Offspring frontman Dexter Holland looks back on 30 years of 'Smash': Listen now

Back in 1994, The Offspring arrived with their third official release, Smash , and asked us all to "Come and Out and Play" while dominating the MTV airwaves and solidifying their place in Pop-Punk for the next three decades.

LISTEN NOW: Rolling Stone Music Now | 30 Years of The Offspring's 'Smash'

Speaking with host Brian Hiatt on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, The Offspring frontman Dexter Holland looks back on the 30th anniversary of the band’s 1994 album Smash remembering writing a bulk of the record in the back of a 1979 Toyota pickup he used to travel back and forth daily to his Ph.D. program in biochemistry at the University of Southern California, on the same tape recorder as his lectures.

“The radio didn’t even work,” says Holland of his “s***ty” old truck. “So, I had an hour to kill twice a day... I was just thinking about the songs, rolling them over in my head. You would just make up parts in your head and hum them into the tape recorder and figure out how to play it on the guitar later.”

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Putting that part of his life on the back burner after the band found success -- helped largely by their breakout hit and music video for "Come and Out and Play," which cost them a mere $5,000 -- The Offspring exploded into the mainstream in the ‘90s without leaving their independent label, Epitaph Records.

Drawn in by the energetic pulse of Punk Rock, Holland felt there was still something to be tapped that could help bring the music to a wider audience. “The rebelliousness of it and the attitude and all that,” he says, was right up his alley, “but I didn’t feel like there were a lot of great songs.” With the exception of “classic albums” by the Sex Pistols and The Clash , he says, “there wasn’t a lot of catchy stuff… I really wanted us to focus on that it wasn't just about the energy, that was the backdrop and the context, but I really wanted to try to write good songs.”

"I have an older brother, so he was actually really helping with my musical education," Holland says. "He brought home KISS ALIVE when I was 9-years-old -- probably not a lot of 9 year olds listening to KISS or David Bowie , so I did have that advantage. Great songwriting was everything from Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road , my parents listened to a lot of Creedence [Clearwater Revival] -- Creedence is one of my favorite of all time to this day."

"I loved all those records, I just devoured them," he adds, "but it wasn't until TSOL that I wanted to actually start a band. Them in large part, and bands like the Dead Kennedys , the Ramones ... made me want to take the leap to the other side from fan to band guy."

Listen to the full episode with Dexter Holland of The Offspring above -- now streaming on Audacy -- and follow along for more conversations with the writers and editors of Rolling Stone , bringing listeners inside the biggest stories in music.