Here, Dave Jerden discusses working with Social Distortion on their self-titled album:
“Mike Ness had done some time in prison. After he got out, he made a record called Prison Bound that was really good. Nobody was really that interested in him or the band. I met with him and thought he was great – the real deal. He was into Hank Williams and all the solid stuff, so we hit it off.
“I recorded them, and again, my idea was to just capture them as they were and not do a lot of production. Pretty much everything was cut live in the studio. We did some percussion overdubs, some tambourine and a few backgrounds, but not too many.
“It all worked, and the record did really well. To this day, it’s doing well. I’ve done a lot of records that were supposed to be huge, and they did just OK. Nobody expected anything of Social Distortion at all, and they got a ton of radio play and racked up sales. To me, they’re the kind of band that should be on the radio.”
