and
I was
impressed. I told him I was proud of him. We made small talk, but the
time
lapse was pretty obvious. Our lives were so far apart."
As Social Distortion continued to climb, signing with a major label
and
making MTV's heavy rotation with elaborate videos, such as "When the
Angels
Sing," Corvin felt twinges of regret. Yet for a bracing reality
check, he
considered Royer, well into his late thirties at the time and still
touring
in a cramped van.
"At what point do you stop? I went ahead and answered that right off
the
bat," Corvin says.
Corvin moved to Kansas City to raise a family, and he and his wife,
Lorrie,
now have two sons, including one he helped deliver in the family's
midtown
house less than two weeks ago. It's a comfortable life. But when he
sees
local punks with Social Distortion patches on their leather jackets --
he
has spotted several since moving to town last year -- he considers
approaching them and telling them about the old days. He imagines the
dim
recognition ("Hey, aren't you that dude from Channel 9?") giving way
to awe.
"If those kids only knew," he says, flashing a toothy, broadcast-
ready grin.
