Bad Religion have been the role models for many second generation punk bands since the early nineties, they have been around for over twenty five years and collected a devout and steadily growing fan base. Their provocative lyrics sang on fast melodic though sometimes aggressive guitar playing, backed with harmonies became their trademark. In 1979 at the age of 15, Gregory Walter Graffin discovered the radio show Rodney On the Roq on KROQ, This show featured the latest punk and new wave releases from the UK and New York, But possibly more important was that the show also played a lot of unknown punk music from the Los Angeles scene. For Greg this show was a revelation, finally he had found something he could identify with. At his school only quite a few other kids were interested in this scene, however just a few of those were proper musicians, One of them was drummer Jay Ziskrout. Together they decided it was time to start a band in their favorite genre, A guitarist was found in Brett Gurewitz from Woodland Hills who was introduced to them through a mutual friend. At that time Brett already played in a new wave band named The Quarks, but he preferred punk music over new wave so it was no problem to quit and join Greg and Jay’s band, Besides that he also owned an amp and a van. With the arrival of Brett a new band was born, The trio started to rehearse, but in a few weeks they noticed that there was something missing a bass player. Jay Bentley who went to the same school as Greg, became the band’s newest member after Greg had contacted him, Bentley was originally a guitarist, but wanted to be in a band so bad that he agreed to play the bass even though he didn’t know how to play it. Now completed with Jay Bentley, the band still needed to come up with a name, Several names were considered for instance Smegma or Head Cheese, Vaginal Discharge and Bad Family Life, but finally they agreed that Bad Religion was the best name. The crossbuster insignia became their logo, The idea behind both the band name and the logo weren’t meant to be anti religious it was their way to define religion as any kind of social group that prescribes a certain way of thinking. Greg Graffin’s garage became the band’s official rehearsal space and was nicknamed The Hellhole, They usually rehearsed when Greg’s mother was at work. From the very beginning the band already gathered a small fan base among the local kids who passed by and hang out in front of the garage.
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