An Interview With Legendary T-Shirt Artist, Bad Otis Link
Meet Bad Otis Link, aka Greg Link. That’s him (in 1983) to the right of Keith Morris of Black Flag and Circle Jerks fame. We tracked him down for an interview because of his decorated career in t-shirts. But as this epic interview unfolds, you’ll discover he’s also a musician, artist, clothing designer, seamstress, author, publisher, and pot-stirrer.
The photo above was taken in front of his t-shirt stand at a Circle Jerks gig. You see, Otis was the early hardcore punk scene’s all-in-one, go-to-guy for tees. He designed, screen-printed, and manned the merch booth during jams.
His consistent offerings will probably be unfamiliar unless you were in the middle of L.A.’s hardcore punk movement in the early 1980s. Otis’s tees were never mass-produced; in fact, it was just the opposite, given that many tees were one-offs or even hand-detailed at shows.
If Stanley Mouse and Pushead made sweet love in the back of the Seditionaries store at 430 King’s Road, their rebellious teen child would have worn Bad Otis Link. I know, I know, even if two dudes could conceive a child – the timeline is completely off – but you get the idea. While it’s easy to draw comparisons to the aforementioned, Bad Otis is a realm all its own, and Link is a pioneer.
Stay tuned for an in depth, tell-all, history lesson of t-shirt meets music as Mr. Link takes you knee deep into the business of tees (when the actual business portion was of little importance.) Ahhhh, the good ol’ days…
Greasers Get Punk’d
Give us the lowdown on your ties to the punk scene?
I was in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve 1976? maybe 77 with a few of my best friends: Tommy Borghino and Scott Angle. The streets were so crowded that we ducked into a bar to get away. It was Mabuhay Gardens. Punk bands were playing. We weren’t sure if we liked it or not. We were kind of long haired greasers at the time, really into rock, Alice Cooper, Bowie, the Tubes along with old country and soul. Those are the shows we used to go to back then. We had a few beers and really started to have fun. We met some of the bands and had a blast. Tommy was living in Reno so he went back there after the show. I remember leaving and driving back to LA all night with Scott in the fog. We couldn’t stop talking about how cool it was.
As soon as we got back to LA we drove to Hollywood to find more Punk shows. Once Tommy got back to Reno, he and his brother, Jimmy, started their own punk band with two other brothers. That band was “7 Seconds”. Around the same time I bought a saxophone and tried to learn how to play. Me and Tommy were at a “Zeros” show in San Francisco and we met Dream Delon. Dream booked punk shows and tours, road managed every early punk band. Things went sideways once we met Dream. He hooked us up with early bands and we made shirts for his shows, we also sold shirts to record shops in Berkeley, San Francisco, LA and San Diego. It was an excuse to travel around and hang in the scene. With Dream, me and Tommy met the “Bad Brains” and made shirts for the Ukrainian show (infamous shirt). We traveled with Dream and the “Bad Brains” to Santa Barbara and met Gary Tovar, the promoter there. He later came to LA and started Goldenvoice concerts.
Eventually, Tommy left “7seconds” after a while and came to LA to make shirts with me. We started a band with Nick Adams and Paul Schwartz (both from “MIA”). Tommy was on drums and I played sax. That Band was “The Panty Shields”. We wanted the most disgusting name we could come up with, 80s punk remember. Tommy went on the road with DOA and The Circle Jerks so we recruited Jeff Newlin on drums and that became the final band. We played around LA with all of the classic bands: “TSOL”, “The Minutemen”, “Social Distortion”, and of course “DOA” when they came through. “The Circle Jerks” loved us so we would often support them on their tours.
We recorded at Casbah in Fullerton with Chas from “Eddie and The Subtitles”. Before we finished mixing the tape Chas died in his studio, he fell while installing monitors in the ceiling. Our tapes were still in the studio when he died. Mike Ness took over the studio as a rehearsal place for “Social Distortion” but he was never able to locate the tapes. We only have the rough recordings now. Later Chuck Biscuits, myself, Nick, and Jeff started a band called “The Brown Sound” We were a punk/funk thing. We played around for a year or two with the early “Chili Peppers”, “UXA”, and tons of others that I can’t remember, many beers ago.
The Friendly Stranger
What are your roots as an artist and screen printer?
I was always interested in art, even as a kid. Always a little twisted, my first recognizable piece was an illustration of President Kennedy gettin’ shot, Crayola. My Dad always asked “why don’t you draw something nice?” I have no formal art schooling, pretty much self taught. In fact I was a high school dropout. School bored me to tears. I hit the ground running at 16, started hustling and working on ideas and projects and haven’t stopped since.
