Ian Winwood

Listen to "Ian Winwood Releases Smash" on Spreaker. A group biography of '90s punk rock told through the prism of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and more. Two decades after the Sex Pistols and the Ramones birthed punk music into the world, their artistic heirs burst onto the scene and changed the genre forever. While the punk originators remained underground favorites and were slow burns commercially, their heirs shattered commercial expectations for the genre. In 1994, Green Day and The Offspring each released their third albums, and the results were astounding. Green Day's Dookie went on to sell more than 15 million copies and The Offspring's Smash remains the all-time bestselling album released on an independent label. The times had changed, and so had the music. While many books, articles, and documentaries focus on the rise of punk in the '70s, few spend any substantial time on its resurgence in the '90s, Smash! will be the first to do so, detailing the circumstances surrounding the shift in '90s music culture away from grunge and legitimizing what many first-generation punks regard as post-punk, new wave, and generally anything but true punk music. With astounding access to all the key players of the time, including members of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and many others, renowned music writer Ian Winwood will at last give this significant, substantive, and compelling story its due. Punk rock bands were never truly successful or indeed truly famous, and that was that--until it wasn't. Smash! is the story of how the underdogs finally won and forever altered the landscape of mainstream music. "An energetic history of the punk revolution of the 1990s, inspired by bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and X...[Winwood has a] deep knowledge and thick dossier of interviews with these three-chord revolutionaries...This is a ripping fun music history and strongly reasoned argument for the place of oft-derided 1990s Cali punk in the annals of pop music." ―Publishers Weekly "[A] straightforward account of the improbably profitable second coming of punk rock...[Winwood] writes with authoritative enthusiasm about the 1990s rise of bands like Green Day and the Offspring and their broader relationship to the always-contentious question, 'what is punk?'...His knowing humor will appeal to younger fans and those who were there. A savvy reminiscence of the era when punk finally paid its debt to society."―Kirkus Reviews "Through a series of interviews, Winwood documents the 1990s, the decade in which punk rock emerged from basements in California to the Billboard charts...The author thoughtfully maps the transformation of the punk rock ethos for both the record labels and the bands as they experienced an unprecedented wave of commercial success...Fans of punk and music in general will enjoy this work." ―Library Journal