The Stepmothers formed in Claremont , CA. around 1977. Steve Jones was the only original member of a band that saw at least a half dozen different lineups, but the definitive Stepmothers lineup was Steve Jones on guitar and vocals, Jay Lansford on Guitar, and Larry Lee Lerma on Bass. They had a revolving door of drummers, including Pat Mullis, Dusty Watson, and Eric West. They released singles on Bomp, Slash and Posh Boy records, another EP and an LP -- "You Were Never My Age" on Posh Boy, and they were featured on "Rodney on the Roq, Vol. 2," as well as several other punk rock compilations. Most of the songwriting was handled by Steve, although Jay co-wrote some tunes while he was in the band. They played the Hollywood club scene, and local Inland Empire gigs. A speed metal band years before the term would be coined, they had the unique ability to play with a Punk band one night and a Metal band the next. If you weren't there, too damn bad. It was an amazing time. It all ended in 1983

Glen Dody (Guitar, Vocals), Lita Ford (Guitar, Vocals), Steve Jones (Guitar, Vocals) John Heshun (Drums), Jay Lansford (Guitar, Vocals), Larry Lee Lerma (Bass), Chuck Light (Guitar, Vocals), Pat Mullis (Drums), John Rush (Bass), Eric Fahrner (Guitar), Jerry Soffer (Guitar, Vocals), Dusty Watson (Drums), Eric West (Drums), Eric Wiggler (Drums).

Names Of Those That Answered the Following Questions:

RB: Robbie Fields, owner of Posh Boy records.

DW: Dusty Watson, Drummer for Stepmothers, Press, Agent Orange, Lita Ford, Dick Dale, Jon and the Nightriders, Legs Diamond, and the list goes on......one of the great rock drummers.

SJ: Steve Jones (AKA John Henry Jones): Founder and lead singer/guitarist for both The Unforgiven and the Stepmothers. He also sang lead for the SST pre-speed metal band Overkill, and Jay Lansford's metal band The Urge. He later helped form Hollywood Records at The Walt Disney Company with Unforgiven lawyer Peter Paterno, where he signed Inland Empire bands The Poorboys and Motorpsycho.

JL: Jay Lansford: Guitarist for both Stepmothers and the late model Unforgiven. Jay was a founding member of the original LA Punk rock scene, playing in lots of seminal bands like the Simpletones, Ch. 3, Rik L. Rik, and The Urge. He also played on and produced some of the best L.A. punk records of all time, including Agent Orange, The Klan and The Crowd. In '87 Jay and Steve went to Germany to co-produce a punk record by The Smarties. Jay moved there, married a German woman and has a 7-year-old daughter. He does A&R for the SPV label and still plays in the Hannover Punk Pop outfit: Gigantor.

CM: Curt Marvis, Co-owner of The Company.

KR: Kurt Ross: Little brother to Jeff and Todd Ross, lead singer & fan club president of Red Brigade, Kent State, The Flamethrowers & The Honky Tonk Angels Band.

DS: Dave Stephens, roadie for both Stepmothers and The Unforgiven. Once took the rap for Steve's illegal billyclub and did time in the County Jail for it. Now a business owner living in Idaho. Creator of this website.

AW: Alan Waddington: Drummer for The Unforgiven, and numerous other Inland Empire bands, including longtime Pomona party band Stratus. Alan is know a teacher at Citrus College, still plays professionally, and often travels to Seoul, Korea where he is the percussionist for the Seoul Philharmonic.

THE FIRST TIME I HEARD / SAW THE STEPMOTHERS:

DW: Maybe '78, Steve approached me at a club in Riverside called The Squeeze when I was playing there with my band: The Press. His band played that night but I think they were called something else, I can’t remember. I don’t even remember if I saw them play now that I think about it.

RF: The Masque probably. But the first time I liked them was at Bates Hall, on North Vermont, in East Hollywood.

JL:: At the Hong Kong Café, late 70s, they were opening for my band The Simpletones, they were unlike any other band in that early LA punk rock scene, which was saying a lot cause it was a very diverse scene. The Stepmothers, Simpletones, Klan, Crowd and Rik. L. Rik, all of whom I played with (or produced records by) were part of a scene that included X, the Go Gos, Fear, The Alleycats, The Weirdos… all very different musically and stylistically. It was a great time, and that early Stepmothers was one of the tightest bands I'd seen in LA, probably cause they weren't from LA.

