Greg Hetson: The Guitarist in The Punk Band With Thousands of Former Lead Singers

The reporter singing "Bad Habit" by The Offspring, with Stan Lee (left) and Greg Hetson (right) at The Viper Room.

If variety is the spice of life, legendary punk guitarist Greg Hetson has a Costco-sized career of musical spice.

Hetson has spent the last 36 years on stage with some of the most influential bands in punk music:  Redd Cross, The Circle Jerks, and most notably, his 35 years with Bad Religion—which Hetson departed last year.

Being in a band that still tours throughout multiple decades will inevitably see members come and go. And the band that has given Hetson the most variety in personnel features a different lead singer for every live song they play. That band is Punk Rock Karaoke. 

The production is simple: two guitarists (of which Hetson has been a consistent player for 19 years), a drummer and a bassist, all in their late 40s or early 50s, from the most notable bands in southern California punk music. Then add a setlist of about fifty upbeat punk songs, and have audience members volunteer to go on stage one at a time to be the Punk Rock Karaoke lead singer for about two minutes (three minutes if the song is a long one).

“We had a friend of ours who worked at a Los Feliz restaurant, and he came up with the idea,” Hetson recalls over the phone about the band’s founding in 1996. The 53-year-old guitarist has just awoken from a nap following an afternoon of practice with the band for their upcoming Canadian tour that begins the next day. 

“Our friend said, ‘What if you do this live punk karaoke thing, could you put a band together?’ So, I just started calling people I know, and started it that way.” 

Punk Rock Karaoke has since taken off as a fun side project for the rotating members. They play party-atmosphere shows throughout the United States several times per year.  

The band has an international following as far away as Japan. The Japanese fanbase is so big, PunkRockKaraoke.net has a yellow and pink hyperlink just for them on the front page reading “Japan Fans Click Here”. After all, the term “karaoke” comes from the Japanese words “kara” meaning “empty”, and “ōkesutora”, meaning “orchestra”. 

As a seasoned veteran of the punk music scene, Hetson still enjoys directly emulating the bands that inspired him to pick up a guitar in the late 1970s and 1980s such as The Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Buzzcocks. “Everybody’s happy, everybody wins,” Hetson rejoices. 

But being a guitarist in Punk Rock Karaoke doesn’t mean freedom from the stubborn demands of a typical lead singer. 

“People kept asking for Rancid and Green Day. So okay, we give in, we give people what they want,” Hetson concedes, “but it ended up being really fun and the singers are always great.” He clarifies that the Punk Rock Karaoke musicians are far from snobbish. Over the years, they added songs by female singers to their setlist such as “Just a Girl” by No Doubt and “Our Lips Are Sealed” by The Go-Gos.

Hetson credits the lack of predictability of each song in every show to making him a better musician. He quotes former Punk Rock Karaoke bassist Steve Soto who has quipped that Punk Rock Karaoke “is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.”  

Whenever a new lead singer climbs to the stage, Hetson and the band are aware that it could be a crazy person. One lead singer, Hetson recalls, was singing and dancing, and then broke a beer bottle over his own head. But Hetson clarifies, “luckily, nobody got hurt.”  

Other vivid moments that stick out in Hetson’s mind include walking contradictions joining the band to be the temporary master of the stage. “You get people that look like they just came out of the office on Wall Street, they come up and just rock out their heart. ‘I may look this way at my day job, but my heart is punk rock.’”

Making those dormant punk rockers come alive while still in their day-job work boots always gives Hetson and his bandmates satisfaction with each show. Two minutes separating calm from chaos gives the Punk Rock Karaoke the power to transform fans in the moshpit into the lead singer on stage—the center of attention that is always wanting more. 

Hetson likes that kind of variety, and knows how to harness his fans’ vicarious desire to rock out with punk legends. And as the interview concludes, his biggest fan, a five-year-old Bassett hound named Squishy started a one-dog moshpit of his own, spinning in circles and tearing apart Hetson’s socks. “I want attention, you’re on the phone,” Hetson mocks his dog. Perhaps Squishy wanted his daddy to have more variety in his clothing. And maybe Squishy had to blow off some angst and be the center of attention. Either way, after two minutes, the show was over.