I grew up on underground comics, “Last Gasp”, “Zap”, etc. One of my fave artists from that period was Rick Griffin. I later was able to work on some projects with him. I would not say that my art is like any of my influences though. I like my art to look better after it is drug behind a truck. I design my mistakes into the art rather than vise versa. Seems more natural to me. Like nature and people, we all learn to live with and around imperfections.
I started printing in the mid 70s. I got a job at a sign and display shop. We printed signs, wood skateboards (for “Hang Ten”, “OP”), stickers, and all kinds of flat stuff, even real estate signs. I didn’t learn to print shirts there though. While I was working at the sign shop this hippie type guy was walking though the alley and saw me working the shop. He asked me if I wanted to print shirts in the evenings for rock bands. His name was Terry Faden. His brother was Jimmy Faden, harmonica player for the “Nitty Gritty Dirt Band”. Terry taught me the basics and cut me loose in his shop. We were doing designs and merchandise for the “Nitty Gritty Dirt Band”, “Kenny Loggins” (his first solo tour), “Canned Heat”, “Earth Wind and Fire”, “Fleetwood Mac”, and others. This is where I learned the basics on merchandising bands. At the same time, learned about the giant companies that were always there to steal away your stuff. I didn’t find it very exciting or cool. I was never a “fan” and these corporate rock people hanging around were all about hero band worship and sucking up. I didn’t give a shit if some rock star was hanging around the shop.
Around this same time I was just starting to meet local punk bands, the polar opposite of that scene, much more appealing to me and none of them were doing shirts or merch. It was a frustrating business. Terry and I could see it wouldn’t last for long. You had to kiss major ass, have shit-loads of cocaine and money back then in the rock world to get in the door. We would bust ass developing art and getting the tours started, Bill Graham and the mass merch companies would step in and steal them away as soon as we got it going. Same shit as today. I couldn’t stand the record company hipsters that attached themselves to the artists back then. Disgusting, shit eating people. The punk rock scene was much more my taste, so I moved on in that direction. Like the bands, a guy like me could grow with the punk scene. It was all new territory and a pretty exciting time for music.
The Man Behind The Man
What’s the deal with your name?
My real name is Greg Link, most bands and people that knew me prior to ’82 call me Greg Link. For a very long time, Anthony Kiedus thought we were two different people. I didn’t realize that until one night at a party he asked me if I could have Otis do a design (the Orca). I just busted up and told him I was Otis. He couldn’t believe it. He thought Otis was some mysterious artist that I had hidden away. He thought Greg Link was the t-shirt guy and Otis was the artist. I wonder how many people really thought that, or still do. I have no name preference really.
The Bad Otis nickname was kind of a joke. When I was learning to play sax with my band, around 1980 (“The Panty Shields”), I sucked pretty bad. There was an old blues player that one of the guys knew named Otis Badd. He started calling me that and one of the others jokingly started calling me Bad Otis. It just stuck and I kind of liked it. So people just started calling me Otis and I just went with it.
Linking up with Biscuits
Tell us, Otis, how did you link up with Chuck Biscuits?
I met Chuck in the late 1970s when he was just a kid, 13 or 14 years old, playing with “DOA” – one of the first bands I really became close with. They would stay at my place (still do), shop, or house whenever they came through town. Me and Tommy would hop in the van and travel with them from time to time. I really got to know Chuck and his entire Family. His Brother Dim Witt was the drummer for the “Subhumans”, also “DOA” from time to time and his last band “The Four Horsemen”. Dim’s band was the last band I made shirts for. Dim Witt died of a heroin overdose in the early ’90s, on the night he was signed to Warner Brothers. Bob, the 3rd brother, was always on the road with “DOA”, “Danzig”, and “The Four Horseman”. Chuck’s dad, Ken, always helped us at the shop. He moved back to BC in the early ’90s and I saw him often when I lived in Washington. He died a few years ago.
I got to know Chuck much better in ’83 when I spent 3 months in a van with him on the Circle Jerks’ “Golden Shower of Hits” Tour. Chuck is somewhat of a hermit by nature but an amazingly talented guy. He plays all instruments like a pro, is a natural song writer, and he is also an amazing visual artist. So we shared a lot of interests. He is also equally as cynical as me, if not more. So we drank a lot, chased girls, and schemed on junk to do when we got back from tour. As soon as we got back Chuck moved from his place with the “Jerks” into my shop. That was the beginning, really, of the “Otis and Biscuits” adventures. We worked the shop and store and lived together for a few years until he joined “Samhain”, turned into “Danzig” and he moved to New Jersey for a while.
