Jello Biafra’s explanation for choosing the name Dead Kennedys
As all-time offensive band names go, it’s unlikely the Dead Kennedys would even make many top 20 lists at this point. Subsequent generations have inevitably taken it upon themselves to push the envelope just that little bit farther, hoping to disturb or infuriate people even before a note’s been played. It might sound commercially counterintuitive, but there’s a tried and true strategy in the art world. If you gross out nine people, the tenth person will probably come to your next show.
Tame as it might seem now, calling a band the Dead Kennedys was the pinnacle of bad taste and vulgarity in the late 1970s, especially if you were a crew of anarchic San Francisco punks trying to spread your ideology to unsuspecting suburban kids in middle America.
Even in the Dead Kennedys’ hometown of San Francisco, there was a pretty swift blowback to the name from the moment they started using it in 1978, with many protestors calling for local venues to blacklist the band. Most of the people of San Francisco had voted for John F Kennedy in 1960, after all, and would likely have done the same for Robert F. Kennedy before his assassination in 1968. The wounds were not fully healed just a decade later.
When given the opportunity, the members of the Dead Kennedys did their best to explain why they’d chosen that name. Yes, it was provocative. But the intent wasn’t as needlessly heartless as it seemed.
“After the Kennedy assassinations, people lost faith in themselves and the seeds of the ‘Me Generation’ were sown,” frontman Jello Biafra told the Sacramento Union in 1982. “The goals are gone. The goal now is to escape and hide. It’s easy for a totalitarian state to control them that way.”
Many years later, in 2017, Dead Kennedys guitarist East Bay Ray admitted to Literary Hub that the name wasn’t the most tasteful of selections, but he still defended the larger idea behind it. “We actually respect the Kennedy family,” Ray said. “. . . When JFK was assassinated, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, when RFK was assassinated, the American Dream was assassinated. . . . Our name is actually an homage to the American Dream.”
These days, when it’s now the President of the United States himself who spends his time insulting the Kennedy family, even while a member of that family is working for him as the Secretary of Health and Science Denial, the “rudeness” or “bad taste” of a relatively powerless punk band doesn’t feel particularly noteworthy.
As one of the bands that set the standard for the politically minded American hardcore scene of the ‘80s, though, it’s wise not to overlook how much influence the Dead Kennedys actually had, and still have on young people who are just coming around to their music decades later. Sometimes, it really is worth alienating some folks in order to grab the attention of the ones willing to listen.
“A lot of what comes with anarchy is responsibility to be taking care of your fellow man,” Biafra said back in 1982. “We continue to take stands. We enjoy annoying complacent people. Getting people to think is why we’re out here.”
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