AW: Steve talked me into driving out to see them play at Madam Wongs in Chinatown, must be '79 or '80, not their best show, Steve was trying real hard, but I don’t know if everyone else was connected.

DS: At The Whiskey, Lita Ford joined them onstage for " American Nights".Also the LA Guardian Angels were there, cause of the song " Guardian Angels", and a shitload of media types. What a circus that was.

THE MOMENT I KNEW I WAS JOINING THE STEPMOTHERS:

DW: Steve said to me, "Hey, will you come down and record some songs with us?" and I said sure. By the end of the first session (Cro Magnum Studios, Chino) he asked me if I could play a couple of shows they had coming up; King’s Palace, Hong Kong Cafe I think. Two days later he handed me a flyer with like 10 fucking gigs on it. I had that funny feeling that I had just committed to something without knowing it, but I was cool with that cuz his songs were good and I liked him alright and his bass player, Larry Lerma totally kicked ass.

THE MOMENT I KNEW I WAS LEAVING THE STEPMOTHERS:

DW: It was after I had started playing with Lita Ford, probably 80/81. I was still playing with Jon and the Nightriders too. The Stepmothers were getting a lot of attention and I was busy as shit with other bands so I think it was a mutual agreement, though I really don’t remember actually leaving the band. I probably told Steve I was too busy to do a show or something and he told me to fuck off or something.

JL: I simply left the Stepmothers without even an argument, just walked out of the rehearsal room. Larry Lerma later told me it became a running SM gag. SJ: (Laughing) I said, "What are you saying, Jay?" and he just threw up his hands and said, "I'm saying, I'm leaving the band." The rest of us looked at each other and it was like "cool."

THE BEST STEPMOTHERS SONG:

DW: "All Systems Go." (Editor's Note: "All Systems Go" was a 30-second speed metal blast, years before anyone would ever think of doing anything so ridiculous)

SJ: I loved "Guardian Angels," and the ballad, "Go Tell It On the Wall." The best cover we did was the Bobby Fuller 4 song "Let Her Dance," and "To Sir With Love" was wonderfully perverse and uncool.

JL: "Middle Class Girl"

DS: "Inland Empire," because the crowd would go wild. Also "Only The Good Die Young".

KR: "Eddie" for obvious reasons( "Eddie don't get hot - The Ducky Boys are all you got" - "The
Ducky Boys" was what Red Brigade was called for a couple of weeks)

RF: Their entire set. They were probably the only group from that early LA Punk scene to play their songs in a rapid-fire manner as though sequenced for an album.

THE WORST STEPMOTHERS SONG:

DW: "All Systems Go."

JL: "Blood on the Moon," we were working on this when I left the band, so I never got to play it live.

RF: "To Sir With Love" ... how to let the energy drain away from a 30 minute set.

DS: " To Sir With Love" it speaks for itself.

KR: "Rub it In," sorry.

SJ: They were all fun, it was all so silly.

THE BEST STEPMOTHERS GIG:

DW: Chino Men's Prison in 1979, with The Plugs and the Textones, fuck I don’t remember who else. The cool part of this gig was jamming with Buddy Miles who was incarcerated at the time, he got onstage with us, borrowed someone's guitar, turned it upside down and played it left handed. He was in for grand theft auto. Rumor has it that there was a pound of coke in the trunk. Whatever. So I asked Buddy what his duties were inside and he told me that he was working in the Rec Dept. I asked, like what, you have to sweep up and shit? and he said, 'hell no, man, we got Studio Instrument Rentals coming in here tomorrow with a whole rig, we’re recording a live album.' Man, I thought that was cool! Steve thought he was smart cuz he booked these chick bands to play and the fellas were calling out for the ladies and we went on and they started giving us sooo much shit. They were telling us to fuck off and bring back the girls and all. I think we played about 5 songs and slinked off the stage. Damn, that was fun. Who else was on that bill….Steve?
SJ: I'm struggling to remember, I think I was too traumatized to remember. The Textones definitely stole the show with those two women fronting the band (Karla and Kathy; Kathy went on to become a rock star in the Go Gos, by the way). But I think that Buddy Miles was actually in for check forgery. Also I remember that Mikal Gilmore covered that show -- called "Prison Punk '79" -- for Rolling Stone. I remember him coming up to me as we all waited to be escorted into the prison, telling me how cool it was that I had arranged entertainment for prisoners (we did a whole series of those prison punk shows from '79 - '82). I didn't learn until years later that his brother was the infamous Gary Gilmore who was executed by firing squad in Utah a couple of years earlier, and then it all made sense.

