Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris marvel at the impact that the punk band D.O.A. had in the Eighties in a clip from the new documentary Something Better Change. “D.O.A. was bigger than life,” McKagan says, heaping praise on the Canadian group fronted by Joey “Shithead” Keithley. “They were, to me, as big as Led Zeppelin. I owe so much to what I am today to him and to his band.” The film, which tells Keithley’s story, is now available on streaming.
In the clip, Morris recalls seeing D.O.A. opening for X at the L.A. venue the Starwood. “D.O.A. came out and decided to just level the Starwood,” he says. “It was an incredible show. Jesus Christ, man, how is X going to play after that?”
The film, directed by Scott Crawford (Salad Days, Creem), follows Keithley as he campaigns in British Columbia for reelection as city councillor for that province’s Burnaby, where he’s a member of the Green Party. He was first elected in 2018 and again in 2022.
But while politics take center stage, Keithley’s life on other stages play a major part of the documentary, as Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, the Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra and East Bay Ray, and Dave Grohl all join McKagan and Morris in praising the artist. “It was important for me to show the impact that Joe Keithley and D.O.A. had on notable musicians in this film, because it helps illustrate the portrait of Joe as the activist and elected official he is today,” Crawford tells Rolling Stone.
“When I got to see D.O.A. the first time, I was 13 years old and I was eight feet away from ’em,” McKagan says. “The ferocity of how they did their thing was genuine, and it just blew my mind. I’d just started playing music, and all of the possibilities of what lay ahead was encompassed for me in that first D.O.A. show I saw.”
The film arrives concurrently with the release of a new D.O.A. compilation, Take on the Tyrants, and with Keithley’s next reelection campaign.
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