Hesher: 'Everlast Named Me'

ByABC News
March 23, 2001, 1:54 PM

March 20 -- Lots of musicians have interesting extracurricular items on their resumes odd day jobs, school experiences. But Chip Love, the self-described "genre jumper" known as Hesher, whose Self-Titled Debut was released in February, is probably the only artist who can also lay claim to being a "Spliff Coordinator" for another band.

"I rustled up the daily bread, I guess," says Hesher, who filled that role for the pioneering punk-rap outfit Bad Brains. He was actually working at a toothpaste factory before that and was more than happy to sign on to the Bad Brains crew after answering an ad seeking a roommate for their flat. "It started with them saying, 'Pick up that guitar and move it over here,' but I was always shooting for Spliff Coordinator," he says with a laugh.

Hesher didn't get his professional name from Bad Brains, however. Though he tells several versions of the story which makes any of them suspect Hesher says it was given to him by fellow genre jumper Everlast, who guests on Self-Titled Debut (along with members of the Deftones and Cibo Matto).

"We were in the studio one day," Hesher remembers, "and Everlast called me a 'hesher.' I didn't know what it was, so he explained it to me; he was like, 'It's one of those dudes you see in high school, skateboarding to class with a Van Halen T-shirt, who was kind of stinky.' I said, 'Oh, yeah? I'm kind of like that. I'm stinky.' Then I asked some other people, thousands of different people around the U.S.A., and they basically told me a hesher is a burnout from the '70s or early '80s. I'm redefining it, I guess."