Dead Kennedys blame Jello Biafra for turning down reunion gigs
East Bay Ray, founding guitarist of the Dead Kennedys, has explained what's holding the rock group back from reuniting.
The San Francisco punk band has been broken up for years, and Ray, whose real name is Raymond Pepperell, blames former frontman Jello Biafra for preventing a nostalgic onstage reunion.
'It's not an issue for me or Klaus,' he said during a recent interview with Guitar World, referring to the group's bassist Klaus Flouride. 'It's Biafra that turns down any offers for us to do something, we don't have any problem. He got caught with his hands in the till and wants to blame us for getting caught, but he should never have put his hands in there in the first place,' said Ray, referencing a decades-old lawsuit.
In 1998, Biafra and his Alternative Tentacles label were accused of withholding royalties from Ray, Flouride and drummer D.H. Peligro, who died in 2022. Biafra was eventually ordered to repay the outstanding royalties and additional punitive damages by California's Court of Appeal in 2003.
The band, formed in 1978, was briefly inactive between 1986 and 2001, but reunited with an array of lead singers until settling on Ron 'Skip' Greer in 2008. In 2017, Chicago's Riot Fest attempted to reunite the band's original lineup, but Ray explained on social media at the time that 'Jello Biafra turned it down,' though the rest of the band was 'looking forward to it.'
'Jello didn't bring in the songs. I know he's created the myth that he wrote them all, but the question here is that if he did, why didn't he ever do anything significant after leaving the band?' Ray said, citing Iggy Pop's output after leaving the Stooges and singer Lou Reed following the disintegration of the Velvet Underground as examples. 'Where's Biafra's solo career with a bunch of great songs?' he added.
He recently performed an updated rendition of the group's 1983 track 'Nazi Punks…,' changing the lyrics to criticize President Donald Trump, during a surprise appearance at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall.
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