When “Danzig” moved to LA Chuck moved in with me again in Long Beach. We continued art and music projects but Chuck was pretty much out of the shirt biz with me due to tour schedules with “Danzig”. When I moved to Seattle in ’93 Chuck stayed in Long Beach until he left “Danzig” a bit later. He moved up to Seattle then and stayed but I came back in ’98. He is still in Seattle but not working in music much anymore. He was disgusted with the music business and I would be surprised if he ever got back into the business again.
Locations, Locations, Locations
Tell us about the Otis & Biscuits operation?
There were four stores and many separate print shops. The first store was a small place at Pacific Coast Highway and 7th Street in Long Beach, CA. It had a crappy little apartment in the back with a kitchen, Chuck moved from the shop to the store, so it served a double purpose. We would use the kitchen to boil, dye, and custom make shirts. Chuck’s Dad would work the store for us while we were at the shop in Signal Hill printing. He was also a welder and he loved hanging around the shop and building contraptions for the shop. The store was more customer based.
I sold shoes, for Mike Roche from “TSOL”, at the store. He had a small punk store in Huntington Beach called the “Electric Chair”. The bands and friends hung around the print shop much more. We all rehearsed there and other friends moved into the area and also set up music studios and art studios around my shop. The print shop was far more of a scene than the store, it was bigger, and touring bands would stay there a lot. I let Mike Vraney live there, too, as kind of a home base when not on the road. Mike Vraney was the manager of “TSOL”, “Dead Kennedys”, “Tex and the Horseheads”, “The Accused”, and others. I also rented a part of the shop to Gary Tovar and he ran Goldenvoice Concerts between the shop and his house in Huntington Beach. We set up a xerox machine and designed flyers for all of the LA shows. So the shop was always full of bands, crew, concert crew, skaters, and others.
It was kind of a functional party place. I could write a book on the stuff that went on around there. Concerts were booked, tours were booked, and we produced the art, shirts, and posters, all from there. Bands were always coming and going from all over the world. I developed a reputation for being able to keep bands stocked with merch while traveling. There were not many other people doing shirts for the punk scene on any level back then. The only guy I remember even coming close to what I was doing was Steve “The Human T-Shirt”. He did amazing punk stuff, early “TSOL”, diamond design, and some of the coolest screen printed Olympic Auditorium Posters, etc. Steve was also the bass player in the “Vandals” and later “Detox”. But we were more consistent at the t-shirt stuff. We even ended up doing stuff for his bands. The stores closed when I got bored with it all and the Punk scene was slowing down as we knew it by the end of the 80s.
Moshing With the Stars
What famous faces were familiar to the scene?
Well, we kind of avoided the celebs. In the early ’80s, punk was not considered cool in the mainstream. I would see Emilio Estevez, David Lee Roth and the like at shows. We would usually poke fun at them though. Danny Bonaduce came to a “DOA” show at the Starwood one night (late 70s.) We kept calling him Danny Partridge, he finally got frustrated with us and left.
I know there were others, Madonna used to come into the LA store but I really wouldn’t have noticed. The celebs didn’t hop on until it got much safer. More at the “Peppers'” shows, later on, the Hollywood kid stars like River Phoenix, Drew Barrymore, and people like that would hang around. A lot of my friends back then have become celebs though as you can imagine. Some are still friends, some have become distant.
Links
Mouse + the Dead, Pushead + Metallica, Bad Otis + ?
I don’t know if that one really applies to me. I did the artwork for so many different bands but never always one. I did a lot for the Chili Peppers from the beginning and the ten years that followed. But others did too, so it wasn’t an exclusive thing. I just printed it all. I was the default artist in a sense. The band would put stuff off and at the last minute would just say, “do something”. They knew my designs always sold well, even if they were not 100% happy with them. The bands’ record companies came to me for the same reasons for promo shirts, giveaways, etc.
But the bands would always have ideas too and they had their own art too a lot of times. I would just print and supply them in many cases. I didn’t do art for all of the bands I worked with. It would have been impossible. For some bands, my art fit, for others I hooked up friends. Scott Angle, my old friend, did the “TSOL” burning Statue of Liberty design, “Circle Jerks” Long Horn Tour, and tons of others. I printed a lot of Shawn Keris art, Mad Marc Rude, and others. It was pretty cool working with other artists too.
Dead Presidents
What Were Your Best Selling Tees?