SJ: Chaffee High School auditorium, Ontario, 1979. We were rock stars. I also remember a KROQ teen skatepark festival in the valley that was the wildest and most fun, that was like 1980, there was also a great gig we did at a Catholic Junior High School for Girls in Buena Park, now they were wild, we played every wicked song we knew to try to piss the nuns off, "Homicide," "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," stuff like that. But the best that band ever played was when Dusty Watson was drumming, what a powerhouse.

RF: The Stepmothers opening many times for Motley Crue and always sounding better.

DS: Too hard to pick one. What I loved about Stepmothers shows, was how they always blew away any other acts on the bill.

THE WORST STEPMOTHERS GIG:

DW: They were all pretty shitty when I was in the band. Hmmm. I don’t remember where it was but we were playing some shit hole in LA and Steve had that super whiney voice back then (before he became a man) and these guys were cat-calling him, mocking his every word and just plain fucking with us all night. So in the middle of one of our songs, I came around from behind the drums and pulled my pants off and started wrestling with Steve on the stage and everyone seemed to like that cuz they quit yelling at us after that.
SJ: I don't remember or believe a word of it!

DS: The one that never happened because Rancho Cucamonga P.D. shot it down before it started. Would have been huge.

RF: The very first time I saw them.

SJ: I dunno, the violent ones in the punk days, but usually those were great too. I remember a broken mirror being frisbeed at my face by some psychotic punk at a gig in Ontario with Red Brigade, Bad Religion and Rik L. Rik. That scared me.

THE BEST STEPMOTHERS GROUPIE STORY:

DW: Who are you shitting? The Stepmothers had groupies? All I remember was sitting at Steve’s parent’s watching George C. Scott do the beginning speech in Patton before the gig. Where the hell were the groupies?

RF: Steve's focus was always on the music.

SJ: Can't remember a specific story, but The Pookies days when we were a Pasadena band and playing with a just-starting-out Motley Crue were killer. Jay and I had numerous concubines, sharing girlfriends right and left, girls who were also with the Crue and the Sharks and Van Halen and…

THE WORST STEPMOTHERS GROUPIE STORY:

DW: This isn’t fair

RF: Something about a girl and a famous L.A. DJ, and what did not happen
between them. SJ: And what did not happen with that girl and certain members of the band.

THE MOST OUTRAGEOUS BUT TRUE STEPMOTHERS STORY:

DW: It only seemed outrageous to me I am sure, but I had convinced Steve I knew how to play racquetball and we went and played one day and I went for a backhand and popped myself in the mouth and broke my front tooth right in half. I was out of my mind in pain. I needed drugs bad and Steve never had any back then the bastard, so he sets me up with a ride back to Hollywood with some cracker roadie guy. I hop in this car and he starts telling me about how he just got this car on the road and it’s hot as fuck and fully chopped shopped together and he keeps it in some garage some fucking place and we are driving like a hundred all the way to my apartment and I just want to eat a bunch of Quaaludes and go to sleep and forget my tooth hurts and all I can think about is going to jail with someone I don’t even know.
SJ:LOL!

JL: The Stepmothers influenced a whole generation of rockers.

KR: 1980: we were in San Bernardino at some shite dive bar, and after the gig Roberto Tarin had all of the band's gear in his truck, and we were taking too long to come out of the club (I remember Mick Mars had something to do with this place, and it might have been Jay's first gig as a Stepmom) Anyway, Roberto leaves his truck running and comes into the venue to see what was going on, and as we come out to the parking lot, his truck was pulling out of the parking lot and headin' towards the freeway!!!! Roberto HATES that story!!!

SJ: Dunno, probably just that we were "speed metal" and "metal pop" before there were such things.

THE MOMENT I THOUGHT IT WAS OVER FOR THE STEPMOTHERS:

DW: After the Whiskey gig with the Guardian Angels I thought the SM’s were gonna be big as shit. I don’t even know what happened. No one invited me to the going away party.