But in the Punk stuff it kind of went with the general popularity of the time. It wasn’t me selling so much but the bands that toured. Some bands sold great others couldn’t sell a shirt at all. My best-selling touring bands were always the “Circle Jerks”, “SNFU”, “The Chemical People”, “Bad Religion”, “Skinny Puppy”, and we broke sales records everywhere with the “Chili Peppers”. I will take a little credit there for sales. The band left me once to save a quarter per shirt. I owned the art at the time and did not let them take it. When they left me sales at shows were at $17.00 per head. The new guy they went with could not design at all, the sales never made it over 80 cents a head and he also got the band involved in a huge lawsuit that they had to pay out on. They came back mid-tour but I really never trusted them after that move.
Battle of the Brands
Was Your Blank of Choice?
Really, I hated Screen Stars, but they were the budget promo shirt of the time. The only thing worse than a Screen Stars was a Pakistani import that came in bales like hay. Screen Stars were cheap, so we used them if the bands wanted to save money (or in most cases didn’t have any.) Sometimes they were all you could get, too. There were t-shirt shortages in the ’80s. Companies like Disney were hoarding and buying all that the mills could produce.
I could get nice shirts cheaper than Screen Stars, direct from the mills, no labels – so we printed our labels in the shirt. I learned this from Terry at Faden in the 70s. He did it on promo shirts when he was presenting new shirt ideas to bands, record companies etc. I saw Rick Griffen do it too at super tees in the 70s. I thought it was a cool idea. I’m surprised it took till the 90s for others to catch on. I used to hand sign some too, especially for the store stuff. We did some printed labels for the Peppers fan club and for the Goldenvoice crew shirts too. I have some stashed away. It was easier and less expensive to print the labels than have tags made and sewn in like a lot of others were doing. They were massive print contractors, running dozens of precision screen printing presses 24/7. they put tags in for OP (Ocean Pacific) Village mews, Levis and all of the others they contract printed and supplied. I got them on and off all through the 80s whenever I could afford to buy them.
I had a lot of artist friends designing at OP – one being Scott Angle, he became art director for OP and Village Mews until he went freelance in the 90s. I would send jobs too big for my shop to them and they would hook me up with shirts in return. Most of those companies folded by the 90s when all of the t-shirt manufacturing left the country. I had to buy minimums of 100 dozen. when I couldn’t afford to buy bulk so I would use whatever I could get, Beltons, Screen Stars etc. That is also where I got the Gesim french brand used for a lot of the early Chili Peppers stuff. I got a ton of those at a pretty good price because they had tags and they didn’t want to remove them and re-sew. I think when I left the Peppers, Giant used Gold Coast for a while as their first print house. As I recall The Peppers were Giants’ first band to merchandise. Giant is Warner Bros. run by Peter Lubin, or was when I was around.
My favorite 50/50 was the Beltons, much nicer than Screen Stars. Don’t get me wrong, I printed thousands on Screen Stars. I tried to keep nicer stuff in my stores though and would always print extras on nice shirts. I would even buy shirts at department stores even when they had sales, sometimes 3 shirts for 5 bucks. JC Penny, Sears. We would also use the cool blank t-shirts that I bought used by the pound. Those we would custom print and do art on for the stores and for screen set ups. They all came out pretty cool.
Killer Line-Ups
Did Any of Your Tees Provoke Media Attention?
Yeah, tons, especially when Punk was still shocking, not so safe like today. I saw a news show once on some psycho that slaughtered a bunch of people. They were going through the guy’s house showing all of the disturbing junk in his house. I saw a few of my shirts hanging on his walls.
People were pissed all the time, but that’s what we were trying to do back then, it was PUNK rock!!! While I was doing the shirt stuff I was always also publishing and doing art for magazines, books, etc. The one project I did, that really pissed people off, was a set of trading cards on True Serial Killers. I published those in 1989. That caused global outrage and the media went nuts, laws were changed, politicians used them for a reason to get on TV, I got sued by everyone, censored and hassled by the feds. It is a hate crime in Canada to own them. “DOA” was busted at the border for having them in their tour van. I later followed up with a set on True Cannibals, designed by me, Chuck Biscuits, and Rob Zombie. Glenn Danzig also published my ABC book of serial killers in the early ’90s (“The Alphabet of Murder”).
So yeah, I guess, I rubbed some people the wrong way now and then. After the ’92 LA riots hit, it all slowed down. Most of my bands had signed giant merch deals, the shit eaters were back, and I decided it was time to shut it down. I moved to Seattle and started a company with my old friend, Mike Vraney, called “Made by Monks” (Below) and “Something Weird Products” no more punk rock. I was merchandising old smut films and oddball stuff, freaks, vintage drug movies, etc. Chuck followed me a year later and he’s still up there. I moved back to LA in 1998.